Housing, Planning and the Green Belt — House of Commons, 2018-02-06
Topic: Housing
Christopher James Green (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins), who rightfully highlights the importance of skills and training for the next generation of people going into the building industry. On the 100th anniversary of universal suffrage, we also need to encourage more women to look at opportunities in the building trade I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) on securing such an important debate on housing, planning and the green belt, about which every constituency across the land has many common concerns. If we get this right, we can create wonderful neighbourhoods and communities with the right level of green spaces, and the right sort of housing and infrastructure. If we get it wrong, however, as we too often do, we lose those valuable green spaces, because they are the places that developers choose first to build upon. We are then left with the brownfield spaces that have been left behind, which are the blots on the landscape and the areas that people in local communities want to see developed first. One of the principal intentions in developing a green belt was not just protecting green spaces, but ensuring that inner-city brownfield sites were developed before those green spaces were taken up There is currently too much urban sprawl, which leads to all sorts of problems. It leads to the distinctive identities of communities, villages and towns merging into one, whereby they become an endless suburbia. It works against public transport, because where there is urban sprawl, it is difficult for buses to follow routes that will make enough money so that they can to keep running. It also means that people are a long distance from railway stations, meaning that they cannot get on a train, and if they are able to, they probably have to drive to the railway station, thus creating congestion and other traffic problems. Developers, councils and railway authorities also too often do not put in parking spaces at railway stations that will enable people to park up safely, which creates all sorts of problems for local residents because their streets are congested with all the cars We see across Greater Manchester that many of the new developments that are permitted, often by Labour councils, are not mixed housing that all people in the community can take advantage of. They are often executive estates, which are not there for the local community. That needs to change, and something that ought to drive that change is devolution to Greater Manchester. There is a huge and wonderful opportunity for Greater Manchester to have a vision about how it develops its planning and housing and, within the Greater Manchester spatial framework, ensures that housing, planning and protecting the green belt are all married up I would like the Minister to clarify something. I understand that the Greater Manchester spatial framework involves individual councils coming together to agree how many houses will be built. Wigan Council agreed its allocation of 16,500 houses, but then voluntarily chose to have an additional 3,000 houses on top of that. That goes against the wishes of local residents, who were already complaining about road congestion before Wigan Council sought to impose an additional 3,000 houses. That is the council’s choice—it referred to its ambition to have those extra houses The Greater Manchester spatial framework will enable council leaders and mayors to work together to create a vision for development, but the first vision offered was an abysmal failure that was rightly torn up due to popular demand. The tearing up of that first framework has in turn delayed the Greater Manchester spatial framework mark 2, and that delay has enabled developers to target and cherry-pick greenfield spaces such as the Bowlands Hey and Leigh Hall developments in Westhoughton and the Hill Lane development in Blackrod, against local wishes The independent planning inspector has said that the failure to put the Greater Manchester spatial framework in place means that no meaningful weight can be given to planning objections. As a consequence, our green spaces are being taken up, congestion is increasing and communities are being damaged. Is it a coincidence that the Greater Manchester spatial framework mark 2 is to be published in June, following the local elections? What is it that council leaders in Greater Manchester do not want us to know? Will voters have a chance to see the proposals before the May elections?