Housing Developments: West Sussex

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

It is good to see colleagues from West Sussex here this evening. The Minister for Defence Procurement, my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin), wanted to be here, but is away on Government business overseas. He is taking a close interest in these matters, and is also keen to see that the Government find the right balance.

West Sussex is a proud county that has contributed greatly to the history of this country. Romans, Saxons and Normans all settled in Sussex first before going on to make a lasting impression on many other parts of the United Kingdom. Much more recently, our ports and airfields were central to the defence of our realm in two world wars. The Minister’s Department may be interested to know that the six Sussex rapes are among the very oldest recorded form of local administrative units in the country, still reflected today in the six martlets on the Sussex flag.

More pertinently to today’s debate, Sussex sits between two immovable features—the coast of the English channel and Greater London. In many places, it is the only ribbon of truly green land preventing unbroken concrete from connecting the two. I requested that the House discuss this important issue back in July, as my constituents in Arundel and South Downs were already feeling the strain of a planning system that had the unique quality of pleasing absolutely no one. I suspect that I make common cause with the Minister when I say that the planning system we have today is too slow, too adversarial and too expensive, and yet still manages to create huge amounts of blight and burden on communities without delivering the volume, quality or even type of homes that we need. Planning permissions are already in place for more than 1 million homes, enough to satisfy the nation’s needs for years to come, but those homes are not getting built. Labour’s tax raid on pensions channelled savings instead into buy-to-let property, and we have a legal commitment to net zero, but we are building homes in the middle of nowhere that are wholly reliant on a car to go anywhere.

Housing is a market where intervention has been heaped on intervention, so that, like a teenager’s carpet, we can no longer see the original pattern. That matters terribly, because right now so many of my constituents from Adversane to West Grinstead, Barnham to Wineham, and in villages of every letter of the alphabet in between, are having their lives blighted by the prospect of inappropriate and unsustainable development. It is on their behalf that I speak today.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important Adjournment debate. The ancient parish of Ifield just outside Crawley borough is facing the threat of some 10,000 houses in unsustainable circumstances on the floodplain. Would he agree that it is very important that while we should provide additional housing for future generations in West Sussex, we must have the environment paramount in our considerations?

[Andrew Griffith]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend on that. I shall come to the point about the provision in the planning system for different landscapes, including floodplains, which, as we know, West Sussex has in abundance.

The aspiration of owning one’s own home is one that every homeowner, parent and grandparent can support. I was proud last December to stand on a manifesto that pledged to tackle a problem that has been ducked by so many previous Governments, but let us also be clear that that manifesto also said that we would

“guarantee that we will protect and restore our natural environment”.

It also said we would “increase bio-diversity” and devolve

“power to people and places across the UK.”.

I am an optimist, and I believe that, with care, it should be possible to do all those things.

The Government’s recent planning White Paper has many features that I welcome, such as local design statements, more emphasis on brownfield land and faster neighbourhood plans, but I would argue that, perhaps not for the first time this summer, well-meaning ministerial intent has been sabotaged by a “mutant algorithm” cooked up in the wet market of Whitehall. There are seemingly three fundamental flaws in the standard methodology. First, it appears to be entirely blind to geography, which is not a great look for a planning system. If, as in West Sussex, much land is physically incapable of being developed or is protected in law, the algorithm appears to completely ignore this. For example, nearly 50% of Mid Sussex District Council’s land is in the High Weald area of outstanding natural beauty, another 10% is in the South Downs national park and the district is one of the most wooded in the whole south-east. My constituents in Hassocks, Hurstpierpoint and Sayers Common are rightly concerned that if this protected land were excluded without an adjustment to the numbers, the algorithm would force unrealistic amounts of development in what should, in any case, be a precious green corridor linking the ecology of the South Downs and the High Weald.

Also, the algorithm must only work in dry weather, as much of my constituency lies on the floodplains of the Rivers Arun, Adur and Rother, something that even a cursory look at the lacework of blue lines on an Ordnance Survey map would reveal. Anyone relying on the Environment Agency’s narrow definition of flood risk will spend much of their winter bewildered by the waters lapping around their waist, as residents of Pulborough, Fittleworth and Henfield know all too well. Promoters of a 7,000-home development known as Mayfield Market Town clearly fall into that category, as locals know that a large proportion of the proposed site sits under water for a good proportion of the winter. I guess we could build the homes on stilts, like those over-water tropical villas, but that does not quite explain how the residents will get in their cars to drive the many miles that development in such an unsustainable location would require. All that is before we take into account the down-catchment impact of run-off from concreting an area that currently acts as a huge sponge, filling our chalk aquifers and preventing flooding of our coastal towns downstream. My constituents in Hassocks and Barnham have both had the disturbing experience of raw sewage emerging from the drains after planners failed to understand how the water table on a floodplain works.

Secondly, the standard method algorithm is backward looking and self-perpetuating; unlike the famous investment disclaimer, past performance here is treated as entirely a predictor of future success. Districts with high rates of house building in the past are assumed to continue that into perpetuity, so this fatally undermines any opportunity to level up away from the over-heated south-east of England.