I thank the Minister and her officials for coming, and I thank her in advance, because I am hoping for an excellent, useful response. I realise that I am picking on a specific planning case that is under an inspector’s review, so the Minister can only respond in the round and not to the specific case.
I came to London from an area of open green hills, bush, trees—the lot—from horizon to horizon, and arriving in east London was more than a shock. I then moved to Mole Valley, so I am particularly delighted that the voters of Mole Valley have returned me as their MP several times.
Mole Valley is south of London, bordering on the M25 with Epsom and Ewell, with Guildford to the west and Gatwick to the east, and it is halfway to Worthing going south. What distinguishes it from London is the green open spaces. There is the famous Box Hill, and farms, commons and parks, and they are all amalgamated together—glued together—and retained by the green-belt land. It is a lovely place to live. The residents live there because it has two small towns and many villages spread among the green.
The local planning council is Mole Valley District Council. It is liberal—no, wait a minute: it is controlled by the Liberals; there is nothing liberal about it at all. The last ratified local plan for Mole Valley was dated 2009. I understand that more than 90% of English local authorities have adopted and are up to date with their local plans. Liberal Mole Valley is among the errant 10% of local authorities, which leaves it vulnerable, as it is finding now, to developers.
In May 2019, the Liberals took control of Mole Valley District Council and with that the responsibility for producing the draft local plan. It was produced between May 2019 and February 2020 and passed for consultation by the council executive and the council without a vote. It contains 30 or more green-belt sites— I am told that; I have not counted them—and the inclusion of many, if not most of them was vehemently opposed by local residents. That was not just those next to the green-belt sites, but those within what New Zealanders would call “cooee”.
I recognise that the proportion of land protected from development in Mole Valley is considerable, and, relatively speaking, the quality of brownfield sites free for development is small in comparison, but it is not impossible to increase the number of dwellings on those brownfield sites. I know from my own time in inner London that with imagination and the new rules and regulations on building, it is possible to increase density and height and adapt those sites.
It has been claimed that the percentage of green-belt sites that the Liberal plan will remove from protected status is small. However, that is a bit like my saying to a cancer patient that the prospect of a long-term cure is 97%—it sounds great, unless they are in the 3%. That is what is happening with green-belt sites. The figures are small in percentage terms, but if they affect someone who chose to live there in part because of those green-belt sites, it is bad news.
The plan went to inspection, but, as last May’s local elections arrived, the Liberals asked the inspector to stall her inquiry, and she did. The Liberals announced on their election leaflets that they would remove the green-belt sites from the draft plan. They did not. Last month, at a full council meeting, the council faced a decision on three choices provided by its planning officers. The first was that the plan be withdrawn for a complete rethink. The second was to continue with the inquiry but withdraw the green-belt sites. The third was to continue with the planned inquiry with the 30 or more green-belt sites included, which the Liberals said they had redrawn but had not.
Just before the council met, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety, being aware that a restart is probably the worst option, wrote to the council to tell it that it had to keep the plan in the system; it could not withdraw it. The Liberal council, in a classic Liberal, duplicitous way, chose to proceed with the inquiry with the green-belt sites—which it said it had removed but had not—still in the plan.
The need for a clear plan is obvious: it would protect sites that are not appropriate for development, but also set out development sites that are considered suitable. The current situation with the Mole Valley plan has come back to bite the Liberals. I will give one example, but there are others. A site near Dorking called Sondes farm is a green-belt site that was put in the draft local plan by the Liberals for its green-belt protection to be removed. In spite of that, the Liberal council did an about-turn and refused a developer’s application for housing on the grounds that it was a green-belt site, ignoring the fact that it was going to withdraw that protection. That refusal was in line with what a large number of local people wanted to happen. They wished to support Sondes farm as a green-belt site. Perhaps they were unaware that the Liberals had in effect already given it away.
Not surprisingly, the developer, having faced a refusal, took its application to appeal and won, with the inspector pointing out that the site was down in the plan to be taken out of the green belt. Others in the portfolio will be in the same situation; one of them is not very far away from that position now.
My ask of the Minister is that she re-emphasises the importance to her, to Ministers and to the Government—certainly to me and most of my residents—of the protection offered by the green belt, that the removal of that protection from a site can happen only in exceptional circumstances, and that those circumstances do not include housing. This is a long-standing situation. It applied when I was a planning Minister, and I think it still applies now. It is not specific to Mole Valley—it applies across the country—and I cannot but emphasise how important it is for so many in Mole Valley and many other areas throughout the country that the strength of protection for the green belt is retained.