I beg to move,
That this House has considered Junction 10a of the A14.
I thank you, Mr Twigg, for taking over the Chair for this debate and welcome you to your position. I thank Mr Speaker for granting this debate. I welcome the Minister to her place. I declare an interest as a member of Kettering Borough Council and the new North Northamptonshire shadow authority.
Junction 10a of the A14 does not exist. At the moment, it is just a blob on a Department for Transport map, but it is a junction that the people of Kettering very much need if our town and borough are not to grind to a halt because of all the new house building taking place locally. There are important plans for 5,500 new houses to be built to the east of Kettering, with about 460 completed already. These will be built between the town of Kettering itself and the village of Cranford and were, in effect, imposed on Kettering Borough Council in the dying days of the previous Labour Government in spring 2010.
We have to ensure that those houses form a vital, liveable community and do not simply become one big, soulless housing estate. In order to make that happen, we must ensure not only that the infrastructure is in place to serve those new houses but that the quality of life of existing residents in other parts of Kettering is not impacted. For local people, the construction of this “sustainable urban extension”, to use the planning term, is the equivalent of bolting on to the town of Kettering itself another town the size of Desborough, which is also in the borough of Kettering, located a few miles away.
This development to the east of Kettering has been called the Kettering East development, but it is now called Hanwood Park and it received planning approval from Kettering Borough Council in 2010 for up to 5,500 new houses. The first 2,700 are in phase 1, to be followed by a further 2,800 in phase 2. Overall, the development covers an 820-acre site. Fortunately, the local design code is set at a high standard. This sustainable urban extension will allow the town of Kettering to plan the delivery of local housing. The design will ensure good internal and town centre connectivity with access to trunk roads, including the A6, the A43 and, importantly, the A14.
To place this in a national context, I should say that Hanwood Park is one of the country’s flagship housing extensions. Ministers have already toured the site on several occasions, especially when the initial release of housing with funding from the Department for Transport’s road infrastructure strategy 1—RIS1—funding plan was fully supported. Local delivery of the houses is supported by all the local authorities and contributes to the Government’s housing targets. It sits within the Oxford to Cambridge arc. A funding partnership with Homes England results in the development now having a primary school, surface water attenuation, adopted foul sewers, three principal access roads and junction improvements on the town roads.
This is one of the country’s largest sustainable extensions. Homes England, which comes under the purview of the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, is funding the major early infrastructure works. There is strong delivery momentum, with Taylor Wimpey, Barratt, David Wilson, Persimmon, Avant, Orbit and Bellway all involved. The scheme is of local strategic importance and is classified as the highest priority in the north Northamptonshire investment framework, but the major hurdle to delivering these houses, which the Government need, is providing the continuous delivery of the so-called Grampian condition for the new junction 10a on the new A14. The new junction is required if the development is to exceed the initial 2,700 houses.
Local land values will not allow the development of this junction to be funded without Government intervention, and that is why we need public funding. Developer contributions exist for up to half the project. The junction was fully supported by the Department for Transport in its RIS1 funding allocation in 2016, when the Department promised £20 million—to be matched by a further £20 million from the developer. However, there were sustainability issues with the development of the housing extension and it was agreed to defer the RIS1 allocation to RIS2. Since then, the junction has been excluded from RIS2. The junction is absolutely essential to the full delivery of this 5,500-house urban extension. It needs to be provided before 2,700 houses are completed.
The extension was stalled for some time because of viability issues, but they were overcome in 2018-19 following refinancing by the developer and this was enabled by a £60 million loan from Homes England under the purview of the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. The repayment of this loan to another Government Department will be at risk if the development cannot fully proceed. Homes England considers this site in Kettering to be its highest priority in the UK. Its delivery will satisfy multiple strands of Government housing policy, including, importantly, the encouragement of small and medium-sized builders and sustainable development practices. The junction works were included in the Department for Transport’s RIS1 funding stream, on the basis of a 50% contribution to the total cost by the developer. That developer commitment has not changed; the developer continues to be committed to match-funding the construction costs.
Upwards of 2,750 new homes are probably at risk if the junction cannot be secured, as the developer may cease activity fairly soon if progress beyond 2023 cannot be guaranteed. If there is a pause in the development, the local authority will no longer have a five-year rolling land supply. That renders our local area subject to speculative planning applications which, if successful, will make no contribution to local infrastructure.
Martin Hammond, the lead official at Kettering Borough Council, has said of the importance of the development:
“Delivery is now gaining momentum at Hanwood Park and new parcels are being brought on stream, alongside infrastructure constructed this year, but for the full scheme of 5,500 houses with associated community education, health, transport and employment provision, Kettering requires an additional junction on the A14, a principle established in 2014, otherwise only 2,700 houses can be occupied in the foreseeable future, which is only half of the intended development.”
The planning for a new road junction takes an incredibly long time. The local council has been advised that it can take up to four and a half years to develop such a major junction. The problem is that if the Government do not commit around about now to including funding for the junction, either as an appendage to the RIS2 scheme or for inclusion in RIS3 after 2025, the developers may pause the development because of the lack of future certainty. It is expected that the 2,700 houses mark could be reached as early as 2025.
The Government announced in August that they were setting up an acceleration unit to speed up transport infrastructure projects and build back better from covid-19. I welcome that development. It will be headed by Darren Shirley, currently the chief executive of the Campaign for Better Transport and formerly of Which? magazine. The unit will be directly accountable to the Transport Secretary.
Encouragingly, the unit will engage experts with significant experience in delivering infrastructure projects, including—this is important for Kettering—Highways England’s director of complex infrastructure projects, Chris Taylor, who oversaw the construction of the £1.5 billion A14 scheme further down the road towards Cambridge, which was not only delivered on budget, but eight months ahead of schedule. No doubt Mr Taylor will be familiar with the A14 going past Kettering.
I make my plea on behalf of the local people in Kettering. The local borough council and all the local authorities have engaged with the various Government Departments at all stages of rolling out the new sustainable urban extension in Kettering, but in order to deliver the project in full, we need a commitment from the Roads Minister that the Government will contribute half the cost of the new junction. We do not need that commitment in 2025; we need the commitment now.
Unless we can get on with planning that junction and giving the developers the surety they need that the Government will deliver their funding, there is the very real risk that the roll-out of the extension will be paused and stop. The problem then is that the Government will not get the houses they need, which is primarily the responsibility of MHCLG, and there is a risk that Homes England will not get the repayment of the £60 million loan.
For local people, the tragedy will be that we could have a very large number of houses built, potentially up to 2,700, without the necessary road infrastructure to take us beyond that level. There is also a very real risk of gridlock in the town of Kettering, with all these initial houses having been provided but with the Government not having come up with the funding for the new junction 10a.
My plea to the Roads Minister today, on behalf of people in Kettering, is to recognise—please—the fundamental importance of the new junction to people in Kettering and to make a Government commitment to fund it.