That this House has considered the impact of planning developments on local transport.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. Let me start by making something clear: the local people of Harpenden, Berkhamsted, Tring, Redbourn, Sandridge and the surrounding villages are no nimbys. They are not against housing. They are raising the alarm against top-down national planning that does not serve local housing needs; that leaves local services bursting at the seams without adequate investment, or with investment that is delivered far too late; that fails to deliver the transport infrastructure that communities actually need; and that is eroding precious landscapes, some of which are home to rare chalk streams found nowhere else in the world. Some of those people have joined us in the Public Gallery, and I thank them.
This debate is about the impact of planning on transport infrastructure, and to understand that, we need to see the big picture. The towns and villages in Harpenden and Berkhamsted, including Tring, Redbourn, Wheathampstead, Sandridge and Markyate, are steeped in history. The beautiful Chilterns national landscape can be found around Tring, Berkhamsted and Aldbury. Four rare chalk streams thread through the constituency, alongside the Grand Union canal. Settlements that appear in the Domesday Book can be found, and the old Watling Street runs through the centre of Redbourn. There is also Berkhamsted castle, where the English throne was surrendered to William the Conqueror.
But there are also towns in the constituency that were originally designed for horse-drawn traffic and are now gridlocked with commuter cars. The M1 cuts right through the middle of the constituency, and every time there is an accident, it causes further gridlock on country lanes. The capacity of Luton airport, which is just seven miles away, is nearly doubling, going from 19 million to 32 million passengers a year. That will add roughly a million passengers per month, many of whom will travel on the same routes as local people.
On Thameslink and London Northwestern services, rammed trains are cancelled almost daily—indeed, a group from the Probus club in Harpenden arrived after their train was cancelled today—and bus services have been decimated. That is before we even talk about the impossibility of finding an NHS dentist, the pressures on GPs and the desperate need for additional school places, particularly for children with special educational needs. These old towns and villages are not built for growth of such scale.
We must, then, look at the Government’s approach to planning. Labour has continued the top-down numbers legacy that the Conservatives left behind and, in some cases, made it significantly worse. From top-down targets to grey-belt land, developers are literally having a field day, using loopholes to get unplanned development through. This matters. Giving developers the green light leaves us with an unco-ordinated approach, and infrastructure and communities are coming last.
I commend the hon. Lady for bringing this topic to the House. We have similar problems back home in Northern Ireland. From listening to her, it seems that whenever a new development goes up, it relies on private cars, because there is no public transport out in the countryside, so the pressure is always on people to provide their own transport, which affects the local roads and infrastructure. It also seems like private developers are not following the rules that require a detailed traffic and transport impact assessment for all major developments. If that has not been done when the rules indicate it should have, should the councils, Government or local bodies not take enforcement action to ensure that what is required actually happens, rather than sitting back and doing nothing?
I agree with parts of the hon. Member’s intervention. The developers have armies of legal teams and, as I will come on to, the national legislation is open to interpretation when it comes to roads. Councils are essentially left powerless to enforce the legislation, because developers find the loopholes. They have the money and the power to push past.
My hon. Friend is right to point out that developers have armies of lawyers, and one of the most frustrating things for local authorities is when they come back again and again. Even when planning authorities reject an application, developers will take it to appeal, and even if the appeal is rejected, they will wait a short period and then come back again. They only have to win once, which is incredibly frustrating for the communities that face the threat.
Absolutely. On top of that, councils also warn that when they get section 106 money or funding from the community infrastructure levy, the funding available is not enough for the new roads needed for development. They also warn that if we expect section 106 contributions to deliver all new infrastructure, the burden will often be pushed on to new homeowners, as prices can be pushed up.
What is more, there is no guarantee on the delivery or timing of infrastructure plans, often because major infrastructure depends on external bodies or funding cycles, such as for highways and regional transport, as well as on NHS capital planning cycles or educational funding cycles. The Government must adopt an infrastructure-first approach. How will they empower communities to take a cumulative view of the infrastructure impact of planning? What action are the Government taking to address the train capacity and service issues I have highlighted?
Let us turn to the reality on the ground for transport services, starting with roads. Local people put it best. Fiona from Berkhamsted says:
“The roads are completely overwhelmed by traffic through Berkhamsted.”
Anne captures the absurdity of national planning guidance:
“The biggest issue for Berkhamsted is a one-size-fits-all NPPF”—
national planning policy framework—
“for a valley town where the only place left to build is at the top of valley sides, and ancient narrow streets give little scope for cycle routes—certainly not a joined-up network.”
