Housing Development: Cumulative Impacts

John Milne Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for bringing attention to this important issue. As far as local planning authorities are concerned, what matters is not the national target for housing but the local target as set by the standard method. At heart, the standard method compares local house prices with local wages. With a little jiggery pokery, that produces a number allegedly related to local needs. Unfortunately, the standard method is an especially bad way to devise a housing strategy. It was bad when the Conservatives invented it, and it is no better now under Labour, now that the numbers have been tweaked to produce even higher results. Far from solving the housing crisis, the standard method is the direct reason why we now have 1.4 million unbuilt permissions—wrong permissions in the wrong places at unsaleable prices. The more we load further badly allocated permissions on to what is already there, the worse it will get.

My constituency of Horsham will be granting new fantasy permissions on the edges of estates that do not exist yet and may not do so for decades to come. Multiple new estates will be attempting to attract customers within a few miles of each other. Of course, each new estate slows down the build-out rate for what is already there, so the net gain in housing delivery is questionable. It is also the most wasteful way to use land that one could possibly come up with. Most local planning authorities, like Horsham, are obliged to choose from whatever sites private developers promote to them. As a result, we are plagued with edge-of-town suburban developments that cost too much when they are built, and take up too much land in the process. Relying on private developers to bring down house prices always was a grossly over-optimistic strategy. And guess what? It is not working.

In Horsham, we have also been faced with a unique additional circumstance called water neutrality. This started with a ruling by Natural England that came out of the blue, prohibiting any increase in water abstraction from our main source in the Arun valley, in case it compromised a rare wetland habitat. For a four-year period, Horsham district council was not allowed to approve any new development at all if it increased water consumption by so much as a single litre. Needless to say, that was a stiff challenge to meet. As a result, the council slipped from being one of the best in class for housing delivery to one of the worst today. Extraordinarily, throughout this whole period, planning inspectors continued to assess HDC against its centrally mandated house building target of a little more than 900 a year. They took no account at all of the reason why the houses could not be built. It was literally against the law for Horsham to obey the law, and that was a gross injustice that remains uncorrected.

A few weeks ago, just as abruptly as the water neutrality was imposed, it was lifted. Horsham has now been left exposed to almost unlimited speculative development because we are so very far from being able to show a five-year land supply—it is probably under one year now. The immediate major consequence has been the approval at appeal for 800 houses at a site known as Horsham golf and fitness village. That development was not included in the emerging local plan, because it was judged to fatally undermine the green gap between Horsham and Southwater. It has no school or clinic and is on the wrong side of a dual carriageway. It is also barely half a mile from a much larger potential site for 1,200 homes, known as West of Southwater. The Southwater site is in the local plan and does have the relevant facilities. That is the site that should be built on.

Because the Government have thus far refused to help Horsham out of its unique problem, we have a chaotic situation of planning by appeal. The whole strategic logic of plan-led development is in jeopardy in my area. There is no present way for Horsham district council to argue the impact of cumulative housing development, because there is always a presumption in favour of development for almost anything that comes forward, as previous speakers have mentioned.

In the worst case scenario, it could be several years before Horsham has an approved local plan, by which time untold damage will have been done to our strategic planning and countryside. Under the previous Government, Ministers seemed to confuse water neutrality with nutrient neutrality and nothing was done. To his credit, the current Minister understands the situation perfectly well. We still do not have a solution, however.

That is very disappointing because a solution would be easy to implement and could be done without compromising the Government’s overall housing ambitions. In fact, I believe it would deliver the Minster’s intentions more completely. The Minister has already kindly agreed to meet me in the new year. I hope we can have a satisfactory conversation and find a solution to this problem, which is grossly unfair to the people of Horsham. There has to be a way forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Holmes]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire and my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon made that point, I was about to make it, and the hon. Gentleman’s Liberal Democrat colleagues also made it, so there is universal acclaim for his claim, but it is also absolutely correct. I hope the Minister addresses that.

As the amount of housing increases, community infrastructure and resources must be expanded accordingly. That means more schools, GP surgeries, train and bus stations, hospitals, paved roads, bin collections and street lighting, to name just a few of the essentials. The list goes on and on; those are just some of the things we need to consider when looking at where to build. We must get better at prioritising those vital services, while recognising that not every development is right for the area it is proposed for.

We all know that under section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, as amended, local authorities can secure investment to fund new services and infrastructure in the local area, but the system is struggling to keep up with demand. Over a third of all section 106 agreements took longer than 12 months to finalise. Some 76% of local authorities reported an average timeline exceeding a year, and in over a third of councils it was over 500 days. In 2024-25, 45% of local planning authorities had agreements finalised that had taken over 1,000 days to complete. Dose the Minister agree that in order to unlock some of the housing that is needed, we need a simplified and standardised method for section 106 notices across the country? [Interruption.] He says yes from a sedentary position. I look forward to his affirming that in his comments shortly, but we would support that.

[John Milne]

I very much agree with what the hon. Gentleman is saying about the lack of infrastructure provision and with his previous comments on the failure to prioritise brownfield, but does he recognise that all those errors were inherent in the previous system under the Conservative Government? The problem is that they have not been corrected. They were always there, and that is why MPs across the country have been complaining.

[Paul Holmes]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman slightly. I remember that in the last Parliament, under the Conservative Government, there absolutely was a commitment from Planning Ministers and Secretaries of State to prioritise brownfield development. That was announced during our time in government by the former Prime Minister but three, and by a number of Ministers in the MHCLG.