Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Rachel Taylor Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 24th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

I am surprised to hear the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) trashing hard-working local builders in his constituency and calling the homes that his constituents live in dreadful trashy houses. Before I came to this place—

[Lewis Cocking]

rose—

[Rachel Taylor]

I am not going to give way; you have had your time. Before I came to this place—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. I call Rachel Taylor.

[Rachel Taylor]

Before I came to this place—

[Lewis Cocking]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wish to seek your advice. I have just been cited as saying something in my speech that I did not say. I was merely talking about developers and my time on the planning committee, when developers would come forward and propose utter rubbish. I did not say the houses my residents live in are rubbish.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Member has made his point. It is a matter of debate, but his point is now on the record.

[Rachel Taylor]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker—[Hon. Members: “Withdraw!”]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I have made my ruling clear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Taylor]

Before I came to this place, I was a property solicitor, and I cannot say how many times I had developers in my office, swearing and cursing at yet another of their projects having been put on hold because of an arcane planning system. Bat tunnels are only the half of it.

I will never forget the day a developer told me that Warwickshire county council had asked him to build a pavement outside his new development but had then refused to let him put up traffic lights to enable the works because there was a vaccination centre a mile up the road. After months of legal wrangling, which delayed the home buyers moving in, the county council eventually gave in, but not before wasting everyone’s time and resources.

There are already half a million fewer young homeowners since 2010, and millions are stuck in expensive, poor-quality and insecure rented housing. Despite that, planning permissions dropped to their lowest number on record under the last Government, because the planning system is outdated and no longer fit for purpose. I want my constituency to be a place where young people feel they can put down roots, whether in our towns or our villages, and I want to ensure that there is the necessary infrastructure for them and their young families to create a life in our towns and villages.

I welcome this Bill to fix our broken planning system and get Britain building again. As a solicitor, on many occasions I saw unacceptable delays in determining planning applications, which cost developers money. There were insufficient resources to deal with complex legal agreements or to consult in a meaningful way about necessary infrastructure. All too often, developers then bypassed the correct processes, only to end up with whole estates being built without key approvals, which have sat empty for more than 12 months because access on to the road has not yet been sorted. This Bill will properly fund planning departments, and I hope that that will extend to the associated legal work. It is rare that developers even go down the route of getting new roads adopted, because for them the delays that that causes are financial risks they cannot take, but that leads to more and more residents paying freehold management charges, which new homeowners can ill afford.

I am glad that the National Infrastructure Commission has welcomed the provisions in this Bill, calling them a

“bold and broad-ranging package of measures”.

After years of the Conservative party letting the planning system crumble, a bold approach is exactly what is needed. Just last week, I met those from National Grid in my constituency. They welcomed the Bill and said that this sort of sensible approach could not come soon enough.

Of course, it is crucial for us to get the balance right. Most people I have spoken to understand that if they want their kids to be able to afford a home and live nearby, we need to build more houses. I agree with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which has said that the Bill

“provides a necessary balance between the need to boost building developments, whilst protecting the natural world through a nature restoration fund, driving green initiatives.”

It is vital we get this balance right. Every person should have access to an affordable home, and green and natural spaces they can use and enjoy.

[Paul Holmes]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I appreciate being able to make this point of order. I would like to seek your guidance on the speech from the hon. Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor), in which she defended developers and also solicitors. Did she have to declare her interest as a practising solicitor, for which privilege she was paid £7,500 this quarter?

[Rachel Taylor]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I no longer have a practising certificate as a solicitor, and I gave up practising as soon as I came into this House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order, and I thank the hon. Lady for putting her clarification on the record.

Coastal Communities

Rachel Taylor Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered coastal communities.

I am delighted to be leading my first ever debate in this Chamber, on the vital topic of coastal communities. I am very grateful to Members from across the House who supported my application for the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.

This is the first debate on coastal communities of this new Parliament, and it could not come soon enough. There are a number of traditional divides into which people break our country: rural versus urban; affluent versus deprived; industrial versus agrarian. However, the divide between coastal and inland communities is often overlooked, yet this divide has wide-ranging impacts and leads to a unique situation for these areas.

In fact, many of my constituents in North Norfolk may share far more similar experiences with our coastal siblings in Cornwall, almost eight hours away, than with those just half-an-hour down the road in Norwich. What coastal communities across the country often feel is that, despite the incredible contribution they make to our country economically, culturally and environmentally, the system is not working for them. Our health and economic outcomes are poorer than those of our inland neighbours. Our environment is battling the challenges of climate change, coastal erosion and the sewage dumping scandal. But, despite that, the Government do not seem to think that we are worthy of proper representation in the form of a dedicated coastal communities Minister.

