Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Garnier Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

2. What steps he is taking to ensure standards in public life are upheld at local authority level.

[The Minister for Levelling Up Communities (Kemi Badenoch)]

The Government champion high ethical standards in local government. On 14 January, I supported the important Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) to disqualify sex offenders from local office and, before Christmas, I met the Chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life to reaffirm that we will shortly be responding to the Committee’s report on this important issue and will set out further steps to improve the system.

[Mark Garnier]

I am sure that you of all people, Mr Speaker, would agree that standards of politicians at every level are not always observed. On Wyre Forest District Council, a local councillor has been sanctioned for not the first, but the fourth time, for standards breaches. In this case, it was the leader of the Liberal Democrat group, but I think that we would all agree that frequent offenders who see sanctions as an occupational hazard of being a controversial councillor come from every political party. It is three years since the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life on local government ethical standards were published. Can the Minister confirm if and when the Government will legislate to implement their recommendations and that any legislation will equip councils with more robust sanctions for serious or repeated breaches of the code of conduct, an example of which could be a ban for six months?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue and for his recent letter on the matter, which I shall respond to shortly. I am actively considering the recommendations set out in the report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and will respond shortly. It is of the utmost importance that local authorities have the right tools to make the system work.

Planning (Enforcement) Bill

Mark Garnier Excerpts

Friday 19th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) on his dedication and determination in leading the Bill to a Second Reading.

Green-belt land is one of our country’s most important assets. It spans approximately 6,000 square miles and provides beautiful open spaces and woodland across the whole country for us all to enjoy. Not only is the green belt critical for our environment, but it provides many people with respite from their busy daily lives.

As my hon. Friend may know, my beautiful constituency of South West Hertfordshire is approximately 80% green belt. My constituents value that land and enjoy using it; it enables them to get closer to nature and enjoy the fresh air, whether they are walking, jogging, running, cycling or even exercising their pets. I have made preserving the green belt one of my top priorities as Member of Parliament for South West Hertfordshire, and I am working hard in collaboration with my constituents and local authorities to achieve that. It is essential that we utilise the plentiful brownfield sites that I and many hon. Members have in our constituencies, to ensure that we preserve vital unspoilt land as best we can.

Green-belt land is not just good for recreation; it is a vital flood defence. Sadly, flooding affects South West Hertfordshire, just as it affects many other areas across the UK. Green-belt land serves as an important defence against flooding, better absorbing water and slowing its flow down rivers such as the Chess, the Gade and the Colne in my constituency. Residents, particularly those who live in Long Marston, have long suffered the detrimental impact of flooding. Only last week, we passed the landmark, wide-ranging Environment Act 2021, which introduced several new measures to incentivise farmers and landowners to use their resources to combat flooding further. It would be a step back to undo that hard work by allowing the destruction of our beautiful green-belt land, which serves a similar purpose, while spending extensively on flood-prevention measures.

Destroying green-belt land can also cause irreversible damage to wildlife and ecosystems, have a negative impact on our biodiversity, and damage land that contributes significantly to our world-leading efforts to reach net zero by 2050.

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Does he agree that one of the problems with unwanted developments, particularly lorry parks or scrapyards, is that the land that he is talking about—the rivers and streams that Conservative Members very much cherish, as everybody knows, and the areas of outstanding natural beauty and nature reserves—get contaminated by fuel oil or by whatever comes out of the developments? There are so many reasons why this is such a good Bill, but preserving nature from such contaminants is one of them.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I remind Members: when you make interventions, please face the House, because the microphones can then pick it all up, and because it is respectful to both sides of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Runnybridge and Weymede, who is not only a friend in this place but a neighbour. I have seen his work in supporting his constituents not only with challenges such as flooding but on so many other issues in Surrey. We are so lucky to have him. I know from the various WhatsApp groups that I am in that there is so much support for the work that he is doing in this area across Surrey.

I am glad to see the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), on the Front Bench. Not only is he known as one of the smartest people in Whitehall, but he has a much more important accolade: he is a former constituent of mine, so he knows the joys of the beautiful landscape in East Surrey. I am sure that he will be listening very carefully to the debate.

When we look at planning controls, we should start by thinking about what they mean. The reason they are so important is that they protect our heritage and ensure that planning improves the infrastructure that we all access. It is so fundamentally important that we have good planning, because it is a key part of people’s lives—of how they interact with their community and feel at home.

