HC Deb 16 April 1993 vol 222 cc1083-90

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

2.30 pm
Sir Anthony Grant (Cambridgeshire, South-West)

I am grateful for the opportunity to raised an issue that I have already raise once in the House. The area around the village of Bourn in my constituency and the 12 village communities in the area are delightful and are characteristic of Cambridgeshire and of the East Anglian countryside generally.

Given the fast growth of Cambridgeshire, it is essential to preserve the amenities and village character of the area. Otherwise, Cambrideshire will suffer the same fate as Greater London and parts of Middlesex and Surrey, which I knew before the war, which became long, ribbon-development concrete deserts. We must prevent that from happening again. If we get planning decisions wrong, the countryside and communities and the village character will be gone for ever.

I first raised this matter in the House on 28 November 1988. The original county structure plan came out in 1980. In July 1988, the then Secretary of State for the Environment, the late Lord Ridley, who, although he had many great virtues, was weak when confronted by developers, yielded to pressure for amendments to the structure plan, which therefore had to provide for a new settlement in south Cambridgeshire.

I want to quote from the reply of the then Under-Secretary of State, Mr. Christopher Chope. who said: It is essential that the policies contained in an approved plan are closely monitored and kept up to date to cater for the needs of the county." [Official Report, 28 November 1988; Vol. 142, c. 557.] I wholeheartedly agree with those important words.

Subsequently, planning applications were made for a number of settlements in the locality, all of which were rejected by the planning authority, so appeals were lodged. An extensive inquiry considered all the proposals of developers and speculators, including the one at Great Common farm, about which I am particularly concerned and which was the least favoured option of the planning authority, which turned them all down.

Eventually, the then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, rejected all the appeals, but, unlike the district council planning authority, he accepted the inspector's recommendation that the scheme most suitable was Great Common farm at Bourn airfield. I need hardly say that, naturally, this has been the cause of immense anxiety among my constituents in the area. Therefore, they were delighted—as I was—when, just before the general election last year, the Secretary of State issued guidance stating clearly that new settlements would gain support only if they did not go against the wishes of the local community.

In that connection, I refer to a letter I personally received from the Prime Minister, dated 16 March 1992. He said: The new guidance sets out clearly that new settlements are likely to gain support only when they come through the local plan making process. This will encourage housebuilders to work with local planners and not to seek to impose plans against the wishes of the local communities … we do not favour a free-for-all in housing land supply. I hope the publication of the guidance will help allay the fears of your constituents. It certainly did. It also allayed my fears, and we went confidently into the general election on that basis.

Following all that, plans were subsequently submitted by developers—now called Stanhope but originally known as McAlpine—which modified the original plan in order to meet some of the criticisms of the Secretary of State and the inspector. However, the plans which have now been submitted and which we are now considering are still flawed and still fail to meet the fundamental objections that were prevalent at the time of the original debate.

Various problems have still not been dealt with, including that of flooding and the inadequacy of the road system. Regional trends in the county of Cambridgeshire have consistently shown that, whereas we have the lowest unemployment rate and the best health in the country, we have the worst record—it is a disgrace—of road accidents in the whole of the United Kingdom. The new development will do nothing to improve that; in fact, it will make it much worse.

The new plan does not consider the problem of overcrowding in schools which will occur. It does not deal with the fact that it will detract from the Papworth and Caldecote developments which are already approved. In the South Cambridgeshire district council area, sufficient planning permissions are already in the pipeline to deal with all housing needs. If the new settlement is approved, there will be an excess of planning permissions, which will be wholly undersirable and impossible to cope with. Perhaps there should be some further development in north Cambridgeshire, which has employment and housing problems, but not in south Cambridgeshire, which is entirely the wrong place for such a development. Above all, it would damage the amenities for ever.

The scheme is not only seriously flawed but already utterly out of date. The county council has produced a new structure plan which rejects the whole concept of such a settlement. It rightly argues that such a settlement would not conform with population housing forecasts for the area which have been revised in the light of regional planning guidance. In those circumstances, it would be plum crazy to go ahead with a scheme that can only result in the biggest concrete white elephant in the county of Cambridgeshire.

I have sought to impress these facts on a number of Ministers, but my pleas seem to have fallen on deaf ears. I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Baldry), for being here to reply to the debate. On 9 March this year, he sent me a confusing letter —it was so confusing that the district council had to seek counsel's opinion to find out what it meant. In effect, my hon. Friend threw the ball back to the district council and, what is more, appeared to reject the county council's proposals to dispose of the need for a new settlement. His Department issued a press statement, without, I must say, having the courtesy to inform me. The statement said that the county council had been told to delete reference to the new settlement in its structure plan because it wanted to secure plans which are not out of step with national policy". What on earth does that mean? I thought that national policy was to ensure that development accorded with local needs which local people were best able to judge. Are we back in the "gentlemen in Whitehall know best" world? If the Prime Minister's letter means anything, it means that Government policy is that local wishes should prevail. That is what my constituents thought when they voted for the Government last year, and so did I.