Having once been a keen cyclist in Berkhamsted, I can confirm that the difficulty of getting around means that my poor bike has been left locked up. Sarah from Berkhamsted asks:
“What’s the point of building new houses if there are no pavements for people to walk or safe roads for cars to use?”
Like in my hon. Friend’s constituency, there are all kinds of speculative developments in Surrey Heath, but one of the greatest challenges we face is the potential relocation of Frimley Park hospital. When I asked about the budget that had been set aside for the creation of new roads, railway stations, road improvements and road-widening schemes, I was told that no money had been set aside and that any costs might come, notionally, from a contingency fund. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is no way to use a contingency fund? If Government bodies cannot get it right, what hope should we have for private developers?
Quite frankly, I find it shameful. It is no wonder that communities are pushing back on development if they see that the infrastructure is not there, and if they cannot get around and cannot get a GP appointment, yet they see thousands of new homes being built. No wonder public trust has been lost.
I could not cover every application across Harpenden and Berkhamsted, but the story is repeated across our corner of Hertfordshire and, indeed, up and down the country. I thank the thousands of constituents who have contacted me. Thousands have written to me about their concerns—94 alone with comments for this debate—and, as I said, several have joined us in the Public Gallery.
Here is the nugget of the issue: if I could say, hand on heart, that top-down planning would, in 10 years’ time, truly deliver affordable, sustainable housing, and houses that local teenagers like Hannah could afford, if I could look her in the eyes and tell her she is wrong about not being able to afford a home, and if I could say that the infrastructure would be built, that developers would not squeeze out of their commitments and that trains and buses would catch up and be up to scratch, I would be making very different arguments. But I cannot.
The latest NPPF makes it clear that transport planning and infrastructure should be designed in at the outset, but my rural constituency has seen continuous large-scale development outside towns, from which it takes 25 minutes to walk into a town centre. There are no buses. It is not like London where, after waiting five minutes, a bus turns up; a person can wait two hours and nothing turns up. Does my hon. Friend agree that the NPPF needs to allocate funding, on top of the commitment to make sure that transport is considered at the outset?
I come back to the promise that I would like to make to Hannah but cannot. Given that the average house price in Berkhamsted is over £650,000, and in Harpenden is more than £900,000, and given that last year the median new build price across the constituency was £747,500, so-called affordable homes—an average house—in expensive postcodes like ours, priced at 80% of market value, still cost more than half a million pounds. How on earth can we say to local people that they are sacrificing green belt so that their children or grandchildren can afford to buy? Local people know that is not the truth, which is why they are pushing back.
Local people understand the need for housing, but they cannot understand why powers are being taken away from them, top-down targets are pushing expensive homes on to communities that need genuinely affordable housing, and precious landscapes are being sacrificed. They cannot understand why Labour have not learned the lessons from the last Government. Communities will again be left without the transport infrastructure they need, and local people will be forced to move away. I call on the Minister and the Government to hear our calls for infrastructure-first and community-led development. It is the least that our communities deserve.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) for giving me the opportunity to talk about one of my favourite topics—public transport, or the lack thereof.
As other rural MPs in the room will know, improving local transport links is a never-ending discussion, particularly in a constituency such as North West Leicestershire that only has a bus service to rely on. We have no passenger rail at all, so everybody needs to travel by road.
Off the back off 14 years of austerity forced upon us by the coalition and then the previous Conservative Government, we need to consider the context that our community has been growing throughout that time. Alongside the destruction of our public services, libraries, Sure Starts and day services, our public transport was cut by 62%.
Planning developments and local transport are about understanding the population we have, as well as the future population. When talking about planning, we have to consider the impact, particularly in my constituency, of huge shed expansion in the industrial sector.
I speak to local residents in Heather regularly, a village in North West Leicestershire. They are just a stone’s throw away from Ibstock, a developing town. Many have told me that when they first moved to Heather, they did not need to use public transport regularly, but knowing they could get a bus meant they had a service they could rely on. Now, as they are getting older, their needs have changed, but the public transport in Heather is long gone. Demand fluctuates, but we are not evaluating that quickly enough or planning for the long term, so when the demography of a town or an estate changes, we are reliant on the community fighting for themselves to get services in place, rather than bus services reflecting the needs of that changing community.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) for securing this really important debate.
