Green Belt: Basildon and Billericay

Debate between Mark Francois and Richard Holden

Friday 17th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Holden]

My hon. Friend is right to make that point. The Mayor of London is being rewarded for failure, just as he was with his knighthood not that long ago. My constituents, many of whom grew up in the area or moved there for the green space nearby, now feel that they face seeing their communities concreted over because of the Mayor of London’s failure.

The green belt was designated by Conservative Governments in the 1930s and Labour Governments in the 1940s. One cannot talk about it today in the context of Basildon and Billericay without talking about Basildon council’s disastrous local plan, which is built on the destruction of the green belt. It will result in the emergence of a contiguous conurbation all the way from Shoeburyness, through the Thames gateway corridor and my constituency, into Brentwood and then through London all the way to Uxbridge on the other side. Essentially, the area from Heathrow airport to Southend airport will become part of that contiguous conurbation.

What I have to say about the green belt rests on so many conversations I have had with county, borough, town and parish councillors, but overwhelmingly on conversations with local residents across my constituency. My argument rests on four main points. First, there is overwhelming opposition to the proposals, especially in the context of London seeing a reduction in its housing targets. Secondly, there are serious concerns about existing and future local services and infrastructure, if this housing goes on the green belt. Thirdly, there will be a need for even more physical infrastructure on whatever remains of the green belt to cope with the proposed development, leading to its further erosion in the future. Fourthly, local residents have broader concerns about why the plan is being rushed through so quickly with the destruction of so much green belt, while our local councils have a gun to their head in respect of the Government’s devolution plans.

I want to be clear: residents of Basildon and Billericay are not against development per se. They are entrepreneurial, hard-working people who love their area. They are also community oriented and have stayed in Essex to raise their family or moved to Essex from London for the green space and greater sense of community. The level of building proposed is on a scale completely out of whack with what other parts of the country away from the south-east face.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I am grateful to my parliamentary neighbour for giving way. One of the most worrying things about Labour-run Basildon council’s new local plan is that 17,000 of the 27,000 proposed dwellings—just shy of two thirds of the total—are intended to be built in the green belt. Surely that is environmental and ecological vandalism.

[Mr Holden]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. It would basically mean the merging of Wickford in his constituency with Basildon, as part of the continuous conglomeration of building that would go all the way through Greater London.

Earlier this week, the Minister for Local Government and English Devolution said in answer to my question that Basildon and Billericay residents should be proud of their council and its plans for 27,000 more properties. If every constituency in England was being asked to take what Basildon and Billericay is being asked to take, the Government would have a housing target of 12 million homes by 2040. We are bearing more than our fair share and more than is necessary. It is difficult to see how that is justified when housing targets are being cut for London.

As you can imagine, Madam Deputy Speaker, there is overwhelming local opposition to this. Central Government should be concentrating on densification of brownfield sites. There is a real fear that when the green belt is gone, the green sites left in the constituency will face immense pressure—places such Norsey Wood in Billericay, which will be the only green space for so many local residents. The pressure on the green spaces that remain will be huge, because none of the alternatives will exist.

If this plan is accepted, even with modifications, the towns and villages of the Basildon borough will become part of an amorphous mass. Villages such as Little Burstead, Great Burstead and South Green, Ramsden Bellhouse, Crays Hill and Noak Bridge just will not exist any more. They will be footnotes in the history of Labour’s plans to build, build, build.

There are serious concerns about local education provision, as we already have oversubscribed primary schools. That is particularly acute when it comes to special educational needs, with some of the services being in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois). There are already major pressures on our green belt from the housing plan, and we are not seeing the services to go alongside it. That is particularly difficult for the green belt, because the only place where those services can be built is in that green-belt space. With the plans the council has put forward, what we are seeing is just the start of the erosion of our green belt.

Healthcare is another major concern for local people. We are already seeing acute pressures on primary care services in south Essex, and yet we are expected to take potentially tens of thousands more residents, without any clear guidance from the Government on what will happen or any plans for where the additional health services we will require would be. We have seen recently in the borough a lack of support from Basildon council’s leadership for Conservative councillors in Burstead and Billericay who are trying to push back on plans to close South Green surgery.

Police and fire services are another classic example of where we already face big pressures. The infrastructure required for the fire service and police service to respond within the required times is already being stretched to breaking point. All that extra building on the green belt in constituencies such as mine will just put more pressure on those local services.