I want my hon. Friend and the Government to be under no illusions: local people are passionately against the scheme. My postbag tells me that, and I know that the Minister's postbag does because I have seen copies of the many letters that have been sent to him. County councillor John Reynolds and district councillors Mrs. Daphne Spink and Mrs. Linda Tingey, all of whom are closely in touch with local opinion—far more so than I am—report how disastrous the settlement would be. They have consistently said so and have argued the case clearly in the forums in which they are concerned and in public.

It is no good the Minister saying that it is up to the district council planning authority to decide the matter when the Department hamstrings it with out-of-date restrictions which make it terrified of being sued by the speculators. There is a distinct danger of this being a case of Whitehall's Big Brother crushing local wishes with a vengeance.

Twelve parishes and their communities have formed the New Settlement Action Group. They are absolutely united against this folly. I consider that I and, more importantly, my constituents have been treated shabbily in the whole affair over a number of years. The settlement is not wanted and it is not needed by anyone. It is not wanted by the Standing Conference of East Anglian Local Authorities, and it is not wanted by the district council, by the county council, by the parishes or by the people. It is wanted only by greedy speculators who seem to terrorise the present Department as they did previous Departments. I ask the Minister to show more consideration and sympathy to my rightly concerned constituents than has hitherto been the case.

2.41 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Tony Baldry)

Before dealing with the substance of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge, South-West (Sir A. Grant), I shall deal with one matter he raised. It is important to consider how planning applications are dealt with in the House. There are frequently contentious planning matters, such as structure plans and district plans, which have to be dealt with by Ministers. We always seek to give parliamentary colleagues on both sides of the House the best possible warning of any decisions that might affect their constituencies. I did that in respect of my hon. Friend. My private office sought to fax to his office the contents of the press release well before it was made available. I hope, therefore, that he will recognise on reflection that no discourtesy to him was intended and that we made every effort to let him know the facts.

Sir Anthony Grant

I am sure that no discourtesy was intended. My point was simply that all the attempts to send faxes and messages failed.

Mr. Baldry

There is no profit in going into the matter further—I just wanted to make it clear to my hon. Friend that every effort was made to ensure that he was warned of the decision.

My hon. Friend has consistently opposed any new settlement west of Cambridge and he has expressed his concerns with clarity and force today, as he did to Mr. Chope, the Under-Secretary of State in 1988, when there was a very similar debate in which very similar sentiments were expressed. I hope that it will be helpful for me to set out the background to the decisions taken in the past few years which will enable us to understand the present position in respect of any new settlement in the A45 corridor.

Policies for a new settlement in both the A 10 corridor to the north of Cambridge and the A45 corridor to the west and east of Cambridge were included in the Cambridgeshire structure plan, which was put forward by the county council and approved by the Secretary of State in March 1989. In approving the structure plan, however, the Secretary of State halved the size of a new settlement proposed for the A10 corridor from 3,000 to 1,500 homes and inserted—as he was entitled to—proposals for a new settlement of 3,000 homes in the A45 corridor. I fully appreciate that the county council has been consistently unhappy about the proposal and in fact rejected it before submitting the structure plan review to the Secretary of State. The background to the proposals was the regional need to ensure adequate housing provision in Cambridgeshire until the turn of the century.

Following the approval of the structure plan in 1989, three proposals were made for new settlements in the A 10 corridor—two in south Cambridgeshire and one in east Cambridgeshire—and eight proposals for new settlement were made in the A45 corridor, six in south Cambridgeshire and two in east Cambridgeshire. My hon. Friend said that he thought that those applications were refused and that there were appeals. In fact, all the applications were called in by the Secretary of State for his determination. Clearly, he felt it important that all of them should be considered together, so that all the arguments could be heard together by an inspector and a view could be taken on their merits. As a consequence, major public inquiries were held during late 1990 and 1991.

In the event, all those specific proposals were rejected. Those on the A10 corridor were refused because all three failed to provide for the Department of Transport's requirement for a grade-separated junction together with 1 km of dual carriageway either side of that junction to give access to the A10. On the A45 corridor, which is of particular concern to my hon. Friend, the location at Great Common farm, which is west of Cambridge but south of the A45 in south Cambridgeshire, emerged as the clear preference of the inspector, but the specific proposals were rejected by the Secretary of State at that time because a business part associated with the proposal was considered, at 1 million sq ft, to be too large for that location.

That decision was reached at the end of a most careful consideration of the inspector's report prepared after many months of inquiry time. The public inquiry lasted 82 days—involving 74 sitting days and eight site visits—and heard evidence from 101 witnesses. No useful purpose would be served by yet a further inquiry into any site-specific proposals.

Since that decision was issued in March 1992, there have been further events which influence the possible siting of new settlements in south Cambridgeshire—including national planning policy guidance set out in planning policy guidance note 3, published in March 1992, two fresh planning applications, a consultation draft of the review to the structure plan, and the district council's own local plan.

