Local Transport: Planning Developments

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. I suggest a time limit of four minutes to start with.

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[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) on securing this important debate and on her continued work in this policy area.

In West Dorset, the issue with planning development is not just about how many homes we build, but where we build them and whether they are built with the infrastructure that is needed to support them. As I have said repeatedly, we need the right houses in the right places and at the right price. That means genuinely affordable homes for local people. It means accessible homes, so that older residents can downsize and stay close to the family. It means not building on floodplains—something that recent storms in the area have shown to be serious and costly. It means protecting natural landscapes, such as the one that covers 70% of West Dorset; and it means that, when new homes are approved, the infrastructure that is needed, such as GPs, dentists, schools and, critically, transport, must be delivered.

Having spent many thrilling hours on the Railways Bill Committee, alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew), I will not revisit every rail argument, but I do want to be clear that housing growth and rail capacity must be planned together. Local transport must be properly joined up. Local communities must be given a voice; and buses need to connect reliably with train services, so that people in new developments can realistically commute without relying entirely on a car.

When demand increases, supply should increase with it. Ticket prices remain too high, and peak services are often overcrowded, with elderly and disabled passengers standing for long journeys. It is not acceptable, and it will only worsen if housing numbers rise without matched investment. West Dorset is rural and spread out. We have an ageing population. Many residents rely on buses to get to work, school, hospital appointments and shops, but bus services have been cut back dramatically.

From 2010, service frequency in West Dorset fell by 62%. Satisfaction with bus services across Dorset stands at just 48%, despite nearly half of residents living in areas ranked in the top 20% most deprived nationally for access to services. Dorset received £3.8 million through the bus services improvement plan, compared with £11.6 million for Devon. It was one of the lowest settlements in the south-west. It does not reflect our rural geography, the scale of the problem, our older population or our surge in visitor numbers during the summer months.

When new housing developments are approved, especially in rural areas, they should come with guaranteed improvements to local transport. If buses are unreliable or non-existent, people will have no choice but to drive. Properly supported community transport also has a role to play. In places where commercial routes are no longer viable, there should be secure grant funding for community-led services. A hub-and-spoke model linking villages to key towns can be more realistic than trying to restore full commercial routes.

The CB3 service in Beaminster shows what can be achieved when communities work together, but parish and local councils cannot be expected to carry the financial burden alone. We should look seriously at pilots for larger roll-outs of on-demand services. Flexible bus systems can use technology to plan the most efficient routes based on bookings. These services have already worked particularly well for younger people travelling between villages.

If that is to work, the council will need technical support and funding to deliver it properly. On-demand services should be supported where reinstating traditional bus services is not viable, and the Government services should provide new centralised pots for community transport funding that can be bid for to specifically counteract the years of underfunding. The extra money and multi-year funding from central Government is a welcome change, but it is not enough to turn the tide. We need measures targeted to those places that have lost the most before we can start building a more sustainable network; otherwise, we will just normalise failure.

There is also a sequencing problem in planning. I have seen developments where housing has gone ahead but infrastructure has stalled, sometimes because a contractor has gone bust after being awarded the contract, as happened recently in Bridport. That leaves new homes without the transport links, roads and roundabouts that they were promised. It undermines trust in the planning system and fuels opposition to future development.

Transport is central to whether a development works. If we build homes without properly improving buses, trains and roads, we increase congestion, make daily life harder and create understandable resentment. If we want communities to have and agree to new housing developments, we must show that infrastructure will come alongside it, not years later.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

I call Chris Bloore.

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[Steff Aquarone]

On a point of order, Sir Desmond. I want to draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a serving county councillor.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Thank you.