HC Deb 04 August 1971 vol 822 cc1801-12

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Goodhew.]

1.46 a.m.

Mr. John Morris (Aberavon)

I am grateful for this opportunity at this late hour to raise some of the problems of the environment in the Aberavon constituency. The word "environment" is very much an "in" word these days. It means what to ordinary people whom I have the privilege of representing are problems of bricks and mortar, the rivers, the sea, tarmacadam and noise. It is the quality of the vicinity in which one lives, works and spends one's leisure.

Every effort is made these days to improve the quality of life. We see in the County of Glamorgan, in my constituency, work being done in land reclamation, and it is a tragedy perhaps that while all this is going on the local authority has to spend £2,500 a year merely to refit light fittings which have been removed by acts of vandalism. That is just one of the problems.

I want to concern myself this evening with three points: first with a caravan development at Porthcawl, and indeed in Wales generally. At Porthcawl there are about 5,000 caravans already, and there is a proposal to increase the number by another 1,000 at Trecio Bay. The history of this matter is that a development plan was approved as far back as 1958 to schedule this part of Porthcawl as a holiday area, and in 1961 planning consent was given. Nothing was done about this matter until latterly, and the developers' plans have lain fallow for many a year, the developers now want to activate them. That has resulted in the whole town being up in arms, and over 6,000 people, more than 60 per cent. of the population, have petitioned the Welsh Office and have expressed their concern about this new development.

The Minister of State has written and told me that this is a matter for the local authority. If it decides to revoke the planning permission already given, that is its affair. But the fact of the matter is that Porthcawl is an area with limited resources, a small town indeed with an above-average number of pensioners and people on fixed incomes, and it is totally out of the question for a small town of that size to consider the question of revocation.

No one knows exactly what the figures would be, but a range from £100,000 to £1 million has been mentioned. It is no good the Government wringing their hands and everyone saying that this should not happen and that there are enough caravans at Porthcawl. We are prisoners of the past, doomed to impotence.

The Government cannot wash their hands of this issue. The local authorities are deeply conscious of the situation. If our concern for our heritage and our coast line is to mean anything, the Government, the local authorities and the developers must act. Trust House-Forte has a major responsibility whether or not it carries on with the permission already given. I invite Lord Crowther to read this debate. He has the interests of his shareholders but also the good name of his company to consider. The answer may be for the developers, the local authorities and the Government to get together to work out a solution.

To underline the gravity of the situation, I quote a report by Dr. Thomas Sharp, who was commissioned by the Glamorgan County Council in 1964 to look into the problem of planning at Porthcawl. He said: I regret that I do not feel able to undertake this work. In my opinion, the future of the town has been so prejudiced by developments within the last decade that no worthwhile plan for the future can be made until the situation resulting from those developments has been corrected. Such correction will require policy decisions on a heroic scale and financial undertakings of an enormous and burdensome kind. The injurious development to which he referred was caravan development. He ended this part of his report by saying that, where there was a great expanse of natural burrows and sand hills, there has been developed the most deplorable and civically cancerous growth that I have yet encountered in my long experience of urban diagnosis. I am not against caravans. Indeed, I spent a most pleasurable holiday last year touring in one. In many parts of Wales there is a need for adequate facilities for the touring caravan. But I am concerned that someone should consider the picture comprehensively to see whether saturation point has not been reached in Porthcawl and many other parts of Wales.

I asked the Minister of State yesterday to give me the figures for each county in Wales, detailing how many permissions had been given for how many caravans and how many had been taken up. I was taken aback to be told that the information was not readily available. When I asked another question about the policy in this matter, he said, first, rightly, that this is a matter for the local authorities and that the Welsh Office calls in such applications for its own decision in exceptional cases; for example, where the issues raised are of national importance.

But if the Welsh Office does not have the figures for each county, and if it does not have the figures showing what has been and what has not been taken up, how can it know whether these are significant matters of national importance or of great importance in the locality?

