UK Parliament / Open data

Eco-Town (Harborough)

Proceeding contribution from Lord Garnier (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 29 January 2008. It occurred during Adjournment debate on Eco-Town (Harborough).
I am perfectly happy for there to be greater publicity about that issue, but it is the Minister and the Government, through the House of Commons, who should be accountable. I cannot see civil servants; I can see the Minister, who is here to speak for his Government. I fear that the Co-op must have been somewhat taken aback by the universally unenthusiastic response that it received, not least because its explanation to us was wholly devoid of detail. Its representatives said that they could not tell us too much because of the need to maintain commercial confidentiality. From the little that we could discover, however, it seemed that the project would have a devastating effect on my constituency. However, it seemed likely that those representing the area would have no say or very little say in the decision-making process. Yes, I accept that at the moment Harborough is only one of 57 applicant sites, and we may not end up in the shortlist of 10. However, neither I nor anyone else whose interests will be adversely affected by the proposal has any idea of how we can influence the decision. The Co-op's development manager and public affairs director have given a further, separate briefing to me and my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton here in the House of Commons. In part they told me about, and in part they pleaded with me to appreciate, the benefits of their scheme. However, they would again not give me any details for fear of losing such commercial confidence as there was in their plans. I was not convinced by that or any other of their arguments, although I told them that they had a perfect right to advance such arguments. No matter how pure the Co-op's motives, I am speaking in a democratic and information vacuum, and all the indications do not allow for much optimism. It will not do lazily to advance a case for this development on the basis, ““We need more housing, so why not have it here?”” All development should be eco-friendly and should occur where it is right and needed, not just because a 5,000-acre plot is available. Just because there is a private flying club operating from an airstrip near Stoughton, it does not make this a brownfield site. Clearly, the Government will be attracted by convenience—think how much easier it is to deal with only one landowner as opposed to several. In this case, the Co-op owns 99 per cent. of the development site, with English Partnerships, an arm of Government, owning just a few hundred acres, but it is a willing partner. I am not suggesting that there is an improper relationship between the Co-op and the Labour party, but it is undeniable that the links between the Government party and the Co-op, generally, are old and deep. The Secretary of State, the Minister for Housing, and the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), all represent northern constituencies in regions where the Co-op has been a strong presence. They will be comfortable with each other, and although there is, I repeat, no suggestion of impropriety, there may be a natural sense of familiarity between an organisation that has its headquarters in Manchester and northern Members of Parliament. No matter how unfair or inaccurate that may be, it has created a perception of bias among the residents of Harborough district, whose enjoyment of their own properties and way of life will be irreversibly and undeniably damaged by this proposal. They also represent areas entirely different from Harborough. Employment levels in their areas are not as good as those in my area or that of my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton, average incomes are not as high as in my area, and owner-occupation and the availability of good quality housing may not be as prevalent as in Harborough or in Rutland and Melton. I can therefore understand the surprised reaction of the former Minister for Housing, now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, when I suggested to her in DCLG questions before Christmas that this massive development was not wanted or needed in Harborough. What are the most obvious consequences of letting this proposal go forward? The lack of existing transport infrastructure and the limited amount of strategic thinking about new roads in the Co-op's briefings is an area of particular concern to me and to the county's planners. The massive congestion that would result from linking the A47 to the A6 without further improvements would bring the whole area to a standstill at peak times. These problems would not happen overnight, but over a period while more and more homes are completed, with a slow creep towards gridlock as millions of tonnes of concrete and other building materials were brought on-site. Leicestershire county and Leicester city councils are looking for someone to fund a southern bypass from the A6 to the Ml, a route that is to the south and to the west of the Co-op site and which will become imperative if this new town arrives, but the Co-op has shown no enthusiasm to accept the implications of its development beyond the limits of its own land. Furthermore, it would face negotiating with multiple landowners, and construction would be expensive and take some time. Other potential eco-town sites are alongside motorways and astride train lines. The Stoughton estate is far away from either, and the concept of reopening a station near Great Glen is most unlikely to be seen as a priority by Network Rail or East Midlands Trains when they are trying to construct East Midlands Airport Parkway station in Nottinghamshire, which has so far taken some 20 years to get close to reality. The Co-op's own sustainability report, published in April 2007 in preparation for its SUE bid, admits:"““There is no existing public transport infrastructure serving the majority of the SUE””—" or, for that matter, an eco-town. The Co-op is relying on people living and working locally, and therefore walking, cycling or using the limited public transport, which is expected