New Developments: Unadopted Roads and Public Amenities

Helena Dollimore Excerpts

Wednesday 13th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Strathern]

My hon. Friend is spot on in highlighting that Gleeson and many other developers right across the country are not fulfilling their crucial obligations, and new homeowners are being failed as a result. We owe them a duty of action over the coming years. Alongside the big challenges on quality of service, I have seen estates where the public realm has fallen into complete disrepair, roads are riddled with potholes, and playgrounds are unsafe and very poorly maintained.

[Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend raises the issue of the facilities on new housing estates, and playgrounds in particular. One of the new estates in my constituency, the Ashdown House development, has been developed by Chartway homes and funded by Legal & General. A playground was promised as part of the development, as was a community centre, but they have not been delivered, to the shock of residents. Eight-year-old Gia came to my playground drop-in session to tell me about this, and to show me in her notebook—with a cat on the front—the many residents’ signatures she had collected to urge the developer to live up to its commitments. Does my hon. Friend agree that not only must the developers live up to their commitments, but the planning enforcement teams at Hastings borough council need to enforce the provision of services that developers have agreed to provide?

[Alistair Strathern]

My hon. Friend is spot on. We should not tolerate the shirking of any responsibility by developers, but sadly that happens all too often on developments throughout the country, including in her constituency, and if developers fall short, we need councils to step up, meet their obligations and drag developers into delivering the valued community assets that new communities are desperately crying out for.

As well as there being poor service levels, important moments in homeowners’ lives can be put at jeopardy. A number of my constituents’ house sales have nearly fallen through—in one case the sale fell through completely —because of management companies’ failure to provide management packs in a timely fashion. That dragged out the process and made the already quite stressful buying of a new home even more difficult for far too many homeowners. We have to act. This is exactly the type of example of rip-off Britain—of unaccountable agencies and poor regulatory failures—that the Government have made it their mission to correct. I look forward to working with the Government to ensure that we deliver.