argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Jason McCartney (Conservative, Centre-right): The debate is timely for my constituents, who are currently fighting unsuitable and unsustainable housing developments across my West Yorkshire constituency. Developments include those on Netherton Moor Road, in Crosland Moor on Blackmoorfoot Road, in Pentlands on New Mill Road and on Wesley Avenue in Netherthong. Labour-run Kirklees Council’s local plan is leading to greenfield sites being dug up for unsuitable and unsustainable developments, much against the wishes of local people A few weeks ago, I joined hundreds of local residents from Netherton in opposing a 250 Persimmon Homes development on a picturesque greenfield site on the edge of their village. The planning committee met virtually, but I and other objectors were cut off halfway through our statements. The development was controversially passed, despite legitimate concerns about flooding, highways and local ecology and wildlife. Residents were left feeling angry and disenfranchised by the planning committee’s shoddy conduct. The scale and nature of the development is unsustainable for the community of Netherton, and there are similar concerns about plans for 700-plus houses in Crosland Moor That is why I have deep concerns about the "Planning for the Future" White Paper. We need more local control and democracy when it comes to developments. We need more protection for green spaces—not just green belt, but the green fields that give my village communities the much-needed green lungs It is all well and good making a local plan sacrosanct, but what if it was rammed through against local wishes and has not got the confidence or support of local people? We have lost confidence in Labour-run Kirklees on planning. Hundreds of houses keep being imposed on village communities, with no regard for highways provision, school places, doctors’ surgeries and so on. When there is section 106 money, supposedly for local amenities and infrastructure, it just disappears into a general pot. We need more local involvement and more opportunity for local people to scrutinise and have their say on local planning applications. More priority needs to be given to brownfield sites and building more affordable homes to meet local needs. So often, the developments are for four and five-bed executive homes, crammed on to greenfield sites Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), I have huge concerns about the supposed new housing formula or algorithm. I think we have all had enough of algorithms this year. I fear that the new formula will allow developers to build hundreds of new houses on much-valued greenfield sites in my patch My constituents and I are fed up with the wrong houses in the wrong places. The White Paper should give local people a bigger say in the future of their communities. I agree with CPRE. Let us create a planning system that delivers genuinely affordable homes and protects locally valued green spaces, while boosting trust and participation in the planning system of the future.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
James Nelson Grundy (Conservative, Centre-right): I declare an interest as a sitting member of Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council. There is much to be supported in the planning White Paper, not least the Government’s commitment to a brownfield-first strategy, the recognition of the need for appropriate supporting infrastructure for new developments, and higher design and style standards Several brownfield sites in my constituency have lain derelict for years, while developers have been enabled by the local authority—Wigan Metro—to build a tide of houses on green fields over the past decade. It is vital to prioritise brownfield above the green belt or greenfield sites to regenerate northern constituencies such as mine, but we must be diligent in ensuring that standards are upheld. Too often we see traffic impact assessments for planning applications that belong in the fiction section of the local library. On one site in my constituency, West Leigh Waterfront, Wigan Council seems hell-bent on seeing development on land categorised in part as having a level 3 flood risk. Such bad practice must be driven out of the system As for infrastructure, my constituents regularly point out that, aside from the East Lancs road and the sadly unfinished Atherleigh Way bypass, which has languished in such a state for roughly 35 years now, we have broadly the same main roads as we did in 1750. So furious are my residents at this state of affairs that a recent planning application for 69 more houses in the village of Lowton generated over 1,500 objections from residents sick of congestion and poor air quality. Councils such as Wigan Metro must be held to account for those failures Turning to the design, style and type of new properties, too many developments suffer from shoddy so-called affordable or social housing thrown up in a corner, often almost as an afterthought. They often manifest as undesirable, cramped two-storey blocks of flats—too small for young families seeking their first home and unsuitable for single pensioners seeking to downsize from a three or four-bedroom council house to a council bungalow. We must ensure that social and affordable homes are of the right quality, even if it means they are fewer in quantity That brings me to my final point. Across my constituency, from Astley to Atherton and from Pennington to Golborne, grave concerns have been expressed about the sheer number of houses proposed by Wigan Council, whose only concern seems to be an insatiable thirst for the revenue generated by new properties without any regard for infrastructure. The number of properties that local authorities set out to build must be both reasonable and sustainable, and I worry when I hear talk of 300,000 houses being built, mainly because I fear that Wigan Metro may volunteer to build every single one of them.