The Government's policy on new settlements is set out in planning policy guidance note 3, published in March 1992 following, the enactment of the Planning and Compensation Act 1991. As my hon. Friend has made clear, in quoting my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, one criterion for any new settlement is that the proposal should have a clear expression of local preference supported by local planning authorities and should not go against the wishes of the local community. The guidance also states: The need to respect local preference means that specific proposals for new settlements should normally only be promoted through the district-wide local plan. The south Cambridgeshire district-wide local plan being drawn up by the local council is the key to all these matters, and to my hon. Friend's concerns. That plan is well advanced and has reached the proposed modifications stage. It assumes that 3,000 new homes in its approved structure plan housing provision up to 2001 will be found in a new settlement in the A45 corridor. It also contains policies in respect of associated development, such as the 50 acres for business development.

Cambridgeshire county council has published the consultation draft of its review of the approved structure plan, extending the period covered up to 2006. It is clear that it takes a different view from that of the Secretary of State. In that draft it proposed, first, the deletion of the approved policy for a new settlement of 3,000 dwellings in the A45 corridor, whether west or east of Cambridge, but included the continuation of the policy for a new settlement in the A10 corridor, in either east or south Cambridgeshire., of 1,500 dwellings, but within the extended plan period to 2006.

The county council has clearly stated its opposition to an A45 new settlement. Also, by retaining the A10 new settlement at 1,500 dwellings rather than the 3,000 originally proposed, it is not giving any additional scope for any proposed development to pay for the infrastructure costs associated with the grade-separated junction to the A10, the expected contribution to the fen link road, water and drainage costs in this low-lying area, or to provide for a reasonable proportion of affordable housing. In short, the county council's proposals are unrealistic.

However, I am clear that PPG3 gives explicit guidance that it is the district-wide local plan which is the appropriate forum for making choices in respect of new settlements and that the Government's "plan-led" approach, as embodied in the Planning and Compensation Act 1991, should be seen to work through the decisions of the local district councils wherever possible.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State has examined the south Cambridgeshire local plan very carefully. He and all Ministers concerned with planning matters in the Department are fully aware of the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-West. We have therefore considered the local plan carefully in relation to the new settlement proposals. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State is satisfied that its provisions are not such as to change significantly the circumstances in which these new settlement proposals are being considered since the decision letter of March 1992.

My hon. Friend is aware that our right hon. and learned Friend has come to the conclusion that there has not been a change in circumstances since March 1992, when his decision letter on the earlier proposals was issued, to justify his interventing in the present applications before South Cambridgeshire district council. My hon. Friend will, I am sure, appreciate that the Secretary of State could effectively intervene only by calling in those proposals and holding yet a further public inquiry. As I have already made clear, these matters have already been the subject of extensive, lengthy and detailed public inquiries and a further inquiry would have no significant benefits and would inevitably involve delay, uncertainty and costs.

Sir Anthony Grant

With regard to delay, a possible solution to the problem would be for the district council, as planning authority, to delay taking a decision on the matter until the county structure plan is resolved. I understand that that will occur next year. The matter has, admittedly, been going on for a long time. A little more delay might result in the district council concluding that the county is absolutely right, as I believe that it is, and the plan being rejected. We should not then have the absurd situation of an out-of-date planning permission being accepted.

Mr. Baldry

My hon. Friend and I are absolutely at one in agreeing that it must be for South Cambridgeshire district council to take those decisions. I firmly believe that South Cambridgeshire district council is best placed to decide on whether there should be a new settlement, having particular regard to its own local plan policies, and to decide the best location for any such settlement.

My hon. Friend mentioned various elected members of the council. They are in a prime position to influence their authority's decision because it must be for the district council to judge whether the developer's proposals are satisfactory in all respects. It is not sufficient for a developer to say, "My development accords with various proposals by the Secretary of State in relation to the structure plan of some years ago." Many other issues must be considered—including many mentioned by my hon. Friend, such as flooding and road transport difficulties. The district council will quite properly have to take such matters into account.

The council is well placed to make such judgments. It has been closely involved in the philosophy of new settlements around Cambridge in recent years. It played a pivotal role during the public inquiries into the new settlement proposals and its own local plan is close to adoption. It would not be right for the council to postpone its local plan to await further modifications to the county structure plan. South Cambridgeshire councillors are well aware of all the options for satisfying the need for local housing, including those for affordable housing. Those councillors must take the necessary decisions.

The Secretary of State is satisfied that South Cambridgeshire district council, as the local planning authority, is best placed to decide on these two outstanding planning applications. In so far as the council has raised queries with us about that approach, we have sought to answer in the fullest possible detail. I think that the council now has a full appreciation of the possibilities that are open to it. As I have said, it must be for the council to decide whether there should be a new settlement and the best location for it.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at three minutes to Three o'clock.