Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

Our houses are not just bricks and mortar; they are homes. And those who live around us are not just our neighbours; they are our communities. We all want to live in streets that uplift our spirits and where our children, and their children, can afford to live and own their own homes alongside us. Churchill once said:

“We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.”—[Official Report, 28 October 1943; Vol. 393, c. 403.]

So too, if we empower our communities, they will empower us.

We know that we can do more to ensure that, when we expand our communities, we do so in the right places, with the right infrastructure, and with the support of local people and local representatives. The think-tank Demos asked people whether they would prefer to have more say over how money is spent in their area, or to have more money. People were twice as likely to say that they would prefer to have more say and less money. Our Bill seeks to provide opportunities for collaboration and empowerment. It provides more opportunity for more homes that are beautiful, supported by infrastructure, delivered with democracy, which level up across our country.

I thank all colleagues for their extensive engagement, highlighting to me, to the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan), and to the Secretary of State the issues and concerns in their local areas. All represent different and diverse areas across the country: rural and urban, coastal and remote, island and inner city. I thank in particular my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) for their constructive contribution on this issue and their unwavering commitment to our planning system and their constituents.

I also thank my right hon. Friends the Members for Ashford (Damian Green) and for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), my hon. Friends the Members for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), for Aylesbury (Rob Butler), for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards), for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) and for Buckingham (Greg Smith), and the many Members across the House who have contributed significantly to our policy decisions on these issues.

It is important that we build homes this country needs in the places that we need homes most. We have a moral responsibility to get on and build, but we also have a responsibility to our existing communities to do so in the right way and with community support.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

My constituents in Rushcliffe are supportive of house building, but they rightly object to being forced to build 660% of the national average, as they were last year, often on greenfield sites and without the infrastructure to match. Can my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that the Bill will give real teeth to our brownfield-first policy and give power back to local people to shape the future of their communities?

[Lucy Frazer]

I was pleased to discuss these issues with my hon. Friend, and she is absolutely right that we must build on brownfield first. That is what local communities want. Through not just this Bill, but the consultation that we will bring forward on the national planning policy framework, we will identify how we can encourage local communities to do just that, with incentives through the infrastructure levy, for example, but through other measures too.

The way for a community and local representatives to shape their area’s future is through the local plan. At the moment, local plans are taking too long. The system is too onerous and councils feel that their local constraints are not properly taken into account. The result is that fewer than 40% of planning authorities have adopted a plan in the last five years. That means that, instead of developments being delivered coherently and in collaboration with communities, new houses are being imposed on local people through successive planning applications. Through the Bill and the consultation on the NPPF, which we intend to launch before Christmas, we will ensure that the needs of the community are taken into account when a plan is designed. Once the plan is in place, it will provide protection against other unwanted development.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

12. What assessment he has made with Cabinet colleagues of the potential impact of investment zones on the environment.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

22. What assessment he has made with Cabinet colleagues of the potential impact of investment zones on the environment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lee Rowley)]

Investment zones seek to empower communities to deliver planning and outcomes that are right for the local area, while maintaining strong environmental outcomes and keeping national green belt policies in place. They are about working with local areas, and we look forward to receiving applications from Wales in due course.

[Lee Rowley]

We are absolutely committed to strong environmental outcomes, as I am happy to repeat and as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already said. We look forward to applications from Montgomeryshire.

[Ruth Edwards]

I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

For strong, sustained growth it is vital that we protect, enhance and invest in our natural capital. Can the Minister give me an absolute promise that none of the proposed reforms to the planning system, including in the investment zones, will row back on the Government’s 10% biodiversity net gain requirement, as enshrined in our landmark Environment Act 2021?

[Lee Rowley]

As my hon. Friend knows, that biodiversity net gain does not come in for some time yet. It could be that, depending on the applications received for investment zones, the planning permissions will have gone through, or be in the process of going through, under the existing planning process. However, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have repeated at the Dispatch Box, and as is clear within the expression of interest guidance on investment zones, we are committed to strong environmental outcomes in those areas and across the planning system.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

For too long, communities in Rushcliffe have felt that the planning system is not on their side. For too long, councils such as Rushcliffe Borough Council have not been able to get the backing they need to prevent overdevelopment and inappropriate development. For too long, developers have used the planning system to their advantage, not listening to local people and only building out developments when it suits them. This Bill offers a huge correction.

The Bill resolves many of the concerns that my constituents have most often raised with me, including the fact that too many homes are built in the countryside, rather than on brownfield sites. It strikes the balance between building the homes we need and ensuring that they are built in the right places: strengthening local plans and providing greater protections for the environment.