I was flabbergasted by the inadequacy of the Welsh Office and its inability to give very important figures which should have been readily available. The Minister's advisers need a thorough shaking up to ensure that they provide him with the relevant information, so that when decisions of this kind are taken a full picture is put before him.

It is time that this nettle was grasped and that we had a thorough-going inquiry into caravan development throughout Wales, to establish first what the needs are—both for the stationary caravans and the touring caravans—and secondly their relevance having regard to the permanent population and how much saturation can be allowed.

We need to be able to look at the whole picture, and I urge the Minister to set up a national inquiry into the matter to ensure that all the facts are established; and in considering the Porthcawl problem he should call all the parties together in an effort to find a way out of the difficulty. The Government cannot wash their hands of this affair.

Because of the lack of time, I will refer only briefly to the development of the M4. This road is generally welcomed in South Wales, where we need a great artery to connect our industrial areas, and the whole of Wales, with the rest of the country. However, the proposed line of the motorway is causing concern, particularly to the residents of the villages of Cornelly and Groes, which are in my constituency.

If the present line of the motorway is maintained, it is likely that Cornelly will be split into three parts. At present it is a corporate unit, with the new part of the village grafted on to the old. If the road is developed according to present plans, the village will be completely split. Groes is an old village containing, among other things, a round chapel that is listed as being of particular historical importance. This village will be torn apart if the proposed line of the M4 is maintained.

I appreciate the difficulties of the Minister in attempting to comment on this matter in detail. I have written to the Secretary of State and I now ask the hon. Gentleman to make it clear that there will be a full public inquiry so that those concerned may ventilate their views. I hope that in the meantime no decision will be taken which might in any way prejudice the future of these two villages.

Another problem involving the environment is atmospheric pollution at Port Talbot. Some work has been done, and the British Steel Corporation has undertaken considerable expenditure to overcome this problem. The local authority has been a formidable watchdog to ensure that pollution is kept to the minimum, but there are emissions and break-downs, and when these occur life becomes thoroughly miserable for those living in the part of Port Talbot of which I am speaking, and particularly for housewives.

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for a Written Answer I received yesterday to a Question I had asked about atmospheric pollution at Port Talbot. I was told: For many processes which give rise to atmospheric pollution, authorised levels of emission are not laid down but the best practicable means are required to render emissions harmless and inoffensive. Where authorised levels of emission have been laid down, the standards are being met in the Port Talbot area".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd August, 1971, Vol. 822, c. 282.] In that Question I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether he was satisfied with the present position, but he did not answer that. I would be grateful for some comments on the whole question of atmospheric pollution at Port Talbot.

In the short time at my disposal I have dealt with some of the problems that concern my constituents. These are problems about the environment in which they live, work and enjoy their leisure. My constituents want to improve the quality of life in the area, and there is a deep awareness throughout the country that we must do our utmost to preserve and improve the environment.

At the end of the day, this is a question of bricks and mortar, of roads and of developments here and there. These are the hard facts of life, and our handling of them can either improve or spoil the quality of life in my area.

1.59 a.m.

The Minister of State, Welsh Office (Mr. David Gibson-Watt)

The right hon. Member for Aberavon (Mr. John Morris) raised three matters concerning his constituency, which is an area embracing heavy industry and great beauty. It is also on the way to somewhere and is therefore subject to road development. I will deal with each of these points and give the best possible answers I can to the questions he asked.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the proposal for an extension of the caravan development on the east side of Porthcawl, and to caravan development generally in Wales. I am aware of the anxiety of many local residents about the Porthcawl proposal. The right hon. Gentleman and I have exchanged letters on the matter, and I have also received representations from the Porthcawl Civic Trust Society. In the course of this correspondence I have explained the present statutory position, but it is sufficiently important and relevant to what the right hon. Gentleman said to go over this again.

The Porthcawl Urban District Council, acting for the Glamorgan County Council as local planning authority, gave outline planning permission for the development of this 40-acre site as a holiday caravan camp as far back as March 1961. This permission required among other things the submission to the council of detailed plans of the layout of all buildings and structures to be erected on the site for approval before any work commenced. I am informed that the Porthcawl Urban District Council subsequently issued a site licence for 1,039 caravans. Detailed plans have not yet, I understand, been submitted.