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Damian Patrick George Hinds (Conservative, Centre-right): I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) for all the work he has done on this and the Backbench Business Committee for granting time to debate this important matter. With dozens of colleagues still wanting to speak, I am going to make just three short points. First, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) made the point that people now accept that we need more homes and that, for affordability, we need to increase the number of homes, including in constituencies such as mine in East Hampshire. However, we need to look not only at the aggregate number but at the mix, and for people on low incomes, focusing on the median price may be largely irrelevant My second point is about the algorithm, or, as we used the call them back in the olden days, the formula. With any such exercise, of course it is right to look at the input elements and to consult on whether they are the right ones, but it is also right to look at what happens when we run the numbers to see what the output is. If the outcome of that formula or exercise is to entrench historical patterns of population growth and contraction, in tension with the Government’s correct emphasis on levelling up and in some ways in direct contradiction to that emphasis, we need to look afresh at the formula.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Felicia Jane Beatrix Drummond (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend and I share a local planning authority, which has already been meeting the five-year supply requirements, but the algorithm means that the numbers will go up by 50% in our constituencies. Does he think that is acceptable?
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Public Lands
Damian Patrick George Hinds (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a good point—[Interruption.] Opposition Members are getting very upset about the clock, and I apologise, but do not worry, I will come in at well under four minutes anyway My third and final point is indeed about national parks. The local authority that I share with my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) is bisected by a national park. If a housing needs assessment is made on the basis of the local authority area but it then has to be heavily disproportionately implemented in the area outside the national park, that causes two sets of problems. First, inside the park, in areas such as Petersfield and Liss, housing will become more and more unaffordable over time. Also, just outside the national park, in places such as Alton and Four Marks, there will be a great deal of pressure and it will be difficult to keep up in terms of service provision. If two different parts of an area have very different constraints, a separate housing needs assessment should be made for each one. The Minister is a good Minister and a good man, and I take it very much at face value that this is a consultation. I encourage him and the Government to think again about some of these important matters.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
William Peter Wragg (Conservative, Centre-right): I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), who gave a splendid exposition of the issue facing us today. Although she is no longer in her place, I also agree with the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) in wishing that our planning Ministers stuck around for a bit longer than they have done during the past 10 years. I do not wish to sentence my right hon. Friend the Minister to a life sentence in that post, but he is perfectly able at the job, and I look forward to his continuing for a great deal longer than his predecessors. Indeed, I can think of no greater comparison than with the late Lord Stockton, who was a man of great erudition and charm—qualities that my right hon. Friend possesses in abundance. No doubt he will be an equally successful housing Minister Contrary to the impression we sometimes give, Conservative Members are not bananas, and we are not part of the "build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody" brigade. On the contrary, we believe in building more homes but, as many colleagues have said, we must build them in the right places. I congratulate the Government on their "brownfield first" policy. In my borough of Stockport, that policy made the council realise, once it was compelled to have a proper look around, that it could make available not 7,000 housing units on that type of land, but 12,000 units I thank the Minister for the work that Homes England continues to do. I recently visited a site off Melford Road in Hazel Grove—a partnership between Viaduct Housing, Stockport Homes and Mulbury. That is a great example of where pump priming from Homes England can make brownfield sites more viable for development. I am also pleased by the greater focus on rezoning, particularly of commercial and retail sites into housing, which is welcome. Arguments about planning will continue to rage for as long as we have an adversarial system for that. We will continue the argumentative process until we abandon the notion that planning is something that is done to communities. Instead, we must revive and continue to champion the neighbourhood planning process, which actually gets more built because communities are bound together and see the need for such a process. In my constituency, neighbourhood forums are developing in Marple, High Lane, Mellor, Marple Bridge, Mill Brow and Compstall, and that is exactly the sort of thing we should encourage. Those plans need even greater strength in law, so that we can allow homes to be built where communities see a need for them The land-banking disgrace must be remedied and rectified quickly: 1 million units with permission remaining unbuilt is not a story to be proud of. Given the number of times that I have made this speech I might sound like an old record, but the green belt is sacrosanct. We must protect it. The vagaries around the Greater Manchester spatial framework and the Greater Manchester combined authority must be tackled, but I reiterate that the green belt must be protected intact, as it is now.