I turn now to the health challenges faced by our coastal communities. In 2021, Professor Sir Chris Whitty published a landmark report into the health outcomes in seaside towns and coastal communities. What he uncovered was shocking. We have higher rates of poor health and disease. The rates of cardiovascular diseases and cancer are higher, and those diagnosed with these diseases have poorer outcomes. They also suffer with them for longer.

Data shows that, on average, residents in Hull live more than 25% of their lives in poor health—around a quarter more than the national average. That results in a lower quality of life and wellbeing, a greater reliance on the health service, and shorter lives overall. The work of Hull’s public health department, under the leadership of Mike Ross and the Liberal Democrat-led council there, to tackle these challenging statistics is commendable, but coastal health inequalities need to receive more direct Government attention.

The disparities in life expectancy that were found are particularly shocking. I want to take Members on a brief tour of my Norfolk neighbours to outline this point for them. To the east of my constituency is Great Yarmouth, and to the south is Broadland. These areas are very nearby, they share similar amenities in many situations, and they have shared frustrations with the A47. However, a baby born in Great Yarmouth has a life expectancy four years shorter than that of one born just over the border in Broadland. Both these babies would be proud Norfolk residents, both live within touching distance of our Broads national park, both may even grow up sitting in adjacent seats at Carrow Road football ground, but the challenges that we face in coastal towns and communities means that there would be a disparity in their health, in their wellbeing and even in how long they live. For communities so nearby, so similar, this cannot be seen as an acceptable status quo. Our coastal communities deserve to live longer, better, healthier lives than they do now.

North Norfolk faces its own coastal health challenges. We have lost the Blakeney surgery, which served many coastal villages with otherwise poor transport links. Benjamin Court reablement centre has been closed down—for now—removing a vital asset that allowed local people to recover outside of hospital and nearer their families. Cromer hospital also needs the support and funding to provide more services closer to our coastal communities, preventing them from having to travel to Norwich for vital healthcare.

Professor Whitty points out that coastal communities share many more of these challenges with each other than with their inland neighbours. It was clear to him that action needed to be taken. We all listened to him when he was on our TV screens during the pandemic, and I hope that the Government will take his advice just as seriously now.

Our coastal communities are major economic drivers. We have a thriving tourism industry, which contributed £17 billion a year to our economy before the pandemic struck. It supports hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country. Our hospitality industry plays host to talented hoteliers, chefs, publicans, chip shop owners and many more. A visit to the Blakeney hotel, enjoying lobster and crab at Rocky Bottoms in West Runton, a pint at the Hill House in Happisburgh, or some dessert at Crumble Crib in Sheringham, are all excellent ideas for anyone taking a trip to our part of the world. Tourists have been doing this for centuries. Jane Austen sang the praises of Cromer in my constituency in “Emma”, describing it as

“the best of all the sea-bathing places”,

although I must say that the whole of North Norfolk qualifies for that level of praise.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

My constituency could not be further from the sea. However, I have spent many happy holidays in Cromer and Sheringham, and I am delighted that he has been returned to the House as the representative of those wonderful communities. Will he tell me how wonderful Cromer, Sheringham and the North Norfolk coast are? I prefer to swim in the sea in Sheringham rather than Cromer—does he agree?

[Steff Aquarone]

I make absolutely no comment on the latter question, but I welcome the hon. Member’s contribution—no advance sight was given of my speech. Her presence here serves to remind us all that it is not just MPs representing coastal communities who have a stake in their prosperity. I thank her for her almost perfectly timed words.

In more recent times we had the 2024 pier of the year in Cromer. The excellent North Cottage in Cromer, run by Andrea and Jerry, was recently awarded self-catering accommodation of the year at the Suffolk and Norfolk tourism awards. Cromer also plays host to a Banksy artwork from his 2021 tour of the east coast. The artwork, of a queue of hermit crabs looking on at empty shells, highlights one of our greatest challenges in coastal communities: second homes and the wider housing crisis.

In North Norfolk we have been plagued by huge numbers of second homes and empty homes. Outside the City of London, we have the highest number of empty or infrequently used homes in all of England. These properties are carving the core out of many small and historical communities, and in too many cases contribute very little back. Our poorest are sitting on ever growing waiting lists, while the rich treat our coastal villages as a setting for a Jane Austen-era summer jaunt, leaving them to suffer for the rest of the year.

In Wells-next-the-Sea, 40% of the town is second homes and holiday lets. In some parts, only one in 10 homes is someone’s main residence. I am delighted that, after years of lobbying, we are able to levy a 100% council tax increase on those second homes. That will bring in £1.7 million for the district council, allowing it to support more affordable housing and provide homelessness services.

