Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between John Howell and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Monday 17th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

In Committee, we discussed at length the process of registering town and village greens, and the value of such spaces. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) reminded the Minister of the speech by a previous Conservative Prime Minister, who spoke about warm beer, swallows overhead and cricket on the village green. We were led to think how odd it was, and how much coalition must have changed the Conservative party, that Opposition Members were having to protect precious town and village greens. Clearly, hon. Members on both sides have open spaces in their constituencies that they and their communities want to preserve. Unfortunately, it was made clear to the Committee that there are instances of vexatious applications for town and village green registration that are intended to stymie development, rather than to protect open space. Although such instances are relatively few in the grand scheme of things, they do delay much-needed development. That is why the Local Government Association and other organisations that, like us, want to encourage sustainable development are in favour of placing some limits on the registration of town and village greens, but we think that schedule 4, in particular, goes much too far along that road.

The Open Spaces Society has helpfully provided us with a long list of cherished greens that would not have been registered had the Bill been in place. I urge Members to think about land that might be lost if the schedule is passed unamended, before they vote in support of it. Some of the triggers in schedule 4 are reasonable. For instance, trigger 6 states that, if a neighbourhood development plan identifies a piece of land for development, it cannot be registered. If a neighbourhood plan is in place, it will have been drawn up by residents, published, consulted on and agreed by local people, and land that they have democratically identified for development should be kept as such, but some of the triggers go too far, and it is these that the amendments would delete to ensure that local people can still protect land that is important to them.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

The hon. Lady talked about warm beer, village greens and all that, but the sort of land we are talking about would not be wide enough even for a bowler to stand at one end.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

In the spirit of localism, I think it is up to local communities to decide what piece of land, no matter its size, is important to local people and not to take the hon. Gentleman’s word for it.