It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) in this important debate.
It is fast becoming a cliché to talk of a broken housing market and building for the future, but those rather trite phrases disguise both the difficult problem that we have in not having built enough homes for some time and the significant challenges that remain for the house building industry.
I want to make it clear that I am not against building and development. We of course need to provide new homes to meet the housing shortage, but that should be done in a way that is sensitive to the local environment and sensitive to the wishes of local communities, which in my assessment has hitherto been lacking.
I shall confine my remarks to the specific consideration of housing and green belt policy in Greater Manchester, but the principles could apply equally to other parts of the country.
The pithily titled Greater Manchester spatial framework, commonly known as the GMSF, is the Greater Manchester combined authority’s land management plan for housing, commercial and industrial use over the next 20 years. It will have a profound effect on the shape and character of local communities, and will impact on the lives of many thousands of families for generations to come.
I, and others, have serious reservations about the draft GMSF in terms of the methodology for calculating overall housing targets, the scale on which it proposes to release swathes of green belt for housing development, the lack of sensitivity and awareness it displays towards the character of existing communities, and the scant regard to additional infrastructure required to support new, large-scale housing developments.