The case for the green belt was put very powerfully by former poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion. He said:
“Since about 1940, the population of Los Angeles has grown at about the same rate as the population of London. Los Angeles is now so enormous that if you somehow managed to pick it up and plonk it down on England, it would extend from Brighton on the south coast to Cambridge in the north-east. That’s what happens if you don’t have a green belt.”
In a densely populated island, the green belt enriches our lives in many ways. It provides a precious opportunity to reconnect with the natural environment and spend time with friends and family outdoors. A substantial part of my constituency is in the green belt, and protecting it will always be one of my highest priorities. When media reports in advance of the Budget indicated, therefore, that the Government were considering dismantling green-belt rules, I argued strongly against this and raised it during Prime Minister’s questions. Thankfully, my right hon. Friend’s answer confirmed her support for green-belt protections, and no plans to rip them up appeared in the Budget after all.
We must build more homes in this country, but we do not have to sacrifice the green belt to do it. The Conservative council in Barnet, for example, is delivering more new homes than any other borough in London, and its main means of doing so is through regeneration of the borough’s major estates. It is in the process of delivering 27,000 new homes under a 15-year plan adopted in 2012. In 2015-16, 1,460 new homes were built in Barnet—4.7% of the total for Greater London. Across its regeneration projects, the council is meeting the affordable homes target of 40%. I support this regeneration programme and other projects, such as the Victoria Quarter development in New Barnet, which is being taken forward by social landlord One Housing on a former industrial site.
Like my Conservative colleagues on Barnet Council, however, I am unhappy about plans brought forward by developers for high-density development squeezed into
low-rise suburban areas where it is completely inappropriate, so I have been part of a number of successful campaigns against the demolition of houses to make way for blocks of flats. I am opposing plans for tower blocks of luxury flats in North London business park, which were rejected unanimously by Barnet’s planning committee, and I am fighting against proposals to build on the agricultural fields at Whalebones in High Barnet. I also oppose the planning application being considered this week for Barnet House in Whetstone. Barnet House hit the national news when the owners of the block proposed to use permitted development rights to convert it into hundreds of tiny flats. Described by some as dog kennel flats, some would have been only 16 square metres. Thankfully, the proposal was defeated, but I remain concerned about the scale of the plans that have replaced it.
I appeal to the Government to restrict or abolish the permitted development rights that allow the conversion of offices to residential use without a planning application. They deprive local residents of a say in whether such developments go ahead and mean that the people profiting from the development do not have to make any contribution to the services or infrastructure needed to support the new homes because no section 106 or other contribution can be obtained. This is a particular problem around the Station Road area in my constituency and was raised by residents when I was knocking on doors only a couple of weeks ago.
Another grave concern, I am afraid, is the Mayor of London’s development plan. If this draft plan is approved, not only will it remove protection for gardens; it will actively encourage building over them, which would make it far harder to resist the kind of garden-grabbing development that Barnet Council was recently able to turn down for Crescent Road in New Barnet. The housing density matrix seems to have been completely removed from the London plan. If that goes ahead, there will be no limits on appropriate density in particular areas, which will place huge pressure on councils to approve denser and taller development. The targets for the building of family-sized affordable homes which were introduced by the last Mayor are also to go. The current Labour Mayor wants to prevent new developments within reach of public transport from including parking spaces, which would inevitably displace cars into surrounding streets, thus adding to the problems already faced by my constituents.
The draft London plan was described by a Conservative Member of the London Assembly, Andrew Boff, as a declaration of war on the suburbs. That is strong language, but there is no doubt that the Mayor’s London plan is further evidence that Labour does not care about the suburbs and does not understand them—which is another good reason for Barnet to re-elect its Conservative council on 3 May.
5.30 pm