argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Laurence Anthony Robertson (Conservative, Centre-right): Very many colleagues have said that we need to build more houses. I am not sure that that is entirely true as a statement in itself, because the planning system so far has built very many houses. What it has not done is built the kind of houses that young people in particular can afford. It has failed in that respect, and it has also not built enough houses that older people may want to downsize into, thereby freeing up the houses they formerly lived in As was so very eloquently said by my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), we are building the wrong kind of housing. It is pointless to come to Gloucestershire and build more three, four or five-bedroom houses. All that does is concrete over green fields and perhaps the green belt—and, indeed, floodplains in my area, which I will come back to in a minute—and create all those extra car journeys, and we are still left with the problem. We are left with the problem because the wrong kind of houses have been built Of course, house building has never—certainly not in living memory—been a free market, open-ended way of going about business; there have always been restrictions. However, when the state does intervene—and I think it is right that the state should intervene in planning—it needs to make sure that it intervenes in the right way. We really do need to get away from this idea that having more and more houses therefore makes them more affordable. In itself, it will not, and we have to think beyond just the housing numbers We also have to think about where we are building those houses. Tomorrow, I am visiting an area in my constituency called Twigworth, just north of Gloucester, and I am visiting it because very many fields there are flooded. That is not unusual in my constituency, which has always had a lot of flooding problems. The reason for visiting those flooded fields is that there are diggers on them: 500 houses are being built on those fields. It is ridiculous. If we are going to go forward with this algorithm or any other system that insists that my area builds thousands and thousands of houses, I have to tell the Government that those houses will be built in flood risk areas and on the green belt. Does that not go against the policies that this Government and the party I support also have about protecting such areas Councils, as I understand it from the White Paper, will be given the opportunity to designate certain land as protected, but will that protected land take precedence over the housing numbers when they are handed down by the Government? I do not think that it will. As things stand, I think that the housing numbers will take precedence. That is wrong and it goes against what we stand for as a party. We want more affordable houses, we have to redefine what "affordable" means and we have to build them in the right places.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Scott Leslie Mann (Conservative, Centre-right): I recognise that the building of homes is one of the biggest domestic issues facing our country. I am unashamedly pro home ownership. A large contingent of people in my constituency are stuck in the rental trap, and I want to be able to provide them with the opportunities that many other people in the UK already enjoy. So although there is a legitimate debate to be had about housing numbers, the much wider issue is about the tenure of those homes and where they are built For years, we have seen a planning system that has been far too rigid, a lack of adequate and appropriate land coming forward, and huge disparities in the way applications are being considered, not only between different authorities, but within individual planning departments. We have to recognise the inadequacies of the current system. Houses being built predominantly by large house builders puts huge pressure on local services immediately. At the moment, there is little involvement for small and medium-sized builders in the planning system. We are faced with constant section 106 delays, which help no one and delay the building of affordable housing. We also have to wait a long time for infrastructure because we have no community infrastructure levy to provide some of that support Although there are some challenges within the White Paper, I broadly welcome the idea of highlighting areas for growth, renewal and protection. I also recognise the need for local authorities now to engage with town and parish councils to bring forward land for development and areas for protection. We recognise the challenges in Cornwall, which relate to people getting deposits; people being stuck in the rental trap; the cost of land; the lack of land; and the lack of housing opportunity What do I want to see in the planning Bill? I know that the Minister probably has not heard that he has not been ambitious enough, but on self-build I encourage him to go further. We have an opportunity to get serviced plots in some of these areas where people do not have ownership of any land or housing. Why not give young people in Cornwall the opportunity to be able to build their own home? That is what I would like to see, as I am excited about what that might mean. The Minister has done an excellent job in bringing forward 30% discounts for key workers, and for local people in communities such as mine. For the first time in a long time, we are able to see a design guide in Cornwall—since the abolition of the district councils, there has been no design guide, and we have seen samey, identical houses that are all standard and no character—and I am excited about that I have a couple of questions to ask in the 20 seconds I have left. How will neighbourhood plans that have been out to referendum fit in with land allocations? How will the 30% discount work in terms of developer contributions? Will the community infrastructure levy be ring-fenced? Let me finish by saying that I cannot turn a blind eye to the people in Cornwall who want a plot of land or a house.