Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

I welcome the Government’s ambition to build homes, including affordable homes, to help first-time buyers and to enable extended families to live close to each other, strengthening our social fabric and allowing key workers to live near to their place of work. I welcome the commitment on locally decided design codes that builders will have to abide by, on tree-lined streets and on building net zero homes. Building back beautiful; building back greener.

However, it is important that I take this opportunity to put on record the concerns of my constituents over planning and infrastructure. We need to put in place either penalties or incentive schemes to ensure that developers build out their planning permissions. The penalty currently falls on the local authority if it cannot meet its five-year housing supply. In the Waverley part of my constituency, my villages of Alfold, Cranleigh and Ewhurst continue to be inundated with homes on pristine green fields miles away from decent transport links, with crumbling water infrastructure and on flood plains. This is not alleviating the concern but creating additional worry for my constituents, who want to know what protection Ministers can give them when neighbouring villages have greenbelt protection. They also want to know why they have to take the unmet need from neighbouring councils.

In the Guildford part of my constituency, the local plan is controversial. It has a brilliant regeneration site in the Weyside urban village, but the additional 14,000 homes cannot be provided as there will now be no increase in road capacity for the A3 through Guildford that was promised. I am pleased that, after a concerted effort by my hon. Friend and neighbour, the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), Conservative councillors and me, the current administration have finally agreed to review the local plan. This is why I am calling for the A3 to be tunnelled under Guildford, taking traffic out of Guildford and improving air quality. Guildford will likely be zoned for growth, which should bring funding for big infrastructure projects such as my tunnel, but we are the party of localism who brought forward neighbourhood plans, and my constituents need to understand how the zoning system will strengthen local democracy and accountability and not erode it, as they fear. I thank my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Housing Minister for their proactive engagement since I was elected, and I know that they will continue to engage in the months to come.