Planning Bill

Amendments Nos. 409A to 409C stand in my name. Like the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Berkeley, they deal with the relationship between the national policy statement and the local development plan, particularly in relation to renewable energy. The principal purposes of the Bill are to ensure that we speed up the planning process and provide the infrastructure to deal with climate change, which we all face. However, the fact is that after the Bill comes into effect, many onshore renewable energy projects, particularly those concerned with wind and solar generation, will continue to be consented as part of the ordinary planning system by the local planning authority. That is because the Infrastructure Planning Commission will deal only with generating stations producing above 50 megawatts, the same threshold as in the Electricity Act. As I interpret them, national policy statements will deal with all development, and the result is that an NPS can be a material consideration in the determination of a planning application. There is concern that the planning system has tended to place insufficient weight on national policy on renewable energy, and that is partly because few adopted development plans deal adequately with the issue of development for wind and other forms of renewable power generation. The problem is compounded by the primacy given to the development plan under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, so the amendments aim to ensure that national policy statements that deal with renewable energy generation are given due weight in the planning system both in the preparation of development plan documents and in individual decisions. They seek to amend Clause 172 and thus would amend the relevant sections of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act. I am aware that Clause 173 obliges the development plan documents to include policies designed to secure that the development and use of land in a local planning authority’s area contributes to the mitigation of and adaption to climate change, but nevertheless it seems appropriate that we should ensure that the national policy statement that relates to renewable energy is given primacy and proper weight by local planning authorities when they deal with renewable energy applications before them.