Category: Wokingham and West Berkshire Issues

Kennet Valley Park development proposals

August 12, 2008 7 Comments

Many of my constituents have written to me expressing their opposition to the inclusion of Kennet Valley Park as a Strategic Development Area in the Government’s South East Plan. I have today written to the Government Office of the South East setting out my opposition to any proposals to build an estimated 7,500 homes in this area, and have highlighted my unease over the potential flood risk from building on a functional floodplain based on the Environment Agency’s interpretation of Planning Policy 25. I have also outlined my concerns about the serious problems such development would create for the road and rail network, along with other types of infrastructure. I have told them that this Wildlife Heritage Site, which contains designated wildlife areas of locally and internationally recognised importance, should be protected and an investigation carried out to determine whether there has been any contamination of the land, as was recently reported in the Newbury Weekly News.

I would urge all constituents concerned about the inclusion of Kennet Valley in the South East Plan to lobby the Government Office of the South East by writing to: The R. S. S. Team, GOSE, 1 Wilnut Tree Close, Guildford, Surrey GU1 4GA. The reference numbers H1B Greater Reading and H1B West Berkshire should be included in any correspondence.

Wokingham needs a Home Information Pack holiday says John Redwood

August 11, 2008 3 Comments

As damaging uncertainty continues over whether or not the Government will introduce a stamp duty suspension or deferment scheme, John Redwood today called on Gordon Brown to use government powers to suspend Home Information Packs (HIPs) to help boost the beleaguered housing market.

Twelve months on from their introduction, there is growing evidence that HIPs deter speculative sellers, increase transaction costs, discourage sellers from changing estate agent and reduce the number of housing transactions – all compounding the economic downturn.

Ministers have powers to introduce a HIPs holiday now. When the Government pushed the Home Information Pack laws through Parliament in 2004, it slipped in a last minute concession to allow a government to suspend any or all of the HIP laws. Parliament does not need to be sitting for such a power to be used.

Five ways HIPs are harming the housing market:

1. HIPs discourage speculative sellers from putting their homes on the market and act as a barrier to entry; this restricts housing supply and so reduces the number of net housing transactions.

2. By duplicating the need for searches and not providing reliable information, HIPs increase transaction costs, increasing the net cost of moving home.

3. HIPs reduce market responsiveness, by discouraging people from changing estate agent if their house does not sell – as they may be asked to buy a new HIP.

4. The searches in HIPs go ‘stale’ if a house is left unsold for too long, increasing transaction costs in a slow market, and acting as a further deterrent to would-be sellers.

5. If the seller has opted for a so-called ‘free HIP’ – a deferred payment option – they will be hit with a fee if they want to change estate agent, on top of the cost of any new HIP with their new agent.

The Government has ignored warnings of harm to the economy from HIPS. Research by independent experts, Oxford Economic Forecasting, warned back in 2006 that HIPs would deter sellers and curtail the number of housing transactions by between 10% – 25%. In turn, this would cut consumer spending, reduce labour mobility and increase the medium term level of unemployment. Ministers ignored these warnings.

The Government claims that HIPs are necessary to meet an EU Directive which requires Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). Yet in Northern Ireland since the start of July 2008, such Certificates have quietly been introduced for home sales without HIPs. Whitehall’s own Better Regulation Commission has slammed the UK Government for “gold plating” the EU Directive on EPCs, and imposing “additional administrative burdens [of HIPs] without adequate justification”.

Speaking about the need for a HIPs holiday, John Redwood said: “I believe that urgent action is needed to kick start the housing market in Wokingham. The Labour Government is dithering – and their spin and speculation over stamp duty is further undermining the market by making buyers wait and see.

“Before Home Information Packs were introduced, Labour Ministers ignored warnings from experts and industry that this new red tape would harm the housing market and the economy. These warnings are coming true, but Ministers are more interesting in saving face than saving homebuyers money.

“Gordon Brown only wants to talk about housing to create a distraction from Labour leadership speculation. If he genuinely wanted to help, he would use his powers to suspend Home Information Packs straight away. A future Conservative Government will scrap this unnecessary red tape completely, but a suspension now will deliver those benefits sooner rather than later.”

John Redwood welcomes announcement of funds for flood defences

July 21, 2008 2 Comments

John Redwood today welcomed the Government’s announcement that Wokingham Borough Council and West Berkshire Council are to receive additional funding to help develop and maintain their flood defences.

