MP defends Green Belt proposals

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A Conservative MP has defended the government's proposals to revamp planning laws, while insisting the Green Belt should be strengthened.

Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) claimed new guidance would give people more power over local developments.

In a Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday, she told MPs: "It will enable communities to come together and work together to look at how best they can encourage growth and development in their areas."

The government's draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) aims to make planning laws simpler, reducing more than 1,000 pages of policy to just 52.

But the inclusion of a "presumption in favour of sustainable development" has raised fears for protected land, with campaigners claiming it would lead to the "concreting over" of the Green Belt.

Soubry denied the shake-up would change the "special protection afforded to the Green Belt" - and blamed "a high level of scaremongering" for any confusion.

"Our Green Belts are our green lungs, spaces. They are open spaces enjoyed by all," she said.

"The Green Belt defines communities; as it halts urban growth it keeps the identity of towns, villages and cities."

She said the NPPF, coupled with the coalition's Localism Bill, would give residents greater power of veto over major planning decisions.

Soubry went on to call for a revolution in how the government built the homes that population forecasters claim are needed.

But she added: "Sustainable development isn't just about building more homes and houses.

"It's also about bringing more jobs in, it's about enhancing our environment - whether that's cleaning up sites so that homes maybe built there, or indeed businesses maybe regenerated on those sites.

"It's this imaginative approach that we need and I think that lies at the heart of sustainable development."

Bill Esterson (Lab, Sefton Central) pressed for more house building, telling MPs: "People need to live somewhere, but that cannot be at the expense of concreting over the countryside."

He said local authorities need to know what numbers are needed, so that councils such as Sefton, which is drawing up its core strategy at the moment, can determine within the strategy whether there is even a need to look at the green belt.

Shadow local government minister Jack Dromey urged the government to protect the Green Belt and direct more building on brownfield sites.

He wanted Parliament to vote on the NPPF, adding pressure groups feared the presumption in favour of sustainable development would lead to building on Green Belts.

Responding for the government, local government junior minister Andrew Stunell claimed: "Far from weakening environmental protections, our planning reforms will tend to strengthen them."

He said the government values the green belt highly and it is "an essential planning tool" to prevent sprawl, and its retention is a coalition agreement commitment.

The minister said the abolition of the regional spatial strategies through the Localism Bill will stop the top-down pressure to review green belts in many areas.

Stunnell said authorities are free to make whatever assessment they believe they should make of their housing strategy and draw up plans in accordance with the current system as they think fit.

To conclude, the minister said the government wants plans to be developed in accordance "with the wishes of local communities and to create the homes, jobs, transport links and recreational facilities that are needed to produce environmentally, socially and economically sustainable communities".

He added: "It is the government's clear intention to do so."