My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 78 in this group, which is in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding. It is yet another attempt to change the definition of what type of project could be included in the extent of the Planning Act. It relates to commercial and business developments that require consent under the national significant infrastructure regime.
The issue that I would like to raise is that of mixed-use schemes that have some housing or retail element. They should be able to take advantage of the regime for nationally significant infrastructure projects. Any retail element is excluded from the proposed list of development types set out in annexe A of the recent CLG consultation on extending the Planning Act regime. I imagine that this could always be reversed if the Government were minded to do so, but the Bill prevents any housing element being included in regulations.
I believe there is a large number of potentially significant business and commercial developments that will have some retail and certainly some housing element in them, even if it is only a caretaker. In theory, if there is just one property in a development, it cannot qualify for going down the nationally significant route. It is important for such developments to be able to include some housing element and to go for the nationally significant approach. An awful lot of time and cost could be saved if this were possible. The original prohibition of housing was well intentioned, and clearly big housing projects are not what the nationally significant definition is for, but it is a problem because if there were just one or two houses in a big development, it would be excluded.
That is what this probing amendment seeks to achieve. I hope that the Minister is willing to look at this again. Perhaps we can discuss whether there is some better wording that could be applied on Report.