Planning for the Future

Andy Carter Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) on securing this debate. We appear to have a bit of a zoning theme in the way that this debate has been scheduled. We have had the south-west and we are in the north now. Now we are up north, we will talk proper and get this debate sorted.

I am sure most of us in this place will agree that our planning system has been in need of urgent reform for some time; the disagreement is about how we actually do that. The speed at which we need to level up and the changes we need to see—the changes that voters backed a year ago—mean that we need to start to do things differently. Many of the issues that are relevant today—the technologies we use and the way we live our lives—have evolved, and that needs to be reflected in planning legislation. There is no doubt our planning system is far too complicated, driven in part by the litigious nature of developers, and that has been a barrier to building the homes people need to see and getting them in the right places.

That is exactly the case in Warrington, where the borough council has spent the past five years producing a plan, largely ignoring 4,000 responses to consultations, and still we have no plan available for inspectors to review. We are now told we will not have one until at least the summer of next year.

Many of the proposals put forward by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government back in August are a welcome step. They lay the foundations for a brighter future. It is about providing affordable homes for young people and creating a better quality of neighbourhood right across the country, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) said, it is also about getting the detail right in the legislation. That is why I am so pleased we have the consultation at this stage, so we can bring those issues forward to the Minister to address.

I want to reflect on the proposed submission version of the Warrington local plan, which expected growth above anything previously achieved, with little evidence to support that expectation. To me, that highlights why we need some of these changes. The scale of new development being proposed in Warrington meant that large areas of the green belt, particularly across my constituency of Warrington South, were to be released for development. That is where the current Labour local council plan gets it so wrong. It concentrated on placing new development on the green belt and previously undeveloped sites, rather than providing for regeneration and redevelopment of a town centre massively impacted by years of neglect. While the council needed to reflect Government requirements for the assessment of the number of new homes to be built, the figure they used in the PSV exceeded all national requirements and proposes housebuilding at a level never, ever previously achieved in Warrington.

The plan does not address more obvious housing needs, but instead proposes large new suburbs and urban extensions, and there is no clear plan as to how developers would be required to deliver the type of housing in the right places of the town that would most benefit existing residents. In short, the number of homes does not make sense, but the location of the new houses is even less understandable.

Frustratingly, the largest brownfield site in Warrington—one of the largest brownfield sites in the north-west of England—the Fiddler’s Ferry power station, which closed earlier this year, has not been included in a plan that extends for the next 20 years. It even has its own rail line, which would satisfy some of the issues that we need to address in how we move around the country. It would allow us to retain some of the green belt, but it has not been considered.

On the back of the planning reforms, I am pleased to see that Warrington borough council will be pausing its work on the local plan, looking again at the homes we need and making a fresh assessment of the opportunity to redevelop our town centre and use brownfield sites. I have a request for the Minister: can we have some clarity soon on the housing numbers? The proposal in the White Paper will actually reduce the number of homes being built in Warrington, so I am perhaps one of the few people in this place who really like the algorithm—it is doing the right thing, and I thank the Minister.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I particularly welcome my hon. Friend’s making that point. It is the understanding that building houses in the right places is the most suitable point to go back to our constituents with. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Andy Carter]

Absolutely. It is about getting the right types of homes in the right places. Land designated for growth will allow new homes, schools, shops and hospitals to be built quickly, and we need that levelling up to happen urgently. Getting the right places is the most important thing.

The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), and I think also the hon. Member for Richmond Park, talked about how local councils are best placed to try to work these things through. I have to say that is not the case in Warrington. The local Labour council ignored all the Liberal Democrat councillors, who argued that it was building in the wrong places. I am afraid that the very simple system that we have at the moment is broken and needs to be fixed.

I welcome the new planning system. There are a lot of good elements in the proposals, but it will come down to the detail. I look forward to continuing the conversation with the Minister, who has been so good in responding to the issues that have been raised with him.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Last but not least from the Back Benches, Ms Felicity Buchan.