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Crispin Jeremy Rupert Blunt (Conservative, Centre-right): Some time ago, I had to make a three-minute speech on why it was not a very good idea to spend £179 billion on putting our deterrent into four submarines, when I found myself as the only Conservative putting forward that view. So I am delighted that on this incredibly important issue of planning the tide of opinion seems utterly uniform: the presentation that the Government have made is potentially catastrophic for delivering the wider objectives of Government policy. I have listened to this debate, and to the great speeches made by a former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), and all the glitterati of colleagues elected at the same time as me and after who have made a better fist of their careers in this place than I have. They have demolished the algorithm, in particular, and the basis on which it is done However, it is necessary for us to come forward with proposals for the planning system that will help the Government to deliver. Some of the analysis is fine. It points out the lack of public trust in local planning authorities. It is hardly surprising—we are engaged in a massive con trick. Local planning authorities do not have any real authority over planning because they are given a number that they have to deliver; they then find that the number has been changed by fiat at the Dispatch Box by up to 30%, and now—in the case of Reigate and Banstead—they find that the number is going to double again. That is quite remote from local circumstances. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) is now my neighbour and we shall fight London’s green-belt cause determinedly, but we need a fundamental reappraisal of the whole planning system. I used to believe that if local planning authorities were given the real power, those that wanted to protect quality of life and the environment and were elected to do that would promote development in areas of the country where economic development was a more important priority, thereby leading to a natural levelling-up process. I am afraid that that is simply not good enough. It is certainly not good enough if the Government produce a target on the scale that they have done and expect it to be delivered The introduction to the White Paper refers to the Dutch and German planning systems. It is quite a good idea to have a look at them. We have to move to a national plan-led system. We must achieve what we are trying to do with the northern powerhouse and deliver for the honour of all our new colleagues. That means that inner cities in the north of England must have the kind of vision that we have already provided. We did it in 2000. It was a Labour Government and Lord Richard Rogers co-chaired the all-party parliamentary group for London’s green belt with me The message to the Government is that we have got to think again. We must think strategically about how we will deliver national and local plans and sound environmental policy.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Harriett Mary Morison Baldwin (Conservative, Centre-right): I want to note something for the record, which colleagues have also seen: there is not a single Liberal Democrat MP in the Chamber. I mention that because between 2006 and 2010, West Worcestershire was a Liberal Democrat target seat. I remember campaigning vehemently against Gordon Brown’s top-down, Stalinist imposition of a regional spatial strategy on the midlands. I have a horrible feeling of déjà vu when I look at the way in which the algorithm has been approached. It seems incredibly top down I am proud of the fact that, under Conservative and Conservative-led Governments, we have increased house building in our country. We have managed to get it from lows under Gordon Brown to heights of nearly 250,000 units a year. I fully sign up and aspire to delivering 300,000 units a year by the end of this Parliament and to providing 1 million new homes. We are the party of home ownership and what we have done in the last decade should be sung from the rooftops We have delivered the dream of home ownership to so many people through incentives and bottom-up reforms. For example, I want the neighbourhood planning strategy to become stronger and have a statutory footing in the reforms that the Minister proposes. I also want the bottom-up involvement of local communities in determining their housing need to be greatly strengthened. The new homes bonus was a powerful way of showing communities the value of welcoming new building in their areas Let us have bottom-up reforms and Conservative principles of economic incentives for home building. Let us move away from the Gordon Brown approach and the top-down imposition of Stalinist housing targets, and let us get a new algorithm and abandon completely the one that we have.