Local communities do not get enough say about development in their area and cannot prevent ugly development. The Bill will give more weight to local and neighbourhood plans and make them simpler to produce. It introduces mandatory local design codes, so that developers have to respect styles drawn up locally, from the layout and materials used to the provision of green spaces.

There is a perception that developers buy land and then do not build on it. This Bill strengthens the requirement for commencement and completion notices, addressing land banking and slow build out by larger developers, and the worry that we do not have the roads, GP provision or school places that we need for new development, and that developers do not pay their fair share. This Bill reforms developer payments through a locally set, non-negotiable infrastructure levy that means that developers would always have to pay their share. As other hon. Members have said, this must come with development, not after it.

Rushcliffe Borough Council’s biggest concern is the abuse of the duty to co-operate, which has enabled Labour-run Nottingham City Council to shirk its responsibility to build houses and regenerate the city centre of Nottingham. It has used this national policy to push nearly 5,000 houses away from brownfield city sites into the countryside of Rushcliffe, and that is on top of Rushcliffe’s own housing target. So I am delighted, I am relieved, I am jubilant that the pernicious blunt instrument that is the duty to co-operate is being abolished in this Bill, especially as right now in Nottinghamshire, Nottingham City Council is gearing up to try it all over again this autumn. Authorities should of course co-operate with each other, but not in a way that can be abused. True co-operation means a system that works for all parties, and we must make sure that the replacement for the duty guards against this abuse in the future.

This Bill represents the turn of the tide—an important and transformational step forward for the hard-pressed communities who have seen unwelcome development and who feel powerless in the face of large developers. I thank Ministers for listening to our concerns along the way. I know they will continue to do so on many of the issues raised today, such as a more flexible approach to housing numbers and national development management policies.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

It is the case that we want to welcome more bids to the levelling up fund from Scotland; indeed, we are in discussion with Scottish local authorities and others about the distribution of the UK shared prosperity fund. However, I hope I can avoid provoking a blush on the hon. Lady’s cheek if I say that her local authority of North Ayrshire, North Ayrshire’s Member of the Scottish Parliament and the hon. Lady herself have been uniquely successful in securing funding from the levelling-up fund. I encourage other Members of the Scottish National party to be as energetic, co-ordinated and effective as she, the MSP for North Ayrshire and North Ayrshire Council have been.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

7. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the role of planning processes in reducing flood risks in new housing developments.

[The Minister for Housing (Stuart Andrew)]

Ministers from our Department engage regularly with those from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on flood risk. That includes the publication of our joint “Review of policy for development in areas at flood risk”, which looked at that very issue, and the updating of the flood risk policies in the national planning policy framework in 2021.

[Ruth Edwards]

Much of the flooding in villages across Rushcliffe has been linked to new developments built without increasing local sewerage and drainage capacity. How does my right hon. Friend think we can best address that problem through the planning system, to ensure not only that water companies are forced to take new development into account when assessing their infrastructure, but that developers are forced to pay their fair share? If we do not get this right, it will be all our constituents who continue to suffer.

[Stuart Andrew]

My hon. Friend is right, and she is a superb advocate for her constituents, having already raised a number of issues with me since I have been in this post. The national planning policy framework is clear that local plans and planning decisions should consider flood risk from all sources, including overwhelmed sewers and drainage systems. Water and sewage companies are statutory consultees for local plans that set out an area’s development requirements, and can comment on planning applications. However, she is right that the right infrastructure must be put in place for the developments we see in our country.

East Midlands Economy

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) on securing this debate.

I think those of us here in this room are all incredibly lucky because we represent a vibrant, dynamic and creative region. As other Members have said, we are the heart of the UK’s logistics and manufacturing industries; the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) talked about the industrial jaws of the United Kingdom. I was fortunate to be able to visit JCB in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler), and see the amazing innovation that has been taking place at its Foston plant, where it has invented the world’s first hydrogen-fuelled combustion engine.

We are leaders in food and drink; we have some fantastic companies in my constituency of Rushcliffe—perhaps too fantastic, as I do not think they did wonders for my figure over lockdown. We have fantastic stilton producers at Cropwell Bishop and Colston Bassett that, contrary to counter claims made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), produce the best stilton in the world—whatever she may say. We also have wonderful wine producers such as Hanwell wine estate and Eglantine vineyard; we have a thriving farming sector across the region; and we are leaders in so many different types of green technology. I have mentioned hydrogen at JCB, but we also have the GeoPura headquarters in my constituency, whose hydrogen generators are powering everything from festivals to film sets. We are leaders in biodiversity restoration; we have BeadaMoss in East Leake, Rushcliffe, micro-propagating sphagnum moss to be used to restore peatlands and to create new growing mediums that will replace peat in several years. The statistics back up what I am saying. We have fantastic innovators across the region; 90% of manufacturers have innovated in the last two years; 96% plan to do so again in the next two years.

