240: After Clause 93, insert the following new Clause—
“Cycling, walking and rights of way plans: incorporation in development plans(1) A local planning authority must ensure that the development plan incorporates, so far as relevant to the use or development of land in the local planning authority’s area, the policies and proposals set out in— (a) any local cycling and walking infrastructure plan or plans prepared by a local transport authority;(b) any rights of way improvement plan.(2) In dealing with an application for planning permission or permission in principle the local planning authority shall also have regard to any policies or proposals contained within a local cycling and walking infrastructure plan or plans and any rights of way improvement plan which have not been included as part of the development plan, so far as is material to the application.(3) In this section—(a) “local planning authority” has the same meaning as in section 15LF of PCPA 2004;(b) “local transport authority” has the same meaning as in section 108 of the Transport Act 2000;(c) a “rights of way improvement plan” is a plan published by a local highway authority under section 60 of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.”Member's explanatory statement
This new Clause would require development plans to incorporate policies and proposals for cycling and walking infrastructure plans and rights of way improvement plans. Local planning authorities would be required to have regard to any such policies and proposals where they have not been incorporated in a development plan.
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to start this day in Committee by moving Amendment 240. I shall also speak to the other amendments in this grouping.
I am very grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who apologises for not being here today. This amendment has the support of the Bicycle Association, Bikeability Trust, British Cycling, Cycling UK, Living Streets, Ramblers and Sustrans. I think you can say that that support basically includes the Better Planning Coalition. Its purpose is to ensure that the various walking and cycling network plans and rights of way drawn up by county councils or combined authorities are incorporated into local planning authorities’ development plans and are reflected in their planning decisions. This would help to safeguard land for new walking and cycling routes or rights of way, including disused railway lines, improve existing routes, and ensure that developments connected with existing or new walking, wheeling or cycling networks with secure development contributions are introduced. This came to a head within the last six months, when National Highways was caught filling in disused railway bridges with concrete to prevent them from being used in the future as footpaths or cycleways, for example. I am grateful that there has been a pause put on that. I hope that it stays a pause, because it was a very stupid decision with no benefit whatever.
This amendment addresses the problems of local planning authorities that sometimes, wittingly or unwittingly, frustrate a higher tier authority’s aspirations for walking, cycling and rights of way by not recording these network aspirations in their development plans. That means that they are not safeguarding the land for these networks or to connect new developments with existing networks for secure developer contributions to implement or upgrade specific routes. There is much discussion going on about all these issues, but it is very important that this covers what is happening now and what might happen in future. The biggest problem is when we have two-tier authorities—county councils or combined authorities, and district councils. In one case, one part of a unitary authority commissioned Sustrans to assesses the feasibility of reopening a disused railway line as a walking and cycling route, while another part of the same authority gave permission for a housing development which blocked the route. There is no point in doing this; it wastes a lot of time and seriously affects the people who want to develop cycling or walking routes.
My Lords, in this debate on transport, it is a pleasure to follow in the slipstream of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and add some footnotes to his speech on Amendment 240.
Before I turn to the amendment, I will say a word about the target of 300,000 EV chargers. Some chargers are fast chargers and some are slow chargers. At some point, we need to define more accurately the division of those 300,000. If they are all slow chargers, that will not do the trick. If they are fast chargers, we may not need quite so many. So a bit of granularity on that target at some point would be welcome.
Researching for this debate, I came across a government document stating that
“continuing growth in road transport and consequential environmental impacts present a major challenge to the objective of sustainable development. Traffic growth on the scale projected could threaten our ability to meet objectives for greenhouse gas emissions … and for the protection of landscapes and habitats”.
I should have recognised it instantly, as it was in a document that I published nearly 30 years ago when I was Planning Minister. It was PPG13, which offered advice to local authorities on integrating land-use planning and transport. Its object was to reduce reliance on the car by promoting alternative means of travel and improving the quality of life.
I note in passing that I referred to the then Government’s policy of increasing the real level of fuel duty by an average of at least 5% a year—a policy now very much in the rear-view mirror—and also my commitment to introducing electronic tolling on motorways. Back in 1993, I was clearly a little bit ahead of the game.
Amendment 240 could almost have been lifted from PPG13. It promoted development within urban areas at locations highly accessible by means other than the car, and it supported policies to improve choice for people to walk, cycle or catch public transport, rather than drive between homes and facilities that they need to visit regularly.
My Lords, I am pleased to speak to a number of amendments in this group, to which my name is attached. This is, of course, a group of transport-related amendments. Like the noble Lord, Lord Young, I am very pleased to see that we have the Transport Minister here to respond in detail to us, because all the warm words on levelling up are meaningless without decisive action to improve transport infrastructure and services. Poor transport facilities almost exactly mirror the overall picture of the social divide in our country: poorer areas have poor public transport and poor transport infrastructure generally.
