Housing Development (Swindon)
Debate between Grant Shapps and Robert Buckland
The Minister for Housing (Grant Shapps)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) on securing this debate, which is excellent and timely, given all the changes in housing and planning, and given what is going on in Swindon. I am tempted to say that he has done such a great job, there is almost nothing that requires a response. He has simply nailed the subject in a manner that has eluded the packed Labour Benches. [Laughter.] Despite having professed great interest in housing over the years, Labour Members have let themselves down this evening by failing to turn up at all.
As my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) mentioned, I went to Swindon the other week, and I found a place that is keen to build more homes. It has made a name for itself by building not just a few, but tens of thousands of new homes, developing new communities and putting in infrastructure. It has seen some of the key advantages of sustainable development, but now it has a problem. The previous Government insisted that there could almost never be enough homes in Swindon and that the only way to convince locals, who had already produced so much additional housing, to build more, was to introduce top-down targets. They thought that the way to do that was to divide the targets up, through the regional spatial strategy, into a figure.
That was simply unsustainable from the point of view of infrastructure or of bringing in the right kind of vibrancy or sustainability to Swindon and the surrounding area—“Greater Swindon” we might call it. When we were in opposition it seemed to us that no matter how much we explained that to Ministers in the previous Government, they could not understand how or why the harder we push down from above and the more we try to impose housing targets, the fewer homes get built.
It is a question of human nature. If we tell someone to do something, give them no choice and exclude them from the decision-making process, they are much more likely to object to the overall plan. By contrast, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon so clearly identified in an eloquent and purposeful speech, we should give people the option, the tools and the benefits of development. We have a proposal to provide on an ongoing basis six years’ worth of council tax for every single new home that is built, and 125% match funding when it is an affordable home. That means that we are saying to local people, “When you build homes, you will get not only the additional housing and a bit of the inconvenience that that might bring, but new infrastructure and facilities and a sense of ownership, because you will decide whether the homes are built or not.”
I should like to address a number of specific questions that have been raised; they were well made and absolutely to the point, and they helped to explain the coalition Government’s policy in these areas. There is the question of the five-year land target. In the previous Administration’s view, unless local authorities planned for five, or even 15, years’ worth of land availability for housing, land simply would not become available. That is because they simply did not trust people.
By contrast, we have said that, with the abolition of regional spatial strategies, we will ensure that the incentive scheme is all that is required to guarantee that local authorities will want to look a reasonable distance in advance to decide whether they need to make land available. That can be done according to local objectives, with local plans in mind and without reference to regional spatial strategies imposed on the area by national Government.
I confirm to my hon. Friend that, although we will not impose five-year plans, we freely expect that many councils will want to adopt them. They may want to look ahead, mainly for reasons of their own financial and sustainable development, to see whether they want to pinpoint land because they will know that a large chunk of their funding will be down to their decision about how much development they want in their area. I confirm to my hon. Friend that the decision will be a local one.
My hon. Friend made a great contribution and raised a number of key issues. As Swindon has got bigger and its population has grown, density has become an issue. As he rightly identified, gardens have got smaller, properties have got smaller, and garden grabbing has become all too common. We simply have to put a stop to the situation. Indeed, we will put a stop to the situation. We have already announced that garden grabbing is to end, and that gardens will, properly, be described as greenfield, which they so obviously are, not brownfield, as the previous Government insisted that they should be described. Instead, people should be allowed to identify, on a local basis, the density of housing that is right for their community. Those in Swindon, who are admirably pro-sustainable development, will no doubt come to a perfectly balanced and justifiable decision about how dense housing should be in future.
It is worth touching on what my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon said about the lack of infrastructure that too often accompanies developments. Where a planning authority is going to give the go-ahead to new housing, it will be able to make a simple calculation. It will take the amount of council tax that will be collected from the band of house that is to be built on that site by a developer and multiply that by six, and then it will know precisely how much money there will be over that period of years to invest in infrastructure, local facilities and services. So the guesswork is gone. No more will we have the randomness of the housing planning delivery grant, doled out by Ministers from this Dispatch Box in random circumstances for the past few years without anybody having a clue as to how on earth that was accountable to the actual level of delivery in the area. Instead, the incentive scheme will link this directly with the aspiration in the area to build more homes. No longer will we have growth point funding, with its random delivery based on the whim of the latest Minister—and Housing Ministers tended to come and go very quickly under the previous Government—in wanting to deliver more money to their chosen project or pet area. Instead, funding is guaranteed and locked into the housing incentive.
