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Housing and Regeneration Bill

My Lords, simply and briefly, when the HCA brings forward developments, it will obviously have to go through the planning system and then engage as part of the statutory consultation process where appropriate. In the exceptional circumstances in which it had to use its own planning powers, it would still be doing so within the overall framework of the Town and Country Planning Acts and would have to go through exactly the same process, so the fact that it was using those powers in exceptional circumstances would not exempt it—far from it—from having to go through the statutory consultation with the Environment Agency. In addition, I reassure noble Lords that, following the flooding of New Orleans two or three years ago, the board of English Partnerships immediately instructed officials to review all our land holdings and carry out a detailed flood risk assessment, not because we needed to statutorily but because we felt that it was correct in the circumstances to ensure that we fully understood the risks associated with the land holdings that we were stewarding on behalf of government. If we had needed to take action at that time, we would most certainly have done so.