Rachel Taylor MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Jun 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for the entertainment he provided throughout the Bill Committee’s proceedings, and for his generosity in the Tea Room. Talking about reflection, however, would he agree that when one looks in the mirror, one does not always like what one sees? The Minister has reflected on many of the proposals that were brought forward in Committee and he has clearly decided that those things would be better left in the national planning policy framework, as opposed to being in this legislation. Would the hon. Gentleman also agree that we do not have more young people buying and owning their own homes now than we did in 2010, and that the reason for that is—

• 10 Jun 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 22 May 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a long-standing norm that building regulations deal not just with the construction of buildings but their thermal efficiency and performance. That is why energy performance certificates were introduced, and there are regulations on windows, glazing and glass roofs all found within the building regulations. Surely these provisions on overheating need to go hand in hand with those provisions on thermal efficiency in housing, and therefore sit far better within building regulations than in this Bill.

• 22 May 2025 · Sports Facilities: Areas of Housing Growth · Hansard source

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  In my hometown of Atherstone, the leisure centre and swimming pool is beyond its useful life. That is the case for more than 50% of swimming facilities up and down this country. When we talk about building new homes, we need to make sure that we are building accessible communities with facilities for people to enjoy sports. As we look forward to a fantastic summer of tennis, I would also like to put in a plea for covered tennis facilities, because half of the time it is raining, and people cannot play tennis in the rain.

• 20 May 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship once again, Ms Jardine. I welcome the clause. In the area where I live in Warwickshire, public transport is woeful, which means that children and young people are left behind because they cannot access school and college facilities. It also means that people are reluctant to make a trip to the hospital because they simply cannot get there. The clause means that young people can have aspirations for their future and live in communities that are connected. The powers will be very welcome in areas like mine where transport authorities seem reluctant to fulfil their functions. I really welcome it.

• 20 May 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for her lengthy and detailed explanation of zero carbon standards. Does she think it is appropriate to constrain the Minister to bringing forward building regulations within the short period of six months? Would that take longer? Not all of us have the same detailed and intricate knowledge of the standards that would be required, although I understand a great deal about building regulations.

• 20 May 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I think what comes across in some of the proposed new clauses, which is not the case in the Bill itself, is a punitive scheme for developers. What we need to do is work in partnership with smaller developers and community developers in particular, so that we can build out any number of different types of homes—whether they are apartments, bungalows, or small starter homes. All of those are important in the market and will help young people to feel that they can get on the housing ladder and not have to rely on living in their parents’ spare room until they are in their mid-30s.

• 14 May 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 14 May 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  This really is a semantic point about language. I fully appreciate that there is a massive difference between notification and consultation, but new section 12H(5) is very clear that that notification is also required to contain an invitation to the relevant person to make representations. Surely an invitation to somebody to make a representation is a consultation?

• 14 May 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The shadow Minister is making important points about how we consult the public, but we heard clearly from him this morning that that was the role of local councillors. I refer him to new section 12I to the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, which provides that any spatial development strategy must be examined by the public. Another layer of consultation would be an unnecessary addition when there is already in-built public consultation in the Bill.

• 13 May 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  When the Committee met the witnesses a week or so ago, we touched on section 106 agreements and the role of planning authority lawyers in that process. I think that the fees for processing and determining applications include the process for agreeing a section 106 agreement. Is it the Government’s intention to include costs arising from the legal department’s time and efforts in determining those applications in the ringfenced planning application fees? I am aware that there is a severe shortage of qualified and experienced property lawyers in both local authorities in my constituency, as well as a shortage of planning officers.

• 13 May 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Ms Jardine. I strongly support the clause and was really glad to see that the Electric Vehicle Association England welcomes the change. It will make it easier, cheaper and faster to install public chargers for EVs. There is a battery assembly plant run by JLR in my constituency. We are making more components for electric vehicles, but my constituents find it really difficult to make the jump to invest in an electric vehicle, because there are just not enough electric vehicle charging points in the town centres around my constituency. Anything that makes it easier and removes the blockages will be extremely helpful. I echo some of the points made by the Opposition spokespeople. We must make sure that the charging points are installed carefully and thoughtfully, which means taking into account the pavement requirements of pedestrians, particularly those with pushchairs or using wheelchairs. Will the Minister explain how that will be taken into account? I definitely welcome this change, and it is a huge step forward. Particularly in more rural constituencies like mine, people need to be able to drive their electric vehicles in and out of town centres for work, and to be able to charge them.

