Sutton Coldfield Green Belt

Wendy Morton Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I am most grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for granting me this debate on a matter of great importance to my constituents. My constituents will note and be honoured that you are in the Chair for this important debate.

The extraordinary and hugely controversial proposal to build 6,000 houses on Royal Sutton Coldfield’s green belt is as obnoxious to my constituents as it is unnecessary in the context of the overall Birmingham development plan. No comprehensive case has been made for this destruction of our green belt, and officials from Birmingham City Council have relied upon inertia and a feeling that resistance is futile as the best means of pursuing these ill-thought-through proposals. Nor, as the Minister will know, is this happening only in Royal Sutton Coldfield. Labour councils are pursuing similar ill-conceived proposals in Conservative constituencies outside Leeds, Manchester and Nottingham as well as outside Birmingham, in my constituency.

The people in Sutton Coldfield have spoken out in their thousands and are confident in the Government’s commitment to true localism, and in the fact that these plans run counter to the national planning policy framework as the Minister for Housing and Planning himself has confirmed in his statements about the green belt.

We have approached our various different community campaigns in Sutton with some confidence and a modest record of success. We fought the Boundary Commission’s plans to dismember our ancient royal town and ultimately secured for Sutton Coldfield one of the very few changes the Boundary Commission made in its national proposals anywhere in the country. We fought to reassert our royal status and thanks to the support of many, and most particularly the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Royal Tunbridge Wells (Mr Clark), we successfully concluded this campaign here in Parliament on 12 June 2014.

Local campaigners fought successfully for our royal town council, which although not yet in perfect form will be set up before May this year. We also fought the disgraceful and destructive Labour Prescott law, which allowed in-filling and back-garden development in our royal town to be treated as brownfield land—something that the coalition Government mercifully overturned as soon as they were elected in 2010, not least following Sutton Coldfield’s trenchant campaign.

I must make it clear at this point, however, that we in Sutton Coldfield are not proponents of nimbyism. We fully understand and actively support the view that more homes must be built if future generations are to enjoy the housing opportunities that our generation has enjoyed. That is why Sutton Coldfield councillors have consistently accepted planning applications that have increased the density of housing in Sutton, most recently in the context of the vexed issue of Brassington Avenue. Indeed, we accept that were Aston Martin to choose to come to Peddimore in my constituency—which we ardently hope it will—development would take place in area D of the green belt under the current plan. We have always said that if area D were needed for economic development that would provide jobs and employment for the future, we would accept it in the greater local interest.

Equally, our green belt in Sutton Coldfield was bequeathed to us by past generations, and we should think with extraordinary care before allowing it to disappear forever under bricks and mortar. Once built on, it can never be restored for future generations. The Minister will also note that the west midlands region has less green belt than any other region of the country.

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Mitchell]

I happily give way to my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour.

[Wendy Morton]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and, indeed, constituency neighbour. Is not the green belt an integral part of the beauty of our neighbouring constituencies and of all that they comprise? I know, and he knows, how much it is valued by our communities.

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

Throughout our campaign, there have been significant campaigning events and marches over the green belt involving hundreds of my constituents. Indeed, I have addressed meetings attended by more than 1,000 people in my constituency. Royal Sutton’s Conservative councillors have campaigned vigorously against Birmingham’s proposals. I pay particular tribute to Project Fields, led so brilliantly by a local campaigner, Suzanne Webb, and to the three councillors in New Hall whose constituents are most directly affected by these proposals, Councillors Yip, Wood and Barrie. More than 6,000 people from our town have written directly opposing the proposals; all have been ignored. Consultation processes held in holiday periods, and ill-considered comments by Labour councillors that it was all “a done deal” and protest was futile, did nothing to deter the sense of local anger and injustice.

This campaigning of ours is localism writ large. It is the “big society” made flesh. However, my constituents have been wilfully ignored by council officials—ever courteous, of course—as officials have been dispatched to inform us of their political masters’ decisions rather than consulting us, and to advise us that resistance is hopeless as this Labour-inspired juggernaut bears down upon us all in Sutton Coldfield. We have been very constructive in advancing alternative ideas, propositions and compromises, none of which has even received the courtesy of a serious response.

There are huge opportunities to maximise brownfield sites in Birmingham, and examples, too, of how to build new and fulfilling inner-city communities featuring proper infrastructure and opportunity. Such developments could make a significant contribution to Birmingham in its emerging role as a key element of the midlands engine. There are between 40,000 and 50,000 existing brownfield opportunities in Birmingham, but alas, my calls for an independent audit of brownfield land in Birmingham fell on deaf Labour ears. There are also new areas covered by the local enterprise partnership which seek house building as part of their strategy for economic growth and new jobs, but again no comprehensive audit has been carried out. There is an enormous opportunity to build as many as 8,300 homes at Brookhay—more than the entire number with which our green belt in Sutton is threatened.

Most important of all, I have put forward a compromise proposal that there should be a moratorium of between eight and 10 years while the rest of Birmingham City Council’s building plans take shape before there is any question of building on our green belt in Sutton Coldfield. That will allow us to take account of updated figures and up-to-date developments, not least the inward immigration figures for Birmingham, which, each time they are examined, vary by a multiple of the 6,000 homes with which we are threatened. This compromise proposal will allow for further consultation in 2023 based on updated figures for housing needs throughout the wider area. That might arm officials in Birmingham with serious and credible arguments for building on the green belt, but such arguments are wholly absent today.

Royal Sutton Coldfield is an ancient royal town with more than 1,000 proud years of history, and the sheer scale of the proposed destruction of our green belt is not easy to describe.