Category: Wokingham and West Berkshire Issues

I have  received the briefing from Wokingham Borough Council that I requested  on the case for more money for Wokingham schools, which has also gone to the Minister following my meeting with him. We now await the government’s decisions on overall public spending and the Education Department’s conclusions on the formula for distributing the money between LEAs.

Our Conference Message: Security, Stability, Opportunity

• We are modern, compassionate Conservatives who are truly on the side of working people – whatever stage of life they are at.

• A home-owning revolution: Generation Rent to Generation Buy

Summary: The Prime Minister has announced a major boost to affordable home ownership. We will ensure affordable housing includes low cost home ownership, so young people are not locked into renting when what they really want is a home of their own.

•  For years, politicians have been talking about building what they call ‘affordable homes’–but the phrase was deceptive.It basically means homes that were only available to rent. What people want are homes they can actually own. Old rules said to developers: you can build on this site, but only if you build affordable homes for rent. We are replacing them with new rules: you can build here, and those affordable homes can also be low costs homes to buy.We are helping Generation Rent move to Generation Buy.

• Current planning rules prevent Starter Homes, which give first time buyers at least a 20 per cent discount on a new build home, as counting as affordable. But such homes are a key way for many to turn their dream of owning their own home into a reality as part of a sensible affordable housing mix. This will help deliver more homes for first time buyers, more quickly.

• Starter Homes are only a part of the Conservative proposals on home ownership. We will extend the Right to Buy to housing association tenants, support Help to Buy up to 2020, and increase the supply of new homes by helping small and medium sized builders,and ensure councils deliver enough homes to meet their local housing need.

Background

• Extend the definition of affordable homes to include Starter Homes.Starter Homes are a new Government programme to build low-cost homes for first time buyers, under 40 years old. Prices are at least 20 per cent lower than the market rate. However, they are not currently classed as ‘affordable’ housing under government planning rules. The current policy says: ‘low cost market housing may not be considered as affordable housing for planning purposes.’1

 

• Holding out for unrealistic types of‘affordable’housing hinders house building. While house builders need to support affordable housing, in some cases local authorities demand a particular type, or level, of a particular type of affordable housing that is simply not financially viable to sell and maintain. This stops homes from being built in the first place, and prevents house builders from meeting the untapped market demand of low cost homes to buy. By introducing more flexibility, more sites will be built out, and as a result, more affordable housing provided than would otherwise be the case.
• People want a home of their own: Thanks to these rigid rules, young people are being locked in to renting, when actually they want to buy their own home –at an affordable price. Given the choice, 86 per cent of people want to own their own home rather than rent, and a fifth say the high cost of housing is the barrier.2 There is massive untapped demand for low cost homes to buy, which the market is being prevented from providing due to state rules.

Our solution

• We are going to change the rules to include Starter Homes in the affordable housing definition. At present such a model of a discounted home for outright purchase is not covered by the definition. We want this model of discounted home ownership to be seen as part of the affordable housing mix. This does not reduce the total financial value of affordable housing provided –but actually can help increase the total level of affordable housing by making more sites economically viable.

• We will also make it clear that councils cannot hold out for one type of affordable housing over another. We will be making clear that significant delays based on the type of affordable housing rather than the overall cost of affordable housing are not acceptable,giving flexibility to developers to bring forward sites with different types of affordable housing.This will not reduce the total amount of support toward affordable homes. Existing guidance already states that councils should be flexible in delivering affordable housing through Section 106 agreements. DCLG will be strengthening this guidance, writing to the Chief Executive of the Planning Inspectorate, writing to Chief Planning Officers, and considering any other measures necessary if these measures fail to have the desired impact. Local authorities should be flexible on the type of affordable housing on any specific site in order to make sites viable and get homes built.

• This will go alongside measures to ensure Starter Homes on all reasonable sized sites. As set out in our Productivity Plan we have said that all reasonably sized sites should have Starter Homes on them. We will also take forward measures at the Spending Review to refocus support on low cost home ownership rather than primarily homes for sub-market rent.

Conservative record

• Delivering affordable homes. We have built 260,000 affordable homes since 2010–with a quarter of them in London.1

• Higher level of council houses built. Twice as many council homes were built between 2010-11 and 2014-15 than under 13 years of Labour Government.2

• Housing starts are at their highest since 2007. Moreover, last year, councils across England granted permission for 261,000 new homes–showing that our locally-led planning reforms are working.3

Costing and funding

• There is no cost to taxpayers.This is about allowing affordable housing to be for sale as well as for rent.

t the request of constituents I visited the Children’s Society stand at Conference to receive their briefing on how we can make more progress tackling child poverty and abuse of children.

