Green Belt (Broxtowe)

Andrew Jones Excerpts

Friday 13th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is a famous champion of the green belt in Broxtowe and is speaking knowledgeably and passionately. She is making a local point and, through that, highlighting a national issue. Does she agree that local people up and down the country are worried and anxious about how to protect their green belt?

[Anna Soubry]

Absolutely. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point because the danger when we have such debates about our constituencies is that people could say it was all about Broxtowe. Of course I champion my constituency, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his generous comments in that regard, but the question has huge implications, as identified by my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). Unless we ensure that there is no conflict between our stated policy of protecting our green belt and what is happening in the real world, all those fine words will ring hollow.

People will say, “Why is this being done? Why is the borough council—and the Lib Dems and Labour, who control it—doing this in the face of so much opposition?” The borough council talks about need; I have addressed the fact that it has looked at the housing market in the whole of Greater Nottingham, but now it seems that the planning inspectors, who are, at the end of the day, Government inspectors, are being blamed. In a letter, Councillor Steve Barber, the chair of the Greater Nottingham Joint Planning Advisory Board and a Broxtowe councillor, says:

“Our consultants and experts came up with a much higher housing figure”.

He does not actually say which figure it is higher than, but that does not matter; what matters is what follows:

“and the inspector indicated to us that in the absence of striking new evidence, he will not accept any lower than this.”

“This” is the overall figure given for Greater Nottingham, which councils have literally divvied up among themselves. I have looked at various minutes—I have some here—to see where the inspector has said that he wants “striking new evidence” before he will accept any lower figure, and I cannot find that comment. I have asked for evidence of that statement, and it is yet to be forthcoming.

My real message to the Minister is this. I do not know whether he is able to contact Keith Holland, the planning inspector, who I know is a very senior inspector, but it strikes me that what is needed is for the Minister to write to him, or arrange a meeting with him, so that I or perhaps others can discuss directly with the inspector what is happening in Broxtowe, and how Broxtowe can offer a figure that in some way matches up to the availability of non-green-belt land, so that we do not find ourselves in a position where so much of our green belt is under threat from development.

I also ask the Minister to give good, firm guidance to all inspectors throughout the country—this is the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones)—to ensure that full, proper advice is given to our inspectors in their work with local authorities, so that local authorities are not putting in danger our green belt and flying in the face of our national planning policy framework document, and the words and policy of this Government—a policy of protecting our green belt.

As ever, the clock is against me. I quickly want to say that the other threat to the green belt in Broxtowe is from an application from UK Coal that the county council will consider in September. The public consultation is completed. The application would allow, at a 325-acre site in a place called Shortwood, between Cossall and Trowell, the extraction of 1.5 million tonnes of coal and fireclay, which—if you can believe it, in this day and age, Mr Deputy Speaker—would be put into heavy goods vehicles, at a rate of some eight movements an hour. Those vehicles would go all the way along congested roads to the M1, and then to a coal-fired power station and back. I am reliably informed that it would take that power station about four months to burn that coal, which it would take more than five years to extract; it would take another year to restore the area. One wonders whether, in this day and age, that is worth it. In my judgment, that is certainly not right.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker for allowing me the time I have taken to speak. I look forward, as ever, to the Minister’s contribution.