Housing Development Planning: Water Companies

Adrian Ramsay Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Helen Morgan]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is where we are going with having them as statutory consultees in the process. It is no good the water companies saying, “You cannot build those houses.” They need to be able to say, “We have this plan to improve the infrastructure. You can build those houses when we have done it.” It is probably also quite critical that they are able to say, “We are doing it fairly quickly.”

I will come back to section 104 for a second. One problem is that council planning departments are hollowed out. They have neither the human nor financial resources to get involved in expensive planning enforcement action, or to ensure that every person has been thought about and invited to consult on a planning application. They need to be required to do that, because the idea that cash-strapped councils will go above and beyond is currently unlikely; many are desperately just trying to stave off a section 104 situation.

We have planning legislation coming, which is welcome. I implore the Government to address section 104 agreements and the bonds that secure them, because at the moment they are not the iron-clad guarantees they should be. We need to ensure that drainage systems are built to an appropriate standard and adopted, so that people can have confidence that, when they buy a home, they will not have to deal with a raw sewage problem for years and be unable to sell their house in many instances.

[Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)]

The hon. Lady makes an eloquent and moving case about the impact of inadequate sewerage systems on residents moving into new properties. Does she agree that there is also a need for a stronger regulatory system for the supply of fresh water? In my constituency we have a water management zone, which prevents new businesses, such as a brewer I spoke to recently, from expanding. At some times of the year, there is too much water, and at other times, there is too little. Does the hon. Lady agree that more effort needs to be put into strategies to manage the supply of fresh water, as well as the issues she raises?

[Helen Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Shropshire is quite wet, so we do not often find ourselves talking about a lack of water; it would have to be an extreme summer before we found ourselves in that situation. He makes a good point that the country increasingly sees very dry periods and then extreme rainfall in winter. We need a water system fit for the future to deal with that and with localised capacity issues in the freshwater network.

Finally, I call on the Government to implement the recommendations of the report published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2023 on schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. The schedule would provide a framework for the approval and adoption of drainage systems; a sustainable urban drainage systems approving body, or a SAB; and national standards on the design, construction, operation and maintenance of sustainable urban drainage systems, which also have a lovely acronym—SUDS. Critically, it makes the right to connect surface water run-off to public sewers conditional on the drainage system being approved before any construction work can start. Currently, that is not a statutory requirement, but those things are often built as part of the planning process. That means that when a development happens in an area that has previously been, say, fields, the water must drain off at the same rate as it would have done had the area still been a field. That is a clever way of managing surface water, and it seems odd that the previous Government, and indeed the current Government, have not yet adopted schedule 3. That would be an important start in protecting new and existing residents from the nightmare of both surface water and foul water flooding.

In conclusion, the current planning-led approach is clearly not fit for purpose. Numerous colleagues have turned up today to tell similar stories of residents dealing with raw sewage in their homes, which is just not acceptable. The planning process is failing to protect residents of both new and existing homes, opening the risk of surface water and foul water flooding. Most of us cannot imagine how awful untreated sewage in the home must be, but a failed planning system is making it a reality for far too many people. I urge the Minister to make water companies a statutory consultee in planning, to implement schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act and to tighten the rules around section 104 so that rogue developers cannot get away with building illegal connections to the sewers.

English Devolution and Local Government

Adrian Ramsay Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I am really pleased that Essex devolution is going forward, and that there has been cross-party support and real collaboration to achieve it. That is the culture change that I wanted to see. As the Secretary of State, that is what I envisage going forward, which is why I will work with all local authorities to deliver for people across England.

[Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)]

I am a strong supporter of genuine devolution of funding and powers, but when the Deputy Prime Minister says that she wants to devolve power from Whitehall to the town hall, my constituents are concerned that it could in practice mean centralising power from local communities to remote county halls. Can she confirm that the Government will not impose huge remote unitary county councils if that is against the wishes of local residents, and how can she justify cancelling local elections when the county councillors last elected in 2021 have no mandate to lead on negotiating changes that are expected to last half a century?

