Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Young]

I will ensure that the Housing Minister is able to meet my right hon. Friend.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

16. What assessment he has made of the reliability of information on associated infrastructure provided to buyers by housing developers.

[The Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety (Lee Rowley)]

It is absolutely vital that buyers have correct, up-to-date and accurate material information on their purchase before they make a decision to buy a home.

[Andrew Selous]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister. He will know that promotional documents put out by major house builders such as Barratt Homes, Taylor Wimpey, David Wilson Homes and so on to prospective purchasers on large-scale housing estates commit absolutely to the building of health infrastructure, which very often does not turn up. Just allocating a piece of land simply is not good enough. Can he please make sure that we do not mislead purchasers and that, frankly, the doctors’ surgery is the first building to be built on many of these new estates?

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend makes a hugely important point, and I am grateful for the time he has spent with me in my first couple of months in the job to highlight this issue, to articulate the problems and to show the real-life examples of where there is an issue. He is such a good champion of this issue for his constituency. A substantial amount of infrastructure has been built all across the country, but where there are gaps it is hugely frustrating, and we will continue to work with assiduous Members such as my hon. Friend to try to close them.

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[Michael Gove]

Absolutely. I hope that the House will note that my hon. Friend, who fights incredibly hard for his principles and for Stoke-on-Trent, is taking a typically statesmanlike approach in putting his constituents first. Come the next general election, people should remember that he is someone whose big heart reflects their good values.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Road safety is put at risk by roads that are not adopted, because speed limits cannot be enforced and often they do not get gritted. There are serious worries that people will get injured. What more can the Department do to ensure that key service roads on big, new housing estates get adopted more quickly?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to ensure that developers live up to their responsibilities to provide appropriate infrastructure. It has been the case that a number of fleecehold—for want of a better word—developments have unadopted roads, where children are at risk.