Planning Policy

I congratulate the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) on securing this debate. I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) said, particularly about the floors above shops in our town centres, which ought to be put to better use. I have a question for the Minister: will she confirm that section 106 agreements are not site-specific and that it is the local authority, not the developer, that determines what should be provided under section 106? I know that that is the case, but there is at least one local authority in this country that thinks that it is the developer who decides what should be provided. I was interested to hear that Lichfield was a new town in the 12th century. I have news: Britain's oldest recorded town was, in fact, its first new town. Colchester was set out by the Romans almost 2,000 years ago, and the street grid pattern from that time still exists. That is both good news and bad news—good news, obviously, from a tourist's perspective, but not quite so good for traffic movement, particularly in the greater core of the town centre. Colchester should be a city. It was a city when it was the first capital of Roman Britain, but, alas, it dropped out in the mists of time. It should have been reinstated for the millennium, but I was advised in a response to a parliamentary question that only the Head of State can withdraw the title of city once it has been granted. I have been able to establish that no Head of State in the subsequent 2,000 years removed the title of city from Colchester, so Colchester is still a city. Alas and alack, the Home Office, which was then dealing with millennium city applications, refused to accept my watertight legal argument. I wish to speak in this debate because, like the hon. Member for Lichfield, I represent an historic town. There are many attractions in such towns, but there is also a downside in that other towns can do many things that we, quite rightly, cannot. That means that we need a bit of assistance from the county council or central Government. They should acknowledge that we are custodians of our historic past and that that comes at a price. It ought to be considered when it comes to transport grants, park-and-ride schemes and so on. I should point out that I am the secretary of the all-party group on small shops, which only a couple of weeks ago produced a report on the threat to small shops. It includes many recommendations, which I trust will be taken on board by various Government Departments. The report is timely, as Tesco is about to come back into Colchester town centre. Having gone out of town and done its bit, it is now coming back into town to do its bit again. In Colchester, it proposes to go into Crouch street. That attractive street, with its parade of local shops, is straight out of Walmington-on-Sea, ““Dad's Army”” and the 1940s. We may talk about a listed building here or a listed building there, but that is only part of it. It is the whole character, the whole street scene, that is important. A building might not be worthy of retention on its own, but if we take it out of the street scene, that scene is like a beautiful lady's smile with one tooth gone. What was attractive now has a gap. We should not talk about an individual building being listed; it is the street scene, the group setting, that is important. I am sure that the Minister was already aware—if not, her officials will have briefed her—of contributions that I have made in the last two years' Christmas recess debates and on my ten-minute Bill, which I introduced only last month. I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) for drawing so much attention to my Local Government Referendums Bill. By his opposition he eloquently demonstrated why local democracy needs referendums when the local authority is out of step with what the community wants to happen. What can be done to help small shops and small businesses? Central Government need to realign the setting of business rates. At the moment, the small corner shop pays more per square foot in business rates than the out-of-town supermarket. That cannot be right, because the existing unlevel playing field becomes even more unlevel. In fact, it is not unlevel; there is now a slope and the only question is how steep the slope is. Perhaps central Government could consider that. I also urge them to consider English Heritage's thoughts on value added tax for new build as opposed to conversions, restorations and so on. That would be a positive step towards addressing the concerns of the hon. Member for Lichfield about brownfield development. We should be encouraging the retention of what is best, though conversions and so on, rather than almost encouraging developers on to greenfield sites. We are left with the interesting question of what is a greenfield site and what is a brownfield site. Let us imagine that a large mental institution occupies 50 acres of landscaped grounds. I think that I am right in saying that, under the Government's definition, those 50 acres of landscaped grounds, sports fields and so on would be classed as a brownfield site. The institution ought to be classed as a brownfield site, but I question whether classing the landscaped grounds as such makes sense and whether someone in the local infant school would recognise a sports field and a landscaped park as a brownfield site. I think that everyone would recognise that as a greenfield site. I referred to my membership of the all-party small shops group. I urge the Minister and her Government colleagues to see what else can be done to try to resist the growing clone-town image. There are many towns where, if someone was blindfolded on the way in, they would not know what part of the country they were in, let alone which town. That phenomenon is very worrying, because local identity is important. I hope that we can consider that. I shall conclude with the Romans. The setting of Colchester's Roman wall is a major tourist attraction. Unfortunately, there is a grandiose plan for an art gallery with a public subsidy of £600,000 a year and the closure of the town's bus station, which the local community strongly opposes. In addition, with the Vineyard Gate St. Botolph's redevelopment, it is proposed to demolish some 40 buildings, ripping the guts out of part of the central area of Britain's oldest recorded town. That is being funded and encouraged by the East of England Development Agency, which was saying only two days ago in the Eastern Daily Press how proud it was of the amount of money that it was putting into Norwich to protect that city's heritage. By my reckoning, those are double standards. Obviously, the agency hoped that the MP for Colchester would not read what it was putting out in the Norwich paper, but I saw that. There is a need for joined-up government in the East of England Development Agency, let alone in the Government, because there are many buildings in the area that, although perhaps not worthy of listed building status, are important in the collective setting. Those buildings managed to survive two Luftwaffe raids on Colchester in the second world war, but it does not look as though they will survive Colchester council in the third millennium. There are many buildings that the Victorian Society, English Heritage and the Colchester civic society—this echoes the comments about the importance of civic society—want to remain. Unfortunately, the power of the developers—whoever they may be and who are, I suggest, working covertly with the local authority—is carrying the day. Many of us are looking to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to stop the latest attack on the heart of the town where I have lived for most of my life and which I have the honour to represent.