Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Soames of Fletching and Lord Pickles

Monday 16th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

1. What guidance he provides for local authorities on co-ordination across local authority boundaries.

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

We have abolished Labour’s top-down regional strategies, which built nothing but resentment, and replaced them with the Localism Act 2011, which asks councils to work together and co-operate on cross-boundary matters.

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

May I ask my right hon. Friend to have a word with West Sussex and Surrey county councils about the importance of constant liaison on roadworks? Is he aware that in East Grinstead, which has suffered terrible inconvenience for several years as a result of roadworks, it is becoming impossible to ensure that there is a free passage for cars at all times?

[Mr Pickles]

My right hon. Friend has made a very reasonable point. I will of course liaise with both council leaders, and will send them a copy of Hansard. The duty not just to consult but to co-operate is immensely important, and most local authorities co-operate very harmoniously. They have a responsibility to work together: after all, the people for whom they are working together are the general population who elect them.

amendment of the law

Debate between Lord Soames of Fletching and Lord Pickles

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

No, the hon. Lady has had her chance. That’s it.

We are also ensuring that small and medium-sized house builders get a share of our housing revolution. A new £525 million finance fund will deliver 15,000 houses on smaller sites. We are cutting red tape, too. Today, we have published our proposals for scaling back section 106 charges on small home builders. We are introducing an exemption from section 106 tariffs for self-builders and extensions, building on our exemptions already delivered from the community infrastructure levy. Yet again, the Labour party has not been clear about whether it supports cutting these stealth taxes on self-builders. Self-builders will also benefit from further steps to free up land for self-build; a £150 million investment fund for custom-build plots; and a new right to a plot and to build from councils. Further planning reforms will help get empty and under-used buildings back into use. Those build on the success of our “office to residential” planning reforms, measures the Labour party opposed, despite the fact that they are providing new homes on brownfield sites in our towns and cities.

We are also supporting the first garden city for a generation, at Ebbsfleet—decisive action and investment that Labour failed to deliver. The original announcement was made in John Prescott’s 2003 sustainable communities plan, but the Labour party failed to build at Ebbsfleet.

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the good thing about Ebbsfleet is that it commands the near unanimous support of the local community—of Members of Parliament, councillors and local citizens—which is very important for a project of this size? Does he also agree that speculative developments such as those in my constituency and in Arundel and South Downs produced by Mayfield are entirely unwelcome and command no local support at all?

Flooding

Debate between Lord Soames of Fletching and Lord Pickles

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

That is contained within the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, with the local resilience forum. With enormous respect to the hon. Gentleman, I saw in Croydon what I have seen at all major incidents: a number of services working together very well. The local resilience forum, as I saw today in Croydon, is an exemplar of the way to do things. Making this a statutory duty would not help anything and would not make a single community safer.

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

As my right hon. Friend wisely reflected, it is the exceptional weather that is responsible for flooding. Does he agree that, in the end, the forces of unstoppable nature humble us all, as we have faced the wettest January since 1767? As he rightly says, the time for review will come later, but does he agree that one lesson, as outlined wisely by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), is that land management needs to be looked at again in the different areas where floods have taken place?

[Mr Pickles]

As always, my right hon. Friend is correct. We cannot have conventional orthodoxy, and neither should we replace one inflexible orthodoxy with another. We have only to stand close to these rivers, some of which were previously gentle and meandering, or to see that monstrous gap in Brunel’s railway to see the sheer strength of nature. Conventional orthodoxy has to be re-examined, and instead we need bespoke solutions for each area of the country.