Lord Lucas (Con)

My Lords, I am delighted to find that I take exactly the opposite point of view to that of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. I see permitted development rights—as in my Private Member’s Bill, and as in my amendments to this Bill—as having a large potential to contribute substantially to housing expansion. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, I shall curtail my remarks in the hope that what the Minister says will be so enlightening that I shall not need to ask her further questions. My amendments propose a targeted set of expansions to permitted development rights to boost uptake and delivery by methods such as: removing unjustifiably onerous restrictions, including those concerning the ability to convert commercial buildings in areas of outstanding natural beauty, or the inability to extend upwards on pre-1948 buildings of no defined heritage value, or buildings postdating an arbitrary date; clarifying the wording of prior approval conditions to remove vagueness, which leads to a lack of consistency in decision-making between LPAs and more uncertainty in their application to, for example, natural light, flood risk or transport impacts; and removing the subjectivity currently allowed for within external appearance conditions for upward extensions, which are regularly used to refuse or frustrate upward extension in classes A and AA to AD and which act as a strong disincentive for the use of these permitted development rights by SME developers and housebuilders. Instead, the local design code-based conditions in my amendments would provide certainty and consistency to decision-making, permitting the combined use and application of class MA and classes A and AA to AD, to maximise the development potential for existing buildings to deliver new homes. Design codes are hugely important in this. Mandatory local design codes, already supported by the NPPF, are essential to make permitted development rights work at scale. They would replace subjective judgments on external appearance with rule-based certainty, define acceptable height, density, daylight and amenity standards to reduce the risk for developers, and be capable of delivery via a public/private model with some costs recovered through planning fee reforms, which could target PDR applications. Reforms would bring consistency, reduce risk and make PDR a viable route to delivery. Local design codes would improve outcomes and boost developer confidence and certainty in the uptake and use of PDR. PDR allows for greater numbers of conversions and extensions of existing buildings to provide new housing and sustainable urban environments. This would help to reduce the demand and strain of granting housing developments in less sustainable greenfield locations. Together, the amendments that I suggest would unlock new housing capacity in the most sustainable and accessible locations and benefit smaller building firms, while still maintaining quality and control over the urban environment.