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Planning Bill

My Lords, my noble friend has indeed allowed the hand of history to touch her shoulder. When it was suggested on Report last week that that might be so, she blushed modestly and demurred. Since then, however, she has embraced her historical destiny to become the reformer responsible for the institution of legal requirements that will raise standards of design across the entire planning system, and in regeneration and building. The new clause and this legislation will be timely. The Government are extremely anxious to accelerate construction activity, and house-building in particular, for good reason. We understand that there are 1.7 million households on the waiting-list for social housing. It is widely agreed that a stimulus is needed for the economy under the present conditions. However, there is a danger that, in our haste to accelerate construction, quality is sacrificed. We must not repeat the disastrous mistakes that were made decade after decade in the second half of the 20th century. With a great deal of public-sector activism and expenditure, and a depressed private sector and—I hope not, but perhaps—a depressed social housing sector operating in circumstances of great difficulty, there is a danger that we will revert to the policy of creating estates, with all that word’s bad connotations, instead of continuing to create integrated communities. That is an aspect of design. There is a continuum between economic policy, social policy, planning policy, functionality, sustainability, building regulations, green spaces, design and aesthetics. All are interdependent. My noble friend has been right to reject the view that it would have been inappropriate to state the requirement for design alongside the requirement for sustainable development in this legislation. Good planning, plus good design, plus good building tend to make for good communities. Where questions of style are concerned it does not matter whether a development is modern or traditional. I personally do not think that is any business of government, but it is government’s business to help everybody involved in design and construction in this country to raise their game. How is that to be done? It is not easy. We have a plethora of planning policy statements and DCLG and CABE manuals of design. There is a mass of local policies in every planning authority on shop fronts, fenestration materials and so forth. So why, then, is good design not widely prevalent? Part of the answer is that knowledge and judgment are hard won. We need to do better on education and training. While the Government should always respect professional and academic autonomy, I hope that they will lend all their weight and drive to improving education and training in this field. However, I think that the main problem arises from pressures imposed on planning committees, for example, by house-building targets, the need to create new infrastructure fast, local campaigns to stop things being done and from developers who want to cut costs and improve their profit margins. Planning officers and members of planning committees often lack the time to go into the necessary detail. They sometimes lack the interest and the knowledge, too, but they mainly lack the time. The agenda for a fortnightly planning committee meeting can easily run to 100 pages and more, so that the advice from the Government, CABE and the local community is paraphrased by planning officers for the working papers of the committee and too much is lost in translation. The detail in such matters as scale, massing, texture and grain, as well as the more obvious issues such as access and parking, is crucial if you are to achieve good design. If we do not want identikit new developments spread all across the country, we must also foster the vernacular. However, by definition the vernacular is diverse and needs to be interpreted locally by local people who are knowledgeable about it. That means that we need to think about how to use the resources that local advisory committees can offer to local planners. That is one of the reasons I am such a strong believer in design review. One interesting model for advice lies in conservation area advisory committees.