Planning Bill

moved Amendment No. 28: 28: Clause 5, page 2, line 38, leave out ““and”” The noble Baroness said: The amendments in this group are intended to ensure that good design is integral to the process of planning. The reason why they are necessary can be seen all around us. People are entitled to properly designed infrastructure sited optimally within our landscape, including the built environment. Infrastructure will not function properly unless it is well designed. There are good architects and designers in this country who work to the highest standards, but there is not yet a culture or an expectation of good design among those who make planning decisions and planning proposals. Indeed, there is a deficit of design capacity among the planning community. We must overcome this if we are to implement the newly central processes of the Planning Bill and seize the economic opportunities that it creates. I know that my noble friend is sympathetic to the importance of good design and I hope that these amendments or something like them will therefore work with the grain of government policy. I shall summarise the amendments briefly, because I know that a wide range of distinguished commentators from all sides of the Chamber is waiting in the wings. Amendments Nos. 28 and 30 would ensure that good design is inherent in the national policy statements and Amendments Nos. 35 and 37 would ensure that the Secretary of State personally endorses the element of good design in the policy statement. Amendment No. 60 would guarantee the same for reviews of the NPS, giving good design the same status as sustainability, to which it is allied but not coterminous. The same parallel is made at Amendment No. 86 to cover the whole exercise of the Secretary of State’s functions, so that sustainability would not be seen as being on a lower level than good design. Amendment No. 429 makes this clear by amending the Town and Country Planning Act accordingly. It fits the CABE-inspired, tried-and-tested review panels into the planning system. It is also important that their findings should carry evidential weight in appeals where applications have been rejected on design grounds. Amendments Nos. 173, 174, 180, 213, 249, 250, 334 and 359 would mainstream design into the operations of the IPC, so that applications for consent, model provisions, the IPC’s acceptance of applications, the content of development orders and the capacity of the panels that make the settled decisions all fully take the need for good design into account. The IPC might best implement amendments along these lines by taking advice from the independent panel, much as operates in some parts of the USA, with the advice being publicly available. I owe this suggestion to the Royal Town Planning Institute, whose view I am sure the Minister will respect. It also chimes with the opinion of good London borough chief planning officers. Amendment No. 334 would ensure that if the Secretary of State needed to halt the progress of any consent, she could also do so if the design was not good enough. On Monday my noble friend resisted the proposal that the IPC should include accounting for the quality of design among the prescribed contents of its annual report. There are examples of that kind of accountability and I hope that she will reconsider, particularly given the wide range of support that the proposal had. Finally, Amendments Nos. 440 and 441 would ensure that the operation of the community infrastructure levy also includes proper consideration of good design. The local authority would be prompted to mainstream design in its thinking and ensure that it had good advice available. Good design is not an extra, a frill or a luxury; it is absolutely fundamental to planning that people can live comfortably with. That is why these amendments, or something like them, are essential. I beg to move.