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3 Feb 2009 : Column 182WH—continued
Garden land development is at the heart of middle England, which is in part why it is so hotly debated. It concerns a group of people on which all political parties direct a tremendous amount of political focus, hence the tremendous effort by certain parties to expend what is arguably a disproportionate amount of political time on trying to win the argument, to present themselves as the saviours of garden land and to reassure affected neighbourhoods that they are on side. There is plenty of opportunity, therefore, for claims, counter-claims, point scoring and bandwagon jumping.
Having got over the first hurdle of taking various interventions, I hope to give a potted history of what has been happening in recent years, an assessment of the impact of the difficulties of classifying gardens as brownfield sites, and the primary problems associated with garden land development. I shall then examine the origins of the modern-day trend towards garden land development and give a short narrative on issues that I have raised over the years regarding garden land development and similar development in the small market and rural towns in my constituency. I shall also scrutinise closely some of the more recent campaigning before coming to my concluding remarks.
With regard to chronology, these issues have been debated many times. I particularly commend my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) for having listened to and been engaged in many debates in the House on planning and development. On 19 July 2005, following the general election, she introduced a ten-minute Bill entitled the Local Government and Planning (Parkland and Windfall Development) Bill. She hit the nail on the head when she proposed amending planning policy guidance note 3 to designate gardens as greenfield land, with an exception for extensions into back gardens. She suggested that such land would be developed last under the sequential test and highlighted the importance of protecting parkland and amenity land in town centres.
On 1 February 2006, the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) introduced a Bill that was similar, but more narrowly focused on private gardens. On 20 October 2006, my hon. Friend’s Bill had its Second Reading debate, which was preceded, on 21 June 2006, by an Opposition day debate led by the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman). The Opposition motion began:
“That this House shares the concern of communities throughout the United Kingdom over the scale of residential development on garden land”.
A number of issues were set out, particularly with regard to the designation of garden land as brownfield sites.
On 2 February 2007, the Second Reading of a private Member’s Bill introduced by the hon. Lady, the Land Use (Gardens Protection etc) Bill, was debated. On 18 March 2008, she introduced, under the ten-minute rule, the Land Use (Garden Protection) Bill, which I co-sponsored.
The issue was hotly debated during the passage of the Bill that became the Planning Act 2008, through which there was an attempt to amend the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and subsequent Acts to make local authorities have special regard to
“the desirability of preserving gardens, groups of gardens and urban green spaces.”
An amendment to that effect was made in the House of Lords on 12 November 2008, but it was successfully struck out by the Government when the Commons considered Lords amendments to the Bill on 24 November 2008. Ministers promised at that stage that there would be a review of the impact of garden land development. There has been some progress, in that the review’s remit has been announced, but I would be interested to hear what progress is being made with the review.
Many statistics have been traded on the impact of garden land development. Although the Government have met their target of increasing the proportion of development on brownfield sites, it is clear that many of those developments have involved garden land. Looking at the statistics, it has been difficult, even in my area, to draw out the impact that garden land development has had, unless one analyses individual sites. However, it is clear that there has been a significant impact in my area.
The main problem with garden land development has been well highlighted in previous debates. Such development contradicts the established British view of what towns and cities should be. The Town and Country Planning Association, Britain’s oldest planning charity, was founded in 1899 by Sir Ebenezer Howard. At that time, it was called the Garden Cities Association, and its purpose was to promote the idea of the garden city. Such a perspective of towns and cities is well established in British life. We do not see towns and cities as simply urban jungles without any green space, but as places where there are green lungs and wedges, and where gardens are protected. There is a recognition that such areas make a valuable contribution to the life of our towns and cities. As has been highlighted, garden land development can have an impact on biodiversity, drainage, climate change and aesthetics, and the creation of such developments can lead to neighbourhood conflicts. Also, as hon. Members have said, such developments do not necessarily address the urgent need for affordable housing, because, often, they are below the quota level on which local authorities insist.
The origins of garden land development go back further than 1997; in fact, they go back to 1985 when, under a Conservative Government, there was a change to the existing definition of brownfield land for the purpose of land use planning statistics. In my part of the world, there was a rush of successful applications to develop gardens during the late 1980s. The pressure arose because the message went out that people with large gardens were sitting on a gold mine that they should realise. The pattern emerged at that stage, so it is not new and did not first arise in the late 1990s.
Clearly, additional pressure was applied when the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), who was then in charge of the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions, set targets for councils to prioritise building new homes on brownfield sites in 1998. The Government met their target of building 60 per cent. on previously developed land in 2001, years earlier than planned.
