Town and Country Planning

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I invite all Members, especially the Ministers, to come and have a look at an example of permitted development that is probably the worst and most shocking that I have ever seen over my 40 years working in housing and then as an MP. It is a warehouse in the middle of an industrial estate, where the neighbour is a tip yard, a skip lorry site or a factory that processes food. It is a warehouse converted into 86 flats in the middle of one of south London’s busiest industrial estates—far from the train, far from the buses and nowhere near a school. These flats were never intended for people who had an alternative. These flats were always intended for homeless families as temporary accommodation, and they were intended as bait for desperate councils. I say to the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), whom I greatly admire, that councils are not housing people in these places because they want to cleanse them; they are doing it because they are desperate and they have nowhere else to put people.

If Ministers would like to see permitted development at its worst, they should come with me to Connect House. They should come and see the flats, which are so small that babies cannot learn to walk because they simply do not have the space, and children have nowhere to play because outside is the car park of the factory opposite. Ministers should come and watch the juggernauts run up and down the main streets of this industrial estate. If they have children, they would be terrified at the prospect of their children being on that street, and it is no different for any of the families forced to live in Connect House. The developers will tell them, “We were allowed to do this, and therefore it must be okay.” They should come and have a look, and see if they think that it is okay.

It does not matter what planning regime Ministers have, for if they do not have a view about how people live and where they should live, it is not going to work. I am not a nimby, but I would like to suggest to Ministers that they start considering building on the un-green green belt. I know it is easy for a Back Bencher to say that, because we are not going to take the abuse that Ministers will take, but there are plans where they could build up to 1 million new homes on old green-belt land, close to London train stations, to give people the real opportunity of a home to buy or a home to rent.

The only way this Government or any Government will ever get to the target of 300,000 homes is by ensuring that at least half of them are built by councils and housing associations. We have not met that target since 1964, when half were social housing units. That is not just my rabid, Labour view, but the view of Sir John Armitt, chair of the National Infrastructure Commission. Why would the private sector build 300,000 homes when they cannot sell them and when property values have reduced? If the Ministers want to see the numbers, they have to intervene, and if they intervene, it has to be with homes they would be willing to live in.