| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. David Lidington (Aylesbury): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. Does he accept that in constituencies such as his, or mine on the fringe of the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty and green belt, there is reinforced pressure for development because they lie just beyond the fringe of areas where restraint is obligatory?
Mr. Evans: Of course I accept that. Because they enjoy the countryside in the area of outstanding natural beauty, people live as close as they can to it; it is on their doorstep. They do not realise that, as all this building is going on there, they are helping to scar and to encroach on AONBs and to damage the very thing that they love, so we have to be guarded about that.
On villages with surrounding AONBs, as I have said, in my constituency Barrow has taken on more than 200 houses. That does not sound like a lot, but it is double the size of the village. Clitheroe, another area around my constituency, is one of the larger market towns and it has taken on several hundred houses, which are dotted all over the place. Each application does not sound like an awful lot--some are for only about 70 or 100 houses--but they all take up different green-field sites dotted around the town.
One green-field site is taken up after another, although each application is for only one more green-field site. Over years, several green-field sites have been taken over. They are disappearing by stealth, and we must guard against such applications.
In Ribchester, a brown-field site has been used for extra housing: it is a mixed development of affordable housing and less affordable housing. I have no problems with that at all, although there was much concern among villagers about all the extra housing coming in. However, the new development has married well with the village.
Longridge has also given over some extra fields to housing. As the name would suggest, Fulwood--which is near the Preston end of the constituency, which is more urban--was at some stage a wood. Now we can drop the word "wood" and just have the word "full", because just four green-field sites are left.
The Commission for the New Towns owns those four fields. I and residents in the area have had many meetings with the CNT, trying to appeal to it. We know that it has an obligation to get the best price for the land, and one of the ways in which to do that is obviously to secure planning permission for houses on it, but we have asked the CNT to be a little compassionate and to have regard to all the extra housing that has been built in the Fulwood area--some "lungs" are necessary for all the people who have moved into the extra housing. We have had some constructive meetings with the CNT, and I hope that they will continue.
My constituency has also suffered from the fact that three large institutions have virtually all closed, apart from one that is now half in operation. They are former
mental institutions of the Victorian style, which housed 3,000 patients. As they have closed, they have become ripe for sell-off and for housing then to be built there. Because those large institutions were not too far away from other villages, which used to supply much of the work force, there is now tremendous pressure for the old hospitals to be flattened and for developments of 1,000 houses to be put on those areas, with little regard to the fact that there are only 500 houses in the neighbouring village.
Again, we ask the Minister to consider those sites carefully. No one is discounting the fact that, once the hospitals disappear, building can go on to the footprint of the old hospital site, but people resent green fields around the old hospital being given up so that extra housing can go on to those green-field sites as well, totally swamping the old villages, with little regard for the infrastructure, never mind the fact that doctors' surgeries and schools cannot cope with the extra numbers.
One of the deals is to say to developers, "You can put on these extra houses so long as you give us extra money to build an extra school." It is called planning gain. I plead with the Minister: there is such a thing as non-planning gain. One of the reasons why people go to live in or visit the countryside is because conditions in cities and towns are not replicated there. Certain people, as we have already heard, want to live in cities and towns, and we have to regenerate those areas to ensure that they can do so. It is done in other countries and we should be looking to do it more here. That will also work as a safety valve for less building in the countryside, so that people can come from cities and towns and enjoy the countryside as well.
I ask the Minister, therefore, to consider carefully those old hospital sites. Many other institutions are past their sell-by date and there is now tremendous pressure for them to be turned into something else. Another one, called Whittingham, an old mental institution, has been flattened and there is tremendous pressure to put 1,000 houses on that site as well. There are about 500 houses in the local village, and villagers are protesting. We have the support of the local council to ensure that the development is down to about 375 houses, so it is not true that we do not want any houses there. We accept that some building will take place, but we ask for sensitivity to ensure that the developments are as small as possible.
Ms Tess Kingham (Gloucester):
I support much of what my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) has said. However, representing an urban constituency, I view the issue of the 40,000 to 50,000-plus new homes to be developed in our county from a slightly different perspective.
Perhaps I feel a little sensitive that my constituency, the city of Gloucester, might be an easy target for the new developments and the tens of thousands of new homes that we have to accommodate on our doorstep, because the recent history of growth has been one of incremental development on the boundary of Gloucester. Often, housing estates have sprung up on the edges of the city, where the agenda has been set predominantly by developers rather than by the communities that have to sustain themselves for future generations.
I have another anecdotal, but perhaps briefer, example. Quedgeley in my constituency has about 10,000 residents. It is a big new development on the southern part of Gloucester city. It was originally developed as part of Stroud district, but the residents, being so close to Gloucester, needed to rely to on Gloucester for services, for transport and for everything that is required to sustain a community.
Eventually, therefore, the city boundaries were changed and Quedgeley became a welcome part of our city. However, the people there now feel let down because, over time, they have realised that they have nice houses, but little else. They have a poor transport network after bus deregulation, few community services, few pre-school services and poor shopping facilities.
Abbeymead is another big estate that has been bolted on to the east of the city. It comprises very nice houses--predominantly three to four-bedroom or smaller detached houses that attract young families. Yet, once again, it is a developer-led settlement rather than a community-led settlement, so residents have little access to good public transport. There is no pre-school provision for under-fives, and shopping facilities are bad. The developments that have sprung up around Gloucester have been bolted on to the edge of our city and are developer-led. We should be building communities, not simply houses.
Gloucester has learnt some sharp lessons from the new developments. The Government should provide a lead, centrally and at county level, and address the housing puzzle with more vision. The previous Government left us in a mess. We are now looking to the new Labour Government not simply to puzzle out where to put new houses, but to have a long-term strategic vision of where future communities should be.
It is often convenient for rural areas to avoid any development by shunting developments on to the urban fringes, but that is storing up problems for the future. I understand that those living in beautiful rural areas do not want large developments, but nor do we want to take what often seems to be the easy option--shoving new developments on to the edges of cities without any real consideration for the needs of the communities.
More than half Gloucestershire comprises areas of outstanding natural beauty or green belt land. It would be very difficult for Gloucester to absorb many more new developments by bolting them on to the edges of our cities without longer-term vision and a strategic approach to developing communities.
There are difficulties, because we have to rely on private developers. We know what we want in our cities--it has already been mentioned by Opposition Members. We want to develop inner-city areas--flats above shops, small low-cost housing units for single people and elderly people. We want some of the run-down areas in the city
to be redeveloped. However, we have to rely on private developers. When they can choose between regenerating an inner-city area with derelict streets or building profitable estates bolted on to the outskirts of cities, we all know which option they will take. We want development in Gloucester to be from the inside out, not bolted on the outskirts of the city.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |