Housing Development: Cumulative Impacts

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing this important debate. It is a truth universally acknowledged that an MP in possession of a majority, however big, must be in want of a debate, so I am full of admiration for the right hon. Gentleman staying tomorrow to debate Jane Austen in Westminster Hall. As for myself, I am hoping to get away before that, so this will be my last appearance before Christmas. I therefore take the opportunity to wish hon. Members, the House staff who look after us so amazingly well, the officials, yourself, Mr Twigg, and even the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) a very merry Christmas, although I know he would prefer that my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) were here instead of me.

I say with some hesitation that I am hoping to go home before that, because it has been something of a week for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. I am not quite sure how the Minister is still standing—he is sitting down now, but must need a break. Knowing the Minister’s prodigious amount of activity this week, perhaps tomorrow we will have three Bills and two White Papers coming out and I will be brought back here, but hopefully not. Yesterday, we were debating quarrying and planning—it was a blast. I did not know that I would be getting up and sitting down so many times on MCHLG business this week, but one could say that the Chairman of Ways and Means shapes our destinies, rough-hew them as we may.

I will move on to the more serious points of the debate about the cumulative impact of housing development. I fear that it is worse than the right hon. Member for East Hampshire surmises, because although I remember from my A-level economics that, in a perfect market, increasing supply should reduce price, we need to remember that in any locality in the country, we do not have a perfect market in house building. We have usually one supplier, maybe two, controlling the supply of homes to the market, drip-feeding them to sustain their prices. Any private house builder that went into business to reduce prices would rightly be punished by their shareholders. Putting private house builders in charge of reducing house prices is a bit like putting Herod in charge of childcare. As another seasonal reference, I am forced to consider what would be the cumulative impact of stables being used under permitted development for change of use to emergency temporary accommodation for young mothers.

The point that I think the right hon. Gentleman is really getting to with cumulative impact is the prolific number of permissions that are coming about outside the plan-led process. The plan-led process is so important because it is where cumulative impacts can be properly gauged and established. Any development that is not in the local plan, unless it has an environmental impact assessment, is not going to carry out a cumulative impact assessment. That is why we are so concerned that the Government’s recent announcements will undermine that plan-led process, with so many loopholes. To take one example, there is the abolition of the town centre-first approach for retail development, but there are many others that will undermine that plan-led process.

There is a particular need to look at the cumulative impact when it comes to flooding. The Environmental Audit Committee has recommended that the Government revise the guidance on the cumulative impact for flooding for this very reason. Many of the developments being discussed will not carry out cumulative impact assessments because they are outside the local plan or are sub-EIA development. I ask the Minister whether and to what extent the Government will carry out that review. Flooding is a massive issue for Rockwell Green and Hilly Head in my Taunton and Wellington constituency, which has been flooded twice in the last five to 10 years. We need to see a proper cumulative impact assessment of flood impact and flood risk.

[Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)]

The cumulative impact of development in Tewkesbury is nothing less than a threat to the continuing viability of Tewkesbury as a permanent settlement. The Environmental Audit Committee recently produced a report on flood resilience in England. Would my hon. Friend join me in asking the Government if they will implement recommendation 89 to make water bodies statutory consultees on development?

[Gideon Amos]

My hon. Friend makes a massively important point—absolutely, they should be statutory consultees. He gives me the opportunity to raise an even more serious concern. From careful reading of the Government’s snappily titled consultation on statutory consultees, alongside the ministerial statement of 10 March this year, it appears—I hope the Minister can put me right—that they are considering cancelling and withdrawing the direction that prevents councils from granting planning permission, against the advice of the Environment Agency, in flood risk areas. They are certainly consulting on that basis, so I hope the Minister will clarify whether that is the intended approach and how many homes in flood risk areas he expects will be permitted, against the advice of the Environment Agency, if they go ahead with that change. It is a very serious matter and could affect areas across the country—not only Rockwell Green in my constituency, but places far further afield.

My hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) made excellent points about the need for cumulative impact to be properly considered. My hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne) felt that plan-led development in his constituency was in jeopardy. I agree: after yesterday’s announcement, I feel that plan-led development is in jeopardy everywhere. The Saunders Lane development in Woking is a classic example of where proper consideration of cumulative impact is required.

The Liberal Democrats would pursue a different approach. Cognisant of the market conditions that exist in relation to private house building, we would focus on public investment in a programme of 150,000 social and council rent homes. In fact, we have never met the housing figure of 300,000 per year, except when we have had a big programme of council and social housing. With that element missing, private house building has bubbled along at more or less similar levels; third sector housing has increased somewhat. The big missing element has been council and publicly funded social homes.

For the reasons that I have set out, without a massive injection of such homes, we cannot rely on private house builders to increase supply in any meaningful way, however many permissions above and beyond the 1.4 million homes that have planning permission already, but are not being built, are given out. That figure, as my hon. Friends have explained, so clearly and starkly demonstrates why the challenge is not the issuing of planning permissions, but how to get those permissions built out. We urge the Minister to use much stronger “use it or lose it” measures to tackle unbuilt permissions. I welcomed the statement that he made in the summer about taking forward such measures, but we have yet to see anything really happen in that regard.

We need to remember those who cannot afford homes, and that however many private house builders provide more private homes, 99% of them will be out of reach of people who cannot afford a first home. That is why we need there to be social homes, but we also need a new generation of rent-to-own homes, so that people can get on the home ownership ladder at an early stage in life.

With that, Mr Twigg, I once again wish you a merry Christmas.