English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 5:05 pm on 28 October 2025.
“(1) LURA 2023 is amended in as follows.
(2) In Section 84, in subsection (2)(b), after “planning and development” insert “including in relation to economic conditions, transport, tourism and nature”.
(3) In Section 91 (Interpretation)—
(a) after “(g) Part 8 of GLAA 1999,” insert “(ga) Parts 2 and 3 of the Transport Act 2000”;
(b) after “(k) this Part or Part 4 or 6 of this Act” insert “ the Environment Act 2021, Part 3 of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, Part 3 of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026”.”—
This new clause extends data standardisation powers contained in the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Act 2023 to encompass Local Growth Plans, Local Nature Recovery Strategies and Local Transport Plans. Currently, proposals in these other plans may not constitute “development”, so would be outside the scope of existing powers.
Siân Berry
Green Spokesperson (Crime and Policing), Green Spokesperson (Justice), Green Spokesperson (Transport), Green Spokesperson (Work and Pensions), Green Spokesperson (Culture, Media and Sport), Green Spokesperson (Democratic Standards)
5:15,
28 October 2025
I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
New clause 34 is about something that I do not think Ministers have yet considered, but it would be of real benefit to the efficiency and transparency of these new authorities. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 created a number of new powers to standardise planning data, including local plans, planning software and the ways in which we can get information about planning applications and policies. The new clause would make sure that other activities of the strategic authorities were, from the start, set up to provide a similar level of data. We are talking about spatial data, spending data, data for inward investments, and data for the jobs created in association with different parts of economic plans. It would be marvellous to put that level of digitalisation of public data into the Bill, for the same Department mandated the planning data reforms that are being taken up extremely well.
We must do something about this either now or at the next stage of the Bill. We have seen provisions in the Bill—I have tabled other amendments on this—say things like, “Mayors must publish in such a manner as the mayor thinks appropriate.” That kind of wording is a recipe for PDFs inaccessible to organisations such as Natural England seeking to scrutinise or interact with these different strategic authorities around the country. Ministers themselves may want to know some data about what is going on in these local authorities, as well as the public at large—civil society. If we do not make things standardised, we will end up having to go through multiple inaccessible PDFs. Sometimes, those are Excel documents that have been turned into PDFs, and yet the Excel documents are not released. It would be tremendous for standardised, accessible data in API formats—searchable, integratable and comparable—to be produced as a matter of course through the Bill.
The measure would also help to support the goals of the Aarhus convention, which is all about transparency and being able to find out information. It would also be a gift to people who want to create things like accessible apps, websites and maps for pamphlets about the services in a local area. Those are the kinds of benefits that the Government talked about at the time of introducing the requirements on planning. They need to look again at whether they want things published in multiple different ways that become hard to integrate later, or whether they want things to be organised a little better from the start. The new clause is tabled in a constructive way. I hope that Ministers will ask their teams to explore the idea and talk to the people working on planning. It would be of huge benefit not to have to unpick a mess of data for these new authorities later on.
Miatta Fahnbulleh
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The hon. Lady has set out the Government’s ambition to move away from a document-led planning system to a data-driven one, where planning data is openly available and more easily accessible. I recognise the intention to expand the data standards provision to ensure that it covers other types of plans produced by strategic authorities, such as the local growth plan or the local transport plan.
The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 grants the Secretary of State the power to specify in regulations which planning information must meet set data standards. Given that data standards can evolve, the Secretary of State also has the power to define those standards. The definition of planning and development is already broad enough to capture the types of data that would be used for the plans sought to be covered by the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion.
The Government are confident that existing powers in the 2023 Act are broad enough to make the new Clause unnecessary. I come back to the consistent theme of many of my responses to the hon. Lady: it is now in the doing and the acting. We have the powers in statute to respond; it is about how we put those into practice. I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the new clause.
Siân Berry
Green Spokesperson (Crime and Policing), Green Spokesperson (Justice), Green Spokesperson (Transport), Green Spokesperson (Work and Pensions), Green Spokesperson (Culture, Media and Sport), Green Spokesperson (Democratic Standards)
I implore the Minister to go away and look at this again. The courts have confirmed that transport schemes, such as the cycleway running along the Embankment, do not count as development. Therefore, the wider applicability that I think the Minister was asserting may not be in place without some kind of Amendment to make sure that things such as the local economic plans, local growth plans, nature recovery strategies and local transport plans are fully covered by the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act. It may need some changes that I think the Minister is unaware of at the moment. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Siobhain McDonagh
Labour, Mitcham and Morden
We now come to new Clause 41, which was debated with Amendment 358 and is in the name of Wera Hobhouse, who is not a Committee member. Does anyone wish to press the new clause to a Division?
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Vikki Slade
Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Housing, Communities and Local Government)