There is a reason why London and the south-east are the richest parts of the UK: they have the transport links to service the areas well, and one reinforces the other. I say that while recognising of course at the same time that there is poverty and disadvantage amongst the most privileged.
I start with Amendment 240, to which I have added my name. The noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Young, have spoken in some detail, and with greater information than is necessary for me to repeat here today. But I want to endorse the fact that this has to be about broadening access to the activities of cycling and walking and safeguarding our rights of way: for many decades, we have been accustomed to the gradual erosion of the practicality of safe walking and cycling, and the erosion of our rights of way on footpaths. The car has been king for a very long time. If we are going to truly improve the quality of our lives and the lives of the generations to come, we need a much broader and more informed approach. In my own local area, I notice the cycleways that disappear into nothing at key junctions and so on. It is a skilled business to provide really good cycling and walking facilities.
Turning to Amendment 468, the intention here is to prioritise the requirements for disability access at rail stations. Progress on this has been painfully slow—way too slow. I use this opportunity to praise the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and my noble friend Lady Brinton, who raise these issues time and again in the media and in this House. We live in an ageing society, and we should be much more encouraging to those people who are less mobile but who want to travel by rail or bus. So this amendment goes way beyond the simple issues of wheelchair access, access for those with sight impairment and so on. It is about access for people who are less agile.
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I ask a very specific question: why are new facilities still being built which are not fully and easily accessible for people who cannot run up a flight of stairs? There was recently publicity about Network Rail bridges being built which were not fully accessible.
An example I have used before is Pokesdown station in Dorset, which is quite a busy station. It is in the Bournemouth conurbation. When the contract was given to the then new train operating company, which I think must be about five years ago, I asked specifically about plans for a passenger lift at that station because it has an extremely long and steep flight of stairs to both platforms. I was told then that the passenger lift was imminent. I made the point that it was unstaffed for much of the day while trains were coming and going. It remains “imminent”—or possibly not imminent—and, of course, it remains inaccessible for anyone less than fully agile. This is even more frustrating because there is an apparently disused goods lift. There is a shaft and there is potential for a lift already built. There must be dozens of examples like that throughout the country.
Finally, I turn to Amendments 470 and 486, which look at the future of electric vehicles. I am very concerned that the charging infrastructure is already developing with inbuilt inequality. The noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Young, raised very important issues. I will not repeat the details and statistics given to us, but I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Young, that, as well as standard rate and fast chargers, there are also rapid chargers. He has pinpointed a key issue: the level of awareness among all of us about the difference in the provision from one area to another.
Rapid is faster than far, but that would not be obvious to the average local public sector employee whose job it is to ensure that there is adequate infrastructure for EVs.
My Amendment 486 requires the Government to update us regularly on their strategy to improve the charging network. It particularly refers to the discrepancies across the country. The discussion often relates to the pure numbers of charge points, but just as important are two different factors. The first is the adequacy of the numbers available in public places. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has made that point. Currently, EV ownership is concentrated among more affluent people—those with drives and who can therefore have chargers attached to their homes. We cannot have an EV revolution that is only for the rich. People who live in terraced houses and in flats must also be able to own EVs. As the revolution plays out and a second-hand market develops for electric vehicles, this becomes an ever more pertinent point. The second factor is that the Government have emphasised time and again that they believe that the market will adequately take care of the provision of charge points, but the figures do not bear that out. London and the south-east have a far more generous ratio of electric vehicles to public charge points than any other part of the UK.
My conclusions are that particular problems need to be addressed. The first is the disparity in cost between home charging and public charge points. If you charge at home, you pay 5% VAT; if you charge in a public car park, a public place or from a lamppost, you pay 20% VAT. That reinforces the unfairness. I urge the Government to deal with the issue soon as otherwise it will hamper any of their best intentions on this issue.
The second conclusion is that the Government must work much harder to increase support and funding in areas that have large gaps in their electric vehicle infrastructure. They are often towns in poorer areas and, of course, almost every rural area. Local authorities have a key role in this but often need greater advice because officials do not know the difference between fast and rapid and so on. They need not just money but support and advice to help them, otherwise EVs will remain vehicles for rich areas and poorer areas will remain subject to suffering from poor air quality.
My Lords, I guess I should rise at this point to follow with pleasure the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, who made a point that I was going to make. I note that in Scotland, they are going for 2025. This is a case where England urgently needs to catch up. I will primarily speak to Amendment 482. It is very simple:
“for “30” substitute “20”.
