Housing Targets: Planning System
Debate between Kelly Tolhurst and Gordon Henderson(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Gordon Henderson
My right hon. Friend is right. Whoever sets the targets, whether at national or local level, when it comes to planning permission for development, there should be an insistence that the infrastructure is put in place before the housing is started. That can be done, but too often is not. I can give an example: we had a major development on the Isle of Sheppey many years ago, which subsequently led to 2,000 houses. At the time, permission was granted for only a couple of hundred, until such time as a new bridge and other new infrastructure was put in place. That has to be done far more often.
I have raised a number of issues today that are of concern to Swale Borough Council. However, the biggest collective grievance is the imposition of mandatory housing targets and the five-year land supply rule.
Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing forward the debate. My constituency neighbours his, and we in Rochester and Strood have seen the stresses and strains on local services and the planning department in order to meet unrealistic housing targets, which are particularly imposed on the south-east, where we are based. Does my hon. Friend agree that the targets should be designed at a local level, and that communities should be empowered to object to unrealistic developments that do not deliver the services that the people living in those communities demand?
Gordon Henderson
I do agree. It is critical that local people have a say and set the targets, because unless there is local support for something, it will never work. Looking at it cynically, we might say that many local authorities are deciding to build houses in inappropriate places because they can blame the Government for the fact that they have to meet housing targets. If it was up to local people, that would not happen. From a purely cynical point of view, it would be better to let local people do that.