Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

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

[Mrs Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

Finding a way to build the new homes we need while ensuring that we safeguard our green spaces and protect the character and quality of life in our urban and suburban neighbourhoods is one of the biggest challenges we face in modern Britain. We clearly have to respond to the concerns of the many young people who are finding it difficult to buy or rent the homes they want in the places where they want to live. In my view, however, it is also crucial that we do all we can to protect our open spaces, which play such an important role in the towns and cities of this great country of ours. As an MP representing a constituency that includes substantial areas of green-belt land, I am very much aware of how important it is to maintain full green-belt protection. I welcome the fact that the Bill is entirely consistent with that aim. It is crucial to prevent the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas, to conserve wildlife habitats and to provide crucial opportunities for outdoor health and sporting activities.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend also acknowledge that we need to conserve the ecology of such areas, especially through the use of hedgehog superhighways?

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[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

It is a delight and a pleasure to see the Minister for Housing and Planning, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), sitting on the Front Bench. I have known him for 20 or 25 years, since he worked in the environmental research department of Conservative central office. He was also the special adviser in the department, and he has been following this issue for a long time.

I must declare an interest. As is shown in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I still have some shares in a public relations consultancy which advised developers on how to obtain planning permission. I have to say that I have also worked for the opposition, notably in Fulham. However, I have a fairly good understanding of the importance of taking the local community with you to get a planning application through.

One of the best people I ever came across was a man called David Prout, who was in the Department. He was also the director of planning at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea when we were trying to do a development on what was known as the Tesco tower on the West Cromwell Road. We had failed to get planning permission, and he eventually decided that we needed to produce a master plan in order to ensure that the local community was very much engaged in the whole process. In such cases, it is important to talk not only about the design but about the other community facilities that will be made available. I therefore urge my hon. Friend the Minister to ensure that as we seek to put housing development in place, we also look at other issues such as community facilities. I shall say more about design in a moment.

I am the chairman of the all-party group for excellence in the built environment, and we have just published an important piece of work on the quality of housing. I am pretty unique—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I am pretty unique on the Conservative Benches in that I represent a totally inner-city seat. The only piece of countryside in my constituency is the Ponderosa pony sanctuary, which, to be honest, is just a rather muddy field. However, I have a large amount of parkland, which was developed by the Victorians and is absolutely wonderful. What is so super about it is that it has space and the settings of the properties are absolutely brilliant.

We need to recognise that if local authorities grant planning permission, that should not be the end of the matter. They must also ensure that the developers produce the development for which they have been given the planning permission. All too often, companies build up land banks but do not do anything with them. I therefore urge my hon. Friend the Minister to consider a proposal whereby a local authority could charge a developer business rates if it had not produced the development, having got people’s expectations up. Developers should not be allowed to have property sitting around doing nothing. It is not good enough simply to get planning permission; getting the property developed is the most important thing. That is what we on this side of the House will be judged on.

We also need to ensure that we have good-quality design. I have a lot of new build in my constituency, thanks to the party opposite. When Labour was in power, it provided a lot of money for new development down in Devonport. I have to say that I am appalled by some of that development. There is brown mould on some of the buildings, and I hear stories of windows and doors that do not fit. The other day I even heard of an instance of sewage going in underneath the floorboards. That is not good enough. This is one of the reasons that I am looking forward to talking to my hon. Friend the Minister about the all-party group’s report. We must ensure that we have better-quality buildings, rather than shoddy developments that could become the slums of the future. We need to have quality in our design as well as quantity.

I also want to encourage the Government to consider ways of getting local authorities to appoint someone to review the quality of the building and design in their area. I have been very lucky. I went to the most beautiful school in the whole country: Stowe. It has the most beautiful Palladian architecture; it is absolutely fantastic. I am not arguing that we should have Palladian architecture throughout the whole country—well, I probably am, actually—but we need to ensure that the volume house builders do not simply build the same factory-produced developments all over the country. I am passionate about this. It is vital that we give people a sense of belonging in their communities, and we need to ensure that we have quality development that will also deliver good community facilities such as doctors surgeries and village halls. It is vital that neighbourhood planning should be done in the round, rather than in isolation.