This is a “20 is plenty” amendment. I am going chiefly to speak to that, but I note that this is a very neat and fit group of amendments.
We express Green support for Amendment 240. We obviously need to get active transport joined up to make preparation to make sure that it happens. Also, we support Amendment 486 from the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Randerson, on disability access in railway stations. Of course, we broadly agree with electric vehicle charging points. However, on the interaction between these two issues, we have to make sure that where vehicle charging points are installed on roads, they do not make the pavements less accessible, particularly for people with disabilities, with strollers and other issues. The space should be taken from the road and cars and not from pedestrians.
Returning to my Amendment 482, this would make the default general speed limit for restricted roads 20 miles per hour. Among the many organisations recommending this is TRL, formerly the Government’s Transport Research Laboratory. Going from the local to the international, there was of course the Stockholm Declaration, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2020, which recommends 20 miles per hour speed limits where people walk, live and play. That is the global standard that the world is heading towards, and we really need to catch up on this. I can see much nodding around your Lordships’ House. I am sure many noble Lords know that pedestrians are seven times more likely to die if they are hit by a vehicle travelling at 30 miles per hour compared with 20 miles per hour. If they are aged 60 or over, they are 10 times more likely to die when hit by a vehicle at 30 rather than 20.
My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 470 in this group, and it is a particular pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on this. I would like to say a few words about the question of footpath access that he addressed initially. It seems to me—and it was amply spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham—that this is part of the essential infrastructure that enables people to have what used to be, and I hope still is, known as multi-modal travel opportunities. In other words, one has at least some sort of menu of options, and one is not just obliged to be in a motor vehicle. This goes to the heart of what we do about making sure that developments are both related to existing settlements, where these facilities are available, and do not become detached from that unless there is some particular reason—and then only when this infrastructure is put in. So I am very much in favour of that.
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On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, about access for people with mobility difficulties, yes, I know all about that. My local railway station is associated with a very large school complex, and there is not much in the way of housing there, although there is a retirement development, surprisingly—otherwise, you might say it was in the middle of nowhere. Those who want to get to London who are not good at navigating stairs have to get on the coast-bound train—in other words, the train going in the opposite direction—and change at the next station down, where there is at-grade access. They must come off on the coast-bound platform, wheel themselves if there are in a wheelchair, or cross using a walking frame or whatever else, over the level crossing when the train has stopped straddling the level crossing—which is what the train often does because the platform is too short—and then they go round to the other platform. There is of course a bridge, but of course that is another lot of steps. Thankfully, the train schedule is so organised that people do not have to wait two trains hence in order to catch the one back up to London, which is where they first wanted to get to. So I am familiar with this.
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Local transport authorities have a duty to prepare a statutory local transport plan. They are also responsible for drawing up one or more non-statutory local cycling and walking infrastructure plans. That is all a bit of a mouthful, but really important. Usually it is the same body, but for each one it is required to draw up a statutory rights-of-way improvement plan for its area. We probably all have examples in our own areas of rights of way not being taken very seriously—and we will talk about that later—but all these things need co-ordination.
The Government have argued that our concerns about this lack of co-ordination would best be addressed through the NPPFs, rather than through legislation. My worry is that the current NPPFs, which are still in proposed revisions, mention these local cycling, walking and infrastructure plans only in passing, leaving out the right-of-way plans altogether. This results in developments being granted permission without taking into account the need for walking and cycling or improving these links. I call it active travel—it is a bit shorter. I am sure that the Minister will take this amendment seriously, and I hope that she gives me a nice positive response to it and says that perhaps we can have further discussions and see what happens.
My Amendment 470, on electric vehicle charging, is quite a short amendment. It requires a change to the Electricity Act, for the Government to facilitate or accelerate the rollout of electric vehicle charging points for domestic and commercial customers. We have discussed this in your Lordship’s House quite a few times. A few statistics really worry me, frankly. First, the Government have a target of 300,000 public charging points by 2030, and there is a long way to go before we get there. Interestingly, a Written Answer from the Minister on 29 March to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, stated that the number of installations were 8,600 public charging, 71,000 electric vehicle home charge schemes, and very few electric charge point sockets and grants, while workplace had 15,000.
Another telling Written Answer, to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, on 21 March, stated that
“the majority (around 75%) of electric car charging happens at home, as it is often cheaper and more convenient for drivers.”
I am sure that the Minister is right, but the problem is: how many people have home charging? I expect many noble Lords here have home charging, if they want it, but there are an awful lot of people in this country who park on the road and, if they want to charge their cars, they will have to get it off a lamppost.