It is for the county council to decide whether it now wishes to revoke the permission given in 1961. If it does, the revocation Order would have to be submitted to my right hon. and learned Friend for confirmation, and it would also fall to him to decide any appeal which might be made by the developers in the event of the council's failing or refusing to approve detailed plans. For these reasons, as the right hon. Gentleman very well knows, it would be most improper were I to comment on the merits of the Porthcawl proposals. I am, however, glad to know that representatives of the developers and the local authority are discussing proposals in the light of the strong local reactions to which the right hon. Gentleman refers.

On the more general proposition of holiday camp development, it might help if I were to say a few words about the Government's rôle and attitude.

First, it is important to bear in mind that, subject to a right of appeal to the Secretary of State, the decision on any planning application is the responsibility of the local planning authority. My right hon. and learned Friend calls in planning applications for his own decision only in exceptional cases. However, the previous Government gave general guidance on caravan sites in Development Control Policy Note No. 8, issued in 1969, which is accepted by the present Government as a fair statement of what is desirable.

This note states that planning policy is concerned to see that the touring caravanner has reasonable freedom to wander and explore and the static caravanner a reasonable choice of site to visit, but without spoiling the countryside, the coast or amenities which other people enjoy. The note points out the need to avoid conspicuous sites, especially on the coast, and to the importance of avoiding both the wider scattering of caravan development and the possible "saturating" of places which already have large numbers of caravans.

The Government's determination to safeguard the beauty of the British countryside and seashore for the future, which are very relevant to the subject matter of this debate, was made quite explicit in the Queen's Speech a little over a year ago.

The question of "saturation" is, of course, difficult to determine. As the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate, the mere number of caravans or of planning permissions in the whole of Wales, or even in a particular county, can at best only give us part of the story. So much depends on circumstances in specific locations.

The right hon. Gentleman has criticised the Welsh Office for not having precise information available about the number of caravans in each county in Wales for which there is in existence planning permission, and the number for which permission has been granted but not so far taken up. Although the precise information which he sought is not readily available, there is a great deal of other relevant information available. We know, for example, that there are some 60,000 caravans or caravan pitches in Wales, and we have fairly reliable information on a county basis. But the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that a large number of the sites were in existence before the post-war planning legislation came into force and, therefore, pre-date the planning permission arrangements as we now know them. Hence the difficulty in giving him a precise answer.

As to the number of permitted caravan sites not already taken up or utilised, the fact is that the number varies substantially, with the seasons—indeed, it changes from day to day and, at the height of the season, from hour to hour. To obtain this part of the information sought by the right hon. Gentleman would, therefore, require a simultaneous physical examination of every caravan site in Wales, which is clearly impossible. I do not accept the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion that my advisers need a thorough shaking up, because what he is asking for is virtually impossible to give, but I hope that what I have said to him about the 760,000 caravans or caravan pitches in Wales gives some idea of the size of the problem.

Mr. John Morris

I am grateful for that explanation. Whether or not the hon. Gentleman is responsible, the answer given yesterday was that the information was not available, and that was said without qualification. That reflects not only on those advising the hon. Member, but on his own responsibility.

Mr. Gibson-Watt

If the right hon. Gentleman studies that Question and Answer and reads my speech in HANSARD, he will find that he is not correct in that.

I appreciate his concern about the need for information to be available and I have arranged for this question to be discussed with the planning authorities to see what further information can be made available without diverting staff resources from other more urgent tasks. There is no evidence that planning authorities in Wales are relaxing their planning control on caravan development. Indeed, what evidence there is is to the contrary.

For instance, in the first 12 months of the present Administration some 47 per cent. of planning applications for caravan development were granted by the planning authorities; this compares with 56 per cent. granted in 1969. The number of caravans or pitches covered by the permissions granted in 1970–71 was 3,762. We do not have the comparable figure for 1969, but it was probably considerably greater. I should like to assure the House that we are conscious of the widespread feeling that there is a caravan problem in some parts of Wales and we recognise that this calls for discussion between the Welsh Office and the local planning authorities.