On heritage, I am lucky in East Surrey because I have not only areas of outstanding natural beauty but sites of special scientific interest, listed buildings and one of the largest proportions of green belt in the country. We have heard from many Members across the House, and I fully concur with them about the importance not only of green spaces, which my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) mentioned, but of protecting the landscape, the luxury of clean air, and the beauty of the biodiversity that we have in those wonderful spaces.

I do quite a lot of work on the environment. On the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) made, it is not only that building on these spaces in this way might denigrate their green-belt status; the environment is a delicate chain, and once we take away parts of natural habitat, it is so hard to replace them. I work with so many organisations that are trying to do exactly that, but in these cases they should not have to.

The things that these rogue developers do are not limited to the rogue development that my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) talked about; they also affect infrastructure, such as infrastructure to handle sewage and flooding—things that my constituents face particular challenges with. That is why it is so important that development goes through planning controls and that measures can be looked at as a whole, so we know that anything that is being built in an area is fit for purpose and fit for the local community.

However, that is not always what happens. We know that some of these rogue developers not only do things that might encumber the local infrastructure, but cause great upset in our communities by doing things that affect local heritage, whether it is the landscape or something else such as listed buildings. It is so important that we crack down on these things.

One of the challenges that I face in my community is that there is sympathy for the need for homes—when I talk to people about affordable homes in particular, they know that we need more homes—but there is a problem with trust in the planning system and in developers. People feel that where there are rogue developers and people not building to planning controls, there is not enough enforcement. When people feel like there is no rule of law, it makes it so much harder for them to trust in more house building, and I will be very clear—I have said it before in the House—that we do need some of that.

These people are not nimbys. Many have spent many hours and weeks working on neighbourhood plans. They have put forward sites, and sometimes there can be difficult conversations about green fields or beautiful places, and they say, “We all agree we can build some homes on that site.” What they do not trust is that developers as a whole will ensure that they build in the way that people would like to see. I know that the Minister will be considering that carefully.

This particular challenge around rogue builders and rogue developers is a real problem, and not just in affluent parts of this country; it affects deprived parts of this country, too. I visited a deprived part of Bristol recently, and I talked to residents there who had not only set up a local lettings policy, but had got their own equipment to go and check building standards. They would look at some of the developments that had been built and use their own equipment that they had personally bought to see whether building standards had been met, and they had not. They felt that they did not have a place to turn to. We should work out how we can give people that confidence when building standards are not being met.

[Mark Garnier]

I hope my hon. Friend will stay for the next couple of debates and will contribute to make that point about building standards in the debate on my Bill about a licensing scheme and rogue builders—hopefully that debate will not be too long away.

[Claire Coutinho]

I always like to listen to what my hon. Friend has to say, particularly in this area.

Turning to some of the interesting measures in the Bill, the database is particularly good. We all know that good government runs on good data, and the database should enable us to find some of the people who are repeatedly breaching proposals. The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) made an interesting point when she said that for so many people, a breach is a first-time mistake and they learn about the planning processes through making it. Certainly we do not want to catch too many of those people out, but where there are major breaches and repeat breaches—I notice that my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge has put this in his Bill—we should take that into consideration, so that we know who is carrying them out.

My hon. Friend talked about creating a financial offence, which is particularly important, because for so many of these people, they will keep committing the same offences over and over again, as he so clearly set out, because there is a lot of financial gain for them. It is not only the fact that they can do it multiple times, but the length of time it takes for enforcement. We heard earlier that it can take up to 16 weeks and possibly longer just to go through the appeals process set out in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. I would welcome that being looked at again.

I have talked about the importance of why we must protect heritage and people’s confidence in their local infrastructure, while also allowing for the house building that we need, and this Bill is a very good starting point. My hon. Friend knows I have some technical questions that I would like to see answered, but this is an interesting area and I hope the Minister is listening carefully.

Draft Enterprise Act 2002 (EU Foreign Direct Investment) (Modifications) Regulations 2020

Mark Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 General Committees

[Paul Scully]

As I said, we already go far enough with the Enterprise Act. The information is released and on gov.uk. This is very much a tidying-up exercise to ensure that the legislation works.

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

My apologies for pressing the point, but having been the Minister for Investment at the Department for International Trade, I know there are quite significant implications in the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean and all of this.