The Department for Communities and Local Government has allocated £30.6 million through its Restoration Fund to help local authorities affected by the floods of June and July 2007. West Berkshire Council is to receive a grant of £491,854 and Wokingham Borough Council is to receive £310,244. The Minister responsible for allocating these funds has said there will be no strings attached on how local authorities decide to use this money, provided it is used to address issues related to flooding in the community.

Speaking about the announcement of the awards, John Redwood said: “I welcome the £801,000 extra for Wokingham Borough Council and West Berkshire Council. It is a shame it has taken so long for this to be forthcoming, and unacceptable that almost a year after the floods there are still people who have not received the proper assurances that action has been taken to prevent a repeat of similar incidences in the future.”

“I hope both local authorities will now set out sensible schemes to help prevent future flooding. This must include a detailed breakdown of just who is responsible for each aspect of the flood defences, clearance and maintenance of the ditches and culverts, and an expansion of water capacity where this is sorely needed.”

You too can live your dream

July 4, 2008 14 Comments

Yesterday at a Prize Giving at a local Comprehensive School I asked the children, students and parents if they thought the prize winners had mainly won prizes because of their genes, and who their parents were, or because of the effort and the enthusiasm they had put into their studies. By a wide margin the audience told me the prize winners had done so through their own hard work. It had been a long hot evening of speeches, with many prizes. I kept my remarks short, conscious that people had homes they wanted to return to, seeing the audience had reached the point where the chairs seemed hard and the air too warm.

I said something along the following lines:

“You too can live your dreams. In this age of watching celebrity on TV, when the best performers in the world of sport, drama and song can be in our living rooms and bedrooms at the touch of a button, it is all too easy to think the successful are born with different genes. People think Johnny Wilkinson was such a good kicker of the rugby ball because he was born with that skill, or they believe Ronaldo can show poetry with a soccer ball because his parents so endowed him. They ignore the hours of practise both put in as youngsters before fame beckoned, when their friends were spending more time watching TV or engaging in a more active social life.

Somewhere in a hall like this is sitting a 15 or 16 year old who will lift a gold medal at the London Olympics. It is unlikely to be someone here tonight, because the best in the world today are so good, and make such a sacrifice. But it could be someone here tonight, if one of you really really wanted to be the best in the world at something which requires youthful muscles and hunger to be the fastest.

There may be many parents here tonight who have long given up on their dream. They may not be able to see their way past the mortgage payments and the school run. My message to you is the same. In a few years you will have no more school run. Eventually the mortgage will be repaid. Sometimes it pays to be brave, to say I am not going to just dream my dream, or let my dream fade into the cynicism of middle age – I am going to seize the moment and advance my dream. You might surprise yourself at what you can do, if you really really want to . Tomorrow you could make that first step to what you have always wanted to do – so why delay, why not start today?

If you do start to live your dream you will find in some ways it is so much better than the dream itself. Yes, there will be the rebuffs and the rejections, the days, weeks or months when it does not work. There will be times when you are not good enough, and other times when you may be good enough but others do not recognise it. There will be times when you are living your dream when it becomes a nightmare and you will wonder why you ever dreamt it. You will need to be your own best critic, constantly striving to do better and to learn more each day. If you want to be good, strive to be the best.

I always dreamt of one day representing people in Parliament. It took me 14 years to get there from the time I first became a Councillor, with many rebuffs on the way. Each time I wondered if it would be worth it. It was. Every day I walk into the magnificent Victorian building at Westminster and see our history in the murals, paintings and statues, I know it was worth it. Every time I make a speech, I am humbled by the thought of some of the great speeches that changed the nation, and inspired by the thought I too can make my contribution to our democratic traditions. Even though I am a well known critic of how Parliament is run and handled by the present government, I never doubt its importance to our liberties, and the need for those who believe to make it better. In a way the defects of the present mount a greater challenge to my generation to do something to sort it, so we can pass it on with greater lustre.

And when I manage to fit in a game of cricket and play well below the standard I would like to, I remember the great saying – my luck at sport always improves, the more I practise. You will find it difficult to live more than one dream!”