[Angela Rayner]

Again, I have been clear that where there is cancellation, it is for devolution and reorganisation to go forward. I have made it absolutely clear that it will be from May 2025 to May 2026. I cannot be much clearer than that as this Dispatch Box. On devolution and the support for local areas, we are clear that we want to push powers out of Whitehall down into local communities. I want to unlock the potential of local areas and see reorganisation that delivers for local people, and I hope the hon. Member will engage with that given his comments on strongly supporting devolution. Let’s see him get on board and deliver it.

New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill

Adrian Ramsay Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Hinchliff]

I find myself, once again, in wholehearted agreement.

Ensuring that solar panels are installed on the rooftops of new buildings specifically could deliver a generating capacity over six times greater than that of Sizewell C. Clearly, if we start applying a strategic approach beginning with the provisions in the Bill, we can host the vast majority of the solar panels we need on our rooftops. Other nations are already proving that this can be done, with similar regulatory measures currently in place in Germany, China and Japan. Better yet, enacting this legislation would not only accelerate our progress toward meeting our climate targets, reducing the industrialisation of our countryside and protecting rural communities; it also offers the most effective way to ensure that the net zero transition lowers electricity bills for consumers.

[Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; my former colleagues at the MCS Foundation have provided research in support of the Bill.

I want to pick up on the hon. Gentleman’s point about timescales, because in my experience this issue is the one that is raised most commonly by residents wanting to see action. Why on earth, they say, are new homes being put up without solar panels on them? Time is of the essence, but is it not the case that we have already lost many opportunities to progress? Regulations were due to come into force in 2016 that would have required all new homes to have zero carbon standards. Those regulations were scrapped by the coalition Government. [Hon. Members: “No, they weren’t.”] The briefing I have had says that they were scrapped in 2014. [Interruption.] Either way, I am pleased to see cross-party support today to press ahead with this proposal at speed. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that speed is of the essence here to ensure that homes are not being put up without solar panels?

[Chris Hinchliff]

I agree that speed is of the essence in multiple ways, and I encourage the Government to move as quickly as possible.

Empowering households to generate the electricity that they use will help families to lower their bills far more rapidly than commercial schemes that feed into wholesale energy markets influenced by international commodity prices. This strikes me as a well-drafted Bill, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) on its clarity and flexibility. The only thing that I might suggest is a widening of the provisions to cover commercial buildings as well, given the vast opportunities provided by warehousing space. It is estimated that we currently use only about 5% of warehouse rooftops for solar generation. Claims that the regulations would hinder innovation are clearly spurious, especially in view of the provisions for exemptions where other forms of renewable energy generation are installed.

It is high time that our country had common-sense standards for rooftop solar on new builds, and I hope that the whole House will support the Bill.

Building Homes

Adrian Ramsay Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to talk about homelessness and the pressures that local authorities face. This issue feels particularly personal because the number of stories that I have heard, not just when I was the shadow Minister but in the role that I am fortunate enough and humbled to have now, show that we cannot continue with the homelessness crisis. Behind every single one of the figures is a human being. Like poverty, housing has a significant impact on people’s lives and opportunities. That is why, in my role as Deputy Prime Minister, I will bring leaders together at a local, regional and parliamentary level to ensure that we tackle homelessness. We need to do something about the figures. We have inherited a really poor state of affairs, but I am determined to ensure that we do something about that.

[Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)]

Many residents in my constituency of Waveney Valley find themselves priced out of living in their community, as is the case in so much of the country, because the homes that are being built are not affordable for local people. I welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s statement on affordable housing, but how many of the 1.5 million homes that she has pledged to build does she expect to be affordable? In particular, how many does she expect to be council homes? What action will be taken to address the fact that we have a million empty homes in this country?

[Angela Rayner]

It is difficult to set out the detail at a local level because those types of development are subject to section 106 agreements. That is why local plans are really important, and we support that process. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the consultation document on the release of grey belt, which talks about a minimum of 50% of housing being affordable. Again, that figure will depend on local need. We have to try to get the balance right. If local areas say, “We need x”, but I say, “Well, you are going to have y,” then that is a challenge. We have said that 50% of housing built on the grey belt must be affordable. Local areas can then use that figure and say that they want a particular amount of homes for social rent. The methodology and the affordability test we are using make things much better, because they give a figure that reflects the reality for people in an area.