Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Martin Vickers Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

If I said that I enthusiastically support the Bill, I would not want Ministers to run away with the idea that I do not have a few reservations about it, particularly the balance between local and national decision making, but on the whole it is a move in the right direction. Priorities vary, depending on circumstances. We are currently in a period of austerity and economic downturn. At such a time, the emphasis must be on freeing up the system to allow growth and jobs to develop. In times of plenty, we may look more to quality-of-life issues—the environment and so on—and give greater weight to them. At present for most households, particularly those in my constituency which have suffered a number of setbacks in recent months, what provides quality of life is a job. Therefore, the emphasis must be on allowing expansion to take place as quickly as possible, and this is reflected in the Bill.

Obviously there is a balance to be struck. Every constituency has varying circumstances. The demands of the planning system in the south-east are very different from those in my area. The demand in my area is for affordable housing, by which I mean housing that people on the average wage in my constituency, about £20,000 a year, can readily get a mortgage for or rent. I do not care where those houses come from—I do not mind whether they are private development, or whether the council or housing associations build them, but we must free up the system that allows those to develop.

The battle between localism and the centre that I mentioned is interesting. I spent 26 years as a local councillor railing against too much centralisation and calling for the emphasis to be on the local level. I recognise that it is a difficult balance to achieve and I note the emphasis that Lord Heseltine put in his report last week on devolving power to encourage local incentives and initiatives. I certainly support that. When I was on the local authority serving in the cabinet, my responsibilities included planning policy. In that respect, I was rather similar to the Minister; I could set policy but had to rely on the planning committee to implement it, and its ideas on a host of issues were different from mine. The Minister can issue as much planning guidance as he likes, but he must then rely on local planning authorities to interpret it in a positive way and use it to encourage growth and development. I sympathise with him in that respect.

It is a constant battle. As ward councillors, we are constantly urged to resist development, because that is usually what our constituents want us to do, but having served as a cabinet member in the administration—it was a very good administration, a Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition fizzing with good ideas, just like the present Government—I recognise that there are other objectives beyond those that we might pursue when representing our local constituents.

It is absolutely necessary that we speed up the planning process, which even now is painfully slow. I know that from experience, because when I was a councillor I was constantly urging planners to improve the way they progressed applications, but of course they were held back to a considerable extent by having to consult Government agencies, such as the Environment Agency and Natural England, and all the organisations that seemed unable to work at the same speed as those with commercial demands who were looking to invest in the area. In many respects, certainly with regard to the Environment Agency—I am speaking from local knowledge—that has improved somewhat, but it is still painfully slow. We cannot have a situation in which someone comes along with a brilliant idea and has capital available to invest but then the process is delayed for years on end. It is just not acceptable. We must speed up the process as much as possible.

Equally, we must balance speeding up the planning process with local consultation and the right of individual planning committees to make decisions. Humberston and New Waltham ward in my constituency, like many across the country, is at present dealing with applications for around 2,500 houses that are unsustainable with regard to infrastructure. It is good to see that the Bill links growth and infrastructure, because too often we allow the growth but the infrastructure and local services lag too far behind.

As an aside, Humberston and New Waltham ward is also grappling with a planning application for an onshore wind turbine development. It is actually in the neighbouring constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell), but it would overlook my constituency and the tourist trade in Cleethorpes is strongly opposed to it. I welcome the comments the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), made last week about onshore wind developments.

One development in my constituency highlights the problem of delays. Able UK is looking to develop an energy park in Killingholme on the Humber estuary that will develop offshore wind for the renewables sector, which is very welcome. Its planning application has been grinding through the tortuous processes for years. More than 5,000 jobs are at stake, jobs that are urgently needed. Anything that can be done to free up the planning process for such developments must be welcome. On that point, I will take this opportunity to ask Ministers to pass on to ministerial colleagues the message that the A160 upgrade is essential and part of what is needed to allow Able UK to develop the Killingholme site.

All in all, I very much welcome the Bill, although I add the caveat that there is a little too much drift towards centralisation, rather than localism. However, I will certainly be supporting it in the Lobby.