Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Mark Menzies Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

Indeed. I extend to my hon. Friend a warm invitation to visit my constituency so that he can see the issues that we face at first hand.

Time and again, in questions and letters, I have asked about the exceptional circumstance in which the green belt can be developed and, time and again, we have been told that housing targets cannot be considered as an exceptional circumstance. However, in the neighbouring authority of Bradford—it abuts my constituency—the inspector recently said that such houses can be built because the figure is aspirational and the employment criteria allow it to happen. There is now even more concern in my constituency that when this goes to the inspector, he will say, because the figure of 70,000 has been agreed, that we can build on the green belt. That would have a terrible effect on my constituency. The green belt is there to stop urban sprawl. We do not want to be just a part of the big city of Leeds. The identifiable towns of Guiseley, Yeadon, Rawdon, Horsforth, Calverley, Farsley and Pudsey all have their own identity.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

And Rodley.

[Stuart Andrew]

Yes, Rodley. If I miss one out, I will be in real trouble.

I am trying to make the point that there is a willingness to make neighbourhood plans work, but when there is such a conflict with the city council, it is very difficult to introduce them. There is real concern about the green belt, and I hope that the Minister will come to my constituency soon so that I can show him, in detail, the problems we are facing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to support the Second Reading of the Bill, and it is always a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey). I do not intend to speak for more than five minutes, because I have noticed for the last hour that when Members do that, the cough of the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), gets worse and worse. In the interests of preserving his voice, I will keep my contribution short.

I wish to focus on a couple of key points. First, we in Fylde are not against development. Indeed, about 6,000 houses have been developed there, mostly on greenfield land. However, Fylde is a small local authority, so 6,000 houses represent a lot of new build. We are currently working through an emerging local plan, and during the first stage, as part of an agreement, certain sites were taken off the plan and others were added. However, developers who realised that lucrative sites had come off the plan slapped planning applications on them, regardless of the will of the neighbourhood or the council. That was particularly true in villages such as Warton and Wrea Green, much to the frustration of local people. The result is an even greater number of houses than the plan started with.

I find it frustrating as a Member of Parliament that after people and the council have been asked to go along with the process of neighbourhood plans and local plans, and after they have identified suitable sites near the M55 that could be developed without controversy, developers seem to have given them the two-finger salute by putting in big applications on sites that were taken out of the plan. Everyone seems to lose out but the developers.

My main focus is on the number of sites for which planning applications have been granted yet nothing seems to have happened. There is no great reason for that—there are no infrastructure blockages or any of the other reasons outlined tonight by other Members. It is just land agents sitting on top of blocks of land with planning applications, and God only knows what is happening other than that they are trying to extract the best possible price from developers. That is not acceptable. If a site has a successful planning application and there is no good reason why it is not being developed, it should be developed to meet housing needs.

Another key point is that on many sites developers seem to be building just 30 or 40 houses a year, regardless of the market conditions. They drip them out to a steady drumbeat of 30 or 40. That makes it more difficult to deliver against the five-year housing supply number and the local council’s annual build targets. Frustratingly, it does nothing to make houses more affordable for local people. The prices keep going up. The Government are being robbed of their whole aim of building more houses and making them affordable, because we are dependent on a large number of developers who have got us by the throat. They decide how many houses enter the local supply chain, and nobody else. That is not right.

I urge the Minister to get tough with the developers. We want to build houses that are affordable and available to buy, and it should not be down to developers to dictate planning policy and tell us what ultimately is going to happen. We are the Government. We decide. This is something we care passionately about.

My other key point is that I want councils to be imaginative about provision of affordable homes, and not simply pass over responsibility to housing associations. They should not just pass the buck, pass the cash and hope it all comes out in the end. I want councils to ensure that there are more affordable homes to buy, to allow people to get on the housing ladder, have a stake in the game, feel part of their community and own part of that community. It is not acceptable for a council to say that it is building 30% affordable homes, when that provision is being made by housing associations, which are often very unresponsive to the needs of local people. Councils must understand that we as a Government want affordable homes to be owned by people, to give those people the opportunity to trade up.

I can see that the throat of my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness is starting to go again, and I do not want to make the cough any worse. I am delighted to see the Minister in his place. I know that he is committed to housing. As an MP for a Greater London constituency he knows the pain of not being able to get on the housing ladder more than many other people in this House. I wish him well in his endeavours, but he needs to know that we on the Conservative Benches will support the Government provided that we see the Government doing everything they can to get those houses built.