B

Baroness Coffey (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 17 September 2025

Debate

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Contribution

My Lords, my noble friends Lord Grayling and Lord Randall of Uxbridge cannot be here, but their Amendment 305, to which my noble friend on the Front Bench has also added his name, is really important in trying to make sure—going back to the environmental principles and government policy—that developers should be rewarded for doing the right thing up front, instead of just being prepared to sign a cheque. It is certainly not a blank cheque, but it could be a very big cheque. That should be offset, recognising the work done by developers as they develop their housing and other projects. I am sure that my noble friend on the Front Bench will go into more detail, but in essence, we risk entering a regime where mandatory levies are applied, and it is not even necessarily guaranteed that planning consent will be given. Meanwhile, instead of outsourcing, in effect, a lot of the work that would happen as a consequence of an EDP, we want developers to make sure that they design in the integration principle, which the Government have in their policies. It is a transfer of that into thinking how we build right first time, instead of constantly thinking about how to retrofit or do other elements, which, frankly, may not be as well done considering the original design.

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