Affordable Rural Housing

Rachel Taylor Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Bailey]

I am delighted that the hon. Member has had an opportunity to congratulate her council, and I thank her for her intervention.

With a lack of supply come skyrocketing house prices. In the five years to 2022, house prices in the countryside increased at close to twice the rate of those in urban areas. We need only look at the nine houses currently for sale in Upper Basildon in my constituency: four are on the market for more than £1.25 million and only one at under half a million pounds. Across the villages in my constituency, there are very few properties available for private rent, and the small number that are available are simply unaffordable for many.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Twigg. In North Warwickshire, private rents grew to an average of £898 in January this year—an increase of 11% from the previous year. Young people are prevented from starting their careers in North Warwickshire because those rent increases are unaffordable, and many of my young constituents are having to move away because of the lack of affordable housing. Does my hon. Friend agree that increased rental costs and a lack of social housing in rural areas prevent local economic growth and pose insurmountable challenges for young families in our rural areas?

[Olivia Bailey]

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. Simply put, these costs price people out of the community. One constituent in Bradfield shared her story with me. Her daughter would love to be able to stay in the village that she grew up in, but there are no affordable houses that are the right size for her young family. Eventually, she is likely to have to move away—a story repeated across my constituency.

Without affordable housing, schools close because there are not enough children to fill a class; pubs shut their doors because there are not enough punters to buy pints; and services for the elderly stop operating because there is nobody to volunteer. We simply cannot have a community without people, and those people need affordable homes.

I am delighted that the Government are committed to building the housing we need and to boosting home ownership, providing over £5 billion total housing investment in 2025-26 and a £500 million top-up to the affordable homes programme, and building an ambitious 1.5 million homes with the infrastructure that they need. I am also pleased that the Government are paying particular attention to housing in rural communities, giving local authorities flexible but ambitious targets for affordable housing development, recognising the value of rural exception sites and community-led development, and committing to look at how national policy can promote affordable rural housing.

Coalfield Communities

Rachel Taylor Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for arranging this debate. We share an office so I know how important this issue is to him and how frequently he speaks about the need for regeneration in coalfield communities—that is, when he is not arguing with my staff about how old he looks. [Laughter.]

Newdigate, Keresley, Baddesley, Birch Coppice and Daw Mill collieries provided jobs for many in my community until they closed. I am proud to have grown up and lived in a coalfield community that retains many reminders of its mining history. For many years I played tennis at the Grove in Atherstone, which was a former miners’ welfare club. I have also walked through the Miners’ Welfare Park in Bedworth and taken part in the weekly parkrun.

My grandfather was a miner and like many other mineworkers in the constituency, he lived in Dordon, which started off as just a row of houses until Birch Coppice pit opened. Coal mines brought opportunity to countless people, and many of my constituents worked hard underground in dangerous conditions throughout their lives. It was therefore crucial they got the pension they were entitled to. Dealing with the injustice of the mineworkers’ pension scheme means that 1,043 former mineworkers in my constituency now have the pensions they deserve. We must do the same for those members of the BCSSS, such as the 93-year-old former miner who called my office today.

Like many other coalfield communities, my constituency is still suffering from deprivation that was intensified by the mines closing. The “State of the Coalfields” report reveals that there are substantially fewer jobs in former coalfields than in most other parts of the country. Unfortunately, that is true in my constituency too, with only 63 jobs per 100 residents of working age. The problems that causes cannot be overstated. One in 16 people are in bad or very bad health, one in five are economically inactive due to long-term sickness and one in four have no qualifications.

By working with local businesses and schools, I am determined to break that cycle and to ensure that people in my area have local employment opportunities and leave school with qualifications that allow them to take up those opportunities. Otherwise, my constituency will continue to follow the same pattern that many other coalfield communities face, where people must leave the constituency for work and our towns and high streets suffer as a result. I am therefore here today to urge the Government to take further action to tackle the disadvantages and worklessness faced by coalfield communities, and to ensure that we hold ourselves to our promise to deliver the opportunities that our young people desperately need.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Simmonds]

I am sure that all those former Members of Parliament, and, indeed, some of their Labour predecessors, would also be happy to answer for the work they did, some of which was successful and some of which was not, to bring new jobs, opportunities and educational chances to those communities. There are many things we can debate that have brought benefits to those communities. If we examine the statistics in the Library briefing on the impact and legacy in different coalfields around the UK, we see quite a different picture. There are some places where those interventions—based on the statistics—appear to have been effective because there are few, if any, super output areas listed that remain affected by those issues of poverty and ill health today, and there are other areas that have struggled to move on. We all know and understand why that is in some places. If the economy of an area has long been based on mining and natural resource, and there is no other direct employment opportunity there, something different needs to be found, and many Members have referred to the impact of that. I have touched on infra- structure as one element.

