Neighbourhood Planning Bill

William Wragg Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

I am pleased to be able to speak on Second Reading of the Bill, which I broadly welcome. I support its main aims of making the housing market work better for everybody, helping to identify and free up more land to build homes, and speeding up the delivery of the new homes that are so badly needed in many areas of the country. Those aspects of the Bill will help to improve the planning system to make it easier to deliver the Government’s ambition of 1 million new homes by the end of this Parliament.

When I arrived in the House last year a sage senior colleague advised me never to get involved in planning matters. Although that may be very sound advice on conservatories and house extensions, it is none the less our duty to ensure that we play a full role in the scrutiny of the Bill. With that in mind, it is good so see such a strong new ministerial team on the Treasury Bench; I look forward to engaging with that team constructively.

I also support the Government’s manifesto commitment to encourage communities to be more engaged in neighbourhood planning, particularly as a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for civic societies. Community engagement is vital; we need it to build homes and infrastructure while ensuring that that is done in a way that is sympathetic and sensitive to the wishes of local communities. In my view, that will mean that we can build more, not less, as developers and local authorities ensure communities are brought on board at an early stage and are therefore more likely to support developments. That process is under way in Marple in my constituency.

There is no magic wand to solve the housing shortage. It will require many years of investment, hard work and difficult choices, and while Government play a role, ultimately the work is done by those building houses: the developers. To my mind, there are three ways that developers are stalling in the process to deliver the homes we need at the rate required. The first is land banking, which many hon. Members have mentioned, whereby developers buy up land, often brownfield sites suitable for building and sometimes with planning permissions already granted, but do not build on it, either because they have priorities elsewhere or because they are waiting for the value to increase.

The second issue is when developers are keen to build, but there are delays between the granting of an outline application and the submission of the full planning application. Thirdly, once planning approval has been granted, there can be delays from developers in starting construction, which can sometimes be the result of deliberate land banking, as I have mentioned. These delays cannot always be laid at the door of the planning system, which is a common cry of developers. Developers must take some responsibility themselves. However, measures from the Government to encourage developers to reduce delays are welcome, and these are contained in the Bill.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

In Northern Ireland we have a planning system that enables social housing to be set aside in each new development for private house building. When it comes to social housing and those who cannot afford a new house but need a rented house, does the hon. Gentleman feel that some of the land in a development should be set aside for that purpose?

[William Wragg]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. That is something that my local authority in Stockport is looking at, to ensure it can use its land assets for the development of housing, so I agree with him on that.

One thing missing from the Bill, although certainly not from our debate this evening, is the issue of the green belt. We know that green-belt land is protected under the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, and it plays an important role in protecting the environment and semi-rural communities, such as the ones I represent, from urban sprawl. Fundamentally, the green belt preserves natural green land, open spaces, wildlife habitats and the character of such areas.

Although it is not currently addressed by the Bill, I am deeply concerned about the threat posed to the local green belt in my constituency by potential massive building development. For instance, the Greater Manchester spatial framework, a policy of the Greater Manchester combined authority, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) referred to, will determine where residential development can take place, including the release of green-belt land. The policy could threaten large areas of green belt in my constituency. I am concerned by the prospect of thousands of properties being built on previously protected land, especially in the High Lane and Marple areas of my constituency. There are significant doubts about whether already stretched local infrastructure could support such development.

Saying that, there is no doubt that we need more housing. However, the areas that should be developed first are brownfield sites, which are those areas previously used for other purposes. Stockport has many such sites that have not yet been developed for housing, and across the country it is conservatively estimated that there is enough brownfield land for the development of some 650,000 properties, making a significant contribution to the Government’s target. I therefore want to ask my hon. Friend the Minister, if this is not covered in the Bill, what is being done or can be done to prioritise brownfield development and to protect green belts from over-zealous local authority plans, such as that in Greater Manchester. I can only hope that development in the green belt in my constituency will be as sparse as Members on the Opposition Benches are this evening.