Debates between Martin Wrigley and Lindsay Hoyle during the 2024 Parliament

Mon 9th Dec 2024

Planning Committees: Reform

Debate between Martin Wrigley and Lindsay Hoyle
Monday 9th December 2024

(1 week, 6 days ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts

Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.

Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.

This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record

Martin Wrigley Portrait Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)
- View Speech - Hansard - -

Speaking as—until recently—the leader of a district council and a long-term member of our planning committee, I do not recognise the issues that the Minister is citing. A lot of the things he says relate to the absence of a local plan. I fully agree with that. My council has just put in place a new local plan, which is hopefully being approved right now. A better way to get more affordable housing would be to look at the way local authorities can finance the building of those houses and fix that. It would be better to allow local authorities to charge appropriate amounts to cover the costs of the planning, so that they can get the necessary planning officers, and far better to look at how many councils already do mandatory training. I hear from Liberal Democrat colleagues that they all had to do mandatory training, as I did in my council, so that is in place. I would like to see a list of how many councils do not do that. We also need to make water companies statutory consultees so that we do not hit flooding problems. Those changes will help. The problem is not in the planning process. More than 1 million applications have been allowed but not built—

Lindsay Hoyle Portrait Mr Speaker
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Order. I think we could have built a whole estate by now.