The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)

My Lords, these draft regulations were laid before the House on 13 February. They make consequential amendments to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and other primary legislation, as well as to the planning application fee regulations. These amendments reflect the two new routes for planning permission for Crown development that were introduced through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. This legislation forms part of a wider suite of statutory instruments needed to implement these new routes. These routes are crucial to ensure that there is a more timely and proportionate planning process for nationally important public services and infrastructure. I will start by providing some context and background to these regulations. Recent experience, including the response to Covid-19, has exposed that the existing route for securing planning permission for urgent Crown development, which was introduced in 2006, is not fit for purpose—so much so that it has never been used. Furthermore, government departments have struggled to secure local planning permission for nationally important public service infrastructure, such as prisons. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act made provision to address these challenges by providing two new routes for planning permission for Crown development in England. The first route, referred to as Crown development, is for planning applications for Crown developments that are considered of national importance. These applications are to be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate directly instead of to local planning authorities. A planning inspector will consider and determine the application, unless the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government recovers the application to determine herself. The second route is an updated urgent Crown development route. This will enable applications for nationally important developments that are needed urgently to be determined rapidly under a simplified procedure. Applications under the urgent route will be submitted to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. These new routes can be used for developments only where it is clearly justified. Provisions in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act require that applications can be accepted by the Secretary of State only if she deems that the proposed development is of national importance and that it is urgent, in the case of the urgent Crown development route. I made a Written Ministerial Statement on 13 February which set out the principles under which national importance and urgency will be determined. Applicants are required when submitting an application to set out the reasons why they consider that the development is of national importance and, in the case of urgent Crown development, is needed as a matter of urgency. I turn to the detail of the regulations. This is the first of a suite of statutory instruments needed to implement the Crown reforms. It makes amendments to primary legislation to reflect the two new Crown development routes. For instance, it amends references to planning permission set out in a range of different pieces of legislation. It also removes references to the previous urgent Crown development route in Section 293A of the Town and Country Planning Act, which now applies only in Wales. This instrument also sets the fee for an application for planning permission under both routes. This is the same as the fee that would have been paid to the local authority if the application had been submitted to it. Following this statutory instrument coming into force, a further suite of statutory instruments will be made through the negative parliamentary procedure. These instruments will set the procedures for the two routes and make further consequential changes to secondary legislation in order to reflect the implementation of these routes. We have published these instruments in draft ahead of this debate to provide proper transparency on how the routes will operate.