A number of problems have been created in my part of the world by intense waves of excessive development, particularly in the mid to late 1980s, the late 1990s and throughout the past 10 years. I have received many
letters from constituents, but I will read one from Naomi Cliff of St. Ives, which was sent to me on 18 July 2007. She wrote:
“We are constantly seeing inappropriate modern buildings rising up in our historic town on the smallest of plots and in the most inappropriate areas; mainly catering for the second home market as they make no provision for affordability and are architecturally misplaced.”
I have raised the issue on behalf of my constituents for many years. On 25 October 2005, I received a letter from the right hon. Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who was then a Minister in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, explaining:
“Classifying gardens as ‘Residential’ was...not a creation of the current Government. This definition was later incorporated into PPG3 in 2000. The Land Use Change statistics classification has not changed since 1985.”
The district council felt that it did not have the power to resist the kind of developments that I have described. When I showed a copy of that letter to the head of sustainable development and improvement at Penwith district council, Mr. Barton, he wrote back to me on 22 May 2006 saying:
“however, it is still evident from appeal decisions received that inspectors are placing much weight to the brownfield case.”
That letter concerns garden land development within my constituency.
The Government adapted what is now planning policy statement 6 in April 2007. In a letter to me dated 19 September 2007, the right hon. Member for Pontefract and Castleford wrote:
“Planning Policy Statement 3 (PPS3) goes further and gives local authorities more flexibility to shape new development according to the needs of their area, and allows them to make the decisions on where new housing should be located. It makes clear local authorities can put strong emphasis on protecting urban green spaces, parks and play areas within their plans...The new policy statement gives them greater powers to restrict garden development if they have alternative viable land available and the level of development within residential areas is much higher than their plan.”
The problem with that is that while alternative sites had been identified by local authorities, developers were unfortunately not prepared to bring them forward. The five-year development of land was available and planning permissions had been granted, but that put pressure back on garden land development, despite the best efforts of local authorities to find development land.
Susan Kramer: Is my hon. Friend aware that finding alternative sites in intensely populated areas such as south-west London is near impossible, even when trying to build new schools that are required? That caveat is entirely unsuitable for an area where population densities are already incredibly high; it merely adds more pressure, and is not necessarily an appropriate protection.
Andrew George: I certainly hope that the Minister will take those comments on board. My hon. Friend has a great deal more experience than me of the particular planning pressures in areas such as south-west London. I can only comment from my experiences of attempting to assist constituents in west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, which I represent and where I come from.
After I raised that issue with the sustainable development and design manager, Andrew England, from Penwith district council, he responded, in a letter of 25 July 2007:
“However, as the planning legislation currently states the plot in question”—
in this case, another plot in St. Ives—
“is regarded as brownfield land where the principle of development is supported. Inevitably given the national issues surrounding the need for more housing this places greater pressure upon such sites, unless further greenfield land is to be released for development.”
As I have said, the local authority had already identified plenty of greenfield development space for developers, but it was not being brought forward—hence the pressure for development on garden land.
Of course, the pressure is not only on garden land. I was rather shocked to receive a letter from Strutt and Parker, which presumed that I owned the offices that I occupied in Belgravia street in Penzance. The letter told me that
“There is a strong demand from developers for both green and brown field sites”,
and that Strutt and Parker were able to
“guide you through the planning system; co-ordinate other professional advisers in gaining planning permission and dealing with section 106 agreements; and consequently dispose of your property with the intention of”
optimising its value. Unfortunately, my landlady got hold of that information, and I was promptly turfed out of my office, which was turned into flats. The problem was that the car park that was available for the offices that I occupied had 10 spaces and that land is being developed as well. The parking pressures in that area are so intense for local people that adding further flats there without the provision of any further parking or amenity land is storing up serious problems. I certainly hope that the Minister is prepared to take that issue on board.
In dealing with all these issues, I want to spend a small amount of time concentrating on the need to be consistent in campaigns. I apologise for going on, but I have taken a number of interventions. I first became aware of the Conservatives’ campaign when the local residents group in my constituency alerted me to an unsolicited letter from the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells on House of Commons headed paper dated 17 May 2006, following a debate on his ten-minute Bill, saying:
“the Parliamentary rules give the Bill another chance on the 14 July. This is a precious opportunity for the Government to change its mind.”
The implication of that perhaps led to the storing up of expectation among many constituents—perhaps even among people throughout the country—that a ten-minute Bill was likely to be passed by Parliament. A lot of Liberal Democrat Members agree with the proposal that the designation by the Conservatives of gardens as brownfield development land in 1985 should be withdrawn.