In my experience, nothing erodes public confidence in the planning system faster than development that is delivered with the promise of appropriate infrastructure that never materialises. People are often accepting and understanding of new homes being built if it is done in a thoughtful and considered way. What they are not willing to accept is development pushing local residents out of catchment areas for schools, it becoming impossible for them to see their GP, their homes starting to flood regularly, and no longer being able to get a seat on the train on the way to work. In my constituency, we face huge amounts of development with an absolutely ridiculous doubling of housing targets, all while London’s target comes down. Unfortunately, I see no signs of adequate investment in our local public transport to accompany this ludicrous target.
As Members will be aware, the Government’s draft revised national planning policy framework is heavily tilted towards encouraging development around stations. I understand the logic to that. If we want to reduce car dependency and create opportunity, we have to build near public transport. To maximise the use of existing infrastructure, we have to build in more urban areas that are already well connected. If we want to protect high-quality green belt, we have to densify close to existing settlements. Those are sensible propositions, but the NPPF is too broad brush and does not discern between those bits of land close to stations that fit with these objectives and those that do not.
Let us take Kingswood station in my constituency, for example. There is high-quality green-belt land nearby, yet the train service is far from ideal, there is no timetabled bus service and there are plentiful other brownfield sites and, indeed, greenfield sites that would be much better to build on first. I recognise the good intentions behind that change, and I support looking at land close to train stations first, but additional parameters are required to act as an appropriate filter to protect villages such as Kingswood. If the planning system is going to prioritise developments near stations above all other considerations, it must also be accompanied by extra investment and funding in transport capacity. If the infrastructure is not there or not credibly planned, the answer should be no. That approach would enable growth at genuinely suitable hubs while protecting small villages.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I, too, thank the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) for securing today’s debate, which brings together so many of us who have a shared passion for aligning local transport with development.
I can understand why so many colleagues have come here today to raise concerns about future developments and how they see new properties as adding pressure to local transport, but I join my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack) in pointing out that many rural communities are already missing vital transport links for our existing residents. In Shropshire, we lost over 65% of our local buses under the last Government. Two out of every three buses were deleted. Imagine what that did to the largest inland county in this country. We now have communities that are isolated, residents who are lonely, and vital services, such as health, shops and community, that are just out of reach for so many.
Like many others here, one of my biggest challenges since becoming an MP has been how to help local transport partners work together to build back our transport infrastructure. I would like to draw the Minister’s attention to the opportunity that comes with new housing developments—not just the opportunity to secure funding and plans for more buses, trains, bus stops and networks, but opportunity that runs in the opposite direction. A couple of colleagues have mentioned the change to planning infrastructure, but when we consider strategic housing developments in our local plans, we need to reconsider the opportunities for maximising housing and development close to existing transport infrastructure.
The Rail Industry Association produced an influential report on this issue last October called “Station Investment Zones: A new model for investment in transport, housing and growth”. The argument from the industry is that well-connected stations already offer economic opportunity as engines of growth and that transport or local government landowners could unlock sites near stations, trams, buses or transport hubs to offer hyper-connected housing as infill.
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The new methodology for calculating housing supply has hit St Albans council particularly hard. Its targets have almost doubled, from 855 to 1,660 homes per year, and the numbers in Dacorum have gone from 1,016 to 1,380 homes per year. Both those increased figures will have to be dealt with in further local plans, because they do not even include the massive housing development that we are seeing now.
The changes have left us facing substantial housing sites, such as the 1,400 homes in the Marshcroft development east of Tring, the 850 homes at South Berkhamsted and the more than 700 proposed homes in north-east Harpenden. The Marshcroft development alone would increase the population of Tring by a potential 40%. As Lucy from Tring says:
“It makes no sense…our roads can’t handle it.”
The town got its market charter over 700 years ago, and it has the roads to match. It is also buttressed against the Chilterns national landscape.
I warned the Government from the outset that their plans for development on grey-belt land would hand the advantage to developers rather than communities, which is exactly what has happened. The unclear definition of the grey belt creates a wide-open door for developers, not for communities. Crucially, by focusing protections on towns, the guidance leaves villages, which often have fewer services and weaker infrastructure, far more vulnerable to unplanned development. In Berkhamsted, developers have used the grey-belt back door to push applications adjacent to allocated sites. For example, the grey-belt back door was used in the Haresfoot farm application to get permission to build on green-belt land.
The situation in Redbourn is even more alarming. The latest proposal is a 1,000-home development that is not in the local plan but claims grey-belt status. If that is combined with other sites, Redbourn faces a pipeline of development that could see its population grow by over 70%. As Jen from Redbourn says:
“I am hugely concerned that there is no local democracy that allows villages to stop disproportionate housing development.”
