My Lords, I was thrilled to add my name to my noble friend Lord Ravensdale’s Amendments 179 and 271. It is seriously important to make sure that the planning system is aligned with our climate and nature targets; this also goes to the heart of whether we will meet our net-zero targets. Currently, our planning system is not doing enough, yet it is one of the most important single levers we have.
All too often we see the degradation of natural habitats caused by housing and other infrastructure, from high-carbon development being approved to homes being built that will later require expensive retrofits. The Environment and Climate Change Committee has just done a report showing how expensive and difficult that process is. It could all be solved in one go. Natural England commented to our inquiry that nature and climate are at risk of further and irreparable damage from a range of pressures, including the need for new housing, which is currently not up to scratch.
It is welcome that the Government are currently consulting on changes to the National Planning Policy Framework to make sure that it contributes to climate change mitigation and adaptation as fully as possible, but it is only guidance. Government must send a strong message about the importance it places on achieving our climate and nature targets.
Fully embedding climate and nature within planning also brings, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, pointed out, great outcomes through green jobs, sustainable economic growth, improved health and well-being, helping to reduce the cost of living in lots of instances and making us more resilient to extreme weather. It is extraordinary that we still build houses in known flood zones; those will only get worse, not better.
At the local authority level, most local plans do not contain any comprehensive or robust policies on climate change mitigation or adaptation, yet lots of local authorities want just that. At the individual decision-making level, ambitious local councils often have their plans refused by the Planning Inspectorate because we have a completely unaligned system. It does not work as a thought-through process from beginning to end, but the Bill provides the perfect opportunity to address this gap.
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Amendment 179 would add a net-zero and nature test to all planning decisions. It would apply not just to big decisions but to little ones as well. To quote again—as the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, did—from the Skidmore review:
“the vision of the planning system on net zero is not clear”;
it is
“A system that appears ambivalent to net zero
and therefore incapable of delivering the change that we need. That could not have been put more clearly, and is from a review that the Government themselves commissioned.
The Government commented in their recently published consultation on the proposed environmental outcome reports that:
“These reforms will deliver a streamlined system which works for everyone and delivers better environmental outcomes”.
The consultation also notes:
“We want to ensure we break the cycle where developments struggle to reflect how they address matters that are of national and global scale and importance.”
What better way to do this than through these amendments? This could work cohesively with the environmental outcome reports, which the Government have said will
“amplify government initiatives such as Biodiversity Net Gain and Local Nature Recovery Strategies.”
There is simply too much scope for inconsistency in the current system. This is a critical decade, as was pointed out in the IPCC report this week. The Government have to be clear that all developments must have at their heart a special regard—a legal regard—to the need to contribute towards net zero. This net-zero test will shift us closer to climate-positive and nature-positive development. I hope the Minister will agree.