We do have our problems, and they have been set out very clearly by Members on both sides of the room today. Our productivity is below the national average; we have a polarised workforce with a lot of people in very highly skilled jobs—based around our universities and our tech companies—but we also have many people in much lower paid jobs. The average income in the east midlands is £70 a week below the national level. We also suffer from low public sector investment; we have the lowest levels of public expenditure and transport spending per head.

We have also suffered, perhaps, from a lower profile than other areas of the country. The west midlands, for example, has one focal point provided by the city of Birmingham and its Mayor. Its share of funding has reached parity with the average amongst English regions in the last few years; we in the east midlands still have only 75%. We hear a lot about levelling up and we see a lot of Government Ministers going to Teesside and the west midlands; we see their Departments following them there. If levelling up is going to spread opportunity over the whole country then it is going to have to involve more places than just Teesside and the west midlands—however wonderful they may be. One of the places that really needs that focus and support from Government is the east midlands.

[Mr Perkins]

I totally agree with what the hon. Lady is saying. Is not the point I just made the reality? Areas such as the west midlands and the north-east are politically competitive. Here, the Tory party is able to take for granted that it is going to get Tory MPs elected and that is why we have failed to get the investments of some of those other regions. Is not electing more Labour MPs the answer?

[Ruth Edwards]

No, I do not agree with that. We are in a debate today that has been called by a Conservative Member and is attended by lots more Conservative than Labour Members, so I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Perkins]

We haven’t got many—that is the point.

[Ruth Edwards]

Maybe that says something about how voters in the east midlands feel the hon. Gentleman’s party has taken them for granted. As a result, they have returned Conservative colleagues, who are here today fighting for more investment in the east midlands.

If everybody in every community having a fair chance at life is what levelling up is about, if it is about people being able to benefit from strong public services such as a great education and having the opportunity for a great career, wherever they live in the country, we have to focus on areas such as the east midlands that have, historically, been underfunded and have not had the Government focus that they should.

We have some great tangible opportunities right now in the east midlands to reverse that. The one I have been most closely involved in is the east midlands freeport, which would cover three sites: one in Leicestershire, one in Derbyshire and one in Nottinghamshire in my constituency of Rushcliffe, based at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station site, which is being decommissioned in a few years’ time. The east midlands freeport would create more than 58,000 jobs and would see investment in skills, research and development. It would see Ratcliffe-on-Soar transformed into a centre for new energy technologies and a zero carbon academy, creating those high-skilled jobs and fantastic careers that we have been discussing this morning. It will also enhance and build on existing partnerships between academia and business across the region, which we need to capitalise on. It will be the best connected freeport in the country: it will connect East Midlands airport to global markets and, in doing so, will connect the companies at the heart of our manufacturing and logistics industries to it too. It will also connect the east midlands via road and rail to the wider network of freeports across the country and, in that way, offer us a national as well as a regional opportunity.

The second opportunity is HS2. I appreciate that it is not the responsibility of the Minister’s Department, but I hope he takes away the message of frustration from colleagues on both sides of the House at the length of time it is taking to get a decision about the eastern leg. We have seen a vaccine created and rolled out across the United Kingdom in less time than it has taken to make a decision about the form in which HS2 is going to come to the east midlands, if it comes at all. I hope the rumours that it is going to be axed are not true.

HS2 has great potential. It would add £28 billion to the region’s economy every year. It would increase east-west—a well as north-south—connectivity, which is vital. Today, we talked about how connectivity and trains are important, but it is about more than trains. It is about massive redevelopment at Toton. It is about improving local transport connectivity across the region. It would send a clear signal from Government that we are investing in the east midlands, that the east midlands is not the poor cousin of the west midlands, that it will not be left behind and that we are committed to making sure that the east midlands shares in the levelling-up agenda. I hope the Minister can give us some assurance that that will be the case. I certainly hope that he will take the message back from the debate to his colleagues in the Department for Transport and I also hope that we can hear something about his support for the east midlands freeport, which is something that he knows Members on both sides have been working hard to support. We have an excellent bid now—one that capitalises on our net zero potential, our connectivity and creating highly skilled jobs and training across the region, which is much needed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be very happy to meet the hon. Lady, as would my hon. Friends on the Front Bench. We have brought forward the community ownership fund, and we will publish details on that very soon. It will allow community groups to bid in for match funding to buy a village shop, a pub or a sports field—much-valued community assets. We have also announced the right to regenerate, which will enable people to bid in for public sector assets that are currently being neglected and bring them into better use.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

Rushcliffe has been let down by the current planning system. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that his reforms will put protecting our countryside at the heart of our planning system and abolish measures such as the duty to co-operate, which has previously enabled councils such as Labour-run Nottingham City Council to push thousands of houses from brownfield sites in the city where they are sorely needed on to Rushcliffe’s greenfield sites in the countryside?

