In today’s Westminster Hall Debate, Dr Kieran Mullan MP spoke eloquently on both the advantages and disadvantages presented in the White Paper “Planning for the Future” that reflected key areas of debate that the Cheshire East Conservative Councillor Group submitted in their detailed response to the Public Consultation in October.
Dr Mullan made reference to the fact that Chester East has suffered enormously from speculative housing developments and the importance of recognising that new legislation must prioritise putting forward proposals that will see housing developments that already have planning permission are built first and foremost,
Dr Mullan summarised his contributions to the debate:
“This week I spoke in the Westminster Hall debate on the Planning for the Future White Paper, which proposes a number of changes to our planning system.
I support the Government's emphasis on our national building design code and the locally produced building guidelines. I also back the Government's goal in making the building rules clearer.
I my speech I emphasised the importance of local knowledge and input to planning decisions and put on record my concerns that these changes may limit the input councillors have on planning decision. I also spoke about the challenge these proposals could create for local authorities who already regularly go toe-to-toe with the lawyers from big developers.
Personally, I would also like to see planning developments give consideration to NHS capacity much more than they do, in the same way that they consider school capacity.
I ended my speech by calling on the Minister to review the proposed changes and consider the impact that they may have on local decision making. We have had a local example of the government overule local views and decision making.
We need to build more homes, but we need to do it in the right way, in the right place and in a way that does not negatively impact the local area.
If we need to change something we need to focus more on making developers build on where they have permission instead of land banking to maximise the prices in what is essentially a broken market.”
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2020-12-15a.76.0&p=25883#g90.0
https://www.facebook.com/KieranMullanUK/videos/244912437059551
