Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Iain Stewart Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to the debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green).

Let me say at the outset that I have no quibbles at all with the provisions of the Bill, which are sensible enhancements to the neighbourhood planning process. I very much support the overall principles of neighbourhood planning: it is absolutely right that local communities have the ability to shape the future size and content of development. I also accept absolutely that neighbourhood plans cannot be out of kilter with the overall strategic housing needs of a town or a wider local authority area. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) correctly made the point that neighbourhood plans have not been a nimbys’ charter, and communities engage enthusiastically with them.

However, I do have some concerns, which I would like to put on the record. I am concerned that the potential for neighbourhood planning is impaired by some of the unintended consequences of wider planning issues, and several Members, particularly the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), alluded to that. Let me illustrate the point further with an example from my constituency.

On the southern edge of Milton Keynes is a charming little village called Bow Brickhill. It has a few hundred residents. It is a place of great civic pride and engagement. If there is a charity event to raise funds for a local facility, the residents are the ones who put together all the events to raise the money. They have engaged enthusiastically with neighbourhood planning, and many of them have devoted considerable time and energy and their own resources to developing the plans. They are far from being nimbys; in their plans, they wish to see some sensible development. They want, naturally, to preserve the semi-rural character of the village, both for its own sake and because it is one of the leisure facilities of the Milton Keynes area, with plenty of open spaces. However, the residents are now becoming confused, exasperated and, indeed, angry that the hard work they have put in may come to nothing. The problem is nothing to do with their neighbourhood plan; it is to do with Milton Keynes’s ability to meet the rigid five-year supply target. Let me just put that in context.

Milton Keynes has made an enormous contribution to the number of new houses in this country. We celebrate our 50th birthday in January, and our population is already well in excess of the quarter of a million the original planners envisaged. We have developed plans, which are now being considered by the local authority, to further expand the population—potentially by as much as 400,000—over the next few decades. The National Infrastructure Commission has been tasked by the Government to look at developing the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge corridor as an economic and housing growth and a transport development project, with projects such as east-west rail and the Oxford to Cambridge expressway. I am in the top 10 electorates in the country, and at every election I contest there—I have done four now—there are more and more doors through which to deliver leaflets.

In addition, in 2013, Milton Keynes Council passed its core strategy, which will deliver 28,000 houses over the next 10 years, but they are not being developed quickly enough. I do not have time to go into all the reasons why that is the case, but we are not meeting that target. Consequently, unplanned, speculative applications for housing outside the development areas are being granted, and some of those are immediately adjacent to the village of Bow Brickhill. If they are granted, they will, effectively, render redundant its neighbourhood plan. That is why the neighbourhood is considerably concerned.

Compounding this situation is the fact that the neighbouring authority—Aylesbury Vale—had a local plan that did not get through the inspectorate. It is now working on a new plan, but in the absence of that, applications for even larger speculative developments are being put in right on the border between Aylesbury Vale and Milton Keynes. These are massive developments and would change utterly the semi-rural area around Milton Keynes.

Therefore, we have a situation in which, in a part of the country where we have expanded and want to develop; where we have enthusiastic communities that want to take part in shaping their neighbourhoods; and where we are in line with wider Government objectives on transport planning and we are developing the Oxford to Cambridge corridor; all that planned, sustainable development is under threat because we are not meeting the rigid targets I mentioned.

I therefore simply ask the Minister to give us some space and flexibility to develop our plans, either by giving flexibility on the five-year target or by bringing in measures to speed up the delivery of already agreed housing. That would be widely applauded in the local area, and it would reignite the enthusiasm for neighbourhood planning.