Ministers from the Department for International Trade will be actively seeking foreign direct investment into UK businesses and, at the same time, the Competition and Markets Authority could start pushing back against those active Government interventions to bring people into the country, for various reasons. If Ministers could disclose some of the information at the start, that would pre-empt the problem otherwise of Departments working against each other, which would be to the benefit of the country. Should DIT officials try to start bringing in people who may be a bit dodgy, we could work out that they were dodgy before we started all the hard work. That is why that question is so important.

[The Chair]

Order. Before I ask the Minister to respond, may I gently bring hon. Members back to the fact that we are considering the instrument before us, not any future instruments?

Lea Castle Farm Quarry

Mark Garnier Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Lea Castle Farm Quarry.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley, and to be in Westminster Hall, even as it evacuates so only the three of us are left, alongside you and your good team. I completely understand, as this very specific local issue of the Lea Castle quarry in my constituency is not of huge interest to other people.

It is quite ironic to have this Minister here responding to this debate. I look back on a January Sunday afternoon in 2004, when he and I were in the final of the Wyre Forest Conservative Association competition to become the parliamentary candidate for the constituency. I beat him, but it could easily have been the Minister standing here, championing the cause for his constituents— as I know he does very well—and me elsewhere.

This is a highly specific issue and I appreciate that the Minister cannot necessarily go into details because of the planning application, but the strength of feeling about it in my constituency is incredibly strong. Basically, the application is to excavate 105 acres of Lea Castle farm in my constituency, bang in between the villages of Wolverley and Cookley and to the north of Kidderminster. The quarry, as I say, is 105 acres and is set to be excavated over a 10-year period, with a requirement to restore the land to its original agricultural use at the end of that period. The family who own Lea Castle farm have entered into an agreement with NRS Aggregates, which will undertake the excavation.

Before I get to the meat of my points, I want to talk about a few points of agreement, because there are certain things that I do agree with. First, I completely agree that we need to quarry; it is essential that we can dig out aggregates and building materials to meet the Government’s target of building 300,000 homes over the period of this Parliament, and 1 million over the complete forecast period. The materials have to come from somewhere, and holes in the ground are as good a place as any, although it is worth bearing in mind that recycling aggregates is something we should do.

Secondly, I understand that, to lessen the impact on the environment, the nearer a quarry is to any development, the better; fewer miles driven by lorries lowers damage to the environment. The Wyre Forest local plan sets ambitions for around 5,400 homes between now and 2032, the vast majority of which will need aggregate resources.

Thirdly, the planning application is designed to be sensitive. It proposes a phased process, with a central plant being established for the full 10-year period, and five processes lasting, I guess, two years each, with each successive phase being required to infill the previous phase to reduce the impact on the local area. It is also worth bearing in mind that there are requirements to have a left-only exit from the site, thereby avoiding the village of Wolverley and all the schools in the locality.

Fourthly, the community benefits from £2 per tonne local community tax, known as the aggregates levy. That is fantastic; it was brought in in 2002 and mitigates the impact on the local community, so that the community can benefit from it. However, I would say that the Government made a mistake in 2010 when as a result of the spending review they ended the aggregates levy sustainability fund. That fund brought together industry, environmentalists and local communities to restore areas affected by extraction and to transform degraded sites back into areas that could be used by the local community.

Those are the areas where I broadly agree with the Government’s position, but there are many areas of contention. First is the location of the quarry, which is bang in between two villages—Wolverley to the west, directly on its western extreme, and Cookley to the north; to the south is Sion Hill, a suburb of Kidderminster. There are four schools within a mile’s distance of the centre of the site: Wolverley Church of England Secondary School is 0.9 of a mile away, Cookley Sebright Primary School is five eighths of a mile away, St Oswald’s CE Primary School in Kidderminster is just over half a mile away and Heathfield Knoll School’s nursery is on the other side of the road from the edge of the second phase of the site. Wolverley Sebright Primary School is just over a mile away, but, as I say, that is measuring from the centre of the site; the full extent of the 105 acres means that the site it is much closer to some of those schools.

Within the immediate locality are three communities: Cookley has 2,034 people on the electoral roll, with 1,114 homes; Wolverley has 1,820 people on the electoral roll and Sion Hill has 760. A lot of people live very close to this site, and despite the proposal’s being low impact, it is inevitable that they will suffer from noise pollution, dust pollution and the impact on highways. Of course, I completely understand that there is an enormous amount of legislation surrounding, for example, the pollution put up by silicates as they come off these sites, and there is a requirement to suppress them. One would hope that NRS Aggregates would comply fully with those with that legislation, and I expect it to do so, but it is possible that there will be accidents. While accidents are wholly to be avoided, and any punishment is the right thing to do, the problem is that, while it is possible to get away with an accident in an area with nobody living around it, the middle of a highly populated area is a really bad place to have one. That creates a greater threat to the local community.

