Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

Levelling up is a great ambition—definitely the right thing to be doing—and I applaud the Government for that ambition, but I do not for one minute underestimate how challenging that is. The one thing I might suggest is that there be a focus on the differing needs and the differing solutions. The solution for a rural community and the solution for an urban community are very different. I think the detail, when it is further worked out, needs to be properly rural-proofed, and probably urban-proofed, if there is such a concept.

Devolution is the way to go, and I thank the Government for positively considering the Devon, Torbay and Plymouth devolution deal. We have a way to go. I think my ask would be that it is a devolution of real power with the money to go with it. My frustration—and that, I know, of my councils—has often been with the strangling bureaucracy and red tape that mean the real power to change is taken away. I would love to see the end of what I see as pointless bidding processes. It is taking up so much council time, often with zero results. If we could reduce the bureaucracy and reduce all that—in some cases, unnecessary—compliance to free up officer time to do things that drive productivity, that would be a real win.

Planning reform has been long overdue, and I am very pleased to see the Government’s proposals in the Bill today. Most of them I support wholeheartedly. Of course, we want beautiful communities. Of course, we want to deal with the overdevelopment. Of course, we want to deal with the planning permissions that are not executed. I am pleased to see the push for local plans to be faster and, frankly, to have greater power and community involvement, but I share the concern that has been raised by colleagues about the national development management policies. Those should not override these plans.

The infrastructure levy should work and should be an improvement, but I share some of the concerns about that being paid at the end, not at the beginning. Is there not a compromise of potentially staged payments, so that local authorities can begin to put in place some of the infrastructure that we desperately need? I absolutely agree that those targets do more harm than good. They are too top-down and do not represent the local need. I also agree with comments about the five-year land supply concept. It simply does not work.

Housing reform is clearly not the prime focus of this legislation, but it clearly is the flipside. This is, it seems to me, a bit of a missed opportunity, and I hope that the Government and the Department will start looking at that. The issue of affordable housing is not going away. The issue I have is that, in the south-west, salaries are so low and house prices so high that a 20% discount simply does not work. We have no proper provision yet for social and community housing. It seems to me that, if we are going to look at the opportunity for tenants to buy, there has to be a mechanism to replace that sort of housing. On second homes, this is a good start, but I share some of the thoughts about needing to regulate Airbnb properly.

If I was to leave a final thought with the Minister, it would be, “Think longer term.” What do we do when we can no longer build on all the brownfield, all the land bank and all the empty properties? Where is the vision? There was a vision for sustainable villages. That needs to be dusted down. Poundbury needs to be the sort of the thing we see every day. We need properly to defend green belt, look at reviewing it, extending it and protecting, if I can put it this way, greenfield land, particularly that which is prime agricultural land, and give it some particular status so that it cannot be built on. I commend the Bill.