General Matters

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I am delighted to have the opportunity to talk about some specific issues that affect my constituency. First, I would like to pay tribute to the Government for their determination to move to a greater localist agenda, to give communities a far better say over what happens in their area. That can only be a good thing.

Northamptonshire was certainly subjected to enormous amounts of top-down bureaucratic management under the previous Government, who were determined to concrete over the green fields and to implement regional strategies for everything, which bore no relation whatever to what local communities wanted. We have definitely moved in the right direction as a Government. There are, however, some very specific problems that concern my constituency, and I shall raise just two of them today.

The first concerns wind farms. Northamptonshire is not known at all for being a windy place. In fact, it is one of the least windy counties in the country. Clearly, we are not given to providing enormous renewable energy resources—yet we have had so many wind farms approved in our county that we have contributed more than what could be seen as our fair share towards any renewable strategy.

I shall specifically mention the Spring Farm ridge development, in and around the villages of Greatworth, Helmdon and Sulgrave—historic villages with great character. The application by the developer, Broadview Energy, to build a wind farm in the area was rejected by South Northamptonshire council on 30 June 2011. The case went to appeal, and the appeal was upheld on 12 July 2012. On refusing the application to develop Spring Farm ridge, the council found

“that the development would have a major impact on the landscape as it currently exists, have considerable impact on some of the many heritage assets within 5km of the proposed wind farm, result in the loss of a perception of tranquillity to the well-used public rights of ways network, dominate the outlook, be unpleasantly imposing and pervasive to a neighbouring resident and be contrary to several local and regional planning policies”.

What is interesting is that the planning inspectorate accepted all those findings, but still upheld the appeal.

Since then I have had an exchange of letters with the Department for Communities and Local Government and with Sir Michael Pitt, the chief executive of the Planning Inspectorate. I explained how appalled local residents were to find that the planning appeals inspector had upheld the appeal despite accepting all the council’s contrary findings of invasiveness. The response of the DCLG, in July 2012, was

“local plans are the keystone of the planning system. Our aim is for every area to have a clear local plan which sets out local people’s views of how they wish their community to develop, consistent with the Framework and against which planning applications for planning permission will be judged.”

That is clearly in the interests of localism and takes account of the views of local communities.

Sir Michael Pitt’s response to the same question about how local views could have been so overruled was

“the recently published National Planning Policy Framework… provided an important and up-to-date expression of national renewable energy policy, and this has… been taken into account. Such decisions”

—appeal decisions—

“involve a careful balancing exercise. In this case, considerable weight was given to the Framework and the economic and environmental benefits of the proposal were considered to outweigh the adverse impact of the scheme.”

Therein lies the problem. Whereas we, as a Government, are in favour of greater localism and of people’s ability to have their say, the inspectorate—while not rejecting those findings, but accepting and welcoming them—is clearly determined to insist that the national desire for renewable energy outweighs those local concerns.

My first question to the Deputy Leader of the House is this: how can we enable local communities to feel confident that it is worth their while to express their views? In this instance, many thousands of pounds were spent and hundreds of hours of local communities’ time, energy and intellect were invested in establishing the planning-related reasons why the wind farm application might be turned down, only for those reasons to be completely overturned. What hope can we give local people that their voices will be heard—indeed, not just heard, but actually listened to—and that they will be able to resist developments that are completely contrary to local wishes?

My second question to the Deputy Leader of the House is very specific. When will the regional strategies finally disappear? According to a second response from Sir Michael Pitt,

“Planning law requires that Inspectors determine an appeal in accordance with the adopted Development Plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise. The weight afforded to plan policies reflects both their progress in terms of formal adoption and whether more recent policy, either local or national, has superseded them to some degree. In this case the Inspector carefully considered the relevant Development Plan policies and also other material considerations as well as the views of local residents.”

I have the impression that the inspectors were looking more to the past and the regional strategy of the last Government than to the future and the present Government’s desire to let local people have their say. When will that change?

My final question to the Deputy Leader of the House is this: will the existence of a regional plan or, indeed, a neighbourhood plan allow communities to reject either the principle or the siting of a wind farm? Will the implementation of the new local plan under the Localism Act 2011 enable them to reject such an unwelcome siting successfully?

Already, in my small area of south Northamptonshire, a wind farm application has been approved on appeal for Spring Farm ridge. Applications have been approved for Winwick, near Daventry, and for Boddington, and are pending for Ml, Roade, Stoke Goldington and Milton Keynes. The Tove valley and Ml application is proposed, and a new wind farm is proposed for Wappenham. How shall we ever convince local communities that they can fight their corner with some prospect of success?

The second point that I want to make is slightly different. It concerns the west Northamptonshire joint planning unit, which was set up under the last Government to force the local planning authorities of Northampton borough, Daventry and South Northamptonshire, with the support of Northamptonshire county council, to implement the last Government’s regional spatial strategy. In other words, it was the tool to implement the previous Government’s top-down RSS, without a great deal of consultation with local people, but the WNJPU still exists under the new Government. Although theoretically it is made up of democratically accountable councillors, each of the four councils that take part in its leadership have only two representatives on the committee. There is no democratic accountability, therefore—in fact, quite the opposite, as each council planning authority is incentivised to stitch up their neighbour and avoid looking holistically at the entire area. That has been incredibly divisive in South Northamptonshire and Northampton, where we have ended up with proposed developments and approvals for development sites that have run entirely counter to local community requirements and wishes.

One such example is at Collingtree, which is in my constituency but on the outskirts of Northampton. The WNJPU is proposing to approve in principle a plan for 1,000 new homes there, despite the local community’s concerns. It has concerns about traffic congestion caused by vehicles coming to the site, where delays of up to half an hour already occur at peak times. It also has concerns about flooding, because there has regularly been flooding of previous developments that were supposed to have proper flood defence plans. Public transport provision is a worry, too. The estimates for this 1,000-home development include only 1.5 cars per property. Unless public transport is superb, that will not be adequate. Yet another major concern is school provision. The residents of Collingtree feel these concerns are not being taken into account by the WNJPU, which is a relic of a previous Government with a top-down ethos.

I ask the Deputy Leader of the House to advise me on what I can do to help my constituents ensure that their voice is heard. Can he help me to get the WNJPU disbanded and have planning powers given back to the local planning authorities, where they should be? Does he agree that local plans should be accepted and recognised as good for the community only if they are supported by that community and that it is therefore unacceptable for organisations such as the WNJPU to continue operating undemocratic area-wide plans?