I also visited the Cancer Research stand to hear of their progress and plans for better cancer research and care.

 

I met the Guide Dog representatives at party Conference. They are running their campaign to stop pavement parking, as bay parked vehicles get in the way of blind people seeking to walk along the pavement. I support their campaign and will raise it again with Ministers.

I met the Heathrow management again at Conference. I told them there are still many complaints about the more persistent and loud aircraft noise Wokingham is now suffering.

They said their records showed that once they ended the trials of new routes prematurely following our complaints, they thought air traffic movements had gone back to normal. They now realised that people do not agree that have to live under the flight paths. They now think that maybe individual air traffic controllers are deciding to route more planes on the same routes, concentrating the noise over Wokingham and Bracknell.

They agreed to take this up with NATs to see if air traffic controls have changed and if this can be changed again to take it back to the situation prior to the trials. I too will pursue it again with Ministers and NATs.

 

 

I visited Winnersh triangle industrial park on Friday, to see the progress with new office development. I also saw the works on the new park and ride facility for buses into Reading, and discussed future plans for improved road capacity on the approaches to the park and the A 329 M.

The owners are pressing ahead with the development of a new potential headquarters building of 60,000 square feet.

I have received an update on changes to planning policy in regard to Travellers from Greg Clark and Brandon Lewis:

We would like to draw your attention to recent changes in planning policy, which will help restore fairness to the system and ensure all communities are treated equally. They mean:

• Special planning rules designed to support England’s travelling community will only apply to those who lead a genuine travelling lifestyle. Anyone from the travelling community who no longer travels will have their planning application considered in the same way as any other member of the settled population.

• Greater protection for the Green Belt from unauthorised development. Applications for new developments on Green Belt land should not be approved, unless in very special circumstances. This remains true even where councils do not have an up-to-date supply of caravan sites, and extends to sites including Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and National Parks. Councils must now place very strict limits on the numbers of new traveller site developments in open countryside.

• Reducing burdens on those who play by the planning rules. Where previously councils were required to plan for the increased housing need created by evicting large-scale unauthorised sites such as Dale Farm, this requirement has now been removed.

This is on top of the range of powers that councils and the police already have to deal with unauthorised development.

The new Planning Policy can be found at:

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/457420/Final_planning_and_travellers_policy.pdf 

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/457632/Final_Chief_Planning_Officer_letter_and_written_statement.pdf 

Rt Hon Greg Clark MP                            Brandon Lewis MP

Several constituents have written to me about the current disputes over indexation of pension benefits at BA. They asked me to attend the debate on this matter, which I did.

On Monday evening this week Kate Green held an adjournment debate to highlight the problem. The Minister in response reminded the House that one of the issues is the subject of court action preventing the government from expressing a view. The Adjournment debate was well attended for a such a debate after 10pm, showing the concerns of constituents and their MPs from a range of constituencies with affected BA staff and pensioners. If any constituent needs a transcript of what was said, please let me know.

I attended a meeting with the Chief Executive of Network Rail this week.

He made clear his commitment to improve services and the efficiency of the rail network. He has accepted the case many of us have made that there is insufficient commuter capacity at morning and evening peaks.

He wishes to invest heavily in digital train control, which he thinks will enable more and faster trains on the existing track. Services into Waterloo are a priority for this new wave of investment. He aims to raise capacity into Waterloo by 40% by introducing digital signals. This would be helpful for our local train services on the Waterloo lines. Network Rail is in receipt of very large sums of government grant, so this should be an achievable objective.

Yesterday I met with Mr Gyimah, the Education Minister. I repeated to him the problems Wokingham schools face from receiving very low levels of pupil funding compared to the national average. I asked for an assurance that the new government, like the Coalition in its later period, is committed to reducing the large gap between the worst and best funded local education area schools and will make more money available to Wokingham schools. I reminded him that this year Wokingham had not received much from the additional cash the Treasury supplied to start to tackle this problem.

The Minister assured me the government did wish to do more to sort out this problem. He said they were currently consulting and may well adopt a different formula or system for allocating future money to LEAs that receive the least under current arrangements. He requested further evidence from Wokingham Borough over the impact, which I will ask them to supply. He agreed that this year’s formula had not been kind to Wokingham.