Chris Hinchliff
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Chris Hinchliff Excerpts(3 days, 19 hours ago)
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Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Ind)
The current drafting of national planning policy is allowing developers to ride roughshod over local democracy, imposing completely inappropriate bolt-on estates to market towns such as Buntingford and Royston, while wholly failing to deliver the genuinely affordable housing that we need. It is difficult to imagine a system and state of affairs more likely to erode public support for the Government’s house building ambitions. Can we have a debate in Government time to ensure the presumption in favour of sustainable development achieves what it is intended to, rather than the current farce?
Lucy Powell
I thank the hon. Member for raising that issue. We are unashamedly pro house building as a Government, but as he says, that does not mean we are pro developers getting away with poor developments. That is why communities need to continue to have a say in what they are doing. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill is in the House of Lords at the moment and will come back to this place soon for further debate.