Planning

Suzanne Webb Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) for securing this debate.

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

I will start on a more positive note—I welcome the reforms in the planning system, particularly those for more local engagement with communities. Only 1% to 3% of the public engage with the current system. It had to change; something had to give. I will now explain why it had to change.

We face a monolithic urban extension of 6,000 dwellings on green belt in the west midlands—the plan started in 2012 and was adopted in 2017. In total, 6,000 comments were made, but not one single comment was listened to, and they were all constructive comments. Residents have been left with a plan that fails to address the real housing need and a plan widely known for the political opportunism of Birmingham City Council. The last remaining green lungs will be ripped out of the city.

The relevance of my mentioning this controversial development today is that it has been delayed and downsized —if only the city council had listened to those 6,000 comments. It really is shocking. It is now anticipated that only 2,000 dwellings will be delivered by 2031, which is the end of the plan, and I suspect that, in fact, the number will end up being only 1,000. Some 6,000 residents said this site was not suitable; 6,000 voices were not listened to. But those voices were right. This was, unfortunately, a lamentable failure of planning. We need planning reform to ensure that it never happens again, so I welcome the reforms on consultation.

My own metropolitan borough council is about to start consultation on the Black Country plan. I hope that it listens to the voices of residents and the comments they make, and I also hope that residents come forward and have their say. After all, this process is about them and their future homes; it is about young adults and their futures. Local authorities seem to forget this, but I am sure my local authority will be listening.

Finally, we must stop building monolithic estates that do not reflect the land they take up. I am passionate about this, as are my constituents. We need to rewrite how we build, and move away from urban sprawl, sprawling concrete suburbs and crammed cities. We must build better; local authorities must plan better. We need renewed vigour in how we build our villages and towns of the future. For many years, urbanism has been turbo-charged with a mandate for place-making on the edge of our cities. We must let the environment be the turbo-charge for future place-making and build homes for the future that are truly environmentally led and that reflect both the surrounding community and the land that is actually used. Communities must be a huge part of that process.