to be beefed up as numbers grow. That is frankly fanciful unless the new town is going to be a gated community with restrictions on the residents preventing them from travelling outside its perimeter. Despite Co-op hopes on the subject, a large percentage of the inhabitants of the new town would be commuters to London. That amount of additional commuters trying to get on to the A6 at peak times would mean that Kibworth will need a dual carriageway bypass, the road from Kibworth to Market Harborough will need upgrading to dual carriageway, and the Market Harborough bypass will need dualling. How much of that will be funded by the Co-op development? To begin with, as the first new residents arrive, their children will no doubt be educated in Oadby. Oadby's schools are already full and taking children from both the county and city. The pressures on all local authority budgets—already among the lowest funded by Government—will intensify as they try to cope with the additional workload of another major town before it is fully occupied and there is a full council tax income stream. New roads create new journeys. Eco-town residents will want to make their own decisions about where to work, what cars to have and what journeys to make. It is reckless to destroy rural Harborough on the back of a few aspirations on a PowerPoint slide. I wrote to the Secretary of State on 20 December. She did not reply, so I tabled a written question. The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda), replied on 17 January—although the answer did not arrive until 22 January. He said that the eco-town programme would be subject to the statutory planning process,"““for example through a review of the regional spatial strategy. As a consequence the local community and planning authorities will have the ability to engage with the process.””" Will the Minister specify the statute that allows for the process that his colleague wrote about and explain what the expression ““to engage with the process”” means in plain English? What is the legal status of that phrase? On Second Reading of the Planning Bill, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk), the Secretary of State said:"““Matters such as eco-towns and large housing developments will continue to be decided by local authorities under the town and country planning system and by reference to the local development plans that have been selected.””—[Official Report, 10 December 2007; Vol. 469, c. 27.]" There is room for a good deal of confusion about what the Government collectively intend and the planning process that governs eco-town developments. To allow planning authorities such as Harborough district council to be merely consultees as opposed to decision makers is to abuse local democracy and to divert ownership of the decision from my constituents to Ministers. This urban development, if allowed to go through, would utterly destroy a much valued green lung south-east of the city of Leicester to the commercial advantage of the Co-op but for no obvious local or county-wide public benefit. In reality, there will be nothing eco-friendly about that vast new urban settlement, albeit that I can see it has enormous financial advantages for the Co-op and English Partnerships at a time when farming incomes are low and wholesale development offers better rewards. The enormous development would create a town of more than 40,000 inhabitants on open farm land that would dwarf the neighbouring villages and even the nearest urban community of any size, Oadby. It will also gravely damage Leicester's plans for its regeneration. It will create an urban wedge that will break down the local rural environment and community in south-east Leicestershire and will allow the swamping of an area of considerable beauty with thousands of houses, cars and lorries and all the permanent infrastructure that would be needed to support such a large town. The Co-op claims that the development will create 12,000 or so new jobs. As I have said before, my constituency's unemployment rate is 1 per cent. Any new jobs would require people to be imported to do them. Strange as it may seem to MPs from less economically vibrant parts of the country, we do not need thousands of new jobs to provide work for jobless people in Harborough or Oadby and Wigston. It is, furthermore, unreal to think that the incoming occupants of the 15,000 new homes would all work in the alleged eco-factories that the Co-op claims will provide the jobs. Thousands of people will necessarily commute by car to work elsewhere within the region and, given that the Co-op wants to build a parkway station at Great Glen on the Sheffield main line that goes from St. Pancras to Leicester, it is likely that many hundreds of residents will commute to jobs in London. We do not need the type of forced or artificial economic regeneration that the proposal would mean. If one wants to create 12,000 more jobs in an area with virtually full employment, one has to import the jobs and import the housing to accommodate the employees and their families. We are beginning to see what only 800 new houses have done to Kibworth, a village on the A6 barely five miles from the proposed development site, in terms of disturbance and placing strains on our local services and infrastructure. We can only imagine what 15,000 new houses will do not only to Great Glen and its neighbouring villages but to inner and outer Leicester, to Oadby and to rural Harborough, too. I urge the Government to distinguish between the immediate or short-term financial interests of the Co-op, and the environmental, economic, social and other long-term interests of the people of Harborough district and Oadby and Wigston. The Government's attitude towards so-called eco-towns should not be allowed to be affected by a misunderstanding of the facts on the ground or public relations material put out by the developers. If the development goes ahead without local input or consent it will arouse untold anger and revulsion. If we get it wrong we get it wrong for ever.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
471 c290-3 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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