Housing, Planning and the Green Belt

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I first dipped my toe into this sort of water quite some time ago as a councillor in a small, unknown local authority in south-west London. We swept in and made huge changes to the staff and the attitudes. In the planning department, for example, we introduced planners who thought laterally, took a positive attitude and worked with local developers and local people, bringing in imaginative programmes and buildings.

My constituency is on the edge of London. It remains a beautiful constituency: 90% of it is green belt, sites of special scientific interest, areas of outstanding natural beauty or similar. Most of the constituency falls within the Mole Valley District Council area, but the western wards form part of Guildford Borough Council’s area. In developing its local plan, the district council is trying to meet its housing numbers with potentially spectacular developments adjacent to and around Leatherhead. To do so successfully, it will need to build imaginatively, higher and more densely. That is understood and expected by most people, including many Leatherhead residents. Of course, there is the usual small group, living in aspic, who want only low-rise housing and everything to be essentially the same. Whatever the eventual outcome, however, it is obvious to me that the local team, led by Councillor Simon Edge, is prepared to think outside the box, so I have real hopes.

I spent a period as a Minister in the then Department of the Environment and one of the things that I discovered was the variation in local authorities. Some are excellent, high quality and low cost and work with local residents, but some will not budge. When it came to planning, some local authorities—I will not name them—killed any hope of development and they are still there. Hopefully, Mole Valley council will not do that. Guildford Council, which has put its draft plan out for consultation, is a complete contrast. Some 57% of the housing that it intends to develop lies on current green-belt land and several thousand of the houses are in the Guildford wards of the Mole Valley constituency. The plan has been out for consultation in some form twice and the protests were gigantic.

Three of the plan’s main sites lie adjacent to a section of the A3. Those who use the road will recognise the section from Guildford to Hook as one of the most consistently overloaded roads. The A3 crosses over the M25 at junction 10, which is the busiest, most accident-prone junction on the M25. Plans are in hand to improve the junction dramatically to meet current demands, but not the demand that will result from Guildford Council’s plans. The council leaders should look to the surrounds of the town itself and use their imagination to build higher and denser quality housing.

I visited my old borough of Wandsworth to see how the council is handling the demand for homes. It has more homes under construction or in planning than the rest of inner London put together. That has been achieved through exciting, often iconic developments and a combination of compact development, quality development and height. In desperation, I sent the leader of Guildford Council a photograph of one of the more spectacular iconic towers. It is stunning. It is tall—it is far too tall for Guildford—but it is an example of how tall can be made to fit. However, my thoughts and those of many others have been rejected by the leadership.

The inquiry on the plan will be a battle to save the green belt. I hope that the Minister will look over the shoulder of the inspector at each of the local plan inquiries. It is an opportunity for that inspector—and there are some very good inspectors—to assess the quality of the council as well as the quality of the local plan. If the local council is raiding the green belt as an easy option, rather than moving back in and around the towns, the plan should be heavily rejected and the council should be sent back to think again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I am grateful for that news, Mr Deputy Speaker, as it means that I can expound my argument a little more fully than I had thought. I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), on securing the debate.

In the limited time I have—notwithstanding your generosity, Mr Deputy Speaker—I wish to cover three points. First, I do not think that we have a national housing crisis; we have a serious regional housing problem that is more severe in some parts of the country than others. Secondly, I shall say a little about housing finance, which my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury touched on. Thirdly, I shall say a word or two on an issue to which one or two Members alluded: the need to spread economic growth and development more evenly throughout the country. Doing so would help to deliver housing, including affordable housing, in many parts of the country.

Many Members have commented about the planning system, but I think that it is doing its job properly in many parts of the country by delivering housing in line with the projected population increase. Under the plans that local authorities are putting in place in my area of Gloucestershire, we are projected to build housing in line with the growth in population. There are a number of other regions throughout the country where that is true, but it is not true in London, where we are massively under-building housing compared with the growth in population, as several colleagues have mentioned. There is also significant pressure in the south-east and east. Those are the parts of the country where the projected growth in population is significantly outstripping the housing that is being built, so that is where the Government need to focus their efforts to bring the housing market under control.

My point about population growth is supported by figures on housing affordability, which give us a good idea about whether we are balancing the supply and demand of housing. Unaffordability is not significantly higher in most of the country now than it was before the financial crash, but that is not true in London. In London, the ratio of median house price to median gross residence-based earnings is nearly 13:1, whereas the average for the rest of the country is about 7:1, so London is skewing the national figure and giving a misleading impression.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I talked about the houses that were being built in Wandsworth, but I should have mentioned that thousands of the homes are specifically for low rent or for purchase at low cost. In fact, the focus is on those people whom my right hon. Friend is so concerned about.