Planning (Enforcement) Bill

Debate between James Sunderland and James Daly

Friday 19th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Sunderland]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was trying to suggest that we should be building on brownfield sites across the country. There is clearly a preponderance of brownfield sites further north. We should be building on the best sites, not on the wrong sites.

[James Daly]

I thought I had misinterpreted my hon. Friend, and I am glad we are in complete agreement on these matters. A group called Bury Folk in my constituency has over 12,000 members. It is committed to ensuring that there is a voice for local people so that they can be heard on how they view their area and what it should look like. The most basic thing we should expect from our local councillors is that, as part of the planning process, they should have an idea and vision about what the local environment should look like, but that is not the case in Bury or Greater Manchester.

We have a regional strategic building plan called Places for Everyone. It has been taken forward by the Mayor of Greater Manchester and supported by the Labour council in Bury. Effectively, it has subcontracted development policy for the next 20 years to unknown developers. The whole plan seems to come down to this: we will allow the concreting over of large sections of the green belt, without any details of how that will happen. That is clearly unacceptable and there is no democratic accountability for it. How can my constituents have any confident in a plan such as that, which has no vision, is lazy, and when we have no idea about what bespoke details will be required and enforced to ensure we have that local voice in the planning process?

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) about the use of our town centres, and how the Government should consider working with local authorities to incentivise developments on appropriate brownfield sites, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) said. This comes down to the voices of all our constituents, and to their confidence that those voices will be heard and that the local authority will act on that. My hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge is correct about individual rogue developers, but there also are issues with large developers, because their financial might impacts the enforcement process in many applications. Essentially, local authorities are intimidated into not taking appropriate action to address egregious breaches by large-scale developers, which is hugely significant.

I agree with my hon. Friend, and his Bill has brought important issues to the Floor of the House. We must ensure that we have enforcement that works, supports local people and—most of all—supports a vision that protects the green belt and the environment that is so important to us. We must incentivise and ensure that local authorities take decisions in the best interests of the people who pay their wages, and who pay council tax to ensure a fully functioning, democratic planning system. Local authorities must not simply subcontract planning to large developers that do not care about individual areas and are eating up large sections of the green belt to build thousands of houses, without any thought or care for the people whose lives they will blight. We need effective enforcement. My hon. Friend’s important Bill contributes to that debate, and I thank him for it.