Housing Development (Swindon)

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

This is a great opportunity to address the House this evening on a subject that at first blush may seem of only local importance, but which is of wider importance not only regionally but nationally. I am grateful to hon. Members for staying to listen to my remarks. In particular, I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), who made her maiden speech this evening. She has been a redoubtable campaigner on this important issue—the quality and scale of housing development in her area and nationally. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) faces the same challenges as we face in Swindon.

To the west, Swindon is bordered by the constituency of North Wiltshire. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) shares a deep concern about what is happening to his rural hinterland. To the east, the Wantage constituency is represented by the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey). He, too, has become increasingly concerned about the potential effects of uncontrolled and unsustainable development.

The issue is not only for academics and planners. For the ordinary residents of my town, it is becoming the most important issue in their lives. Swindon has doubtless benefited greatly from expansion and growth in recent decades. Many would agree that its economic success was underpinned by that growth. However, it has now reached the stage where it is difficult to discern which comes first, rather like the chicken and the egg—is it housing development that engineers growth, or is it the wider economy? I am clearly of the view that it is economics and the country’s economic situation that fuels the growth of towns such as Swindon, and that housing development, important though it is, is not the engine of economic growth.

We in Swindon are increasingly in danger of moving from a system of predicting growth and then providing houses, to one of providing houses and hoping, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up. Until the election and the welcome change brought about by the new coalition Government, we in Swindon were facing an extra allocation of 37,000 new homes in only 16 years, 2026 being the target date. We already have thousands of new homes being developed both to the north and to the south of the town, and many of those who live there do not work in Swindon.

The question that many local people are rightly asking me and others is, “Who is going to live in all these new homes?” Another question they rightly ask is, “Where is the infrastructure going to come from? Who is going to pay for that?” The pressure on road infrastructure, drainage and existing services could become so unbearable that Swindon risks being strangled by inappropriate expansion. Even allowing for the recent recession, housing development locally has proceeded at a breathtaking pace. Although we are nowhere near the heady heights of the middle of the past decade, when more than 2,000 homes a year were being completed, average house completions locally have reached 1,100 to 1,200 a year for the past 15 years or so.

I have mentioned ongoing development, but we face the spectre of more and unsustainable development in several forms. To the east of the A419, the eastern development area has been developed by the local authority in response to the unsustainable housing target imposed upon it by the regional spatial strategy—12,000 homes in an area that is too small. It represents too high a density and the sort of urban extension that, rather like the layers of an onion, creates more problems for existing infrastructure and residents. To the immediate west of my constituency in north Wiltshire, we face thousands more homes being earmarked on land areas immediately adjoining west Swindon. The problem there is compounded by not only the lack of infrastructure, but the fact that any planning gain, in the form of section 106 moneys, will be retained by another local authority. In other words, Swindon will have to take all the pain while having none of the gain. That is yet another urban extension to the west.

Is that a spatial strategy? Of course it is not. There is no regard whatever for the need for rural buffers, and no understanding of the importance of the words “sustainable development”. If we are to translate those laudable sentiments into something real, we must acknowledge that it is time for a different approach.

I thoroughly welcome the Government’s commitment to the withdrawal of the RSS and housing targets, but we are now walking—this is my principal worry and the main reason for tonight’s debate—into a potential planning vacuum. Like politics and nature, planning abhors a vacuum, and already we see developers making planning applications locally: 800 homes to the immediate west of Swindon, on the Ridgeway Farm area; and 950 homes just to the east, on the much-loved Coate country park. These applications are being made for a reason: planners believe that into the vacuum something must fall, and that something is the existing housing figures and the existing evidence that was presented to the inquiry in public in 2006.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I do not represent Swindon or Wiltshire, but this is an issue in other parts of the country. He talks in particular about the vacuum that exists. Although in my constituency we are grateful that the regional spatial strategy has gone, we are unsure as to where the local development framework is heading. We have the reverse situation, with small communities being deemed unsustainable when we know that they are sustainable.

[Mr Buckland]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Into the vacuum that is being created by the current change will fall, to my great concern, applications that will seek to take advantage of current evidence. We need quick action from local authorities to change their approach. But as well as scrapping the RSS and housing targets, we need to get rid of the system of five-year land supply. At a stroke, that system continues to cause problems for local authorities when allowing them genuine autonomy in making planning decisions. My worry is that that system will be used by applicants and developers to force local authorities into having to grant wholly unsuitable applications. It would be tragic if, despite the coalition’s excellent work in freeing up councils to make local decisions, they were left still hoist by that petard. Local planning with financial incentives for allowing development, and incentives for working with neighbouring councils to deliver growth figures for the Swindon travel-to-work area, represent the best way forward for a sustainable Swindon that works well for all its residents and businesses.

I am not opposed to organic growth and expansion, but I am opposed to command and control time frames and targets that make a mockery of sustainable development. We should let councils get on with the job. Let us forget about 2026 and 37,000 new homes. Let us trust local authorities to earmark areas for sustainable development with the consent and involvement of local residents in order to create a Swindon that works. I look to the new Government for their strong support for that new approach to planning and housing development not only in Swindon, but nationally—one that rewards sustainable development and encourages developers to build wisely and well.

Mr Speaker, earlier I notified you that I wished my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) to contribute to this debate, bearing in mind his obvious interest and concern, so I shall now resume my seat.