Housing, Planning and the Green Belt — House of Commons, 2018-02-06
Topic: Housing
Alexander Paul Beresford (Conservative, Centre-right): I first dipped my toe into this sort of water quite some time ago as a councillor in a small, unknown local authority in south-west London. We swept in and made huge changes to the staff and the attitudes. In the planning department, for example, we introduced planners who thought laterally, took a positive attitude and worked with local developers and local people, bringing in imaginative programmes and buildings My constituency is on the edge of London. It remains a beautiful constituency: 90% of it is green belt, sites of special scientific interest, areas of outstanding natural beauty or similar. Most of the constituency falls within the Mole Valley District Council area, but the western wards form part of Guildford Borough Council’s area. In developing its local plan, the district council is trying to meet its housing numbers with potentially spectacular developments adjacent to and around Leatherhead. To do so successfully, it will need to build imaginatively, higher and more densely. That is understood and expected by most people, including many Leatherhead residents. Of course, there is the usual small group, living in aspic, who want only low-rise housing and everything to be essentially the same. Whatever the eventual outcome, however, it is obvious to me that the local team, led by Councillor Simon Edge, is prepared to think outside the box, so I have real hopes I spent a period as a Minister in the then Department of the Environment and one of the things that I discovered was the variation in local authorities. Some are excellent, high quality and low cost and work with local residents, but some will not budge. When it came to planning, some local authorities—I will not name them—killed any hope of development and they are still there. Hopefully, Mole Valley council will not do that. Guildford Council, which has put its draft plan out for consultation, is a complete contrast. Some 57% of the housing that it intends to develop lies on current green-belt land and several thousand of the houses are in the Guildford wards of the Mole Valley constituency. The plan has been out for consultation in some form twice and the protests were gigantic Three of the plan’s main sites lie adjacent to a section of the A3. Those who use the road will recognise the section from Guildford to Hook as one of the most consistently overloaded roads. The A3 crosses over the M25 at junction 10, which is the busiest, most accident-prone junction on the M25. Plans are in hand to improve the junction dramatically to meet current demands, but not the demand that will result from Guildford Council’s plans. The council leaders should look to the surrounds of the town itself and use their imagination to build higher and denser quality housing I visited my old borough of Wandsworth to see how the council is handling the demand for homes. It has more homes under construction or in planning than the rest of inner London put together. That has been achieved through exciting, often iconic developments and a combination of compact development, quality development and height. In desperation, I sent the leader of Guildford Council a photograph of one of the more spectacular iconic towers. It is stunning. It is tall—it is far too tall for Guildford—but it is an example of how tall can be made to fit. However, my thoughts and those of many others have been rejected by the leadership The inquiry on the plan will be a battle to save the green belt. I hope that the Minister will look over the shoulder of the inspector at each of the local plan inquiries. It is an opportunity for that inspector—and there are some very good inspectors—to assess the quality of the council as well as the quality of the local plan. If the local council is raiding the green belt as an easy option, rather than moving back in and around the towns, the plan should be heavily rejected and the council should be sent back to think again.