That brings me to the need for more physical infrastructure. At the moment, Tye Common Road in my constituency is basically the last bit of green space we see before we get to the greater conurbation of London. That is not going to exist—in the next few years, it will be carpeted with huge amounts of new building. Small local roads that are already over capacity, all of which go through the green belt, will have to be expanded. Whether it is the A129, the A176 or Tye Common Road, which go between Basildon and Billericay, the massive expansion of those roads will further damage the green belt. That is before we even come to the A127 or A13, which run east-west through my constituency or just outside it, and are major arterial routes for the entire region. The green belt is already massively at stake, and I do not want to see it further at stake. I do not want to see massive new road building programmes, but they will have to happen if the Government’s proposals go ahead.

Before I close, I want to mention the future-proofing of these plans. We are seeing the Government push for devolution across the country, and nowhere more so than in Essex. The local plan that has been proposed, with all this churning up of our green belt, may well not be what is wanted by the council that the Government are basically going to impose on us, with a new unitary authority and a mayor, in a couple of years.

I urge the Government to think very carefully. Once the green belt has gone, it cannot be changed back. We need to think again, especially as we face massive local government reform over the next couple of years, pushed forward by this Government. So many properties are being proposed locally for building on green belt land. That means irreversible destruction, and the merging of towns and villages across Basildon borough. It is hardly surprising that local people are outraged by the loss of their green belt. I have yet to find anyone in my area who supports the proposal. The people of Basildon and Billericay, Laindon, Crays Hill, Noak Bridge, Noak Hill, the Bursteads and Ramsden Bellhouse want the green belt to be protected to keep their communities special. They are not against development; they are just against the wholesale destruction of their communities by a Government who do not seem to understand or care about them.

Pie and Mash: Traditional Speciality Guaranteed Status

Debate between Mark Francois and Richard Holden

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mr Holden]

I cannot possibly agree with the hon. Member any more. Many of his constituents wander across the road to get to the pie and mash shops in my constituency, and I encourage them to do so even more in the future. He raises an important point about us as a country not recognising some of the great food heritage that we have and what an asset it is to our country.

I had an email from a constituent today—a chef working in a Michelin-starred restaurant in London—who had read about the debate being proposed in Parliament. He and his son agreed that we need to talk up what we have traditionally produced. He said that they love the original pie and mash and that he wishes us every success in the campaign. I thought that was a really good sign. Yes, there is obviously high-end cuisine that we want to celebrate at a national level, and I am sure that is exactly what the Government and DEFRA want to do too, but traditional speciality foods need to be looked at in the broader context and celebrated too.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I am grateful to my Essex neighbour for giving way. My pie and mash journey began when I was a child in north London. I then moved to Basildon, and have eaten pie and mash in the Robins Pie & Mash shop many times. I now have two good ones in my constituency: Rayleigh Lanes Café and the Turkish café on the high street, both of which do very good pie and mash, which shows what a cosmopolitan food it has become. Does my right hon. Friend agree that pie and mash is a great British food? I want to do everything I can to endorse his campaign and give it the recognition it deserves.

[Mr Holden]

I thank my right hon. Friend and neighbour for raising that. I cannot wait to come down to Rayleigh and Wickford. Maybe we could do an Essex pie and mash championship and get an awards scheme going—maybe that is the next step for this campaign. But my right hon. Friend also makes an important point. Everybody starts somewhere on their journey with pie and mash. Mine started as a 19-year-old when I moved to east London and came across pie and mash for the first time. If we gave pie and mash a little bit of a status boost with traditional speciality guaranteed status, it would perhaps be opened up to more people, and more people might want to think about it. It would also provide a boost to that sector, particularly as our broader hospitality sector, as hon. Members know, has suffered since the covid pandemic and we are hoping to get it back on its feet.

So what are we after? We are after traditional speciality guaranteed status. We are not after a geographical designation, but we are after something that recognises the important traditional heritage of pie and mash. When do we want it to happen? Well, as soon as possible. I hope the Minister will look forward to working with the Modern Cockneys and pie and mash shops to bring it to fruition.

This debate points to something wider about British culinary heritage, about how we view food in Britain, and perhaps a little bit about how we view our own food in this country. That is something we need to look at again. We need to look at how we can celebrate it more. I hope that, as hon. and right hon. Members have mentioned, other parts of the country will look at how we can champion their local food produce—yes, in order for it to be recognised locally, which is a nice thing, but also for the broader economic narrative, whether that is exports or tourism.

I thank my pie and mash shops in Basildon and Billericay for putting up with me invading them over the last few weeks, particularly Robins, which has had the national media with it over the last couple of days. To everyone, I say: get out there—try that pie and mash. To the Minister, I say: I hope we will be able to get this status. I hope that at the end of this process, we can say to him, “Yes, Pie Minister.”