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Richard Quentin Fuller (Conservative, Centre-right): I have seven points to make to my right hon. Friend the Minister. First, whatever the housing targets are, please will he ensure that they are on a manageable scale locally? For the two local authorities that cover my constituency, current targets would mean 60,000 new homes over 15 years. That would be the equivalent of building seven towns the size of the largest town, Biggleswade, in my constituency. That does not seem a reasonable burden Point No. 2: will my right hon. Friend please ensure that the burden is shared? No algorithm will fix the country as a whole, but equally, my local authorities have the same housing target as Cambridgeshire, which is three times the size. We are part of the Oxford-Cambridge arc and it would be better to share across the two counties Point No. 3: we were elected on a manifesto commitment to infrastructure first. Delivering ahead of new housing developments the GP surgeries, the schools and the roads is a crucial part of making my right hon. Friend’s reforms successful Point No. 4: as we have heard many times in today’s debate, delivering houses is essentially a contract of trust between the state, nationally and locally, and the developers who build the houses. If the developer does not fulfil its part of the contract, trust is broken and therefore we need some remedy in the form of penalties for not building planned homes when given approval Point No. 5: there are a number of what I call "creepy" developers who are using loopholes in the current local planning system to build housing in areas that really do not want it and where it changes the local character. Can the reforms please make sure that those creepy developers are pushed to one side Point No. 6: if we are going to continue with neighbourhood plans—I think it is essential that we do—they really need some teeth and they must matter Point No. 7: my right hon. Friend the Minister will have heard today a torrent of voices pushing in one direction, and that shows why change is so hard, but he should not be dissuaded from his central task. The planning system needs reform. He is on to something, and I urge him to work with his colleagues on the Government Benches to get it right.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Gareth Andrew Bacon (Conservative, Centre-right): I rise to support the motion in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely). He was quite right to praise the Government’s levelling-up agenda and to offer support both for the Government’s overall housing objectives and for appropriate housing development, and I join him in supporting those aims, but the key issue is how we get there I have concerns about the algorithm and the targets that it has produced, apparently without regard to local policy objectives, supply constraints or environmental impacts. Those concerns are shared by many hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) and for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) who, like me, represent constituencies in the London borough of Bromley. In recent years, Bromley has consistently surpassed the targets required by the local plan—typically by 10% in an average year—but the proposed new standard method would require an increase of 288% on the current local plan requirement and 252% on the rate of current delivery Much of the London borough of Bromley is green. Indeed, two thirds of my constituency of Orpington, which is on the south easterly edge of Greater London, is rural. The White Paper rightly seeks to retain green-belt protections—I welcome that and would oppose any attempt to water them down—but the massive targets imposed by the new standard method would lead to a situation in which Bromley could not possibly achieve the numbers required without creating a series of high-density, high-rise housing developments all over the borough. Existing family housing may well have to be demolished to find sufficient space Orpington town centre and outlying villages such as Petts Wood and Chelsfield, could be turned into high-density housing estates more common to central London than to rural Kent. That point is especially important because, despite Orpington being classed as an outlying part of Greater London, it is historically part of Kent and still has far more in common with neighbouring Sevenoaks than with Southwark, Camden or Islington. Having such changes forced upon local people would be the very opposite of progress. We desperately need the right number of houses in the right places with the right infrastructure to support them. Starting with an aggregate national number and retrofitting everything else around that will, as top-down algorithms tend to, lead to unintended consequences and bad outcomes The Government could take alternative approaches, and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight outlined some of them, as have other hon. Members during this debate. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform our country for the better, and we must not get it wrong, so I urge the Government to heed the words of hon. Members in this debate and to revisit the proposals.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Laura Trott (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on securing this incredibly important debate. It is also a pleasure to follow my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), whose sentiments I entirely endorse I want to make one central point today, which is that we must take the green belt into account when calculating housing targets. Of course we need to build houses and help families to get into their first homes, but we cannot be blind to local geographical circumstances when setting these targets. The White Paper sets out many laudable changes to modernise the planning system. It says that the green belt will be protected, and that is right, but we see no evidence that this is being taken into account in the algorithm. I understand that the algorithm reflects housing need and not a target, but it would be wonderful