Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)

My Lords, I will speak specifically to Amendment 84, to which I have added my name, although I support many of the amendments in this group. We know how important public green spaces are to communities, and for nature, and that there is widespread public support for their protection. That is why, as I understand it, registered parks and gardens, along with battlefields, were given protection in the town and country planning order 2015. I thank the Gardens Trust for its briefings on this, and the Minister and her office for a helpful meeting and correspondence about it. At the moment, as my noble friend Lord Inglewood has said, registered parks and gardens are not considered statutory heritage assets, which would make them part of the same process as listed buildings. Instead, they have their own process of consultation, with Historic England as the statutory consultee for battlefields and grade 1 and grade 2* parks and gardens, and the Gardens Trust dealing with grade 2 parks and gardens, which is 65% of them. Importantly, three-quarters of registered public parks are grade 2, so the Gardens Trust is tasked with looking after most of our public parks. The Gardens Trust appears to do this very efficiently. From its statistics, we see that it was consulted 1,842 times last year, and that 99% of the time it responded within the agreed deadline. It voiced an objection to planning in only 6.6% of its responses. Its government grant for fulfilling this consultee role—for giving bespoke responses to planning inquiries, on time and with expertise—was £43,963. Clearly, there is no way that anyone else within the planning system could deliver this expertise for less money and with any greater time efficiency, and there is no evidence that it is causing a major blockage to housebuilding. Actually, not having heard of the Gardens Trust before this matter arose, I thank the charity for its service to this country and its public parks. I understand that the Government are considering removing the Gardens Trust’s statutory consultee role—the slightly bespoke role that was created for registered parks, gardens and battlefields. We all, however, appreciate the work that it does, so this amendment aims to protect this service while making the administrative process simpler. It would put registered parks and gardens into the same planning process as other heritage assets, where there is an existing and well-understood statutory consent process, whereby the Gardens Trust would be the amenity society that would be notified if there were planning proposals that might affect registered parks and gardens, or, importantly, their settings. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, has Amendment 109 coming up, which I believe would have a similar effect by commencing Section 102 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, in which this area of planning was already tidied up. That might be an alternative to this amendment. None the less, it would be very helpful if the Minister, in her response to this group, could indicate the Government’s intentions on making best use of the efficient role that the Gardens Trust plays in helping give advice on our much-loved grade 2 parks and gardens and their settings.