Catherine from Redbourn is equally clear:
“When it comes to measuring green belt, brown belt and grey belt land, villages should not be measured in the same way as a town. This is green-belt land with rare chalk streams, water vole and flora that you don’t find in Europe—it should be protected.”
Redbourn is precisely the kind of village with less infrastructure that has been left more exposed by grey-belt development. Will the Minister speak with colleagues from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to address the top-down practices that take powers and critical infrastructure away from communities?
Although the previous Conservative administrations left Dacorum and St Albans without adopted local plans, which left our area ripe for speculative development, Liberal Democrat councils in the area have worked hard to finally get local plans to the examination stage, but while the plans remain in inspectors’ hands, the Government give no protection from unplanned development. Despite continuous calls on the Government to help to protect us, we have been left exposed.
All that is before we even consider the wider pressures bearing down on local councils, which leave the looming threat of Government takeover when too many appeals are overturned. Nor have we covered the lack of teeth for neighbourhood plans, or the proposals in the planning legislation to make it easier to build near train stations. All these rules put the power in developers’ hands and take it away from communities—so no wonder developers are popping up across the constituency. Does the Minister agree that tackling unplanned development and giving communities more power is vital when preparing transport infrastructure?
Underlying all this is a structural failure in how infrastructure can be planned. The speculative and unplanned development I have outlined sits entirely outside of planned growth modelling. That means that unplanned sites are assessed site by site, in isolation, and with no cumulative way of seeing what they mean together for the roads, buses, rail, cycling, schools, GPs or dentists that communities need. It is wholly inadequate, fragmented and reactive.
Local plans cannot account for national infrastructure decisions, either. The Luton airport expansion, the Universal Studios theme park, and even a rail freight development, approved by the Government, have taken the place of thousands of potential homes elsewhere, and cannot be accounted for. When councils do secure investment for infrastructure with section 106 money or the community infrastructure levy, the current viability criteria mean they can often get out of building more affordable homes, or limit that investment.
Gill from Harpenden is direct, saying:
“The town has so many pinch points on already narrow roads that are already causing jams.”
As I said, the towns and villages in my constituency are old, and many of the roads were built for horse-drawn traffic. Berkhamsted is a hilly place, but there is not a single mention of topography in the national planning framework. Yet the loose definition of “severe”, in terms of cumulative impact tests for roads and traffic, leaves another door wide open for developers.
If someone cannot get around by car, perhaps they can use the bus. Well, that is a whole other story. Under the Conservatives in Hertfordshire, we saw a 56.5% reduction in bus mileage between 2017 and 2023—the biggest reduction in England. That has left us with inaccessible areas where people need a car to get around. The 307 bus in Redbourn runs to Harpenden station only from 9 am, with the last departure at 2 pm, and on Sundays there is no service at all. There is no direct bus connection to local secondary schools. Catherine from Redbourn says it plainly:
“While you might have had to wait ten minutes in London for a bus, here we have three buses a day to Harpenden—you cannot rely on the buses.”
In Berkhamsted, we worked with local campaigners to bring back the 500 bus every half hour, but the service stops at 7 pm. It is a similar story in Tring. I once tried to get a bus across my constituency, from Wheathampstead to Berkhamsted, but what should have been a 30-minute drive took four hours. The recommended route from Harpenden to Berkhamsted is actually via London and costs £35 one way.
Hannah, a sixth-form student from Harpenden, makes the point well:
“Public transport allows me as a young person to visit friends and do activities outside the House—it gives me independence.”
She adds:
“I have never considered living in Harpenden in the future, because it would be far too expensive to buy a place to live.”
That is a double failure by this Government that needs to be heard. Young people say they cannot afford to stay and cannot get around even if they could.
So what about the train? In the last four weeks, only seven out of 122 daily trains from Harpenden to London ran 100% on time. From Berkhamsted to London, only three out of 78 daily departures ran 100% on time, and from Tring there were also only three. From driver availability issues to Thameslink core infrastructure failures and a bottleneck around Croydon, it seems that things will only get worse as pressures grow around the Thameslink line from Bedford to Brighton. Beyond housing development, I have mentioned the other pressures from the expansion of Luton and Gatwick airports, and the Universal Studios development.
