Housing: North Staffordshire

I will call Dr Allison Gardner to move the motion and then I will call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they can make a speech only with prior permission from both the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered housing developments in north Staffordshire.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey, and I thank the House for allowing this debate today.

With the publication of three draft local plans across my constituency, this is an incredibly timely debate. Too many of my constituents know the struggle of finding suitable affordable housing. Families need high-quality homes in which to raise their children, young people starting out need affordable homes, and many people need accessible bungalows. I understand our Government’s targets for house building and the three draft local plans for my constituency deliver on that commitment. My constituents deserve to have a home to call their own and I back every effort to support local people into good homes.

I spoke to the hon. Lady beforehand and I congratulate her on securing this debate. Does she agree that housing for over-55s, with smaller units, must also be a priority, in order to free up larger homes for younger families, and that every local authority should consider the inclusion of such units when housing developments are being built?

I agree with the hon. Member: we are an ageing population and need to think about how we house our older residents. I am a big advocate of bungalows, having just moved into one.

That is not to say that proposals for new housing developments come without challenges. In Barlaston, the local community are trying to resist a planning application on green-belt land off Barlaston Old Road. The local parish council has proactively produced its own neighbourhood plan and is not against developments. It is offering suitable alternatives that will deliver more housing and address local issues regarding abandoned land. I hope that Stafford borough council engages meaningfully with the parish council and works to protect the integrity of the village while supporting new housing. Does the Minister agree that parish councils have a strong role to play in planning—indeed, increasingly so, as we proceed with devolution? The local voice must be empowered and heard.

Similarly, my constituents in Lightwood are concerned about the draft proposal to build up to 3,000 new homes in a neighbouring valley. A development of such size would create a whole new electoral ward. Although this proposal is in the very early stages of the local plan, should it proceed, it would have a significant impact on the surrounding communities. Residents are rightly worried about the scale of the development, the loss of green space and the strain on local infrastructure.

It cannot be denied that we are in the worst housing crisis since world war two. I thank the Minister for his engagement; we have previously discussed this issue in relation to my constituency of Stafford, Eccleshall and the villages. We need housing, but the village of Loggerheads, right in the north of my constituency, has been left in chaos due to large-scale housing developments that were allowed under previous Administrations, but put forward and built without the proper supporting infrastructure. Does my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour agree that while we desperately need housing—particularly bungalows—it cannot be delivered in the Conservative way, where there are houses but no infrastructure, and residents are left in limbo?

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend’s points.

The land I mentioned also contains a large quarry full of valuable reserves of Etruria marl. A major concern of mine with new developments is the impact on transport infrastructure. Access roads in Lightwood are minimal: one connects to a route already beset by traffic and speeding, while the other country lanes cannot safely accommodate significant traffic.

I have seen that in villages throughout my constituency, where villages are cut in half by major roads but not given safe crossings and speed restrictions. In Tittensor, villagers have been campaigning for over 30 years for a crossing, and in Draycott in the Moors, a large development and an industrial estate brought promises of high-quality traffic management measures that were watered down to a final proposal that will be incredibly disruptive to residents.

Reform-led Staffordshire county council has not supported my attempts to deliver safer roads, and the separation of responsibility between National Highways and the planning authority makes it an exceptionally difficult issue to solve. I ask the Minister, when responsibilities sit between multiple authorities, how can we ensure that the wider impact of developments on surrounding roads is properly considered, with co-ordinated action to support affected communities?

On a similar note, within the village of Tean, developments have led to an increase in flooding and sewage outflow. Developers tend to meet their requirements to build suitable infrastructure and flood mitigations on site, but the problem occurs when the outflow from the estates hits the water company’s mains, which have often not been updated to cope with increased demand. We then see flooding throughout the village and sewage outflow killing our rivers and streams.

Although water companies are consulted, they often put the onus on the developer to address increased demand. As far as I understand, there is no statutory requirement on water companies—in my case, Severn Trent Water—to upgrade their infrastructure to meet new demand. Without that, I question whether consulting water companies is anything more than a tick-box exercise. I ask the Minister, what powers can we enact to ensure that new developments are supported by upgrading main sewer systems, the responsibility for which lies with the water companies to deliver at their cost?

