Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Bob Seely Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I note what the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said about second homes, because we have a similar problem on the Isle of Wight.

I genuinely wish the Secretary of State and Ministers well on this issue. Our planning reforms should be community led, levelling-up led and environment led, and it would be great to see even more evidence of that, if at all possible. Communities help development to happen, as long as they can shape it. One initial study has shown that places with neighbourhood plans accept more development. Therefore, working with communities gets better results than treating them as the planning equivalent of a foie gras goose, with ever more housing shoved down them. Stripping away democracy, at whatever level, should be avoided by a Conservative Government.

When it comes to levelling up, I believe that the standard method is still a problem at the heart of this matter, and many red wall colleagues are beginning to realise this. In the words of one expert report, the current housing methodology

“systematically disadvantages poorer parts of the country, particularly in the North and Midlands”.

Simply put, we are actively depriving the red wall of investment, because the construction jobs, the infrastructure jobs and the household spend jobs all come down to the south-east. If this process continues reductio in absurdum, like some planning wheel of doom, it is a road to nowhere. We need a better system. I hope the Minister will take that and what others are saying here to heart.

As one of my hon. Friends said earlier, we need a recycling agenda. I suggest that the Secretary of State puts at the heart of that a tax on greenfield sites, to recognise the true cost of greenfield, and the money should go into major campaigns—a massive process—of cleaning up brownfield. It is a disgrace that 70% of finishes on the Isle of Wight are on greenfield. Why, when we have 35 potential brownfield sites? We need to do more with greenfield in the way of taxing it, then spending the money on brownfield. There are many more ideas, and I will be writing to the Minister this week about this, because it is such an important problem. We need to do more to prevent land banking, to ensure legal priority for brownfield and to provide more powers for compulsory purchase. We have 600 empty homes on the Isle of Wight. If the Minister wants to do something to help us on the Island, let the council compulsorily purchase long-term empty buildings and we will take 600 people straight off our housing list.

We need to get our planning right. Surely we have reached the end of using unsustainable, car-dependent, low-density greenfield sites. Our reliance on them must come to an end. We need clear principles, and I recommend these to the Secretary of State: planning should be community-led, environment-led, and levelling-up-led.