Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Fiona Bruce

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We have a few more speakers and there is another group to get through after this one. The quicker we can move on, the better.

[Fiona Bruce]

I rise to speak in support of new clauses 7 and 8, to which I have added my name, but I am spurred by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) to put on record my support for the tenor of new clause 1.

It is imperative that Ministers act to restore the confidence of my Congleton constituents in the status of neighbourhood plans specifically and in localism more widely. My constituents consider that the status and application of neighbourhood plans is confusing, contradictory, inconsistent and unfair. The area has no local plan and no agreed five-year planned supply. For years, local communities in my constituency have been bombarded with a barrage of inappropriate planning applications by developers gobbling up green spaces, including prime agricultural land, and putting pressure on local schools, health services, roads and other services. It is essential that Ministers take action to give neighbourhood plans the full weight in practice that the Government say they have in theory. It is for that reason that residents in my constituency have in some cases taken years to prepare neighbourhood plans. I respect the Government’s good intentions, but they are not being carried out.

The Government factsheet on the Bill states:

“Neighbourhood planning gives communities direct power to develop a shared vision for their neighbourhood and shape the development and growth of their local area. For the first time communities can produce plans that have real statutory weight in the planning system.”

That is the theory, but let me tell hon. Members about the practice. The parish of Brereton was the first area in my constituency to produce a neighbourhood plan. It is a rural farming area mainly—just 470 houses are dotted about it. It developed a neighbourhood plan over many years, and it was voted in with a huge 96% majority vote on a 51% turnout. It is a very intelligent document. It has no blanket objection to development, but does say that development should be appropriate in scale, design and character of the rural area of Brereton, and that it should not distort that character. It says that small groups of one or two properties built over time would be appropriate, supporting the rural economy and providing accommodation for those with local livelihoods, which seems reasonable.

I warmly welcomed the plan when it was produced and when it was adopted. However, the Brereton example is one of several in which planning applications that are contradictory to the best intentions of local residents have been approved by the inspectorate. Brereton is a parish of 470 houses. Within the last month, one development of no fewer than 190 houses has been allowed on appeal. Another application for 49 houses is coming down the track. That is more than half the size again of the parish.

Brereton has very few facilities—for example, it does not have a doctors’ surgery—so nearby Holmes Chapel will be pressurised further. That village already has hundreds of recently built properties or properties for which permission has been given. The health centre is full, the schools are under pressure and traffic pressures render roads dangerous. Unlike Brereton, Holmes Chapel has not yet completed its local neighbourhood plan, but people there are now asking whether it is worth the time and effort of completing one.

The position is the same in Goostrey, another nearby village that is in the process of developing its neighbourhood plan. A resident and member of the Goostrey parish council neighbourhood plan team wrote to me. He says that such decisions are demotivating when it comes to creating neighbourhood plans, and that they make encouraging people to get involved in the Goostrey plan much harder—he refers not only to the Brereton decision, but to the inconsistency of two recent decisions down the road in Sandbach, where one application for a substantial housing development was dismissed based on the neighbourhood plan, and another, cheek-by-jowl down the road, was approved with the neighbourhood plan carrying little or no weight, even though there was no five-year housing supply in both cases.

I have been told by local residents that what really offended people in Brereton was the fact that

“at the public examination of the Brereton Neighbourhood Plan in November 2015 at Sandbach Town Hall, the Examiner insisted our Plan and its policies were sufficiently robust to counteract mass housing development and protect the rural character of the Parish. He asserted publicly that Brereton, as a rural Parish, did not have a responsibility to provide mass housing towards the wider strategic housing target—yet, the Appeal Inspectorate essentially has argued the complete opposite. Why are Government representatives involved in planning matters holding completely opposing and inconsistent views?”

Another resident in yet another parish who has worked for almost two years with neighbours to develop a neighbourhood plan area designation has now resigned from the steering group, in what the constituent calls “total disillusionment”, saying:

“I do not understand how this decision is either fair or reasonable…I conclude that the Neighbourhood Planning Process is a Government-sponsored confidence trick”.

Those are strong words, but they express how many of my constituents feel. Another said that

“there seems little point in producing a neighbourhood plan if it is considered irrelevant.”

Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Fiona Bruce

Friday 23rd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce]

I will not comment on my hon. Friend’s last remark, but the town very much supports the regiment. Indeed, every year soldiers from Holland visit Congleton to celebrate with our town the wonderful work many of them did when they were stationed there during the last war.

My second different perspective comes from being a member of the International Development Committee. I also sat on the Bill Committee that debated Michael Moore’s International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015. I very much wanted the 0.7% commitment to international aid to be enshrined in legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot also sat on that Committee, but he was on the other side of the argument. I am pleased to say, however, that we are on the same side today. I absolutely agree that if we can commit to a particular target for the overseas aid budget, why not do the same for defence? I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and others that 2% must be the minimum.

The International Development Committee visited New York last month for the announcement of the sustainable development goals, to which 193 countries have signed up. One of the new goals is to ensure that we keep the peace and provide good governance, the rule of law and sustainable institutions. Unlike the millennium development goals, which were far shorter and simpler, the SDGs require every country not only to endeavour to support the developing world in meeting them, but to commit to do so ourselves. As a country, we have now committed to ensuring that we will do what we can to promote global peace through the SDGs. We did so very publicly, with the Prime Minister and several other Ministers going over there to make that commitment. However, we need the capacity and resources to ensure that we can do so and that we can, when crises occur, ensure that stability, security and peace are promoted.

That is very much my perspective when I say that our forces must be properly resourced to keep the peace. When crises occur and other institutions lack the necessary resources and expertise to tackle potentially devastating problems, it is often British armed forces who step in. I am not seeking to take away from all the other essential roles our forces play with their defence capabilities, on which other hon. Members have much greater expertise, but want to talk instead about the remarkable role that British forces play in promoting peace and containing crises that would otherwise lead to severe instability.

The Ebola crisis last year, particularly in Sierra Leone, was absolutely devastating, but it would have been far worse without the 800 UK military personnel who were sent to west Africa. Military engineers built six treatment centres, each of which had 100 beds. The UK naval ship RFA Argus anchored at Freetown, acting as a base for helicopters to distribute aid and supplies.

When the International Development Committee was in New York last month for the announcement of the SDGs, we met Dr David Nabarro, the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy on Ebola. He told us that last September, when the speed of the epidemic suddenly became clear, the UK provided immediate, strong political leadership. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the International Development Secretary all said together, in effect, “Count on us.” But it was our military that enabled them to translate that political commitment into immediate and very effective action, saving countless lives. I made a careful note of what Dr David Nabarro said:

“My abiding memory of tackling Ebola in Sierra Leone at an early stage were the district Ebola response centres—the DERCs—run by UK Army officers.”

He continued that the UK “wins the prize” on military support:

“The big prizes go to the young Army officers in district offices using management disciplines to bring everyone around the table.”

Without that, he said that

“the epidemic would have been far worse.”

He told us:

“The very presence of RFA Argus in the port of Freetown projected an important symbol of solidarity and stability which helped the capital remain calm.”

We cannot be complacent because, time and again, global health experts tell the International Development Committee that there is likely to be a similar and possibly worse global health crisis within the next 30 years. Unless our forces have the capacity to deal with such situations, the world will be a far less stable place. Unless they have that capacity, we will not be able to reassure our people not only that the defence of this country is provided by the Government as a priority, but that so is the global peace to which the Government are committed as part of the SDGs. However, in speaking about that, I do not want to take anything away from all the other aspects of the work that our forces do so expertly.

In closing, I want to give another example of the remarkable impact of our servicemen. I was a member of the International Development Committee when we went to Nepal just before the terrible earthquake disasters, with which our Gurkha regiment officers and retired Gurkha officers helped out. I want to tell the House about the work that a young serving engineer in the Gurkha regiment oversaw in Nepal. The Gurkha welfare scheme looks after retired Gurkhas in Nepal quite remarkably.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Perhaps I can help the hon. Lady. The Bill is about NATO. I understand that great efforts were made by the Royal Army Medical Corps on Ebola and everything else, but we are debating the funding of NATO. I have been very lenient, but if she could just come round to funding that would be helpful.

[Fiona Bruce]

I will conclude by saying that some remarkable work was carried out in Nepal to provide the water supply for an entire village, at a cost of just £18,000, and it was overseen, with his engineering skills, by that young Army officer. I support the Bill because I believe that it is an essential key to promoting global peace, stability and security, to which our country and 192 other countries have signed up with the SDGs.