Planning and House Building

Luke Evans Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

I have three minutes, and I will be brief. I welcome the fact that the Government are looking at this area. I stand by the manifesto commitment to increase housing numbers by 300,000. That is the biggest change in 70 years, and we therefore need to get it right, which is why I also support today’s motion to have further debate and a meaningful vote.

Even before covid and the consultation, planning was the biggest issue in my inbox. Hinckley and Bosworth is a good example of where planning gets into difficulty and the current system fails. Since being elected, the current Lib Dem-led council has no local plan or five-year housing land supply, which has resulted in speculative, piecemeal development with no overall strategy. That causes community resentment and loss of trust in the aspects of planning.

Hinckley and Bosworth has a willingness to take its fair share of sustainable development across Leicester and Leicestershire, but the following must be considered: under the formula consultation, I am concerned that the affordability aspect is based on work-based median house prices, which appears to assume that residents live and work in the same place. That is demonstrably not true in a constituency such as mine.

I am also concerned that the formula does not take into account infrastructure, as has been mentioned, or future plans for generations. My working days in this House are spent trying to improve the infrastructure of the likes of the A5 and such schools as Hinckley Academy. We need to future-proof our communities, and of course our country, especially in areas such as mine that attract young people, as they will have families. That will only compound the issue of a low level of amenities and connectivity.

Finally, on the algorithm, the numbers produced by Lichfield analysis suggest that Bosworth increases its numbers by almost 100% of current levels; yet Leicester city, only 15 minutes away, is dropping by 30%. How can that be levelling up? How can that be building better? How can that be using brownfield sites and quality regeneration? One solution that I might offer is to turn the formula to use 0.75% of housing stock, not the 0.5% in the consultation.

We can consider the algorithm, but we must also consider the White Paper, of which I am broadly supportive. Zoning and the pattern books are a great asset. The key thing is to ensure that who makes the decisions in zoning and patterns is transparent to local people. Without that, I fear that councils will be unable to bring residents with them.

The final thing to mention is neighbourhood plans, which need to be simplified and strengthened. The likes of Bagworth, Stoke Golding and Market Bosworth are all at various levels trying to do so, but they need to know that the Government are listening to what they are saying. Otherwise, what happened to localism?