Christmas Adjournment

I would like to take this opportunity to raise a couple of issues of accountability that have arisen in two recent cases with which I have dealt. When this House discusses accountability it is often aimed at improving the accountability of Government and other public bodies, and rightly so. When it discusses the accountability of the private sector, it is usually in the context of failure, as was shown in the recent case of Farepak or in many cases relating to pensions. I want to focus on private sector accountability and the cases of two companies that are not failing—indeed, in many ways they are thriving. Each case raises a different aspect of accountability. The first case concerns my constituents who live in and around Southwold close in North Swindon. They live near a site being developed by George Wimpey, and their lives are being blighted by the lack of consideration being shown by those developers. For example, the planning conditions state that work should not begin before 8 o’clock in the morning, but lorries arrive from 7.10 and sit just outside the site with their engines running. Families with young children are deeply concerned about the drivers’ practice of mounting the pavements and driving over roundabouts in their rush to get to the site. Building materials are dumped off-site by residents’ homes, raising profound concerns about health and safety. There is constant noise and disruption to the environment. Some disruption in a development area is inevitable, but what makes this unacceptable is Wimpey’s response to complaints. It continually refuses my requests to sit down with me and residents to find a mutually satisfactory way to resolve the issues. Instead, the managing director of George Wimpey South West feels that the issues"““have been blown out of all proportion””." That is not the view, incidentally, of Swindon borough council or the Health and Safety Executive, both of whom are responsibly and thoroughly investigating the complaints. My constituents in the Oakhurst residents association, who seem to me to be decent, responsible people who quite reasonably want nothing other than to have their lives disturbed as little as possible by intrusive and disruptive development work, feel increasingly harassed and intimidated by Wimpey. Of course it is understandable that developers should want to get their site developed and sold off as quickly as possible. But that is no excuse for the basic lack of consideration shown to those local residents, whose money the developers have already pocketed for their own homes. The process of enforcement of planning conditions and health and safety regulations is under way by both Swindon borough council and the HSE, but the process is inevitably complex and lengthy, and in the meantime my constituents’ lives are being blighted.