• 13 May 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Amendment 152 is well intentioned and sets out a number of matters that planning authorities should take into account when organising training. There are also other aspects of the planning process to consider, including how we make better provision for electric vehicles. The last major piece of planning legislation from 1990—it has endured for 35 years—is very prescriptive about the content of training for members and officers, but it will be extremely difficult to encapsulate everything that is needed. I certainly think that the requirements for people with disabilities and for climate and nature are sometimes conflicting. I have seen a number of planning schemes where trees are put in the middle of the road or pavement. Although those environments look nice, they do not accommodate people with disabilities, such as sight or mobility problems. We have to adapt as things move on, and this is exactly the sort of thing that I would ask the Minister to consider in guidance that could be regularly updated, as opposed to it forming part of the Bill. I certainly support the amendment’s intention, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) for tabling it.

• 13 May 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister agree that very often the controversial decisions that go to planning committees and are declined by them, leading to an appeal, result in higher council tax for residents, because of the huge cost of appeals, reviews and so on? A national scheme of delegation, where it is clear which decisions can be made under delegated authorities and which cannot, will therefore simplify the process for developers, remove the delays and costs for them, and keep costs down for local residents.

• 13 May 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I acted for developers before coming into the House, and I know their biggest concern was always delays, not the fees that the local authority charged for doing these things. As a result of the lack of capacity in local authorities, there has been a move to more unadopted roads on small estates, which has its own problems for property owners going forward. I really welcome this provision, because it lays sensible steps toward making it easier for developers to complete their projects sooner, which enables them to make more money. I think that the offset in costs will be welcomed by small developers. This provision is particularly important in the small authorities that cover large geographical areas, because it will enable them to go out and make visits. To give an example, my client was required to build a pavement but could not do so while there was a vaccination centre up the road. The local authority could not, under the fee structure, find the time to come out and visit the site, which would have enabled it to make a more sensible decision. In general terms, this provision is really welcome and developers, both small and large, will see this as a very positive step forward.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q As a follow-up, also at Hams Hall, JLR has a battery assembly plant, and its representatives told me that it could probably power the whole of the industrial estate there, but that there was no chance that it would be able to get a grid connection. Is there an estimate of those sorts of things, which are feasible and possible but have not entered your radar because they have not applied? Beatrice Filkin: One of the purposes of the queue reform is to make sure that the projects that we need and are ready earliest get earlier access to the network. At the moment, we have a lot of projects in the queue that are at an early stage of development, and are not so critically needed by the strategic plans that we are setting out. Projects such as connections for demand or for factories are already in the queue and are deemed as needed. They will therefore be prioritised for the queue, and we expect their connection dates to improve as a result of the connections reform process.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Until the election I was a commercial property solicitor acting for a number of residential and commercial property developers. I was also a North Warwickshire borough councillor until I resigned a couple of months ago.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I was delighted recently to visit a National Grid substation at Hams Hall, in my North Warwickshire and Bedworth constituency. It is almost doubling in size to accommodate connections for High Speed 2, but people there also talked to me about the massive queue of projects that need connections if there is to be expansion right across the west midlands. Have you carried out an assessment of the backlog of connections? To what extent will these changes enable us to achieve our ambition of net zero by 2030? Beatrice Filkin: I am very happy to take that question. We have had an ongoing process of reform to the approach to the connections queue with NESO and Government for quite a while now. We reached our conclusions last week and made a decision on how the reordering of the queue should work. As part of that, as Charlotte mentioned, we have been looking at how we move away from the idea that we had previously—a first come, first served application process—to looking at what we need as a country and which projects are most ready. The decision we have taken on how that process will work now needs to be implemented by NESO. It will be implemented very rapidly over the next year, with the network operators, to give industry confidence and security that it can continue to invest to deliver clean power targets, as well as all the growth targets that we want. One point that we did not touch on previously was that the demand connections are really important for the growth story. The queue connections reform deems all the connections that are already in the queue as needed, so they pass the first test. That is very important in making sure that we are prioritising access to our network, and that will enable growth in the country. Charlotte Mitchell: Bringing forward the legislation at pace will enable us to move to the new system. It is important that measures in the Bill are brought forward quickly, so that we can move towards the new reordering and prioritisation.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I am interested to hear your quite controversial views on the role of local councillors in the planning process. I am sure that a lot of developers might agree with you. We heard from the previous panel that planning with consent is key to securing good communities. How do you feel it is best to consult the public? Should it be via their elected representatives, or should there be something in the local planning framework to do so?

