DAVID KIDNEY’S RESPONSE TO BOROUGH’S PLANS

 30 March 2009 

Stafford’s MP David Kidney has sent to Stafford Borough Council his comments in response to the Council’s consultation about its Local Development Framework.

Main points he makes in his response include:

§  The new Plan is the community’s opportunity to say what kind of sustainable development we want over the next two decades;

 §  We have to build new homes to meet housing need, including new homes to meet the needs arising from an expected expansion of the military base MoD Stafford;

 §  The Plan should include as many sites for employment and jobs as possible;

 §  The Borough Council should let people have a say on its decision to volunteer to be a “growth point”;

 §  There should be a bus station in Stafford town centre.

David Kidney says it is important that everyone has their say about the plans for the Borough’s future:

“The final document will shape the kinds of development we will have in Stafford Borough for the next 20 years. It is right that the Council should seek the public’s views and I have encouraged my constituents to respond. I am also having my say as MP for Stafford.”

See  David’s full response below.

 Response to Stafford Borough Council’s consultation for the Local Development Framework 2006-2026

(Delivering the Plan for Stafford Borough, Issues and options February 2009)

INTRODUCTION

At the start of a new plan period there is bound to be concern about the total number of new homes to be built in the years planned for. When the last Plan for the 15 years 1986-2001 was produced we were concerned about having to build 9,100 new homes.

In this 20 year plan period the figure for new homes is 10,300.

The actual numbers for new homes built since 1997 are:

1997                323

1998                244

1999                698

2000                459

2001                647

2002                677

2003                567

2004                604

2005                321

2006                442

2007                449

2008                581

Total              6,012

An annual average over this period of 501 new dwellings.

What this table tells me is that we have been accommodating housing growth and we will continue to accommodate housing growth.

But it is a mistake to focus only on the housing numbers. This plan is our opportunity to work for sustainable development, harnessing economic, environmental and social gains for the future benefit of our society while protecting and enhancing the special character of the Borough, including through high standards of design.

We should plan to reduce the overall need to travel to work by providing jobs and homes within easy reach of each other. This means the plan should be firm about providing space for employment sites.

We should plan to play our part in reducing carbon emissions and so helping to tackle climate change. This means the plan must set high standards for energy efficiency, green energy and greater care and attention for our natural environment.

We all want a socially just society with fairness and equal opportunities for all residents. This means the plan has to be uncompromising in ridding our communities of crime, anti social behaviour and the fear of crime. It should contribute to efforts to strengthen public services including public transport.

The Local Development Framework is our chance to shape the kind of society we want Stafford Borough to be. I’m having my say by responding to the Borough Council’s consultation and I hope many more residents will do the same.

HOUSING DEVELOPMENT

Our starting point should be to plan new housing to meet need. There is unmet need now. Most residents will know someone who is on a waiting list for a home to rent from a social landlord like a Housing Association or on a waiting list with a private letting agent wanting to rent a home in the private sector or first-time buyers who have been priced out of the present housing market. Where once first-time buyers borrowed a mortgage of three times their annual salary, in recent years they have had to borrow six times or seven times their pay. We have all witnessed the housing crash that shows just how unsustainable that situation had become.

There are other kinds of unmet need. More and more residents are living longer lives. It is great that healthy diet, increased wealth and medical advances allow people to live much longer lives than ever before, but it also means more people have complex needs, including a need for different kinds of housing – for example supported housing or “extra care” housing.

We are becoming a kinder, more inclusive society towards our fellow residents with learning difficulties, physical disability, mental ill-health and substance abuse. We are more conscious of the needs of carers as well as the people they care for. Here again, there are kinds of housing needed that we do not provide currently or we do not provide in sufficient amounts – housing where groups of people can support each other, where support services can be provided at home and in the neighbouring community.

Overall most of our existing housing is still fit for purpose but housing does eventually come to the end of its useful life and needs to be replaced.

All these are forms of existing need. In addition, we can forecast more need for new homes in the period of this plan. In particular, the demographic revolution has not finished yet. We will carry on living longer lives and thereby contribute to a growing population. This factor will add to the pressure for more new homes in the years ahead.

It isn’t easy making accurate forecasts of future housing needs. Nor is it easy to predict with precision the breakdown of that need between homes for rent and homes to buy, or between large, expensive homes and affordable homes, especially ones suitable for first-time buyers. But everything points towards the conclusion that new homes will have to be built in Stafford Borough over the plan period: past performance, existing unmet need, future need that can obviously be anticipated.

The housing numbers in the consultation document stem from the Government setting a national requirement for 3 million more homes by 2026 to meet anticipated need. Each region is asked to take a share of this total and devise its own strategy for allocating sites for new homes.

In the West Midlands, the councils and other partners together drew up a strategy with a top priority to direct much new house building to city centres to aid regeneration plans and to halt a drift of residents from urban to suburban and rural locations. After those allocations the remainder of the region’s share was agreed by the councils and other partners.

In the case of Stafford Borough there is an additional factor.