Wokingham Times

July 1, 2008 1 Comment

One of the many policies and aspirations of the present government that lies in tatters is its wish to see many more houses built in Britain. With an impeccable sense of timing and no sense of irony, the government chose the top of the housebuilding cycle to announce that it intended the building industry to step up from around 180,000 new homes a year to 240,000. With all the certainty of the old Communist regimes announcing their tractor production targets, Minister told us solemnly that another 3 million homes will be built by 2020. The policy was to be pushed through by the construction of numerous “eco” towns on greenfields, coupled with brownfield redevelopment, town cramming and back garden building. Doubtless Ministers would like to force too many new homes on us here in Wokingham, without making the money available to build the schools, roads and drainage systems they would need.

All of this looks absurd when you see the reality of the Credit Crunch. The first thing the government did to “help” implement its policy was to nationalise the most aggressive of the mortgage banks, and then stop it undertaking new lending! The Bank of England and the government failed to keep markets liquid enough, so credit dried up at many of the smaller lenders, and the larger banks all had to rein in their lending and raise new capital. As a result in the first quarter of this year only 32,000 new homes were started – an annual rate of a mere 130,000 if the first quarter’s activity levels can be sustained, or little more than half the government’s ambition.

At the same time the government decided it needed to speed up the granting of planning permissions for major projects. It has chosen to do so by legislating to set up a new quango to become involved in these decisions. In our recent debate on the subject Ministers were themselves unable to confirm it would be quicker to wait for the new quango if you want a major planning permission, whilst the Opposition pledged to abolish it and pointed out it was likely to delay matters with judicial review of decisions a distinct possibility.

Regional government – unelected, expensive and much disliked – is currently dividing up these top down government targets for more housebuilding. It is playing the part of a faithful retainer in this process of illusion – instructing Councils to make land and planning permissions available on a huge scale, as if the industry wanted to build all these homes, or people could borrow the money to buy them. I look forward to a Conservative manifesto pledging to abolish both these hated regional governments and the silly housing targets they generate. Planning applications should be considered on their merits by the local authority involved. If a company or a landowner wishes to gain a permission which greatly enhances the value of their land, they should make it worth while for the local community and the people who will be adversely affected by the development. They should not be able to rely on unelected regional officials, on Chief Executives of Councils keen to do the government’s bidding to advance their own careers, and on the idiotically optimistic government view of how many houses people can afford to build and buy.

I was pleased to hear Shadow Spokesmen sharing my view that top down targets, regional control and over optimistic plans are a bad idea. The planning system at the moment suits no-one. Developers think in better economic times they cannot get the planning permissions they want, whilst most people feel the system fails to take their views seriously and fails to protect communities against unwanted development or to provide the additional facilities needed to make a housing estate part of a thriving community.

So what should Councils about the pressures from the top to identify more greenfields to be bulldozed? They should argue, remonstrate and use every clause in the long manual to slow things down.It’s time for masterly inactivity. There is no need to identify new sites at the moment. This system cannot last. There is no need for more planning permissions this year, as the housebuilding industry is going through extremely difficult times. Land values are going to fall. There is too much land with planning permission around for current needs. Leading housebuilders need to sell land and finished houses to pay off some debt. The government is in a world of its own. The problem today is not a shortage of planning permissions, but a shortage of mortgages and people to buy the homes.

Redwood welcomes the Pitt Review, but cautions against complacency

June 25, 2008 0 Comments

John Redwood has welcomed the findings of the Pitt Review, published today. He is pleased to note that his urging for clarity of responsibility among the relevant authorities is a central tenet of the report’s recommendations. The report proposes a framework, overseen by the Environment Agency, in which all responsibilities are clearly mapped out on a local level. Mr Redwood very much hopes that this will, finally, translate into some action on the ground, ensuring the gully clearance and capacity increases that are needed to avoid risking a repeat of last July.

Having submitted concerns to the review regarding the planning process, John Redwood also welcomes the report’s emphasis on the need either to implement properly, or strengthen, existing planning legislation, in order to reduce the flood risks posed by new building developments.

He is concerned, however, that the lack of urgency in producing the final report will also characterise the implementation of its recommendations.

Speaking today, John Redwood said: “It has taken more than a year for the government to come up with a report, chronicling the obvious failures of the authorities’ responses to floods last year. Meanwhile some people are still not back in their homes one year on, and many still face the threat of floods if we have more heavy rainfall. It is vital that the government accept the main thrust of this report, and get on with accepting responsibility to carry out the works needed and to make the planning decisions that are required, to prevent so much flooding of people’s homes in the future.”