I beg to move,
That this House has considered housing in Sittingbourne and Sheppey.
In a Westminster Hall debate, back in November 2016—I cannot remember who was in the Chair—I pointed out that Kent was being asked to take more than its fair share of the country’s new house building, and that unprecedented housing growth had put great pressure on our local infrastructure and services, particularly in my constituency of Sittingbourne and Sheppey.
Since that debate, I have raised the problem of unsustainable housing development in my constituency six times, but the only thing that has changed is that the pressure on Kent has got worse, with Sittingbourne and Sheppey being particularly hit hard. My constituency now has one of the highest patient to GP ratios in England, increasing health deprivation generally, a lack of school places and congested roads, particularly on Sheppey, where a problem affecting any of the main roads on the island leads to gridlock.
In the last 30 years, almost 17,000 new homes have been built in Swale, the majority in my constituency, which comprises two thirds of the borough, and there is more to come. As it stands, using the standard method of calculating housing need, from this year my local authority, Swale Borough Council, is being forced to provide housing land for an annual build number of 1,048, which is a huge increase on the target of 776 per year included in the council’s current adopted local plan.
Sadly, those figures demonstrate the irony of the Government insisting on ever increasing housing numbers, because despite the huge increase in housing development that we have already witnessed in Swale, developers have not once hit the 776 per year local plan housing target in the last 10 years. That begs the question: why are the Government expecting Swale to increase its housing land allocation still further, when developers have not yet used the land already allocated for housing?
One problem with housing targets is that historical housing numbers are a key part of the data used by the Government to determine future need. The assumption that past housing growth will automatically generate the need for more housing growth in the future creates an unsustainable cycle. Understandably, Swale Borough Council is very concerned that it will be unable to deliver the number of homes required by the Government’s standard method for housing need without considerable detriment to our area, either through damage to our local environment and other assets, or significant impact on our local infrastructure. I very much share those concerns.
Swale Borough Council is also of the view that if the planning system is to be genuinely “plan-led”, then the application of paragraph 11(d) of the national planning policy framework should be scrapped, because it does not take into consideration factors that hinder housing delivery that are beyond the control of local planning authorities and undermine the plan-led system.
Another irony is that despite all the developments that Swale has witnessed over the years, we are still desperately short of decent affordable and social housing in the borough. There are a number of reasons for that. The first is because developers are expected to fund any necessary infrastructure improvements, rather than the Government. That requirement has a negative impact on the local communities in which the developments take place. For a start, it pushes up the cost of development, which means that the number of homes set aside for social or affordable housing are often kept to the very bare minimum, if they are built at all.
If at planning stage the local authority insists on a higher percentage of affordable or social housing, it can make the development unviable, so councils tend to accept lower figures. A stark illustration is that just 12% of the homes built in Swale between 2019 and 2020 were classified as affordable. Where affordable houses are built, too often they are snapped up by local authorities outside the area, mainly London boroughs, because it is cheaper for them to buy a property in Kent than to build or buy homes in their own locality. Kent’s local authorities are priced out of the social housing market because they do not have the same financial resources as London boroughs. All the housing developments that we have witnessed over the past few years have done little to alleviate Sittingbourne and Sheppey’s own housing problem, because they simply draw in more people from outside the area.
Another problem with expecting developers to fund the necessary infrastructure is that the section 106 funding raised is never enough to meet the actual needs of the local community. An example of that is local road building. A development that comes with a section 106 road improvement to serve, say, an extra 500 cars will too often over time generate many more cars than originally envisaged. The local road network is then unable to cope with those additional vehicle movements. The only way to secure further improvement is by accepting even more development that will provide the necessary additional section 106 funding. That is another unsustainable cycle.
As I pointed out earlier, it is not just the roads infrastructure that has been impacted by all the new housing developments. In my constituency, schools have also been affected. We were promised a secondary school to accommodate the growth in population generated by the housing developments in north-west Sittingbourne. Sadly, there is still no sign of the school. We are now in the absurd position where every day, entirely due to a lack of school places, many children from Sittingbourne are bussed to the Isle of Sheppey, where there are spare places, for historical reasons I will not go into today. It means that almost 1,000 children from Sheppey travel in the opposite direction every day. That two-way flow of children increases pressure on our local transport network and is costly for parents and the local authority.
The new housing developments have also had a negative effect on our health system. As I mentioned, my constituency has one of the highest patient to GP ratios in England. That has led to many practices being oversubscribed, with patients finding it increasingly difficult to book an appointment to see a doctor, which is a problem I recently raised in the House. Although housing developers will often be asked to provide health facilities via a section 106 agreement, a medical centre is just a building and is of no use to anybody without the trained medical staff to run the practice, including GPs.
The problem in Kent is that we have an insufficient number of GPs to provide the primary care service that people expect and to which they are entitled. There are a number of reasons for that shortage, which I have highlighted in previous Westminster Hall debates, so I will not rehearse them again today. It is a serious problem that the Government must resolve before imposing any more housing targets on Kent’s local authorities, and on Swale Borough Council in particular.
The Government should also take into account the impact on our local environment when they decide how much land local authorities have to allocate for new housing developments. The reality in my area is that any new developments will increasingly have to be built on green fields, because most brownfield sites have already been used for new homes. Of course, developers prefer to use green spaces and farmland, and I understand the reasons why. It is mainly because it is cheaper than developing brownfield sites. However, using those green spaces destroys natural habitats, and creates light and noise pollution.
In addition, putting down more concrete and tarmac can exacerbate issues with water absorption and cause flooding, so even if housing is not built on a floodplain, it can destroy natural barriers that are necessary to soak up the vast quantities of water when there is heavy rain. It also puts pressure on existing sewers and storm drains, raising the risk of flooding and environmental issues with sewage. This is another element of local infrastructure that is too often given only second thought when the population is expanded by hundreds or thousands of people.
Frankly, many people believe that the current planning system favours large housing developers and ignores the needs of the ordinary folk who must live with the consequences of those developments. They believe that planning policy is driven by the Government’s desire to build hundreds of thousands more homes. It is difficult to argue against that belief. As an example, when Swale Borough Council submitted its last local plan, which set out what land was required to meet future housing needs, its calculation was based on local knowledge and had the support of local residents. As I said earlier, the council estimated that the housing need would be 776 homes a year. However, the Government rejected that local plan and insisted that the figure should be increased to 1,048 a year—a 35% uplift.
I believe that the same thing has happened to other councils in our beautiful county of Kent. I have a message for the Minister, for whom I have a great deal of respect, from my fellow residents—my fellow men of Kent and Kentish men: if he wants us to remain the garden of England, please stop the rooting up of our ancient woodlands, the cementing over of our fields and orchards, the polluting of our rivers and sea with sewage, and the contamination of our air with toxic fumes from ever-increasing traffic congestion. Large-scale development must not continue without the requisite investment in infrastructure—not just from developers but from the Government.
Building must not be allowed to disproportionately affect Kent and the south-east. The Government must accept that suitable land for development is finite, and that the concerns of local communities must be taken into consideration when imposing housing targets. The Government must not ignore the elected representatives of those areas, or treat them like nuisances when they point out that Government planning policies are wrong. Finally, the Government must, please, give us a planning system that works for and with communities, is fair and acknowledges the pressure that increasing Government housing targets place on areas such as Sittingbourne and Sheppey.