New Developments on Green-belt Land

Gary Streeter Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Taiwo Owatemi]

I thank the hon. Member for making that important point. Yes, in my constituency there is a long waiting list for housing, and local government needs more control over that.

I have covered a number of issues today, including how house building favours large developers, how the statistics that are used are often inaccurate and lead to undesirable outcomes, and how the houses that are built are often not what local people want or need. I am sure that many Members here have similar issues in their own constituencies and that, like me, they have heard from concerned constituents who oppose the current development free-for-all. It is seriously concerning that the new Prime Minister appears determined to make the situation even messier. We have seen reports in the media just this week of Government Ministers scheming to hand over yet more power to developers. At the same time, they want to scrap rules that ensure new homes are affordable, and they want to remove wildlife protections. This Government want to create a developer wild west, which is completely out of order.

I believe that the only way to deliver for our constituents is to listen to their concerns. It is overwhelmingly clear to me that they want good-quality, family-sized homes that are for sale at an affordable price, and they want those homes to be built on empty brownfield sites, alongside good-quality infrastructure and local services. They do not want homes to be needlessly built on green-belt land—they do not want that to be imposed on them by an out-of-touch Whitehall and developers looking to make a quick buck.

With reform in development and planning rules high up on the Government’s agenda, I call on the Government to do the right thing: listen to my constituents and take action as soon as possible.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Colleagues, there are nine of you trying to catch my eye, and we have about 50 minutes in which you can all make your excellent speeches. If you can contain yourselves to five minutes each voluntarily, that will be most helpful.

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[Maria Caulfield]

I will not because there is little time left.

That is not fair because the housing being built on those sites is not affordable for local families. It is £400,000 or £500,000 for a starter home, and those are three-bedroom or four-bedroom homes that do not allow our older residents to downsize and stay, or our new young families to start their life in their community. This is not the right housing. We were trying to build communities, not just homes, and the system has failed us.

I have seven key asks of the Minister. Many Members have raised the brownfield first strategy, which was highlighted by the previous Prime Minister and hinted at by our current Prime Minister. We need clarity on that. In Lewes town, we had the Phoenix quarter, which would have delivered thousands of new homes. The Government gave the council £1 million to start that scheme, but not a brick has been laid on the site. Meanwhile, our green fields are being concreted over.

We need to be able to force local councils to get their local plans in place. It cannot be right that we had a plan in place that delivered the housing numbers and the housing that our communities wanted, but that the local plan is not happening because the council is squabbling over housing numbers. All that is now a hostage to fortune. It is the same in the Wealden district of my constituency, which I share with my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne. There has never been a local plan and the district is holding out for the Government either to scrap housing numbers or to deliver a different housing strategy. Meanwhile, every greenfield site is open to challenge from developers.

The standard method was touched on by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson). I have received letters from the previous Housing Minister saying that it is not a target, just an indication, but local councils do not feel confident enough to take matters to appeal, because when they do so the planning inspector does not uphold that view. The 2014 housing numbers, which form the standard method, as has been highlighted, are inaccurate and out of date.

We need to take the heat out of the south-east. Members across the Chamber might not agree with me, but we are talking about applications in their thousands, not their hundreds. We have GPs who have closed their lists because they cannot cope, schools that are full and roads that are congested. At the end of the day, we are just not building the housing that helps our local communities, and residents have had enough.

On the land banking issue, Oliver Letwin did a review a couple of years ago and said there was no problem—“Nothing to see here, folks.” Actually, I agree with the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne. Wealden district has 8,000 units that have planning permission, but because they are mainly on brownfield sites, it is cheaper, quicker and easier for developers to challenge the council, win at appeal and build on greenfield sites instead.

We absolutely need to support our local planning authorities. In the case of the proposed Mornings Mill development, the council has refused it twice and it has gone to appeal. I am concerned not about the cost but about the principles behind that decision. What is the point of having planning authorities? We might as well give the decision to planning inspectors in the first place. We have tried to build the housing that we are required to build, we did our local plan and our neighbourhood plan, and it cannot be right that decisions by democratically elected councillors are overturned. Developers have the money and legal expertise to be able to win every single case.

Finally, I will address the issue of local plans and five-year land supplies going out of date. Does it really need to take years? They were good plans, and there are only a couple of sites that did not come to fruition. It should take months to revamp that, and we should be able to keep those local plans and the legal protections they provide for our constituencies.

The odds are stacked against our communities at the moment, and we need the Minister’s help. We want to build housing, but it must be the right type of housing for our communities, and we want to build communities and not just homes.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

I thank all of you for your co-operation this morning.

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[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister, I remind him to leave two minutes for the mover of the motion to respond at the very end.