Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between James Gray and Mark Prisk
Mr Prisk
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The key—it was referred to by the planning Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles)—is the strength of local civic and business leadership. That is what we are seeing in the pilots. On the grants, the key is ensuring that the money is spent wisely, not quickly, but I take the point about disputes that block activity on the ground.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I very much welcome the Minister’s strong support for the Portas principles and that of the planning Minister. Does he agree that one sure-fire way of wrecking high streets is to allow local authorities to allow out-of-town shopping centres?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between James Gray and Mark Prisk
Mr Prisk
I am sorry to disappoint the right hon. Gentleman, who was an experienced Minister performing my role in the last Government, but if we look at completions—homes that families can actually move into —we see that there has been a rise of 8% over the past two years. I would have thought that the Labour party welcomed that.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
19. Does the Minister agree that one problem is that developers buy large quantities of land and get planning permission for it, but do not build on it? That means that when the next lot come along and ask for planning permission for more land, they get it because not enough houses are being built. Surely it is time that we had time-limited constraints on planning permission so that developers are required to build on land before the planning permission runs out of time.
Mr Prisk
The key issue is that by getting rid of regional spatial strategies and moving towards local plans, under this Government local people and their representatives will have the opportunity to set that agenda. I take my hon. Friend’s point. We want to ensure that planning permissions are used properly.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between James Gray and Mark Prisk
Mr Prisk
I understand that the hon. Gentleman is a historian, and he should know from the previous Government’s record that at that time we saw the lowest rate of house building since the 1920s. It is important to get the affordable homes built, sometimes making sure that we use empty homes and sometimes that we build on brownfield—and yes, we will occasionally want to make sure that greenfield land is used where that is appropriate.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Wiltshire council, Swindon borough council and the local parish councils of Purton and Lydiard Millicent have, over very many years, strongly and unanimously opposed the application to build 700 houses on green fields at Ridgeway farm in my constituency, yet last week the inspector allowed it under the regional spatial strategy figures. Given that it is not in the green belt—we do not have green-belt land in Wiltshire—what can local people do to prevent unwanted developments of this kind on greenfield sites across my constituency?
Mr Prisk
My hon. Friend will know that I cannot refer directly to individual cases and he will understand the quasi-legal reason for that, but I would say that a robust local plan is absolutely the right way to do this. Sadly, under the previous Government we did not have that; we just had regional plans instead.