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q James, I would like to ask you a question first. We heard a lot on earlier panels about the number of permissions that have been granted but not yet delivered. How do you think your members can be helped by the Bill to deliver those homes? Also, when we talk about affordable housing, how much of that really needs to be socially rented housing to help deliver homes that homeless people need? That second question is more for Kate. James Stevens: On the first element of that question, we really dispute the notion that house builders just bank land and are not interested in building out. Craig Bennett of the Wildlife Trusts cited a figure on Radio 4, I think, of 1.4 million homes that have granted permission but that have not been built out. We strongly contest that. A lot of those things are not counted as a completion until they are actually completed. A lot of those schemes have to work through very complicated discharge conditions. A lot of those permissions can just be outline planning permissions, and not the detailed planning permissions that you need to be an implementable consent. A lot of those figures are just poor figures that do not reflect the true numbers that have actually been built out. Lastly on that, this accusation of land banking has often been levelled at the house building industry over the last 20 years. Consistently, independent studies, including one by the Competition and Markets Authority last year, have given us a clean bill of health on that. There is an issue about absorption rates—the ability of a local market to absorb certain sales—but house builders do not make their money from sitting on land. That costs them money. We make money from the sale of homes. The issue of social housing—I will allow Kate to come in shortly—is very important. The problem is that we have a severe housing crisis. As Kate said, we have many thousands of children in temporary accommodation. Local authorities had to spend something like £2.3 billion last year on temporary accommodation; local authorities would go bankrupt there. Therefore, the tendency is to try to maximise social housing provision—social rented housing. We can understand why local authorities want to do that. However, to follow up on the point I made to Gideon Amos, the problem is that if local authority policies are too prescriptive on the tenure split, that can make it very difficult for house builders to contract with registered providers, to provide registered providers with the type of tenure mix that they need. We need to be a bit more realistic and flexible about that. The key issue is to get houses built—to focus upon the quantity—in order to alleviate the affordability problems that make people so dependent upon social housing in the first place. But absolutely, social rented housing is very important. We are not trying to say that we do not want to build it. Kate Henderson: Social housing is needed in every part of the country. What is really important is that we have objectively assessed needs and that those needs are then incorporated in local plans, and that we deliver mixed, sustainable communities that reflect the needs of those areas. I will just dispute a little bit the point about the London situation and the London plan. London is the only part of the country where we have a strategic development strategy. The reason that we have a crash of supply in London is not because of strategic planning. It is because of a building safety crisis, hugely high inflation, huge land prices, an absolute crisis in temporary accommodation, and huge pressures that have happened across the social housing sector over the last 15 years in terms of cuts and caps to our income. To get out of the situation in London and in the rest of the country, we need a comprehensive planning system that is based on objectively assessed need; a long-term housing strategy that looks at our existing homes as well as new homes; a rent settlement, including convergence, and funding that addresses building safety as well as new supply. Those are all things that the Government are looking at, which is welcome. As for bringing forward those spatial development strategies in the rest of the country, it is really important that they have a focus on social and affordable housing, and that that should be mandated within them. The percentages will need to reflect the context of the areas and the need in those areas, so there will need to be a degree of flexibility in accordance with place, but it is vital that that is mandated as part of the remit of those strategies. We welcome their introduction.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Before I came to this place—

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I am surprised to hear the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) trashing hard-working local builders in his constituency and calling the homes that his constituents live in dreadful trashy houses. Before I came to this place—

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I no longer have a practising certificate as a solicitor, and I gave up practising as soon as I came into this House.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I am not going to give way; you have had your time. Before I came to this place— [ Interruption. ]

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker—[Hon. Members: “Withdraw!”]