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Gareth Alan Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) has been listening to the debate, but every single Conservative Member has talked about having the correct development, not unrestricted development across the country In the short time I have, I want to concentrate on my constituency of Dartford, which is a very proactive builder. It has allowed a garden city with some 7,500 homes to be built on a brownfield site in Ebbsfleet, which is less than 25 miles from the Chamber of this House. I defy any Member to point to a development within 25 miles of the Chamber that has been put forward with less controversy than the garden city in my constituency. Dartford Borough Council has ensured that it has exceeded its target each and every year Last year, Dartford built a new house for every 104 local residents. In comparison, Manchester built one house for every 389 people, and the West Midlands built one house for every 1,340 people, so we cannot be accused of not playing our part. However, I regret to say that our housing target has been doubled under these proposals, while neighbouring Gravesham has seen its housing target halved. Anybody who knows Gravesham will vouch for the fact that it is a fairly similar local authority, with a similar mix of rural and urban areas. It is very Kentish in its identity, and it has similar house prices. We therefore find ourselves in a bit of an odd situation It is essential that we bring local authorities with us in proposing these targets. Good, proactive councils that are already building houses need to be encouraged, but there is a danger that they will get rebuffed and end up building fewer houses as a consequence. I spoke to the leader of my council, Jeremy Kite, who rightly said that house building is at its best when there is an enthusiastic relationship between the developers, the local authority and local residents. We need to ensure that that continues People are realistic about housing targets. They realise, because they have youngsters at home who want to get on the housing ladder, that we need to build new houses. However, that is only up to a point. What they fear is a lack of infrastructure. Too often, we see Governments of all persuasions sitting down and working out where we can put more houses and more developments on brownfield sites and how we can get local authorities to build, when people at home are saying, "How can I get an appointment with my GP? How can I get a place for my child in school? How can I get to work through the congested roads?" We need to also concentrate on infrastructure.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Geoffrey Robert Clifton-Brown (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. I hope the Minister for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), who I thank for listening to my concerns, will forgive me if I do not praise the good bits in his White Paper because I do not have time to do so As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) said, the real flaw in the White Paper is that all it does is concentrate building in the south-east and central south of England, and does not use the Prime Minister’s wish to build more infrastructure to level up the rest of the country. It is really important that a planning system is led by a well-executed local plan. National designations under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, such as national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and green belt, must be respected. I understand the Government’s desire to increase housing numbers. A formula or algorithm, if correctly designed, will always achieve that. However, it is a very blunt instrument that does not take into account any local variations There is a particular concern about the proposals, which deal with housing needs and requirements, between the housing numbers in the planning White Paper and the algorithm in the change in the planning system consultation. The Cotswolds is 80% AONB and the current local plan requirement is 420 houses. The proposed standard method would deliver a staggering 1,209—a 188% increase. If every area had a 188% increase, the Government would hugely overrun their targets. The current formula will certainly increase the numbers, but will not necessarily improve affordability. It is fundamentally wrong to automatically assume that affordability will be solved in areas of housing demand. It is the housing mix, not housing numbers, that is really important. In my area, what we need are small one and two-bedroom flats to meet the aspirations of first-time buyers, the young and the old. As was so ably said by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), if we stripped out those people who live in the Cotswolds but who do not actually work in the Cotswolds, both housing prices and average salaries would come down immeasurably and we would be nearer the average on affordability. The current proposals need to be looked at seriously. The present proposals would so radically alter a very special area like the Cotswolds, which the planning system to date has so successfully protected, that future generations and visitors alike would not be able to visit the area and see why it is so special.