The second subject which the right hon. Gentleman raised was that of the motorway. He asked for a public inquiry into the proposed line of the M4 motorway within his constituency. I can give him an immediate assurance on this. Shortly after draft Orders under the Highways Act were published containing my right hon. and learned Friend's proposals for the line of this length of motorway, the Welsh Office arranged public meetings in both Groes and North Cornelly so that officials could explain the choice of routes to those affected and give the public further information to enable people if they wished to object to the proposals. At both meetings assurances were given that the objections would be the subject of a public inquiry.

I cannot yet say when this inquiry will be held. The period for the receipt of objections to the proposals ended today. The Welsh Office will now be considering all the objections and an announcement will be made as soon as possible. I understand the difficulties of the right hon. Gentleman's constituents. We live with progress, but progress does not al-always seem to be on our side and when a motorway comes to one's village, it is absolutely right that these matters should be ventilated and questions asked about them in the House.

The right hon. Gentleman's third theme was that of air pollution in his constituency arising from the operation of the steelworks. May I briefly set out the statutory position on this subject and then the facts in relation to the right hon. Gentleman's constituency as I know them. The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that most of the processes at the Port Talbot Steelworks are registered under the Alkali Acts and are therefore under the direct control of the Alkali Inspectorate which reports to the Secretary of State for Wales. Companies with processes registered under the Alkali Acts are generally required to employ the best practicable means to control the emissions of noxious or offensive gases so as to render them harmless and inoffensive. There are maximum levels of emission laid down for some of the processes in steel making. Most of the processes in the steelworks are in fact registered under the Alkali Acts and therefore come under the control of the district alkali inspector for the area. So much for the statutory position.

I now turn to the situation in Port Talbot. I am aware that about the middle of last year the operation of the steelworks coke ovens gave rise to complaints about a dust nuisance and noise nuisance arising from the operation of No. 4 blast furnace.

I understand that the British Steel Corporation management at the plant made considerable efforts in the face of difficulties to improve the situation at the coke ovens and generally throughout the steel works. It is working in conjunction with the local authority and the District Alkali Inspector and I have been assured that these efforts by the Corporation will be continued.

Turning to smoke and sulphur dioxide pollution I understand that the figures provided by the Port Talbot Borough Council to the Warren Spring Laboratory of the Department of Trade and Industry show that smoke pollution in the area in many cases is below the levels in other parts of South Wales, while sulphur dioxide pollution is only slightly higher. This may seem surprising but it has to be borne in mind that domestic premises account for a considerable proportion of smoke and sulphur dioxide pollution.

As for the total emission from registered processes in the steel works I am advised by the District Alkali Inspector that there has been a steady decline in the level of emissions in recent years and where there are authorised levels of emission these are being complied with. I assure the hon. Gentleman that no one who is in any way concerned is being complacent about the situation. The District Alkali Inspector, the local authority and the British Steel Corporation will continue to pursue vigorously the possibility of further improvements.

Finally, I know the right hon. Membe is interested in atmosphere pollution in the wider context. He showed great interest, as the Government did, in a study published by Mr. G. Goodman and Mr. T. Roberts of University College, Swansea, on mosses as indicators of atmospheric pollution by heavy metals in the Swansea area. Following publication of this report a group of experts met at the Welsh Office to discuss its implications.

It was decided to set up a working party of experts to prepare proposals for further research. The first meeting was held recently and detailed consideration is now being given to the sort of research which might be undertaken, including further monitoring of the atmosphere, the possible medical effects of heavy metal pollution of the atmosphere and the possible effects on agriculture.

The right hon. Gentleman will recall one of the main conclusions of the first report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution was that there was insufficient evidence about the effects of atmospheric pollution. I am sure he will agree that our actions show that we are treating this subject with proper concern. He has raised three important matters concerning his constituency. They affect an important part of South Wales and I hope my answers have gone some way to satisfy him on these matters.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at fourteen minutes past Two o'clock.