On 2 February 2007, the then shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Meriden, said during the Second Reading of her private Member’s Bill, the Land Use (Gardens Protection etc) Bill:
“The only people who are not losing out from the rush to develop back gardens are the developers and land speculators. For them, England is literally becoming a treasure island.”—[Official Report, 2 February 2007; Vol. 456, c. 473.]
On 1 October 2007, at the Conservative party conference, the shadow housing spokesperson, the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), said:
“I know that you share my concern over the practice of garden grabbing, so we’ll change planning law to recognise that brownfield does not mean your neighbour’s garden.”
On 28 November 2008, following the defeat of the Conservative Earl Cathcart’s amendment to the Planning Bill, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) was reported in The Daily Telegraph as saying:
“Labour’s rules have given a green light for garden grabbing and rich pickings for developers...leading to leafy gardens being dug up and replaced with soulless and ugly blocks of flats...Our proposals would increase protection for gardens”.
They say all that, but in my constituency in May 2007 the Conservative party headquarters applied for six flats in its own back garden. [Interruption.] Of course, it was not making the application, but a company made up of a former Conservative councillor and a prospective parliamentary candidate was. Earlier that year, the hon. Member for Meriden had said:
“Such applications are divisive, because they set neighbour against neighbour.” —[Official Report, 2 February 2007; Vol. 456, c. 473.]
Lo and behold, that application certainly did so, because the neighbours in that setting, in Alexandra road and Hawkins road in Penzance, were up in arms against that development and pointed out to the local Conservatives that the party had made a lot of claims to be the saviours of garden land. At the same time it was applying for planning permission to build in its own garden in a conservation area.
Mr. Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con): The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the planning application for the garden land at Alexandra house—the headquarters —is before Penwith district council. Given that all six Conservative councillors on the planning committee of Penwith district council will declare a pecuniary interest and take no part in the debate, is he saying that the remaining councillors, including Councillors Ruhrmund, Mates, Cook, Jack Dixon and Terry Tonkin—all Liberal Democrats—will somehow make a decision outside planning law that is improper, irregular or potentially unlawful? Does he believe in local democracy or not?
Andrew George: I absolutely believe in local democracy. I am not going to comment on the merits or otherwise of that particular planning application because it is up to the local authority and its planning committee to decide how it will determine it.
In fact, the hon. Gentleman invites me to point out that the planning application of May 2007 was withdrawn with a certain amount of red face on the part of the Conservatives. They assured local residents that they had apologised for it, and local residents felt satisfied at that point that they did not need to take any further action, but they drew the matter to my attention and I took it up with the planning department. I could have made political hay with that issue in the House and scored a lot of political points. However, I am interested in the protection of garden land, not turning such issues into a political dogfight. Once the application had been
withdrawn, that was it as far as I was concerned, which is why, later on in March 2008, I was content to sponsor the Bill of the hon. Member for Meriden when requested. I felt that we must stand above party political tribalism and not attempt to make party political points on the issue.
I was happy to support the Conservatives’ private Member’s Bill introduced in March 2008, but imagine my disappointment—the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) has just drawn attention to this—when I discovered that, during that time, the Conservatives had indirectly sold the land to a developer and that a planning application by that developer had come before the planning committee in November.
That application is about to be determined and, as I say, I am not going to comment on the merits of it. However, the point is that it is all very well masquerading as the saviour of garden land, but Conservative Front Benchers were informed by residents in my constituency that that was going on at the time and they received no response from them whatsoever. The Conservatives had backed down shamefacedly in June 2007 when it was pointed out to them that what had happened directly contradicted everything on which they had been campaigning.
Residents in Hawkins road and Alexandra road in my constituency are much put out by the way in which the issue has been managed because not only was the garden sold to a developer, but the Conservatives negotiated a clawback clause. That means that if the development goes ahead and the planning application is successful, the Conservative association will secure for itself up to nearly £250,000. We need to be careful that what we say in this House is carried out by our foot soldiers on the ground in our constituencies. It is a matter of deep embarrassment for the Conservatives nationally and locally that this should have happened. I put my faith in the hon. Member for Meriden and the Front-Bench team because I was prepared to turn a blind eye to the mistake made in May 2007 and sponsor their Bill. I feel that they have seriously let me down and destroyed the trust I had that what happened was simply a blip—a mistake that they had made at that stage. I admit to making political mistakes and I have been shown to be naive in trusting the Conservatives at that stage and allowing them to go ahead in that way.
Mr. Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con): I am not clear whether the hon. Gentleman’s objection is to every proposal for development, or just some proposals.
Andrew George: Every planning application should come forward on its own merits, and I am not debating the merits of one application over another. All I am saying is that that planning application was at one time considered unacceptable for that area. The residents were up in arms about it, it was withdrawn and an apology was given, but there has been an attempt to bring forward the development by the back door.
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