Planning Reform

Daniel Kawczynski Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

In May of this year I will have completed 19 years of service as Conservative Member of Parliament representing my constituency. Reflecting on those 19 years, the current planning system and its ramifications are some of the greatest concerns for me and many of my constituents.

I want to highlight a very important infrastructure project in my constituency. As a Conservative, the thing that I am most interested in is value for money for taxpayers. We have been talking about Shrewsbury—a beautiful town in Shropshire with more listed buildings than any other town in England. Tourism is extremely important for us and is our No. 1 income generator, but Shrewsbury is a historic town built hundreds of years ago, and it is struggling to cope with the huge increase in house building and people moving into our community. We have been talking about completing the ring road around Shrewsbury for 50 years. I was approached some years ago by the late Graham Galliers, head of the Shrewsbury Business Chamber, who said to me, “The one thing you need to do as the Member of Parliament is to secure the funding to complete the ring road around Shrewsbury, because that is at the very centre of economic sustainability for your constituency.” I use my position in the House of Commons to lobby for funding for the completion of the ring road. Basically, 9 o’clock to 12 o’clock of the ring road has been missing for 50 years. Completing that part will free up the whole north- western segment of Shrewsbury, which is undeveloped, and its construction will be the catalyst for massive private-sector investment in that vacant north-western segment.

I was delighted when the then Secretary of State for Transport came to see me in February 2019—I repeat that date: February 2019—slightly more than five years ago. He came to see me in the Chamber and said, “Good news—you’ve got the funding for the north-west relief road.” That was five years ago. I live in Coton Hill in the centre of Shrewsbury, and I see the extraordinary congestion in my town. We are a small county town, but it takes over an hour to get from one end of Shrewsbury to the other because of the huge amount of congestion.

As I have said before, there is also massive construction. There is a huge flow of young professional couples leaving the Black Country and moving into Shrewsbury. Working practices are changing rapidly. Why live in Birmingham, Wolverhampton or the Black Country, when you can live in beautiful Shropshire and bring your family there and enjoy the countryside? People are starting to move to rural areas like ours and then commute intermittently to Birmingham and inner-city conurbations. That flow of people will only continue into Shrewsbury and Shropshire.

I secured the funding five years ago and, over the past five years, I have watched the ping-pong taking place between Shropshire Council—my democratically elected local Conservative council, which is elected by and accountable to local people—and the Environment Agency. Each side blames the other for the extraordinary delays taking place in trying to get this project through the planning process and for construction to start. In my frustration at what was going on, I said nothing for the first year, the second year and the third year, although I watched with increasing desperation and concern. Eventually, I said, “I can’t allow this to continue. I must intervene.”

I wrote to the new chief executive of the Environment Agency, Mr Duffy, who had previously worked as a civil servant at the Treasury. The Environment Agency shares the Home Office building right around the corner. I asked him in a polite letter whether I could meet him and bring some of my councillors and the portfolio holder for highways. Initially, I was told that he would see only me, that he refused to see my councillors. We went through a bit of an argy-bargy to ensure that, ultimately, the portfolio holder for highways and others were able to join me.

The discussions are all about the construction of a bridge over the River Severn. There is a segment of the north-west relief road where we need to build a bridge. Of course, as with many other construction projects, there is no alternative. The bridge comes relatively close to an aquifer from which drinking water is taken for the people of Shrewsbury, which is why, I am told, there are such significant delays.

I am going to say something controversial and a lot of people will disagree violently with me, but then again, that’s politics and that’s democracy. Do we need these quangos? Do we need the Environment Agency? Yes, of course we do. I see some snorting and guffawing from the Opposition Benches. We need the Environment Agency to work with us and our authorities on mitigating flooding. I chair a caucus of 38 Conservative Members of Parliament who have the River Severn flowing through their constituencies. We are working in a constructive way with the Environment Agency and the River Severn Partnership to try to lobby collectively for additional resources to tame Britain’s longest river.

I see relevance in that work, but do we need such a level of interference from an unelected, unaccountable organisation that clearly lacks transparency, to scrutinise a democratically elected council that is responsible for the people of Shrewsbury and can be thrown out by the electorate if it makes an environmental mistake? The council has hired some of the best environmental advisers and construction companies to try to build the bridge. Can we afford, as a nation, such a level of excessive engagement between the Environment Agency and a democratically elected council? I would argue that we cannot. I trust the local council with all its resources and good intentions, and with local councillors who are part of the community, who drink the water that we take from the aquifer, who are elected and accountable to the people. Can we entrust our councils to make decisions and build essential infrastructure projects for our constituents, or we do need this outside body?

What worries me more than anything else is that I secured £58 million for the road in February 2019. The end project will cost about £140 million or £150 million, and that is just my project in Shrewsbury. I think we will spend an extra £100 million on the project as a result of the massive delays. If that is being replicated across the United Kingdom, which I know it is—I have spoken to other Conservative MPs who have serious concerns about the lack of engagement from the Environment Agency—we really are creating massive additional costs that will be difficult to meet.

