Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

Unlike the last speaker and the official Opposition, I welcome the Bill and its focus on the importance of speeding up infrastructure delivery. I would like to speak to three aspects of the Bill: part 1 on highways, part 4 on planning and part 5 on the proposals for fracking. I shall also identify one other aspect of infrastructure provision that I think is missing from the proposals and needs to be addressed.

On highways, it has been a huge step forward that the Government announced a roads investment programme for our strategic roads network. The time period for the programme is defined and the Government are providing the resources for it. I disagree with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) who implied that the local roads network was somehow more important than this and was being neglected. In fact, in my constituency in West Sussex, it is the strategic road network that has been in need of significant investment, and the failure to provide it over past decades has put great pressure on our local roads network as traffic is forced up through the rural network, including through beautiful parts of my constituency in the South Downs national park. That causes environmental damage.

Up until now, proposals to deal with this problem, particularly relating to the A27, which is a major coastal route, have either not been developed, have been developed piecemeal or have been cancelled when they were initially taken forward. That is what happened in respect of the Arundel bypass, which was cancelled by the last Labour Government. I thus strongly welcome the Government’s major investment in roads, including a £350 million investment in the A27 and an Arundel bypass. It is precisely this kind of long-term vision for national infrastructure that will help to generate the necessary prosperity. If the creation of Highways England will assist in delivering that long-term vision and some accountability to ensure that these roads are built to time, it is welcome.

I agree with what the roads Minister said about the importance of aesthetics. I have already mentioned the fact that my constituency of Arundel and South Downs is a very beautiful one. The proposed Arundel bypass would run at the bottom of the national park across the Arun valley and through a very small piece of the national park if it is to take the preferred route, which achieved a great deal of local consensus when last proposed. I believe there is a powerful environmental argument for this bypass, but the design of this road and of a bridge across the River Arun would do a great deal to mitigate any concerns about the impact of the road on the aesthetics and beauty of the local area.

The French have done this very well in the past in the provision of some of its national infrastructure. We could think of notoriously stunning bridges that have been built in France such as the Millau viaduct over the River Tarn. That is a stunning piece of work by a British architect, and many would argue that it adds to the beauty of the area and does not detract from it. We should seek to achieve the same thing in the design of our roads infrastructure in the same way as the Victorians impressed us with their design of rail infrastructure—Brunel’s bridges, for example. In doing so, we would win much more public support for our roads proposals.

My second topic relates to planning. I agree about the importance of speeding up the provision of nationally needed infrastructure, but as a Government we also promised that we would deliver localism to communities. In fact, local communities are very concerned when planning permissions are given that local infrastructure should be sufficient to meet the needs of the new development. Too often in my constituency, the development of houses has not been matched with sufficient provision for schools, local roads or even basic things such as sewerage provision. This has resulted in placing great pressure on local infrastructure, and it undermines support for local developments.

The Government announced new guidance last year—I was grateful for it—that emphasised the importance of planning authorities ensuring suitable infrastructure provision before housing is delivered. It is important to enforce that guidance if we are to continue to build houses on a sustainable basis. In that respect, the provision of localism through the Localism Act 2011 was important in giving communities control through local plans and neighbourhood planning. Where that has worked well, with the early adoption of neighbourhood plans in my constituency, for example, it has commanded strong local support and even built support for development that would otherwise have been absent.

That process, however, can be undermined when speculative planning applications are granted by local authorities or overturned on appeal by the national planning inspectorate. The consequence is that development that would not have been permitted in the emerging neighbourhood plans or the local plans can be insisted on by that inspectorate, which I think can gravely undermine the localism we promised.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

My constituents are very excited about the idea of localism—local decisions made by democratically elected councils—but does my right hon. Friend agree that there is not much localism in action when a distant planning inspector is allowed to ride roughshod over local decision making?

[Nick Herbert]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend, and I share his concern. While all four of the district councils in my constituency are preparing responsible plans for the delivery of substantial numbers of houses, speculative applications are being made by developers who are circling villages like hawks. They want to get in quickly and secure planning permission that would otherwise not be given under the local plans but is being allowed in this instance because the planning inspector is taking a view of the provisions for five-year land supply that is excessive and unrealisable.

The inspectorate has just examined Horsham district council’s plan. It makes substantial provision for housing in the area to meet local need, but the five-year land supply provision presumes that building could take place at a rate that has never been achieved by the local authority and never could be, because it does not take account of the fact that developers did not build using the existing permissions that were given by the local authority in the years of the economic downturn. The five-year land supply provision is resulting in the allowing of developments in villages in my constituency that will damage the villages and erode green space between them that should be maintained, and runs against what local people seek in their neighbourhood and local plans.

If we are to deliver the localism that we promised, it is important for top-down intervention by the planning inspector to be prevented. After all, in our Conservative party manifesto we made this pledge:

“To give communities greater control over planning, we will…abolish the power of planning inspectors to rewrite local plans”.

If we believe in localism—if we want to put power and responsibility in the hands of localities through neighbourhood and local plans, which is already proving very successful, and which does not produce fewer houses but produces them by consent in the places where people want them—we should not allow a body that is based in Bristol to come in and effectively rewrite those plans, because that undermines the localism that we promised.