The Government wants some councils to volunteer to be “growth points”, places where more housing than would otherwise be allocated should be built. In return for volunteering to be a growth point, a council has access to an additional pot of central funding for “infrastructure”.

Stafford Borough has volunteered to be a growth point. On average, growth points have accepted 20% more housing than would otherwise be allocated.

This fact hardly features in the consultation document. Why is this? Has the Borough Council simply done the deal and the rest of us can have no say over it? I argue that the public should be consulted and have a say before Stafford Borough agrees to be a growth point. If this is not possible, why not?

Many people will say that new house building is only acceptable if new infrastructure comes with it. The Borough Council can justly claim that they have secured almost £3 million of central government funding by volunteering to be a growth point. However, again it is not clear from the consultation what the status of this funding is and how it might be spent. I see from a Government statement that Stafford Borough Council has been invited to submit plans for spending the bulk of this additional funding on a “sustainable transport package”.

It is sensible to expect the majority of new house building to be in Stafford town. If we are serious about sustainable development we want most homes to be within reach of jobs, transport systems and facilities like shops and leisure outlets.

The military base MoD Stafford, home to the Army’s 22 Signals Regiment, the RAF’s Tactical Supply Wing and other MoD units, will likely expand over the next decade. Additional accommodation within the base will be needed and more homes in the community for Services personnel and their families who wish to buy or rent their own homes. Some personnel will, I’m sure, like their posting here so much that when they retire from HM Forces they will want to settle here. All this means we will need more homes to meet these demands.

Some developments in the immediate Beaconside area around the base will be unavoidable because of the interaction between the changes to the base as it expands and the growth in demand for more homes. It does not follow, however, that every soldier who wants to have his or her own home will want it to be near the base.

The demand that a growing military presence drives is only one specific example of the future need for more homes in Stafford. Other locations as well as Beaconside can be expected to be under examination.

Land at Castlefields next to the railway line includes brownfield sites and unused land, which would be capable of development in ways that promote sustainable links with the town centre and its facilities including safe walking and cycling. The open land around the castle – a “green lung” for the town - would have to be fully protected and the Greenway from Stafford to Newport safeguarded.

Land east and south of Stafford (the latter partly in South Staffordshire, not the Borough) comes under scrutiny. This is partly linked to the long-standing issue of a road to the east of Stafford. If the road goes ahead, and I think it should if possible, then there will be significant pressure for house-building along its route. I would make three points about this. First, the route is not straightforward because the previously protected line has been breached by permitted development in recent years. Secondly, housing on this route will involve building on predominantly greenfield land. There should be limits on how much greenfield land can be taken for the a new road and its accompanying housing. Thirdly, as a relief road for the existing congested town roads, this road will not be very effective if in building it we attract many new homes and many new car users. In part, the answer to this challenge has to be effective transport planning, something I return to later.

In the Haywoods, the consultation plan identifies five main sites for possible new development. In my opinion, development of all the four sites between Great Haywood and Little Haywood would represent an over-development of these rural villages. Some of them have serious flooding problems. I do not know whether the fifth site at Great Haywoods out towards the A51, is a practicable option for development but I do know that the last development on that side of Great Haywood created serious problems for water and sewerage services and may have contributed to even more severe flooding problems at Mill Lane. There remains a problem at the Haywoods regarding burial grounds that also inhibits further housing development.

At Hixon, some residents have complained to me that the consultation has proceeded on the basis of an out-of-date map, which fails to show all the existing housing in that village. It seems only fair for there to be a re-consideration of the plan in respect of Hixon and a re-consultation with Hixon’s residents.

In rural areas more generally, it is right to assess whether existing villages are “sustainable communities”. Can the adult children of village residents find a home in their parents’ village? Are there homes they can afford to rent or buy if they want to stay local? Often villages are attractive locations for people at the end of their working lives to buy a home in. This pushes up house prices and, in the absence of any new house-building, shuts out local young people. The sustainability of schools, post offices, shops and pubs may be lost. In judging what a village needs, the residents and their parish and local councillors are best placed to make judgements and many parish councils carry out local needs surveys and draw up parish plans. The Borough Council’s own plan should respect this process.

In any discussion on building more new homes it behoves us to take a hard look at existing homes that are standing empty.

In my opinion, our community should always aim to fill existing empty homes before building new homes. Realistically, filling all the empty homes would not alone meet the housing need we have now nor the future need we anticipate. In some cases, homes are empty for perfectly understandable reasons like the death of the owner or a delay in securing a sale after moving away. But we should have a planning objective of filling empty homes and there should be a local Charter signed by councils, Housing Associations and Government Departments committing all partners to keeping empty homes to an absolute minimum.

EMPLOYMENT

The consultation document points out that there is a high proportion of public sector jobs in the Borough. It is to be expected that the County Town will be home to centres of public sector employment. During times of rising investment in public services this situation can be seen as a positive factor, but in a changed political environment – a Government committed to cutting public spending for example – it could be a weakness.

