Housing, Planning and the Green Belt — House of Commons, 2018-02-06
Topic: Housing
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), although I did not agree with everything he said. He and I know each other very well, and it is good to see him back in the House We constantly hear the same lines about the Government promising to fix the housing market, yet after their seven years in government, it is no secret that we still have an enormous housing crisis in this country. Last year, the number of affordable homes built in this country fell to the lowest level in 24 years New policies introduced by this Government have weakened the previous Labour Government’s brownfield-first policy. In fact, under this Government, as of July 2017, 425,000 homes were planned to be built on green-belt land. That represents the biggest yearly increase in proposed development on green-belt land for two decades. To add insult to injury, since 2009, only 16% of houses built on green-belt land outside local plans were deemed affordable It is worth pointing out that under the previous Labour Government, 2 million more homes were built and we had 1 million more householders owning their own homes, but since 2010, under this Government, the number of homeowners aged under 45 has fallen by 900,000. There was also the biggest investment in social housing for a generation. On average, Labour councils have built around 50% more homes than Tory councils since 2010. It is clear that the Government’s Housing and Planning Act 2016 fails to get to grips with the crisis of home ownership. It is simply no good trying to twist this around and placing the blame on those in local government. If that were true, Coventry’s local plan would not have been approved by this Government There are issues in my constituency, particularly in the Kings Hill and the Cromwell Lane areas of Coventry, and I have raised those issues many times. In fact, the situation is now so bad, and there is such serious concern, that a new residents association has been formed in the Westwood ward, which covers those areas. The Government now say that they believe that there is a better way to calculate housing numbers. According to the new plans, even more homes will need to be built each year, but those plans are based on incorrect Government numbers. Many residents groups in my constituency have protested against these developments, and I have spoken in defence of the Kings Hill area for many years. The Government seek to provide different formulas and figures. The current figures for Coventry make huge assumptions about students, but the idea that they all stay and live in Coventry after university is simply not true Nationally, the big four developers account for more than 75% of the plots with planning permission, but getting developers building on existing sites is far more important than allocating them yet more land. There need to be firmer consequences for developers that are land banking, so that we ensure that their existing commitments are met before further land is released. Incentives should be introduced to put an end to a slow build-out rates and developers must start building the homes that communities need. The Government say that they listen to communities, but the communities are overruled, as has happened in the Kings Hill area of Coventry that I just mentioned Brownfield sites have the potential to deliver more than 1 million homes, so the Government need to reassess the possibilities that they offer. That is crucial, because 70% of the housing proposed for land to be released from the green belt will be unaffordable for local communities. The Government must understand that this is about not only the sheer number of houses being built, but the types of those houses. This needs to happen urgently, so that we can end the housing crisis and give this generation the homes that they deserve I have asked the Minister to meet me on two or three occasions, but those meetings have been postponed. I hope that, this time, the Minister will meet me and some of the residents from the areas I have mentioned.