Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and Julian Sturdy
Alec Shelbrooke
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. The council is playing with people’s lives. These are people who have moved into communities and are working damn hard to pay the mortgage and develop the life that they want, but they do not know what is going to happen. Saying that they want to be looking out on to fields and that they have paid for that is an important argument, but we also need to make the other arguments. Where are the children going to go to school? Where is the road capacity to cope with 400 houses here and 400 houses there, with no infrastructure improvements whatsoever? How do people get access to the doctor’s surgery? People have genuine concerns about how they can function in their daily lives.
I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to look at these areas and say, “We’re giving you the power through a register of brownfield land. If you’re not going to develop that land, we want to know why. We want to know why you’ve decided that all this land in the centre of Leeds is going to be left derelict and you’re going to build on virgin land outside, whether it be green belt or greenfield.”
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making some powerful points. Is it not the case that developers will always go for the easy option, which is greenfield and green-belt land over brownfield land, and that we have to do everything we can to make sure that local councils are putting brownfield sites first?
Alec Shelbrooke
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I know that he suffers from many of these issues in his constituency. The Labour party in Leeds is allowing developers to get away with this by going on to the most profitable land masses and building properties that are not going to help the situation. Houses worth £250,000 or £300,000 are not affordable starter homes in anybody’s view.
The fundamental point is why councils are allowing developers to get away with this. Why are they being allowed to say, “We’re going to leave that area derelict and build on this greenfield?” Most constituents in a rural area, if challenged to look at a meadow and say whether it is green belt or greenfield, would not be able to do so—most people do not know the difference. They are planning terms. People will then see swathes of land in the city centre that are not being developed because the council is not considering that. It is time for the council to get on with it, to engage with local people, to look at things strategically, to say “There’s a brownfield register and we’re going to use that land.” They need to get on with building the number of houses we need rather than an over-inflated number that means that the developer will always be able to have the choice cuts and build the most expensive and profitable houses.