Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Miriam Cates Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

Levelling up is the core mission of this Government. It was certainly a mission that resonated with voters in my constituency of Penistone and Stocksbridge in 2019. For far too long, communities such as those in Barnsley and Sheffield have been left behind—there really is a north-south divide—and some have been completely forgotten.

What do we need to do to level up? We need to improve our social fabric, improve opportunities, improve education, provide more skilled jobs and improve our infrastructure. This Conservative Government are tackling all those issues. We are preparing people for well-paid jobs through the Skills and Post-16 Education Act. We are improving public transport through measures such as the levelling-up fund, my bid to improve the Penistone line, the Restoring Your Railways project and my bid to restore the Stocksbridge line. Through the towns fund and the community ownership fund, we are making places that we can be proud of.

We also need good-quality affordable housing, because good housing is the foundation of wellbeing and prosperity and bad housing is the cause of poor health and poverty. So many families in our country and in my constituency cannot afford to buy a decent home to raise their children. The impacts are wide-ranging, including poverty, overcrowding, parents being forced to work longer hours than they want, and young couples delaying having children or not having them at all. Despite its considerable mass, the Bill will not, in itself, solve the problem overnight, but it does lay the foundations for repairing our broken housing system.

One of the biggest barriers that we face to building new houses is the number of objections that appear to planning applications, both from local residents and from local authorities, often because the housing is inappropriate or the infrastructure has not been properly thought through. For example, the Wellhouse Lane development in my constituency, which I know the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) is aware of, is an interesting housing development, but there is not enough infrastructure at the right time. Greenfield sites such as Hollin Busk near Stocksbridge are being picked off by developers when brownfield sites are available. The Bill will enable local plans and local people to take precedence, so it should lead to more of the right type of housing being built with fewer objections and more developments making it to the point of delivery.

Neighbourhood planning absolutely needs to be simplified. I tried it as a parish councillor, but we got stuck; it is too bureaucratic and too difficult when there is not enough volunteer time, which is a particular problem in areas that need levelling up. Many areas in my constituency have been successful in doing that—Oxspring, Penistone and Silkstone are in development—but for many areas it is just too complicated. The reforms to make it simpler, with just a statement of priorities and wishes, are a really good development.

The infrastructure levy is a fantastic way to ensure that development gives back to communities and that infrastructure is built in a timely way, but I ask the Minister to look into how schools receive the funding. It often does not work, because many more children come in than will actually be affected, and because the formulae used to calculate the number of children do not make sense in areas that are attractive for families to move to.

I welcome the Bill, which will improve the landscape and lay the foundations for fixing our housing problems, but we need to go further. We need to build more social housing, stop developers hanging on to land for their own benefit and look at the causes of housing demand, particularly family breakdown. Over the past two decades, the number of people who live alone in the UK has risen by 20%. The number of 45 to 64-year-olds living alone has increased by 53%: they are often middle-aged men who are moving out of the family home and then require another family home for their children to stay in. All sorts of problems associated with family breakdown are also causing housing demand. I welcome the Bill and it lays some great foundations, but we need to look at the causes of demand for home ownership, including family breakdown.