I was very attracted to a new idea put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon in relation to what happens when a new estate is developed. Like him, I have a lot of new housing in my constituency, and I am afraid that the issue of adoption rears its ugly head. One finds time after time that, although these developments have been finished for five, six or seven years, the basic services are not available. For example, there is no way of ensuring that police can come and police the roads because the roads have not been properly adopted. Dealing with issues such as speeding, antisocial behaviour and repairs to vital services is often a huge struggle for local residents. I was interested by my hon. Friend’s idea of a bond scheme of some type. I will take that away and have a further think about how it could be implemented.
It would be wrong not to mention the comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) about housing in a rural context. I think that to the west of Swindon, on the Wiltshire border, there is a proposal for 3,000 properties on a rural site and therefore connected to this debate. Our plan is to introduce local housing trusts, which means trusting local people to decide whether they want to grant themselves planning permission in order to build properties in that location. So if people want to save their local school, which might be struggling with only a half form entry, save a post office, or keep a convenience store in the village, all those things not only become possible but are in the hands of local people in that more rural setting. My hon. Friend made a very valuable contribution.
Mr Buckland
The issue of the 3,000 homes immediately to the west of my constituency is all about the urban extension nightmare versus the local vision that my right hon. Friend has been elucidating. Instead of a rural buffer with a sustainable rural settlement, we are facing yet another extension of Swindon into open countryside, with all the problems that that will engender.
Grant Shapps
I certainly recognise the problems that my hon. Friend describes, and the interesting thing is that I just do not think it needs to be like that. It is a matter of fact that other countries have already discovered the value of what we are now implementing. In future, under our incentive scheme, local authorities will not push development away across the border. In fact, they will want to welcome it into their areas. Why? Because there will be six years’ worth of council tax incentive there for them if they accept it on their side of the fence. Already in places such as Sweden and Germany, areas vie to allow people to build homes, and under our scheme that can happen here in our country, too.
Where homes are on the boundary of two different authorities, is it not right that there should be an agreement between those authorities? Should they not come to some sort of settlement? We will ensure that there is a duty to co-operate. In other words, one authority—Swindon or Wiltshire in this case—could not simply build all its homes along its boundaries. Instead the authorities would have to co-operate with each other, and we will ensure that the local plans to achieve that are signed off.
I happen to know that Swindon’s local development framework is now out for consultation and therefore quite close to being filed. The previous system of local development frameworks was so incredibly complex that very few local authorities in the country—just 16%—ever got around to filing them, despite the fact that they have been around and worked on for the past four years. The one in Swindon is close, and it will now be for Swindon borough council to decide whether it wishes to go back and have another look at it before filing it, and what it wants to do with the housing demands placed on it under the regional spatial strategy. In doing so, it will want to examine its budgets and give proper consideration to the next five, 10 or 20 years, or whatever time it thinks appropriate for the needs of its community, not some random date of 2026 prescribed in a regional spatial strategy. It will be able to ask itself, “Is this appropriate or not, and how much development needs to be done to ensure that we have the budgetary means to sustain our area?”
In other words, for the first time there will be a properly joined-up system that not only puts local people back in control of their housing but provides proper incentives to ensure that in future, rather than people in any area being told where, when and how to build homes, and how many to build, local people and localism will dictate the shape of future communities.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Grant Shapps and Robert Buckland
Grant Shapps
In my experience, in my constituency and across the country, people also want a good supply of private rented sector property. Of course, getting that balance right is important. I share the hon. Lady’s concern about the extent to which homes in multiple occupation sometimes become a blight on an area. I confirm that we do not plan to overturn the rules that the previous Government introduced, but we will look at them in more detail.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
We already face new planning applications for large-scale and inappropriate housing development in and immediately around my constituency. The Secretary of State’s letter to local authorities has been helpful, but what further steps should local authorities such as mine take to revise their housing growth figures, which now seem utterly outdated?
Grant Shapps
First, after one month, frankly it will still wash; and, secondly, over 13 years, while in government, the Opposition built on average half the level of affordable housing per year of the previous two Conservative Governments, so we will be proud to put the situation right again.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
T8. I apologise for asking this question earlier. On regional spatial strategies, what advice can the Secretary of State give to local authorities such as mine in Swindon about revising housing growth figures that now seem utterly outdated?