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Luke Morgan Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I have three minutes, and I will be brief. I welcome the fact that the Government are looking at this area. I stand by the manifesto commitment to increase housing numbers by 300,000. That is the biggest change in 70 years, and we therefore need to get it right, which is why I also support today’s motion to have further debate and a meaningful vote Even before covid and the consultation, planning was the biggest issue in my inbox. Hinckley and Bosworth is a good example of where planning gets into difficulty and the current system fails. Since being elected, the current Lib Dem-led council has no local plan or five-year housing land supply, which has resulted in speculative, piecemeal development with no overall strategy. That causes community resentment and loss of trust in the aspects of planning Hinckley and Bosworth has a willingness to take its fair share of sustainable development across Leicester and Leicestershire, but the following must be considered: under the formula consultation, I am concerned that the affordability aspect is based on work-based median house prices, which appears to assume that residents live and work in the same place. That is demonstrably not true in a constituency such as mine I am also concerned that the formula does not take into account infrastructure, as has been mentioned, or future plans for generations. My working days in this House are spent trying to improve the infrastructure of the likes of the A5 and such schools as Hinckley Academy. We need to future-proof our communities, and of course our country, especially in areas such as mine that attract young people, as they will have families. That will only compound the issue of a low level of amenities and connectivity Finally, on the algorithm, the numbers produced by Lichfield analysis suggest that Bosworth increases its numbers by almost 100% of current levels; yet Leicester city, only 15 minutes away, is dropping by 30%. How can that be levelling up? How can that be building better? How can that be using brownfield sites and quality regeneration? One solution that I might offer is to turn the formula to use 0.75% of housing stock, not the 0.5% in the consultation We can consider the algorithm, but we must also consider the White Paper, of which I am broadly supportive. Zoning and the pattern books are a great asset. The key thing is to ensure that who makes the decisions in zoning and patterns is transparent to local people. Without that, I fear that councils will be unable to bring residents with them The final thing to mention is neighbourhood plans, which need to be simplified and strengthened. The likes of Bagworth, Stoke Golding and Market Bosworth are all at various levels trying to do so, but they need to know that the Government are listening to what they are saying. Otherwise, what happened to localism?
Planning and House Building — House of Commons, 2020-10-08
Topic: Housing
Karen Anne Bradley (Conservative, Centre-right): I rise to speak in this important debate because this subject is so important to my constituents. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) for securing the debate. It is so vital that we have this moment to discuss this issue and make sure that our constituents’ voices are heard Planning applications are probably some of the most difficult issues we deal with as MPs. The impact on residents of the suggestion of an inappropriate development or a speculative planning application causes so much stress and anxiety. I know that residents living on Moorland Road in Leek are absolutely beside themselves with fear at the moment about what a planning development could be like if it is given permission to be built just behind their homes, with inappropriate housing included in that development One of the things that has helped people cope with and live with planning is that it is the decision of local councillors, and that it is a matter for those locally elected representatives to make the decision. I, like the Minister, was so proud to be elected in 2010 on the premise, as was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), that we would have no top-down targets: we would get rid of the regional targets, we would get rid of central targets and we would let local people decide what housing needs there were in their areas. I have been absolutely thrilled to see neighbourhood plans being worked on in my constituency. I pay great tribute to Staffordshire Moorlands District Council for the years and years it has put into developing and finally agreeing, only in the last few weeks, a local plan. The local plan has local support, which will allow us to have the right housing mix in the right locations in the constituency How can it be the case that the Government are now considering any form of central target, because that is exactly what the algorithm looks like? I say to my right hon. Friend the Minister, who I know is a very good man and a constituency neighbour of mine—well, not a next door neighbour, but a fellow Staffordshire MP—that he should trust the good folk of Staffordshire to make the decisions and trust the good folk to elect the right people to make those decisions. He should take the measures that were suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) to deal with land banking, which causes so much grief and anxiety, and please just stop this algorithm.