Housing, Planning and the Green Belt

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I want to focus on my constituency and to raise the issue of how the Government keep sending mixed messages about what has priority in local plans, how many houses should be built and the amount of business that should be put in place.

I live and was born and brought up in the Halton area. Halton Borough Council is putting out a local plan for public consultation. I and many of my constituents do not agree with it, but the council tells me that, given the Government’s current rulebook—the national policy planning framework—it is impossible for the local plan to meet the NPPF requirements without going into the green belt. If the Government are serious about their commitment to protecting the green belt and delivering sustainable growth, they need to provide funding for infrastructure—which they do not; they have a fund, but I have not seen anything coming through in any significant numbers in Halton—for land assembly and for remediation. Halton has also been told that it has to consider economic growth, but how can it do that if it does not have enough brownfield land? So the Government force it to use the green belt. Should Halton be using the green belt? Is that an exceptional reason to do that? The Government talk about exceptional circumstances. Paragraph 79 of the NPPF says:

“The government attaches great importance to Green Belts. The fundamental aim of Green Belt policy is to prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently open; the essential characteristics of Green Belts are their openness and their permanence.”

That is what most of my constituents feel about their great green belt.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that urban sprawl happens not only beyond town boundaries but within towns, where green space may be a green lung within a built-up area?

[Derek Twigg]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and that is the situation in Halton, where we are losing the green belt within the town while our boundary is being pushed closer to neighbouring authorities.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has sketched out two alternatives: brownfield sites or urban sprawl. Does he accept there is a third alternative, which is to go for greater density within towns and cities? Greater density uses existing infrastructure far better and, provided it is done within planning and design codes, can be a great deal more acceptable to local people in gaining local consent for development.

[Derek Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but it is for local authorities to decide on density. It is also important that people have decent-sized gardens. One side effect of having greater density is the lack of gardens, or a reduction in their size.

Halton is currently considering its local plan. The current planning policy states that it must plan to meet its objectively assessed need, which is calculated at 460 new homes net a year during the life of the plan. The Government need to understand that Halton is a special case. The borough has significant constraints in the form of COMAH sites—control of major accident hazards—and flood risk. The borough is hard against its green-belt boundaries, and all brownfield sites in Halton are allocated to housing or employment. There is only green space and green belt left, apart from 60 hectares of land that is too contaminated to be used for either housing or employment. Will the Government assist Halton with funding to decontaminate that land, rather than force us to use the green belt?

The “Planning for the right homes in the right places” consultation states:

“The housing White Paper contained a number of proposals to reform planning to achieve these objectives. It reinforced the central role of local and neighbourhood plans in the planning system, so that local planning authorities and local communities retain control of where development should…go.”

In his letter to MPs on 7 June 2016, the Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), said:

“The Framework makes it clear that inappropriate development may be allowed only where very special circumstances exist, and that Green Belt boundaries should be adjusted only in exceptional circumstances—”

is it an exceptional circumstance that we have no land left on which to build unless we build on the green belt?—

“through the Local Plan process and with the support of local people.”

That is the important point. Do local people have the final say, or have the Government put some other consideration in the framework and advice that says differently?

Local people do not want the green belt to be built on, so they want to retain control of where development should or should not go. Halton has run out of land to allocate for housing, yet there is still this requirement to maintain a continuous five-year supply of housing land to meet the housing delivery test.

In his answer to my parliamentary question this week, the Minister said there

“is not a local housing target.”

The fact is that no inspector in his Department would allow any council to say, “We are not going to build any housing because we have no land left other than green belt.” The Minister can tell me that is not true and that the inspector will not impose it. I understand there is not a target, but inspectors will be working to a very clear policy framework. I am interested in what he has to say about that. Many local authorities have much more green belt than Halton. Surely there is a balance to be struck for an area such as Halton, which has urban developed land taking up the great majority of space.

Halton was really where the chemicals industry was born. It was a huge area for that industry, which provided many jobs. That was important, but the industry left a huge legacy of contaminated land in Halton. Few local authorities will have to deal with the scale of pollution that Halton Borough Council has faced. It has done a good job since 1974 in dealing with that legacy and ensuring that a lot of that land has come back into some use, but the council does not have the funds to remediate the contaminated land that is left and the Government must recognise that in their future guidance.

If things continue to follow the same path, we will have little green belt left for future generations to enjoy in my constituency. As we know, such land is very important in terms of enjoyment, exercise, mental health and so on. It is therefore very important that urbanised areas such as Halton have these spaces. I know that the new guidance is being worked on and the first stage of it will be coming out in the spring, but the Minister must answer what the defining factor is for our local authority and for our local community, who has the final say and what is the strongest weight to give to a particular argument. He and his Department, in the guidance, have consistently given out mixed messages about what should be taken into consideration, but they do not make it clear what should be given the greatest weight. Should it be what is important to the local community and what they want, or is it the guidance that the Government have sent out for the inspectors to deal with? We do not want inspectors coming to Halton and saying that, because the council has not done what they think it should have done, it should go back and reconsider or even that it should have powers taken away from it. The Minister really needs to address that.

My constituents do not want green belt land to be built on. We have suffered a massive legacy of pollution and contaminated land. Our council has worked hard to deal with that, but we are entitled to enjoy our green space and our green belt in Halton as much as anyone anywhere else is.

I wish to mention one final thing, which is the leasehold issue. A number of my constituents have faced a situation where developers have left them with leaseholds that cost them an awful lot of money. The Government say they are going to bring forward some plans to deal with that, but what are they going to do for those people who have already had the problem and have the legacy of it? I hope the Government will make sure they do this retrospectively and help the people who have been conned by the developers, in that they have been charged very high rates for their leasehold. I hope the Government will see to that.

In conclusion, it is very important that the Minister listens to what Halton is saying. I am happy to meet him so that he can see what the specific challenges are in Halton, which many other authorities will have faced.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dominic Raab]

I know that the hon. Lady has a great deal of experience in this regard and she is right. I suspect that what is needed is a mixture of coaxing and cajoling, carrot and stick. We must try to ensure that there is a win-win. However, it seems to the Government, and certainly to me, that there is a huge opportunity not just to build more affordable homes, but to control the process to ensure that those homes are for key workers on low and middle incomes.

We have heard a range of excellent speeches. I shall try to do justice to as many as possible in the time available. The hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) raised the issue of funding and, in particular, the issue of the homes infrastructure fund. As I have said, we want to encourage the building of more homes, but we know how important it is to provide the infrastructure that will enable us to carry communities with us.

[Derek Twigg]

May I press the Minister on that, if he does not mind? Halton Borough Council is saying that, because the brownfield land is either contaminated or has already been allocated and used, there are exceptional circumstances to build on the green belt. My constituents do not agree and nor do I. Can the Minister tell me whether that is correct? May I also ask whether he is going to do anything about developers who build on green belt before all the brownfield land has been used?

[Dominic Raab]

The national planning policy framework makes it very clear that building on the green belt must be the last resort. Well disposed as I am towards the hon. Gentleman, he will not tempt me to start commenting on individual plans or planning applications, but I can tell him, in relation to his own local authority, that we did not have a bid for the homes infrastructure fund and we want the bids to be locally driven. Then we will look on them as sympathetically as possible—in accordance, obviously, with a set of criteria—to maximise the output.