Housing, Planning and the Green Belt

Lee Rowley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Seely) on further enhancing his reputation as a doughty and energetic campaigner for his island. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) on securing this debate.

I listened with interest to the exchange between my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) and my near-neighbour, the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins), about where and how we should be building and the interaction with other things such as skills and the like. I do not think it is an either/or discussion, as we could do both. As the hon. Member for Chesterfield said, we have to build up the skills base and the infrastructure in the places that we have the privilege to represent. At the same time, I completely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean that there are parts of this country where there is a clear imbalance in demand and supply, and we need to try to address that.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury said, planning should be regional. We have clear evidence of problems with house building in certain parts of the country, primarily in London and the south-east. Given that a limited number of Members from London and the south-east are here at the moment, I guess I can get away with saying that, because they are not listening. There is a clear case for adopting the proposals and approaches that have been described. The suggestion from the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) with regard to building close to train stations is a very interesting one for areas where there is an acute supply difficulty.

However, in my constituency and those of many Members who have spoken today, we do not necessarily suffer from that acute supply difficulty. The Nationwide house price index suggests that in the past 10 years, the real-terms increase of house prices across the country has been in the order of 20%. In the constituency that I have the privilege to represent, we have had single-digit increases at best in some wards, and prices in some wards have reduced in real terms by up to 22%. If supply is a proxy for actual demand and for the issues we are talking about, there are examples in places such as North East Derbyshire where, because house prices are falling or staying static, there cannot be the demand issues that we are seeing elsewhere. That necessitates a different approach in places such as London and the south-east from places such as North East Derbyshire.

When we are talking about these issues, we also need to think about collaboration. When I go home every weekend, I get off the train at Chesterfield and drive past large swathes of brownfield land that could be redeveloped. In fairness, I know that the council is hoping to redevelop that land, but I understand the frustration of my constituents who drive past the same brownfield land and then are expected to accept increased building on greenfield or green-belt land in my constituency. As an addendum, my constituency has pledged to build a significant number of houses on brownfield land, so I am not trying to shift that to other parts of the country.

Along with collaboration and a regional approach, we have to accept that this requires local leadership. Localism requires local people to take control, and there is ample evidence that while the opportunity has been given by the Government since the Localism Act 2011, it has not been taken up in far too many places. My council in North East Derbyshire has not put in place a local plan since 2005. That plan is now 12 years old. North East Derbyshire is one of just 15 councils in the country that have been called out by the Government for failing to do that. The Labour leadership of the council still, six days after the Government’s deadline, has made no public comment that I can find on the website about how it will solve that issue.

The council has spent 12 years going through the first three stages of an eight-stage process, which means that on current form, it will arrive at a local plan some time in the 2040s. That is probably not where we need to be as a forward-looking part of the world. We have to ensure that there is local leadership and local ownership, and where there is not, perhaps we need to look at how to replace people who refuse to take up the opportunities afforded to them.

In the time I have left, I want to focus on the second and third parts of the subject of the debate: planning and the green belt. I completely understand and accept the need to build more houses and that there should be a debate about that in places where we may have to build on green belt and greenfield land, but that should be locally led, locally understood and locally accepted.

Local residents find the apparent iniquities within the planning system incredibly frustrating. For example, people are unable to build a single farm building in certain parts of the country, and yet large-scale developments such as the ones talked about today are pushed through on account of local plans not being in place, so developers can swoop in and make applications in the way that has been described, as I see in parts of my constituency such as Wingerworth and Old Tupton. That is unacceptable because it undermines confidence in the planning system.

I would also say—I know I am going slightly off the point about housing—that such confidence is also undermined when we look at hydraulic fracturing. I spent most of yesterday in a planning committee meeting in Matlock for Derbyshire County Council to make a decision on fracking. When we have large-scale planning proposals such as that one, which will see the wholesale industrialisation of significant rural parts of our country, which local people are told that they should accept, despite not being able to have incremental increases in affordable housing in their local villages, they find that very difficult to accept.

I welcome the Localism Act, even though it brings challenges. We have to look at ways in which we can rebalance our approach in such matters from a regional perspective. However, we must also make sure that there is confidence in such planning approaches and in the planning system by ensuring that such large-scale and often unwanted developments are contextualised in a system in which people are heard.