My hon. Friend is right to mention historic and heritage buildings. Across Stoke-on-Trent we have many such buildings that have been left vacant for far too long. With the right support and partnerships, they can be brought back into use. Although Stoke-on-Trent city council is rightly taking a brownfield-first approach to development, as she rightly said, does she agree that unlocking those heritage assets is a central part of our ambition to deliver homes for families across our area?

I commend my hon. Friend for his hard work on transforming our heritage buildings. Many of those buildings are owned by private landlords who neglect them and they are an eyesore in our towns.

Indeed, in Longton we have had several fires in buildings that have not been properly maintained. While I welcome the high street rental auctions, many of those buildings are not fit for use in their current state. I understand that councils have several powers to take ownership of derelict buildings on our high streets, but I am told that the funds required and the time it takes to hold property owners to account is often prohibitive. I ask the Minister, what additional powers and resources can we give to local authorities to address empty and derelict properties in town centres, hold property owners to account and repossess empty town centre buildings if needed?

I acknowledge, though, that reutilising inner urban areas may not meet the full demand for housing and that such areas may not always be accessible for our ageing population. We need large developments in some places, but the new designation of grey-belt land has caused confusion. To many of my constituents, the area in the Lightwood proposal is not grey-belt land; it is the countryside. While much of the land is agricultural, it is a rich area with newts, bats and badgers. In redesignating the land as grey belt, I ask the Minister for greater clarification on the meaning of green and grey-belt land, and whether that extends to areas that have agricultural-grade land and minimal built spaces.

In such cases, we must consider the delivery of suitable infrastructure, and if a community must be enlarged, we can offer benefits that improve the lives of everyone in the area. For example, in Yarnfield, which has several proposed sites in the local plan, villagers have been in a long battle to gain ownership of their local pub. The owners, Stonegate, seem to prefer to keep a decaying building up for sale rather than allow the village to revive it. I would greatly appreciate an update on the status of the community right to buy, which was announced in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, and further clarification as to how it can support my constituents in Yarnfield.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) on securing the debate and commend her for managing to fit a phenomenal number of issues into that very brief speech.

In general terms, I can assure my hon. Friend that the Government want to see more plan-led development and want development generally to provide all the infrastructure, amenities and services necessary to sustain thriving communities. While there is much more to be done, I trust that she recognises that the Government have already taken decisive steps to deliver on those objectives.

My hon. Friend will appreciate that I am unable to comment on individual local development plans or individual planning applications in her constituency due to the role of Housing, Communities and Local Government Ministers in the planning system, but I will seek to respond to as many of the general points that she raised as I can. If there are any that I am unable to cover in the time that I have, I will happily write to her with further detail.

I very much welcome the fact that the local planning authorities that cover parts of my hon. Friend’s constituency are all taking forward draft local plans. It is really important that local plans are put in place, and at speed. Having an up-to-date local plan, or, where one is not in place, ensuring that one is brought forward quickly, is the best way for a community to shape the development required in its area. Where local plans are not up to date or in place, there is a detrimental impact on individuals and communities. We really need to drive that point home: it is not cost-free to not have a local plan in place.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I commend to the Minister the draft local plan in Stoke-on-Trent, which is very bold. It recognises that there is an acute waiting list for housing in Stoke-on-Trent, and that we need to build the houses that we need for local people, so that generations of families can live there. The council is taking some tough decisions and building on pieces of land that residents would not ordinarily want built on, but that is one of the trade-offs for having a growing city.

The Minister and I spoke about an urban development corporation covering Hanley, in Stoke-on-Trent, to allow land assembly in order to bring derelict brownfield sites back into use and build the homes that we need. Is that a conversation that we can pick up again? The opportunity is there with the local plan, but it just might need a shove from the centre to help get it over the line.

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am more than happy to pick up that conversation and see where we have got to. For the reasons I have already given, I will not be able to comment on the local plan in question, but suffice it to say that we have a local plan-led planning system, and such a system operates effectively only if coverage of up-to-date local plans is extensive.