There is a two-track bottleneck through central London, and when it fails, the whole line fails. Govia Thameslink Railway has asked the Government for funding for a back-up system; has that been agreed? What are the Government doing to work with rail operators to prepare for the pressures that are building up on the Thameslink line from Bedford to Brighton?
When we talk about connecting new housing developments to leisure, jobs, education, medical and other services, the context is that we have so many fewer services than we had 15 years ago. Context is important in these transport conversations. Planning for change and growth is at the very core of what we are discussing. In fact, planning a new housing estate feels so much more straightforward when the numbers needed to create a new school or doctor’s surgery are taken into consideration. It might not be easy, but we understand the maths that sits behind it. However, when it comes to public transport, it is much less cohesive. It seems a complete waste that public transport is lagging behind in a much more piecemeal discussion. We are not planning for change; we are responding to it, and that is very frustrating for our local communities.
We had a newish development in my community that already involved the enhancement of a new school and the opportunity to extend the doctor’s surgery. As part of the planning conditions, residents were given a six-month bus pass, but it is of little use: there are no buses, so what is the point? We are not getting true, seamless connection between our new developments and our towns. Our towns need those new communities to survive and thrive. Any building in existing town centres does not create good connectivity and extra footfall. It actually means an impairment to growth. Quite often, the bus network does not serve newer estates that sit just outside our town centres, which means that residents are cut off from the town centre, and the town centre is cut off from them. They simply never visit. Therefore, the opportunity to help our town centres is lost. I was proud to sit on the Bus Services Bill Committee, and the Government’s commitment to get more money to local authorities for public transport is clear. However, the difficult part of that is trying to ensure that the money is actually being best utilised, as we are not planning for change; we are reacting to it.
There needs to be a better link between where people live and where services are required. We are never going to be able to plan for everything, but I would like to hear the Minister’s view on how bus services in the long term can be a vehicle for growth and create clearer community connections.
On Gatwick expansion, I am concerned that Gatwick airport has been given the green light to operate a second runway without sufficient thought being given to what that means for surrounding public transport. Reigate station sits on a busy community artery, yet the Department for Transport has said nothing about the impact that millions of extra passengers heading down to Gatwick will have on the line or the station.
The most transformational improvement for Reigate station would be achieved by extending its platform to allow additional and more efficient services. Back in 2020, a Network Rail scheme proposed the creation of a 12-car turnback platform to allow Thameslink trains to stop at the station and avoid the need for splitting and joining of trains at Redhill. I ask the Government to reconsider that project in the light of Gatwick expansion. Redhill is impacted, too, so I would be grateful if the Minister clarified what plans are in place for these stations and lines to meet the need for additional capacity and more frequent and reliable services. This is also a good opportunity to ensure that the facilities at those stations are fit for the 21st century and fully accessible, so that everyone can use them.
On the topic of accessibility, I would like to raise the plight of Earlswood station. It serves a growing area, and one that could come under even greater pressure if the planning system encourages heavier development around it, yet Earlswood’s infrastructure is already creaking. Things have got so bad that the underpass was recently badly flooded and had to be pumped out. People are literally taking their shoes and socks off to get the train, and those with buggies, older residents and disabled passengers are effectively blocked from travelling. I am pleased to see that Network Rail has now replaced the pumps to help to address the situation, but there is still more to do in the long run.
In closing, if the Government want public support for housing growth, they must improve support for public transport as well. Those two things must go hand in hand.
There is another benefit from that approach—one that I have also heard Ministers mention. By investing in our station quarters, we can lift what can sometimes become forgotten corners of our towns and turn them into more brightly lit, well-used areas, with more footfall, amenities and bustle. Let us bring people back to the community hubs that these areas should always have been. That would also deliver more passengers for rail operators such as Great British Railways and reduce unnecessary car journeys, helping the modal shift that we are all trying to drive forward to reduce congestion and pollution in town centres such as Shrewsbury. I would love to see that type of development near my train station in Shrewsbury. Let us get more shops, cafés, streetlights, ATMs and footfall to complement the services that are already offered there.
I was therefore delighted that the Government amended planning policy in the NPPF to include a presumption in favour of suitable developments within 800 metres of a well-connected station. It is the ultimate example of joined-up Government: cross-departmental policy delivering much-needed housing where we already have transport infrastructure and in turn helping to fund more transport for the areas where housing will need to be increased, which Members have talked about today. On behalf of the people of Shrewsbury, I say to the Minister: thank you very much for bringing forward a sensible and impactful policy that will help all of us in the search for transport alongside housing.