Jobs are strong in manufacturing, especially those businesses involved in the energy sector like Areva T&D, Alstom and Perkins. Stafford is well placed to promote green technologies because of our expertise in wind, solar and biomass power technologies. The latter also relates to land use and agriculture, other activities where Stafford Borough is strong.

We also value the starting up of new businesses in the Borough, including spin off businesses from ventures started at Staffordshire University and the Business Village there. During the three years of the Government’s Local Authorities Business Growth Initiative (LABGI) the Borough has performed strongly in winning more business rates funding for the Borough due to the starting up of new businesses in the Borough.

The expansion of the military base brings with it opportunities for improving civil employment opportunities. Alongside the strengths of Staffordshire University in computing technologies and media technologies, the Signals presence at MoD Stafford highlights the need for high value added ICT applications in roles like communications and surveillance.

We live in a beautiful part of England. We have great travel links by road and rail and three major regional airports are within easy reach. We have opportunities to attract visitors for business conferences, tourist short breaks and adventure holidays. We have a great network of canals passing through the Borough and carrying huge numbers of people each year looking for places to stop and enjoy a slower pace of life. There is even a project to restore the Baswich canal link to Stafford town centre.

Our plan should support promotion of these opportunities in hospitality and tourism. 

The consultation document identifies many sites for potential future employment uses. I approve of this approach and it is reassuring that a large range of locations are identified. The consultation document says that not all these sites can be approved for inclusion in the eventual plan. This is a pity.

I would urge that sites that do not make it into the final plan ought to be identified as locations offering opportunities for several future uses in order to enable Councillors and planners in future years to give consideration to proposed employment uses at these locations on their individual merits.

TRANSPORT

There is something of a black hole in the consultation document concerning future transport plans. This is because the Borough and County Councils have still not finished their own studies into all the options. The trouble with this is that the planners may come up with suggestions after this consultation is closed. How then will the public be able to influence those plans?

As stated earlier, the Government has invited the Borough Council to bid for funding for a sustainable transport package. The Borough and County Councils should consult the public before they submit a bid to the Government.

A large number of residents, myself included, believe that the transport proposals should include plans for a bus station in Stafford. Currently, there is too little road priority for buses, too many different places from which to catch different bus services and too little space for bus stops at those roadside places like Chell Road.

It will be important to continue improving bus services – routes like Numbers 8 (Moss Pit to Parkside), 9 (Highfields to the University), 481 (Telford to Stafford) and 825 (Lichfield to Stafford) are good models. Modern, clean buses frequent and reliable will earn the trust of travellers and make it easier to persuade residents to make more journeys by bus and fewer by car.

Rail services have improved after the £9 billion investment in the West Coast Main Line and a new timetable with more frequent services. Smaller, less well used services tend to be overlooked by the main train operators and there is a greater role for “community rail services” like the North Staffordshire service. We should still be looking at options for improving access to rail services, including the re-opening of Colwich station.

I want to see, and many people comment about this, a more coherent cycling network in place of the current cycle lanes that suddenly come to an end or disappear.

I think there should be more attention to safe walking, including well-maintained footpaths and adequate lighting at night.

Everyone thinks there are too many traffic lights but there is no getting away from the fact that there is little room for adding new road capacity in Stafford town centre.

We must get better at managing the existing road space (better use of technology, for example) and trying to reduce pressure on the roads at peak times – for example, more flexible working hours and more use of Yellow School Buses.

People comment to me that many rural roads are poorly maintained. It should be the aim of the local plan for rural roads to be safe and well-maintained.

GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE

There is a very welcome recognition in this consultation document of the positive difference that the natural environment makes to our quality of life.

Green spaces, trees and plants enhance the beauty of our Borough, they contribute to the biodiversity that we all value and the world’s plant and animal species rely on for their continued existence and they soak up harmful carbon and pump out oxygen.

Studies have proved the beneficial effects of green spaces, trees and plants to our health, our emotional well being and our natural environment.

Asthma rates for children fall 25% for every 350 tress per sq km. Each new park helps cut carbon emissions by 74 tonnes. For every 5% of tree cover added, water run-off is reduced by 2%. These are all benefits we would all want for our communities.

The proposal for a major new green park is welcome but it shouldn’t be seen as a sop to planned new house-building. It has to be properly integrated into the stated policy of improving our environment consistently throughout the Borough.

Green spaces should also be integrated into other objectives such as safe walking and cycling as well as promoting the attractiveness of our Borough overall.

CONCLUSION

It is great to see the movement over the years towards an increasing emphasis on sustainable development and sustainable communities.

Discussion in this consultation document of crime reduction, support for older people and for carers, providing more facilities for young people and promoting green industries make for welcome recognition of our changing times.

They key to getting the development policies right is to listen to what people want, bring into the plan the ideas and suggestions of those who respond to the consultation and focus always on sustainable solutions that will command popular support as well as stand the test of time.

David Kidney MP

House of Commons,

LONDON    SW1A 0AA.

30 March 2009.