Finally, we have a riding stables, which is privately owned, right in the middle of the site. The riding stables will be quarried all around over the 10-year period. Their lives will be appallingly badly affected. The whole planning application has profound impacts on the local community and the local community is very heavily against it.

Looking to the future, the planning application is merely for a 10-year period, to extract 3 million tonnes of aggregates from a 105-acre site. I recently met Mr Louis Strong, who seemed a perfectly reasonable and nice chap. He is the son of the site’s owner; he is 36 years old and wants to be a farmer. The site has been in the family for three generations, and while his father is a successful entrepreneur doing land deals who now lives in Jersey, Mr Strong strikes me as being a very sincere individual who genuinely wants to farm. I think his wishes are at odds with his father’s. His father previously applied to secure planning permission for the site to be a golf course; although planning was approved, the plans were shelved for one reason or another. The farm is around 250 acres, and although they farm one or two other sites locally, the farm seems only marginally viable. Louis Strong is understandably seeking alternative cash generation schemes from his farm. Farm diversification is a wholly understandable and desirable option, and Mr Strong wants to continue farming the site once it has returned to agricultural use.

I used to be an investment banker. Among other things, I used to invest in and study aggregate companies and extraction companies. I am absolutely convinced of the sincerity of Mr Strong’s desire to be a farmer, but the key principal in the application is NRS Aggregates Ltd, which in this case—it does a number of different things—is entirely in the business of extracting value from the ground. I know the company will be eager to secure the maximum output from the quarry. To deliver its fiduciary duty to shareholders—having secured the big heave of getting the initial planning permission across the line— it will almost certainly seek to maximise the output beyond that stated in its initial low-impact intentions.

There are too many variables that could change decisions over the coming 10 years. As we know, extraction rates are determined by market demand, and the cost to developers of sand and gravel are a function of market price and delivery cost. We are proposing in the Budget to increase the demand for aggregates by encouraging the building of 300,000 houses per year over the next few years. That can result only in an increase in the price of the aggregate and a subsequent increase in quarrying. Although the argument is that local demand means there is a local market, it requires the demand locally to match in every way the continuous extraction of 300 tonnes per annum. How can anyone predict at this stage the exact flow of local demand? It requires synergy for a decade, which is very unlikely to happen.

Should there be a period of low development locally, the quarry will have to find markets further afield or slow production. That would bring into question the end date of the process. Similarly, if demand is high, will the quarry beef up production and seek to vary its planning permission in order to excavate at a higher, and thus more aggravating, rate? That will cause greater concern and upset to the local community. If market rates for sand and gravel continue to rise, there will be a greater imperative to dig more. If the company seeks to change the planning grant to extract more aggregates from the area, it will create more hassle for my community. In any event, the average six-room home requires around 100 tonnes of sand and gravel—in Wyre Forest, that equates to a total demand for 5,400 tonnes of sand and gravel, compared with 3 million tonnes being excavated. The vast majority of the quarry’s output will actually have to go out of the district.

Looking at the green issues, the local plan has a variety of sites across the district. Meeting low-emission targets for delivery could easily result in a subsequent application to change the left-only exit policy from the site, meaning that lorries would drive past a number of schools and through villages. On this particular argument, the environment’s interests are at odds with those of the local community. Did I mention that the quarry is smack in the middle of the green belt? It is quite offensive in terms of the green belt legislation.

There are plenty of examples of quarries that have submitted subsequent planning applications to enhance their size. Clifton quarry in Worcestershire was extended in 2016. In 2017, Willingdon quarry sought to enable the production of a further 2.07 million tonnes of sand and gravel. There was a proposed extension to restore Chadwich Lane quarry in Bromsgrove. There was an extension to Barton Quarry Western to extract 6.3 million tonnes of sand and gravel over a period of 10 years. These are all extensions, not the absolute planning. At Newington quarry there was a proposal for an extension to sand and gravel extraction. The Norton Bottoms quarry applied for a four-phase extension, Hints quarry for a variation of conditions, and Methlick quarry for an extension for a further 10 years—and on it goes. Quarries change their planning applications because they want to extend what is going on. Lea Castle Farm quarry is already hideously offensive to the local community. What will it become if NRS Aggregates decides it wants to maximise the output from this opportunity?