Another Written Answer from the Minister said that there was no national data on how many lamppost chargers were available. If we do not know how many are available, we do not know who wants them, and we do not know where the public ones are, where do you charge your heavy goods vehicle or coach? Who will fund them? Most important of all, what about the regulation of chargers? There is a lot for the Government to do to meet their target of 300,000 charging points by 2030.
Finally, I support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, on the same subject. I am sure that she will tell us a great deal more of it. I beg to move.
I also came across an article in the Independent from 10 July 1995, when I became Transport Secretary and continued my campaign. In an open letter to me, Christian Wolmar wrote:
“When your appointment as Transport Secretary was announced, the whoops of joy from cycling campaigners could be heard across the nation. The notion of having a Transport Secretary who is not only an active member of Friends of the Earth but also an active cyclist and tandem rider was beyond their wildest dreams”.
So, the Minister will not be surprised that, as middle age taps me on the shoulder, my commitment to environmental means of transport is undimmed.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, set out the case for the amendment, which I believe is even stronger than it was in the 1990s. I will not repeat it. I understand from the Government’s response to a similar amendment in another place that, instead of an amendment to primary legislation, the objectives to the amendment should be incorporated in a revised NPPF, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has just said. My response is that I tried that and it did not work. We need to be more assertive.
Paragraph 1.10 of PPG13 said:
“If land-use policies permit continued dispersal of development and a high reliance on the car, other policies to reduce the environmental impact of transport may be less effective or come at a higher cost”.
That is exactly what has been happening, as the Government’s own publication, Gear Change: A Bold Vision for Cycling and Walking, published in 2020, recognised. Despite the exhortation in that PPG and, I suspect, many other PPGs since, we have not seen the transformation in planning for transport that is required. We continue to build housing with little or no public transport provision, or where it is impractical to get to school, the shops or work without jumping into a car. We must up our game and cease relying on guidance.
The amendment also addresses the problem touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that has arisen in two-tier authorities, where, typically, the county council is the transport authority but the district council is the planning authority: if you do not have the commitment to walking or cycling networks recorded in the district plan, this can then frustrate the county’s ambition to promote cycling and walking networks—clearly an undesirable outcome.
The challenge to my noble friend, who I am delighted to see is replying to this debate, is to convince me that we should continue to rely on guidance, as I suspect my officials advised me to do in 1993, despite the evidence that it has not brought about the transformation that I aspire to. I wish her every success.
However, treatment is far from being on an equal basis for those people in wheelchairs. As a regular rail traveller myself, I watch this week after week. Despite huge efforts by the staff, there is still so much further to go. We have to ensure that people do not have to book way ahead in order to be able to make a simple journey.
My final point on this is that the Government simply must address the delays in national grid connection. They are hampering the whole thing which is totally inadequate to service the revolution that needs to take place.
In relation to Amendment 48 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, I live in Wales. This week, 20 miles per hour became the default speed limit throughout the country. I live in Cardiff, where it has been the default speed limit for some time, and we have all—more or less—got used to it. The traffic flows more smoothly.
Noble Lords might say this is the levelling-up Bill rather than general provision, but to draw on just one of many reports that reflect on this issue, Fair Society, Healthy Lives: the Marmot Reviewsays that targeting 20 miles per hour zones
“in deprived residential areas would … lead to reductions in health inequalities”.
However, there is, of course a problem. The Marmot report was looking within the current legal framework for travel, but it is extremely expensive to bring in local areas of 20 miles per hour speed limits. There needs to be local signage and individual traffic regulation orders, and then presumably, if there is to be some hope of compliance, there needs to be an education campaign. All of those things cost money, and councils in some of the poorest areas of the country will find it most difficult to find those funds.
If we think about some of the other impacts, as well as road safety, 20 miles per hour speed limits where people live, work and shop reduce air pollution and noise pollution. These are things that particularly tend to be problems in the most deprived areas. The wonderful 20’s Plenty for Us campaign that has been working on this for so long, and increasingly effectively, notes that there is a 30% reduction in fuel use with “20’s plenty”, so it saves people money as well—something of particular interest to the most deprived areas of the country.
This is a very simple measure, by which we could catch up with other nations on these islands and really make an improvement to people’s lives, health and well-being. I have focused on the practical health impacts, but the reason this group of amendments fits together so well is that, if you want to encourage walking and cycling, then ensuring that the vehicles on the road travel more slowly is a great way to open up the entire road network to cyclists and walkers. Of course, it could also build communities: the reduction in noise pollution gives neighbours more of a chance to chat over the garden fence and build those communities that we desperately need.