Housing: North Somerset

We are not nimbys. As I have said, there has been a 50% increase in the number of our residents, and therefore housing, over the period, but we need to safeguard the quality of life for those who already live there. The infrastructure in our area is creaking in terms of the number of schools and the GP services that we have. Our policing is overstretched and our roads leave a great deal to be desired.

In Wrington, one of the villages in the green belt where there has been some development, we have already seen problems with flooding and drainage that were entirely predicted; I raised the issue with the district council at the time. Road traffic access is a nightmare in a village where the infrastructure had already been degraded. In Portishead, our schools are already full. Yatton is used as the emergency route when there is a closure to the M5, which is a joke, because at the best of times it is effectively a single-lane road through a small village.

In Clevedon, there is an attempt to use our last bit of green belt in Clevedon East to build an overflow school. Long Ashton and Dundry in particular have the nightmare prospect of a huge housing estate being planned that will effectively take the urban sprawl from Bristol into North Somerset. The whole point of the green belt there is to stop urban sprawl and to stop Bristol moving south into North Somerset. We utterly reject the idea of some of those lovely villages having huge housing estates, which would be an eyesore as well as a burden on the local authority.

The Government have said that they want to increase the infrastructure budget, particularly in the north of England. I am absolutely, fully committed to that; it makes perfect sense to spread opportunity to all parts of the country. But if that is where the infrastructure spending is going to go, why are we increasing the housing supply in the south of England, where we are not getting the investment in the infrastructure? That applies not only to our constituencies in north Somerset but to many of the constituencies of my right hon. and hon. Friends, who took the opportunity in the Lobby tonight to say, “Speak for us when you are having your Adjournment debate.” We need to have house building commensurate with investment in the infrastructure. We cannot have the mismatch that we seem to be developing at the present time.

So what do we want to see in North Somerset? We need to develop brownfield sites, particularly in Bristol. The idea that there are cost issues should not be allowed to get in the way of building on the most appropriate sites where they are closest to the city environment with all the infrastructure that already exists there. We need to look, particularly in the post-covid environment, at change of use from offices and shops to more dwellings, bringing people back into our town centres and improving the life of our communities there. We want to get rid of North Somerset’s obligation to make up for unmet need in Bristol. Why should the residents of North Somerset have to pay the price, in terms of pressure on their infrastructure, for the failure of the authorities in Bristol to meet their own housing needs, especially given that there are brownfield sites yet to be built on?

We need to have—this is a more generic issue than just what we face in North Somerset—a methodology that is realistic. We need to have a clear link to local demographics, not some made-up numbers that are simply applied irrespective of the real conditions in our population. We must have a fact-based assessment of need in our constituencies. We must have a sensible view of the constraints already in place, including all the issues that I mentioned, including the fact that we have such a large amount of green belt, and the fact that we have the north Somerset levels, with some of the areas that would otherwise be used for planning being on floodplain. The clue to the impact on those areas is in the term “flood”, which is why we do not expect to see building there. We need to have to have the right type of housing. We want to see more affordable housing so that young people who grow up in North Somerset are not forced to leave and come back only when they have attained a much higher income later on in their life. We have a mismatch with our demographics. We need more young people to be able to stay and live where they grew up. We have to see housing targets and the type of house building that are in line with our environmental targets.

I believe that the Government fully understand the need for more house building across the United Kingdom, but we have already seen our share of development in our part of the country. We are constrained by the very elements that the Government themselves set down. We cannot build on green belt. We cannot build on floodplain. It is an accident of nature that we have the north Somerset levels. We cannot build in the protected areas: in areas of outstanding natural beauty or conservation areas. I invite my right hon. Friend the Minister, for some amusement over the weekend, to take back the map of North Somerset that shows all these elements included, and show me where 26,000 houses are meant to go.

Therefore, I urge the Minister to consider that Weston-super-Mare, perhaps some of the areas in my right hon. Friend’s constituency, and certainly central Bristol should be willing to take more homes in the middle of towns, rather than in the areas, which, as my right hon. Friend rightly pointed out in his nicely coloured-in map, are not available to be built on outside towns. Central Weston needs the investment; central Weston would be delighted to have more homes built in the right places. That points to one of the advantages of the Government’s latest set of proposals for permitted development rights with carefully constructed local council-approved planning guidelines.

We have tried to approach the process fairly, based on evidence, because the evidence shows that for too many people homes are simply unaffordable. That is why I should be clear that both the current and the proposed standard method have a focus on affordability, because it cannot be right that in areas where, historically, supply has simply not kept up with demand, people are prevented from living where they most want to, or where they most need to, in the places that perhaps they call home.

Indeed, it is a question of intergenerational fairness. We need to build more homes to help young people on to the housing ladder and also help some of the most vulnerable people in society—some of our elderly. We must consider the question of affordability. However, as I said, I have heard hon. Members, most recently my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset and my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare, express concern about the effect that this might have on the geographical balance of our country—that there may be too many homes in the south and not enough in the north.

That is why we are looking at other levers, such as stock renewal—regeneration of places—where it is required, generally in the industrial west midlands and the industrial north. We are looking at all-important city regeneration, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare. We are committed, in the national planning policy framework and in our consultation proposals, to further brownfield development, and we are committed to reimagining our town and city centres.

That is why we have introduced permitted development rights statutory instruments that allow for the demolition and rebuilding of commercial property to make it easier to turn that into residential property. We have introduced changes to use classification to make it easier for town centres to accommodate more residential accommodation so that they can once again become the places they used to be before, perhaps, the 1970s and the 1960s—places where people live as well as work.

I am in no doubt that achieving the right balance is critical. We need to challenge the affordability issues that bedevil so many people in our country and the places that they want to live.