The lack of urgency is a concern. Mr Betts, I can show you a file 7 inches thick of my correspondence with the Environment Agency over the last five years on that one project. I am very unhappy with that, and I would like the Minister to know that I have serious concerns about the impact on taxpayers—my local, hard-working families who are paying their taxes. The lack of urgency and accountability from Mr Duffy and his officials on the matter is very disturbing indeed.

Last week, we had the positive announcement of an extra £244 million designated for transport projects in Shropshire, which we have got because High Speed 2 has been cancelled. I was a great supporter of HS2, because I was told that one of the reasons why we did not have a direct train service between Shrewsbury—the only county town in England without such a service—and London was “lack of capacity” on the network. HS2 was going to free up and build for future generations and increase that capacity. What the Victorians did was fascinating. They built not for themselves; they built for future generations. If we plant a row of trees, we are not going to benefit from the shade ourselves. We will be gone, but those who follow us will benefit from the shade. The Victorians understood that, and they built for future generations. The London metro system, which I use almost every single day, is a classic example of building for future generations.

I was very saddened that the Prime Minister ultimately decided to scrap the project, but I was also cognisant that there was no alternative, because the nimbys and people who campaigned against various aspects led to massive increases in costs. We have now benefited in Shropshire from an extra £244 million—thank you very much, Treasury. I will be spending that £244 million as quickly and as expeditiously as possible in Shropshire, but we have only got it as a result of the destruction of a major national infrastructure project by these environmentalists and nimbys.

The pendulum has swung too far away from Governments, councils and Members of Parliament—from people who are elected and responsible for delivering major essential infrastructure projects. The pendulum in our society has swung too far away from those in positions of responsibility and accountability. That pendulum has swung towards the environmentalists, the Environment Agency and the nimbys—we all have thousands of nimbys in our constituencies. We need to recalibrate this equilibrium to ensure that more power is brought back to engineers, architects, designers, planners, councils, Governments and Members of Parliament. Otherwise, we will sink—I want the Minister to remember this—into a quagmire in this country, whereby we cannot build essential infrastructure projects, and they will double, triple and quadruple in price. That is simply unacceptable, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister’s intentions are to streamline and improve the planning process so that examples like my north-west relief road do not occur in other constituencies in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Felicity Buchan]

I really want to make some progress.

We are absolutely committed to modernising our planning system. We introduced the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act to enable radical improvements in the way planning works. There are numerous measures in the Act, and future support in policy and regulation, that will modernise the system, making it more efficient, effective and accessible. Local leaders will have greater powers and the necessary tools to regenerate town centres and bring land and property into productive use. That will support growth, the delivery of quality homes and environmental improvements.

Underpinning that, the Government believe decisions about development should be driven by sensible local decision making, supported by digital tools to make engagement easier and bring the current system into the 21st century. More local plans must be in place—I agree with the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich on that point—to deliver the homes and infrastructure that people need, in the places where they want to live and work. In addition, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has set out his ambition for planning performance. It is now up to those who make the planning system work—local authorities, the Planning Inspectorate and statutory consultees—to expedite delivery. We are committed to building more homes, more quickly, more beautifully and more sustainably, and we must build homes in the places where people want to live and work.

The Opposition parties talk a very good game, but the proof is all in the delivery. I am a London MP, and it really saddens me that under the Labour Mayor of London, in 2022, London had the worst delivery of new houses of any area in the country. We can compare that with the west midlands under the Conservative Andy Street: he actually exceeded his targets.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I speak as an immigrant to this country—we left communist Poland in 1978—but does the Minister agree with me that getting levels of immigration down to sustainable levels will also help in the crisis affecting housing, because a lot of the pressure on the housing stock is coming from people coming from overseas to the United Kingdom?

[Felicity Buchan]

We have to acknowledge that a lot of the settlement in the UK in the course of the last two years has been exceptional, whether it is by Hongkongers or Ukrainians. I agree with my hon. Friend on the arithmetic. If we have big levels of inward migration, we need the housing to house the inward migration, so I agree with him on the basis of the arithmetic—absolutely.

[Felicity Buchan]

We have been very clear that our target is 300,000, but we want local communities to buy into it. It is very much an objective. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland has laid out very clearly, we need the new housing, and that is why Government are committed.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Will the Minister join me in challenging the Labour party? It claims that it will come in on a white horse and resolve all of this. In practice, we have seen how the socialist Mayor of London has failed to build houses. Will my hon. Friend join me in expressing a reservation about the Labour party’s silence about that rather than questioning the failure of its Mayor of London to provide essential homes?

[Felicity Buchan]

I agree 100%. The proof is in the delivery, and London in 2022 was the worst performing region for housing delivery. An independent review has been conducted of London housing delivery, and that makes it absolutely clear that the Mayor has failed to deliver housing. It is running at 15,000 new homes per year, according to his own plan, but the actual need in London is multiples of that. That is clear underdelivery, but let me make some progress.