My hon. Friends will no doubt be aware that the Government inherited a system in which less than a third of local plans were up to date. We have taken decisive steps to progress towards our ambition of universal local plan coverage, both by providing local planning authorities that are striving to do the right thing with financial support and by intervening where necessary to drive local plans to adoption as quickly as possible. We are also introducing a faster and clearer process for preparing local plans, which will set a clear expectation that local plans—as well as minerals and waste plans, it should be said—should be routinely prepared and adopted within 30 months. Other aspects of the reforms—such as the introduction of gateways; shorter, simpler and standardised content focused on the core principles of plan making; and a series of digital transformation initiatives—will support that aim.

I very much commend the efforts being made in the area in question to get the local plan in place. As I said, where local plans are not up to date, and where LPAs are not delivering in line with the needs of their communities, areas are open to speculative development. It is right that, in those circumstances, development comes forward outside of plans—the homes our country needs cannot be put on hold—but we have made it clear that that is not a route to poor-quality housing, and we have added new safeguards to the presumption in the national planning policy framework in order to ensure that.

It must also be said that the absence of an up-to-date local plan does not remove the need for local planning authorities to consider the use of conditions or planning obligations to make otherwise unacceptable developments acceptable. That can include the provision of necessary site-specific infrastructure at appropriate trigger points in development. Local planning authorities already have enforcement powers to ensure compliance with such provisions.

We have certainly talked about the brownfield-first approach being taken. As I alluded to earlier, one of the issues in Stoke-on-Trent is that we have a number of historic and heritage buildings lying dormant. I encourage the Minister to talk across Departments about how we could create a heritage building release fund, similar to the brownfield land release fund. Those buildings are at the centre of our towns and communities, but at the moment they tend to fall down on value for money.

I will happily take that conversation up with colleagues in other Departments, and I am happy to write to my hon. Friend about heritage policy in the planning system more generally if he would find that useful.

The point needs to be made, and it needs to be made again and again, that there is not enough brownfield land on registers—and certainly not enough viable sites in the right locations—to meet the demand for homes across the country. That is why we have taken a different approach to the green belt. We are committed to preserving green belts, which have served England’s towns and cities well over recent decades, not least in checking the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas and preventing neighbourhoods from merging into one another. We have acted quickly to replace the haphazard approach taken by the previous Government to green-belt designation and release with a more strategic and targeted approach.

I emphasise that Ministers do not themselves determine what, if any, grey-belt land is released in any given local planning authority area. It is for the local planning authority itself to determine whether exceptional circumstances exist that justify doing so. In those instances, we expect it first to demonstrate that it has examined fully all other reasonable options for meeting identified need for development, including making as much use as possible of suitable brownfield sites and underutilised land, optimising the density of development—a number of local authorities across the country are looking again at brownfield sites and exploring whether they can get additional density to make up housing numbers—and working with neighbouring authorities to assess whether identified need might be sensibly accommodated across borough boundaries.

Where those options have been exhausted, we expect local authorities to look again at green-belt land release. National policy makes it clear that, in those circumstances, local development plans must take a sequential approach: first exhaust previously developed land, then consider low-quality grey-belt land that is not previously developed, and only then consider other green-belt locations. Under our revised approach, the sustainability of green-belt sites must also be prioritised, and local planning authorities must pay particular attention to transport connections when considering whether grey belt is sustainably located.

The Minister and I discussed this issue just prior to the recess, particularly in relation to Eccleshall, where greenfield sites with really poor transport infrastructure, as well as poor sewage and water infrastructure, are being proposed for development. I gently remind him that we were going to meet this month or early next month to discuss that further. It would be great to have that meeting put in the diary as soon as possible.

I am looking forward to that meeting. The relevant diary slots have moved around on several occasions, but I will ensure that it takes place in the very near future. We can discuss that and other issues.

Because we recognise the value that communities place on green-belt land, we have taken steps to ensure that any necessary development on it must deliver high levels of affordable housing; the provision of new green spaces, or improvements to existing green spaces, that are accessible to the public; and necessary improvements to local or national infrastructure. Our new golden rules, which are the mechanism by which we will deliver that public gain, will apply where a major housing development is proposed on green-belt land, released either through plan making or subject to a planning application.