The application is due to go before Worcestershire County Council’s planning committee later this year, possibly in May. Officers are committed to ensuring that planning law is upheld. It may well be that they recommend approval. All of us know that planning committee members are prevented from predetermination, so I have no idea how the planning committee will vote, but I think that if its members take the recommendation of the officers, it is not impossible that this may get passed. If the application fails, the refusal will almost certainly be challenged. I warn the Minister that, in the event of a successful appeal and the inspector passing the application, I will ask him to call in the decision to get the Secretary of State to look at it.

There are plenty of examples where planning has been refused in the past. For example, a proposed expansion of Wangford quarry in Suffolk was blocked given its location in an area of outstanding natural beauty. The planning inspector found that there were no exceptional circumstances to justify the expansion of mineral extraction on the site. At the Thrislington quarry in County Durham, residents fought Lafarge Aggregates’ proposed extension to the quarry. Officers had recommended that the planning committee did not object to the development, but councillors blocked the quarry due to the unprecedented level of objection to the scheme, with 1,366 individual letters and objections. It is entirely possible that at Lea Castle Farm quarry, an application may have a similar number of objections.

At Bengeo quarry in Hertford, campaigners were fighting plans to quarry an extra 1.25 million tonnes of sand and gravel from its field. The planning inspector rejected plans for the quarry, and the developer appealed to the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State backed the views of residents and the planning inspector decided that the quarry had the potential to threaten water supplies and loss of amenities. More important, and very similar to what we face at Lea Castle farm, his concerns were also raised due to health risks from silica dust in the air and significant damage to open space and the green belt. Similarly, at Fullamoor quarry in Oxfordshire, an Oxfordshire based company, Hills Quarry Products, wanted to use land over 12 and a half years to extract 2.5 million tonnes of earth. The application was finally rejected in 2017. The company reapplied in 2018 and the council again turned the application down, concerned about the green belt and severe highways impact; that was for a smaller and lower impact development.

I am not against quarrying, but I am against quarrying in people’s backyards in semi-urban areas. Canada has a rule forbidding quarrying within 600 metres of schools and residences. I know there is an argument that there is more available space there, but nonetheless the point is still well made. No part of this quarry is not within a 600-metre radius of a school or property adjacent to this site.

Today, I want to make the Minister aware that, if the planning inspectors put the application through, I will ask him to call it in and give all his support to help the Secretary of State come to a sensible decision—in case of doubt, “sensible” means backing my constituents. I also want to ask the Minister to review planning laws on quarries. I completely accept that we need quarries, but we cannot have quarries so close to people’s private residences, businesses, and schools. It does not make any sense. If Canada can have a 600 metre rule, why can we not have something similar here? I look forward to hearing how the Minister would have dealt with this had he been elected Member of Parliament for Wyre Forest all those years ago.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Garnier Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The hon. Gentleman raises a really important point. Clearly, the process of levelling up is not restricted to that of economic infrastructure; it is also absolutely about making sure that the life chances of individuals are realised to the full. That means, for example, making sure that our skills policy works, and the Government are committed to delivering a new national skills fund—we will announce more about that as part of the Budget process. It also means that it is really important that we get the process of skills devolution right, and we are keen to make sure that we work with strong local mayoral leaders to make sure that they deliver those budgets in a way that makes a real difference. This is clearly a long-term challenge. We need to make sure that we get the right devolution models in place so that such things as the towns fund and the future high streets fund are complemented by comparable work on life chances.

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

6. What steps he has taken to ensure that local authorities receive adequate funding in the local government finance settlement for 2020-21.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Luke Hall)]

This afternoon, we will debate and vote on the final local government finance settlement for 2020-21. The settlement is a huge investment in the sector, with a £1.5 billion boost for social care and the biggest year-on-year increase in spending power for a decade.

[Mark Garnier]

I am grateful to the Minister for detailing the amount by which he is increasing funding for local government spending, but Wyre Forest District Council has seen a 2.7% drop in funding, which is very disappointing. That is largely due to the fall-off in the new homes bonus. The council is doing its best to grant planning, but the problem is that developers are land banking. What can my hon. Friend do to help district councils that are doing their best to deliver new homes but are facing increasing land banking by developers? If his answer did not include anything to do with compulsory purchase, that would be terrific.