to hear from the Minister how the aspirations in the White Paper will be met so that we take the green belt into account, because the figures that it is suggesting for Sevenoaks are simply undeliverable. My constituency is 93% green belt. The district is 142 square miles, of which 10 square miles are available to build on. The algorithm is suggesting that we build 12,000 new homes on those 10 square miles over a period of 15 years—10 square miles, I should point out, that are already highly developed. My local council has done a brilliant job in the last five years. It has delivered 357 houses a year, which is more than double our current target, but less than half of our new target In Sevenoaks, we have reason not to trust the planning inspector. Our new local plan delivers more than 600 new homes, but the planning inspector gave no flexibility for the green belt. There was no concern for protecting our local area. This is simply not good enough. Sevenoaks needs the ability to build sustainably, led by our local council, so that we have homes that local people need, but this must not come at the expense of our precious green belt I support the White Paper, but we must be clear how the aspirations are met in the housing targets that we are given. I hope that we will take the green belt into account, deliver on our promises in the White Paper, and trust local councils to deliver the houses that our local people need.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Other
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. Sadly, we have to come to the wind-ups now—I apologise to the 28 Members who were unable to get in on this debate. That shows you what an important subject matter it is. With Westminster Hall now being fully operational, perhaps there will be many more opportunities for the Minister to address the concerns of Members.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Christopher John Pincher (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful for the contributions of all 39 right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken today, and I do not for a minute underestimate the insight and the wisdom that I have heard, not least that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) in his very kind but entirely unsolicited testimonial during his remarks I hope that we will not lose sight of where we have come from, because this Government have delivered more than one and a half million new homes since 2010. We have built more than 241,000 in England in the past year alone. This year, we will announce a £12.3 billion package of affordable homes, which will see more than 50% of them delivered at discounted rent. We will take no lectures from representatives of the Opposition: we built more council homes in one year than they built in the entire 13 years. In Wales, they managed to build just 12 council homes last year—not even enough homes for a Welsh rugby team We can be rightly proud of our success, particularly as it has been achieved despite a slow and outdated planning process. We are determined to deliver on our manifesto commitment and deliver 300,000 new homes each year by the mid-2020s in the areas that really need them to meet that most fundamental Conservative value to own our own home and to have a stake in the country and the future of it. We want more people, especially younger people, to realise that aspiration. We also want to enhance our environment, protecting our green belt, increasing biodiversity and safeguarding our precious green spaces.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Greg Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): In that spirit, will my right hon. Friend, as he looks at the consultation responses, make a commitment to giving a measure of consideration to those of us in constituencies such as mine and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler), where we have had national infrastructure like HS2 forced through us, and take that into account when it comes to further development land that is required?
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Christopher John Pincher (Conservative, Centre-right): I am obliged to my hon. Friend. I shall certainly look very closely at the representations on the consultation that he makes The Prime Minister has made it absolutely clear that we have to be bold in our vision for the future of planning in our country. That is why we have put forward two sets of proposals for consultation to address our needs both in the short term and the longer term. The first, on changes to our current planning system and local housing need calculations, closed last week. The second, on our White Paper "Planning for the Future", which sets out our long-term ambitions, closes on 29 October Our long-term proposals will create a reformed system that not only delivers the homes that we need but puts communities at the heart of a process that encourages more local community involvement, fairer contributions from developers, more beautiful homes and communities, and stronger environmental outcomes.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
John Henry Hayes (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend has spoken of Conservative principles. He will agree, I am sure, that any Government who blighted the countryside with more ubiquitous, huge housing estates would not deserve to be called Conservative. I know that he is a notable aesthete. Will he give the House an assurance that he wants to build better and more beautiful, in line with the views of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, and indeed, in doing so, quash some of the fears and quell some of the doubts?