Housing and Planning Bill

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend is right, which is why independent approved inspectors were set up when they were, to take pressure off local authorities. The problem we have seen is that because we are not working within a defined statutory scheme, those approved inspectors can vary the way in which they work. Indeed, some could argue that there are pressures on approved inspectors to come in at a lower price or to offer to do fewer inspections because it would cost the house builders less. What I am advocating here is a level playing field where all approved inspectors would be acting in the same way, and this is firmly something that would be a cost covered by the house builders. After all, we are dealing with properties worth many hundreds of thousands of pounds, and we would want to make sure that they were going to last for the long term and not simply be subject to inappropriate and inadequate quality checks.

I urge the Minister, on behalf of the homeowners from many different constituencies around the country who have contacted me, to listen to the arguments being made today and to respond positively to what is being suggested. With a nationwide shortage of skilled tradespeople, ever-growing demand for housing and home builders looking to keep costs low, buyers need protection afforded by the building control performance standards regime, and the work of approved inspectors is more important than ever before.

As I have just said, we need to remove the pressure that could exist on approved inspectors to reduce the number of inspections that are made in order to cut costs. We need a robust system to safeguard the quality of what is being built, particularly given the taxpayer investment in schemes such as the starter home initiative. Of course these concerns go far wider than starter homes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) mentioned in his intervention. I hope that the Government will look to further extend the requirements in this new clause to all new-build homes. I have spoken to the Minister about this issue in recent months and I know that he has a clear understanding of the problem. I look forward to his response and an indication as to whether the objectives set out in new clause 1 could be achieved for all new builds, perhaps through further regulations. With that, I shall draw my comments to a close.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to new clause 2, which stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). It would place a statutory duty on the Secretary of State and local authorities to secure and promote the resilience of housing and other developments, giving consideration to the impact that new developments will have on resources and biodiversity.

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[Alex Cunningham]

It is relatively straightforward. Currently, the measures are not necessarily imposed. The legislation is not strong enough to compel various changes, and I will come on to that as I go through my speech.

It is worthy of note that the new National Infrastructure Commission has been established without a mandate for sustainability or resilience and without any commissioners with expertise in the environment. Thousands of homes could therefore be given the green light in areas of flood risk or water stress and without proper provision for resource resilience or protection of urban diversity. There is a very real risk that new infrastructure will be built without proper regard for its impact on natural systems such as the water cycle or habitat connectivity. That is precisely what the campaign for flood-free homes led by the Association of British Insurers is attempting to halt, with calls for better planning, greater investment in flood defences and a stop to inappropriate development. Indeed during Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions in December, the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) suggested that we needed to end house building on floodplains. Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether there will be a change of policy in that area.

The statutory duty that new clause 2 seeks to introduce would address those shortcomings by securing a resilience objective, promoting measures by developers and those responsible for utilities infrastructure to further that goal in building homes in communities that are sustainable in the longer term. This is an important point. By promoting action to respond to pressures on the environment—be it from climate change, population growth or changes in behaviour—a statutory duty of resilience would encourage long-term planning and investment, and support measures to manage development sustainability and reduce demand on resources. That would represent a positive movement towards securing the continued viability of the infrastructure, on which new developments rely. I am clear that the proposals to speed up the planning system must not come at the expense of sensible design.

Let us not forget that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has already recognised the advantages that building resilient homes can deliver relative to efforts aimed at adding resilience at some future date. Those folk who have suffered the effects of flooding in recent weeks will be only too familiar with the need for adding resilience by default. The concept of resilience in this context encompasses a broad spectrum of issues that range from waste disposal to water supply management and flood-risk mitigation.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

We heard earlier a number of colleagues from both sides of the House talking about the impact that the flooding that communities have experienced in recent weeks has had on their constituents’ properties and belongings. It has to be accepted that such flooding is not the exception and is becoming the norm. It would be extraordinarily remiss of the Government not to accept the new clause.

[Alex Cunningham]

Indeed. The events of recent weeks highlight the need for the inclusion of the new clause in the Bill. The extensive flooding that devastated both large and small communities across swathes of Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire throughout December underlines the need for in-built resilience, so much so that the Environment Secretary has committed to revisiting the modelling used by the Environment Agency to ensure its fitness for purpose following repeated unprecedented weather events, as well as committed to a national flood resilience review which will see worst-case scenario planning updated.

These are certainly steps to be welcomed, and I hope the Minister will build on those commitments from his colleagues and agree to grasp the opportunity to legislate for a longer-term resilience objective in the Bill. Doing so would be of great significance at a time when cuts to the resource budget of the Department responsible for dealing with flooding are fresh in the memory and doubts remain about the equally vital issue of spending on flood defence maintenance to ensure its continued integrity.

Although the Government must commit to long-term investment in maintaining flood defences to provide stability and certainty, it is high time that Ministers dropped their complacency about the need for climate change adaptation and actively put measures in place to increase resilience. David Rooke, deputy chief executive of the Environment Agency, recently echoed this thinking, saying that we need a “complete rethink” in our approach and suggesting that

“we will need to move from not just providing better defences…but looking at increasing resilience”.

