My Lords, this excellent amendment, probing how we link national planning, regional strategic planning and local planning by including planning by private companies whose role is regulated by government, poses a very interesting question. I will give a couple of practical examples.
In my area on the M62 corridor, National Highways —or Highways England, another of the forms it has taken over the years—has a plan to create a link road from the M62 to the M606. To my knowledge, that has been in the local plan for 25 years. It has prevented the development of a brownfield site because of the land that it would take and the consequences that followed from that.
It was in the latest five-year plan from National Highways for its infrastructure, and all of a sudden, having done some costings—I think that was at the heart of it—it suddenly withdrew its intention, within the five-year plan and no further, to create or even begin to plan for that important link road, which, I have to say, has very significant consequences for the whole area. That is because its purpose was to take traffic off what I think is the most congested motorway roundabout in the country, the Chain Bar roundabout at junction 26 of the M62 in West Yorkshire.
10.30 pm
The removal of that leads to huge consequences for other developments in the area, including the brownfield site but also other development which would lead to more traffic congestion on the roundabout. When I say congestion, I will just cite what happened—and it happens every week, really—last Wednesday, when it was reported to me that it took an hour and a half to get round the roundabout because it was absolutely gridlocked. So I am talking about serious congestion.
Talking about and creating a plan for utilities prior to development is absolutely important. Looking at it from the other end of the spectrum, I spent 10 years as a non-executive director of Yorkshire Water, so I know
a little bit about the planning that water companies undertake. I absolutely hear what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said, but he will know, because he mentioned it, about the price review and the five-year plan that has to be submitted to the regulator. There are also the capital allowances that go with it, and the pricing review aligns with the capital plan that water companies do. So we are talking about very long-term planning. I would suggest that you would have to think probably seven years ahead for what would be in the pipeline at the end of it.
A hugely important issue has been raised, because it is not just the area of the Fens that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, mentioned in terms of water shortage but the south-east and the east of England, where water supply is restricting housing development. He is absolutely right in those terms. All I would say on that score is that the north of England has a good supply of water, and we are willing to sell it, at a cost, to those areas of shortage—actually, that does not work either, because it is very difficult to move water around the country. I will listen carefully to what the Minister has to say—I always do—but this is a fundamental issue about strategic planning on a national scale, so it would be worth hearing what has been said.