[Rachel Taylor]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[David Simmonds]

I will, with your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Rachel Taylor]

An observation I have made as I have listened to the hon. Gentleman is that not one single Member of his party stood up for the thousands of pensioners who were not given the justice they deserve in the mineworkers pension scheme or the BCSSS. His party claims to stand up for pensioners, and yet it did nothing and said nothing for those mining pensioners who deserved a better deal.

[David Simmonds]

If the hon. Lady refers to Hansard for debates on these matters in previous Parliaments, she will find those points being raised by Members from across the House—rightly so—with a view to moving the debate on to the decisions that have been made today.

The Clapham review of the effectiveness of the Coalfields Regeneration Trust was a key opportunity to consider the role that local government in particular plays in the regeneration of our coalfields. Clearly, that challenge exists at a number of levels. The hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick) referenced the large number of spoil heaps—some of which I can see from the garden of my parents’ house. A number of local authorities—and Governments, through local authorities —have sought to address that through planting and remediation to stabilise their spoil tips, for example, but there is still a job to do. As the years go by and the industries that produce those spoil tips become historical, we know that we must effectively address the risks that they continue to pose.

To conclude my remarks, I turn to the importance of learning from the work that the Coalfields Regeneration Trust undertook and from the points that many Members of all parties have made in debates about these issues over many years. We know that we are about to embark on a process. The UK has made progress in the decarbonisation of our economy since the early 1990s, when, as a leading nation, we began the major shift away from coal. In the 1950s, coal produced most of our energy; today, it contributes to none—our last coal-fired power station recently closed.

The Trades Union Congress recently passed a motion highlighting that 30,000 jobs were at risk in the oil and gas industry. We talk about the just transition—Labour Members are, in my view, justified in raising the problems that process has created—but we must lay the groundwork for it. I remember interventions during the miners’ strike, such as the distribution at my school of the EEC butter mountain. That is not an example of an effective economic intervention to address the needs of people in difficulty. If we are to have a just transition away from fossil fuels in the future, we must learn from the past mistakes of all Governments in respect of coalfields, and incorporate the lessons into effective policy for a better future for all affected communities.

English Devolution and Local Government

Rachel Taylor Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

Again, we are working with local areas to deliver devolution. This is about pushing power down to local areas and about reorganisation, and we are working with local authorities to deliver for their local area. I have been clear on the terms to which there was a 12-month delay to those elections to facilitate reorganisation and devolution in those areas. This is not a new phenomenon; it happened under the previous Government. We are turbocharging devolution so that we can deliver for local areas.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

I welcome the statement made by my right hon. Friend. I also draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. In North Warwickshire and Bedworth, my constituents can see the benefits of devolution just over the boundary in the West Midlands combined authority, and I am sure that they want to see those benefits for themselves. I ask her why Conservative-run Warwickshire county council asked to have their elections postponed. Was it because they wanted to avoid public scrutiny of their appalling record on SEND education, on fixing our rural roads and on rural transport? Does she agree that it is better that districts and counties work together to come up with the best solution for residents on devolution, and will she set out the timetable for the second stage of that devolution, so that I can tell my constituents when they can feel the benefits of investment, growth and better transport?

Oral Answers to Questions

Rachel Taylor Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I have set out the routes to redress that are already available and our intention to switch on the measures in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act, but I am more than happy to sit down and have a conversation with my hon. Friend about what more protection leaseholders in this space require.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

17. What steps her Department is taking to allocate local growth funding according to need.

[Gill German (Clwyd North) (Lab)]

18. What steps her Department is taking to allocate local growth funding according to need.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Alex Norris)]

We are intent on moving towards allocated, multi-year funding settlements targeted at need. We will set out this refreshed vision for local growth funding in the multi-year spending review, working with local leaders to drive growth in the areas that need it most, and ending the plethora of competitive pots.

[Rachel Taylor]

I am very pleased to hear the Minister’s reply. The last Government wasted local authorities’ time and money by making them bid for handouts from central Government. In North Warwickshire, so much time was spent preparing numerous bids for the new swimming pool and leisure centre that our community desperately needed, only for vital funds to go to places without such high levels of need. Under this Labour Government, will the Minister ensure that local authorities receive the fair funding they require to deliver the local services they know their communities need?

[Alex Norris]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the harm done by that “beauty parade” funding model, which was inefficient and created so much disappointment. What follows will be much better.