Building higher walls will not, on its own, provide the protection that our towns and cities need. Such an approach has been well and truly debunked in the past month alone. Instead, we need measures aimed at prevention as well as at defence. Achieving this, as the floods Minister acknowledged only a few weeks ago, means more trees and woodland in the hills, functioning ponds and bogs, allowing rivers to meander, and constructing buffer zones around their banks. The Government’s own climate change risk assessment lists the various risks resulting from climate change to which our homes and communities need to be resilient, including damage to property due to flooding and coastal erosion, and energy infrastructure at significant risk of flooding.

However, although new developments are to be prepared for all the eventualities identified in the risk assessment, the Government’s plans for infrastructure development pay little attention to the need to manage resource risks or the need for so-called green and blue infrastructure to support development by better bringing together water management and green infrastructure. That is worrying when continued urbanisation is drastically reducing the amount of rainfall that can soak away into the ground, meaning that water has to be actively managed to prevent flooding.

Although national planning policy was strengthened from April 2015, making clear the expectation that sustainable drainage systems will be provided in all major developments unless demonstrably inappropriate, that was a blatant watering down of previous commitments. The Government originally said that sustainable drainage systems would become compulsory in all new developments from April 2014, as mandated by the flood and water management legislation, but they delayed implementation before choosing to ignore completely the findings of the 2007 Pitt review and cancelling plans for the approval bodies that would have been established by local authorities. Will the Minister tell the House what proportion of new developments now include sustainable drainage systems?

Exemptions and opt-outs currently apply to smaller developments, allowing many to go ahead without sustainable drainage. The Government stopped short of implementing the Pitt review recommendation to remove developers’ automatic right to connect new homes to the public sewer system, which provides an incentive for them to include sustainable drainage.

The provisions in new clause 2 would ensure that local authorities and the Secretary of State take the positive steps necessary to promote resilience and protect against such damage in future. A failure to address the issue, however, and choosing to push ahead with non-resilient development is likely to increase costs in the economy, not to mention ruining people’s homes and livelihoods at the same time as threatening critical national infrastructure. It is therefore vital that as the area of urban development grows, sufficient green space and wetland must be incorporated to support nature and to manage flood risk both in any new developments and downstream. With the failure of the existing framework to encourage developers to pursue such strategies freely, it is right that mechanisms should be put in place to compel developers to create more places for trees, shrubs and grass to flourish—to create what engineers in the field term “hydraulic roughness.”

Today the Government have a chance to add a vital part of the system: the management of water in our communities. Many hon. Members will have seen the story of the north Yorkshire town of Pickering, which used natural flood defences to protect itself when traditional concrete options were too expensive. At a tenth of the cost, the people of Pickering were protected by investing in natural resilience. We should incorporate that objective in all our new developments. Although added resilience is certainly no guarantee that such flooding will not occur, there is popular concurrence that the absence of such features compounds and intensifies these events.

Ministers will recognise what new clause 2 would achieve. I hope that it will be accepted, or that we will hear alternative proposals from Ministers on how to address the specific issues I have raised today. We owe it to the country and, in particular, to every individual and family who have suffered in recent weeks.

[Oliver Colvile]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this debate on new clause 1, which was introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), whom I thank for her generous and heartfelt words. Before going any further, I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; I have an interest in that I still give advice to developers.

I am also chairman of the all-party group for excellence in the built environment, which, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, is currently conducting an inquiry into the quality of new build. Although I have no wish to prejudge or predict the report’s recommendations, I want to explain a little about why we have launched the inquiry. I remind the House that I am also probably one of the only Conservative Members who represents a totally inner-city seat—the only thing I have that resembles a field is a muddy meadow called the Ponderosa pony sanctuary.

I am keen to pay tribute to the previous Labour Government for embarking upon a great deal of regeneration in the Devonport part of my constituency. Like most of Plymouth, Devonport was badly bombed by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz. The city fathers quickly put up new housing to accommodate the many homeless in the city but, as Members can imagine, its quality was not fantastic. After all, it was erected after the war, so with very little money.

I am delighted that the coalition and Conservative Governments have continued with the previous Government’s housing initiative. The Government ensured that there would be a mix of both municipal and private market housing, which is important as it has changed the demographic profile of the ward. I am delighted that the Government have set themselves a target of building 200,000 new homes by 2020. Oddly enough, that is the year when we will celebrate the anniversary of the Mayflower leaving the great city of Plymouth in order to found the American colonies.

I am very keen that we should have good-quality design in any new housing. The vast majority of the new builds are perfectly acceptable. However, I am surprised at the number of new builds in my constituency that are already showing mould after just five years. I am also surprised by the number of constituents who have beaten a path to my constituency surgery because they have problems with the quality of their housing. In the main, the developers have agreed to take up those cases, but they are very aware that they have to be careful; they want to ensure that they do not find themselves legally liable.

There has been some confusion as to who is responsible for sorting out those problems. Is it the council? Should it have signed off on the development before it was sold? Where do the insurers fit in? What happens if the consumer, who has paid good money for the property, cannot get a satisfactory answer? Who should consumers go to if they cannot get redress? We need to remember that this is probably the biggest investment that individuals—our constituents, and probably ourselves—will make in their lifetime. I hope that our report on the built environment will deal with those issues and suggest some recommendations on how the inspection regime can be improved and strengthened.