Seema Kennedy
Main Page: Seema Kennedy (Conservative - South Ribble)
Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn). I applaud her passion on behalf of her constituents, but I suspect that our analyses of the Bill will be somewhat different.
I welcome this Bill. There are moral and economic imperatives for it, and it has very ambitious and wide-ranging aims. The Government have rightly identified productivity as
“the challenge of our time”
and have the aim
“that Britain becomes the richest of all the major economies by 2030”.
A major part of solving the productivity puzzle is the need to build more homes that people can afford to live in. I welcome this Government’s commitment to building 1 million homes by 2020. As we have heard from Members in all parts of the House, people want to own their own homes. Indeed, 86% of our fellow countrymen aspire to home ownership. Our population is ageing and growing, with more and more people living on their own. If we want people to be able to have a home of their own, it is absolutely vital that we build more.
This is a very wide-ranging Bill and other Members wish to speak, so I will limit my comments to reform of the planning system, particularly the aspects relating to brownfield sites. That reform was well overdue, as has been rehearsed in this debate, and what happened during the previous Parliament was very welcome. Before I came to this place, I practised as a property lawyer for 15 years, and then in my family’s property business, and I have seen at first-hand the delays that can occur because of the logjams put into the system through planning policies that are not implemented properly.
I am in no way advocating a “no holds barred, build anywhere” planning approach. The Bill’s provisions on planning strike a good balance between realising that we must have local planning, even down to neighbourhood level, and recognising that there are cases where central Government need to act to break logjams in the planning system. We all know places where local authorities do not have a local plan in place and may not have agreed one for many years. That often means that they are then prey to developers in the appeals process. Some councils have local plans that are up to 20 years old and take no account of the changing demographics of an area. It is absolutely essential that we rectify this situation. I welcome the powers in the Bill whereby the Secretary of State can expedite the agreement of local plans. I hope that the Minister can confirm that the new regulations will not unduly stretch the resources of planning departments.
The clauses of particular interest to me are 102 and 103, which relate to brownfield sites, because our business specialised in building on brownfield sites for both residential and commercial properties. It is a difficult process and all of us have recognised that it is a lot more expensive for developers to decontaminate land, rather than building on a green field.
Jake Berry
My hon. Friend spoke earlier about productivity in the building industry. Given her experience in this area, does she accept that development of brownfield land would create an opportunity for modular construction because of the ability to build on a concrete slab, which minimises the amount of decontamination required? Is this not a great way of driving more productivity in the construction industry, particularly through brownfield developments?
Seema Kennedy
That depends on the land. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) spoke about marshland. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. It depends on the nature of the land, the flooding risk and the sort of contaminants present.
There is a great moral imperative to build on brownfield sites. I have the great fortune to have grown up in, done my building in, and now represent, as Mr Deputy Speaker will agree, part of the most beautiful county in our country—Lancashire. In Lancashire industrial towns lie adjacent to stunning countryside. We want to protect these green spaces. I know from personal experience that it can be done. As I have said, it is time consuming and can be expensive. It depends on the nature of the contamination and what is to be built, but more and more specialist companies are coming down the line with expertise in this area, which means that costs have come down and will continue to do so. The Campaign to Protect Rural England has estimated that nearly a million homes can be built on brownfield land in England. This means that not only will our green belt be protected, but, as the land has already been developed, there will be at least some infrastructure already in place.
I hope the clauses dealing with the system of “permission in principle”, which is similar to the zonal system in the US, will speed up the development of brownfield sites and contribute towards the aim of 1 million homes.
I particularly welcome the requirement for local planning authorities to have a statutory register of land, which should make it easier for developers and builders to identify brownfield sites and also give local people a sense of ownership, and reassurance that while homes are being built locally their beautiful green spaces are being protected. I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether he agrees with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors that, along with the proposed measures, there should be a brownfield map—my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) referred to this—which includes privately owned brownfield land.
It is incumbent on us to speed up house building. If we want more people to own their homes and the prices of homes to go down, the ambitious aims of the Bill will help to achieve that and I will support it as it makes progress through this place.