Rough Sleeping

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The Health Secretary and I secured funding at the spending review for the programme of support for mental health and substance abuse. We also made a joint bid with the Minister of Justice to help those people who are currently in prison to receive offers of accommodation when they leave jail. More than 50% of those people sleeping rough on our streets are ex-offenders, and that is a very important angle that we need to address.

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s remarks about the success of the programmes that we have run over the course of the year. I praise Chester because I see that its numbers have reduced from 14 last year to just four in November’s count.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con) [V]]

It is great news that the Everyone In programme and the hard work of my right hon. Friend, councils and charities across the country helped to prevent 21,000 extremely vulnerable people becoming infected with coronavirus this year. Can he confirm that the £10 million announced last March by the Government to support councils and their ongoing efforts to prevent rough sleeping can be used to ensure that people who are sleeping rough or at risk of sleeping rough can access a covid vaccine in line with the priority groups outlined by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation?

[Robert Jenrick]

Yes, I can. It was very important to us that those sleeping rough were not left out of the vaccination programme, by oversight or omission, so we launched the Protect Plus programme to provide extra support to local councils so that they can work with the NHS, weave those individuals into the local vaccination programmes or get them GP registered, which is a good in itself. That will ensure that when their time comes, they are vaccinated so that even if they return to the streets, which of course we hope they do not, they do so protected by the vaccination.

Westferry Printworks Development

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

As I look across the Chamber, I am struck by the sheer desperation on the Opposition Benches. This is clearly the age of trial by Twitter and conviction in the court of public opinion. Rather than using their time to discuss things that really matter to people in this country, such as building more homes and greener communities, the Opposition seek to score political points.

In the Opposition’s view, it is outrageous for Ministers involved in housing to meet housing developers such as Mr Desmond. Presumably the Health Secretary will soon be raked over the coals for daring to sit with a doctor, or the Home Secretary for meeting a senior police officer. It is a scruple that they do not apply to themselves. They have nothing to say about the fact that the shadow Justice Secretary has met Mr Desmond or that Mr Desmond has dined with the Labour Mayor of London.

[Steve Reed]

They can’t do favours for him.

[Ruth Edwards]

Actually, Mr Desmond says it was the Labour Mayor of London who lobbied him to reduce the affordable housing target connected with the development. Such facts do not matter to the Opposition, as they clearly have not even read the planning inspector’s documentation that is in the public domain. Instead, we are setting sail for the island of political point scoring, a tiresome voyage that we seem to go on regularly.

Perhaps the Opposition want to avoid talking about their record on affordable housing because it is not good. Under the last Labour Government, the number of first-time buyers fell by 61%. The current Labour Mayor of London has built fewer affordable homes in the whole of his first term than the previous Mayor—our Prime Minister—did in two years. Under the shadow Secretary of State’s leadership, Lambeth Council’s affordable housing completions plummeted by 68%. What a total shambles.

Conservative Members are proud of our record on housing. In the past 10 years, we have built 1.5 million homes, 460,000 of which are affordable. In this Parliament, we have pledged to build 1 million more homes.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ruth Edwards]

I will not; I am closing. We are making the decisions that will help many more people on to the housing ladder. The Opposition seem to have nothing sensible to say on the issue. How disappointing.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

We will absolutely help communities like the hon. Member’s. The Government have removed the requirement to offer council tax discounts on second homes amounting to 75% of the full rate. He is quite right: the consultation closes on 16 January, and then we will make decisions on it. If he would like to discuss his suggestions with me, I will gladly meet him.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

T7. There has been a lot of talk about the blue wall of the north; less, however, has been said about the blue doughnut of Nottinghamshire. Can my right hon. Friend reassure the people of Rushcliffe that this one nation Conservative Government will deliver on our promises to support communities and businesses across the east midlands, to truly get the midlands engine revving in top gear?

[Robert Jenrick]

I welcome my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour to the House. I think she is the first new Member of Parliament for Rushcliffe for 49 years. She has a lot to live up to, but I look forward to working with her as we power up the midlands engine. I think her constituency was the only Conservative constituency in the county of Nottinghamshire in 1997. Today, all the constituencies are Conservative. One area that we will of course work on together is delivery of the new development co-operation at Ratcliffe power station, which is a brilliant opportunity for the whole country.