Duncan Hames
Main Page: Duncan Hames (Liberal Democrat - Chippenham)
Mr Pickles
One of the things we were concerned about was that we might repeat some of the mistake’s that Labour made over rent controls and the placing of a lot of burdens on landlords. The last thing we wanted was to see a great plunge in the availability of properties for tenants. So, by and large, I think that this has been a very good thing.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
The Planning Minister told us earlier that local councils getting their local plans adopted was the best thing for them to do, but is that sufficient to enable them to defend those policies against the increasingly confident threats from developers to overturn them on appeal on the ground of a lack of a five-year housing supply?
Nick Boles
I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend that it certainly is sufficient. One of the decisions that I have most enjoyed taking in this job has been to support the decision of a local authority, which had well in excess of a five-year land supply, to refuse an application for speculative development in an area where it did not want development.