Category: Articles

I attended an interesting meeting a few days ago with local resident groups and Councillors to discuss the future housing numbers for Wokingham. The government is abolishing top down targets, regional plans and Whitehall inspired requirements. Wokingham can make its own decisions about how many homes to put into its forward plans.

The Council points out that it still needs to come to a sensible conclusion on how many homes are needed. The developers still want to build, and there will still be people wanting to buy new homes. Under planning law a Council will have to show it has taken all relevant matters into account when coming to a judgement about how many homes to allow.

I myself do not want to see an end to all development in Wokingham Borough. A community needs some new buildings, the local builders need some work, and people want some new homes, new shops and new offices. Nor do I wish to see us carry on with town cramming, overbuilding, and using up too many of our greenfields which act as important gaps between settlements, leisure areas and agricultural land.

I hope our Councillors start their review by looking at how much green space we need to keep to preserve greenbelt, areas of special environmental interest, good farming, and gaps between settlements. They should also rule out more building on floodplain, as the last government’s insistence on this has caused difficulties for many residents.

They have already decided to allow substantial new commercial development at Winnersh triangle, which I think makes sense. I suspect they would also allow more at other main business parks, as all of these parks from time to time need to expand the floorspace, improve and change the nature of the buildings on them. The Council wishes to see new commercial development in the Town Centre, and has advertised substantial opportunities. It would be possible to include apartments for new buyers at the same time.

The most contentious matter is how many additional homes should be allowed, and where. The Council says the response to its last consultation on this gave a clear message that a majority preferred the idea of concentrating new development in a given area, and ensuring this new housing had proper roads, schools and other facilities to cater for its needs. It is certainly true that a Council can do a better deal with a developer or a consortium of builders if they allow a substantial development in one place. They can obtain the money needed to provide some or all of the extra public service construction needed.

The Council identified four such large sites under the old government’s housing numbers. One approach might be to say the Council will start with just one of these sites, and seek a proper developer commitment to timely construction of new homes allied to proper contributions for the necessary supporting work on roads and other public facilities. Future housing need would be reviewed as the first site progressed in the light of the experience of that site. A large site could meet the five year supply of land at the chosen build rate of the Council in the first instance. The Council would then need to decide on a potential additional large site subsequently, or seek to amend the housing numbers down again. I would suggest the Arborfield Garrison site would be the best one to take to see how it works. The development should be within the wire of the current Garrison perimeter, and is of course dependent on a government decision to move the Garrison as part of the Defence Review.

If the government decides otherwise, Wokingham will need a thorough revision of its housing strategy anyway, as Arborfield was always a big part of the old plans. The Council needs to consider carefully how it can best judge housing need. If you send out a survey asking people if members of their family would like to be able to buy an affordable property in a good area near them they might tell you several members do feel that. That is not the same as those family members actually trying to do so. Grown up children often move away for a variety of reasons unconnected with local house prices.

I am fed up with all the talk about cuts of 25% or 40% in public spending. It is alarming people who depend on public money needlessly. The budget figures are clear and are not going to change. Public spending on current services will rise by £90 billion over the course of the next five years, taking it up from £600 billion to £690 billion.

Labour was spending on current services was £10,000 for every man, woman and child in the UK last year. This government plans to increase that to £11,500 by 2015. Spending on health is going to go up by more than price inflation every year. I expect schools spending to increase every year as well. State pensions are going to go up by prices or wages, whichever goes up by more. Labour was only raising £7500 from every person in the country on average in taxes, and borrowing the other £2500 each.

The questions we should all be asking are these. Are we getting £10,000 of value from the public service spend today? Will the extra £1500 each be well spent on the right things? Why are some parts of the public sector saying they will have to make clumsy and unpopular cutbacks, when overall spending will go on up in cash terms?

Most of us in work in Wokingham of course have to pay in rather more than the average £7500 per person in tax. Wokingham tends to have more people in better paid jobs than the national average, so it is a high tax paying area. If you add up your Income Tax, VAT, Council Tax and National Insurance you will see what I mean. Many of us do not expect to get our £10,000 of public spending. If like me your children have left school you receive no education spending. If you are earning a good living you do not need or receive benefits. If you are healthy you do not need to go to the hospital. Those three services alone account for more than half the average £10,000 per person spent.

Many of us are happy to pay extra tax so the sick can receive proper care and the disabled can receive benefits. We are happy to pay for the neighbours’ children to be educated. It is part of good neighbourliness to pay more in tax so any neighbours who are disadvantaged can enjoy the rising prosperity of our age as well. We are less happy to pay more tax if we think the money is wasted, building bloated bureaucracies or indulging grand political projects that will not make our lives better. By far and away the biggest item in my annual budget is the cost of government. Tax takes far more than my housing or food or travel which I buy for myself directly.

That’s why it is a good idea that central and local government takes a hard look at all that is being spent to drive better value for money, and to get rid of the irritating or wasteful items. What we do not want is another parade of the bleeding stumps, as public sector managers trot out unacceptable cuts to try to avoid making sensible economies in the way they are doing things. If the main public services end up cutting important services when the money available to them goes up it is a sign of bad management, not of insufficient money.

I received some better news today from the Environment Agency. They tell me they are now working on a paper to submit to the October flood prevention meeting to propose an Emm Brook flood prevention scheme in Wokingham.

Nothing is guaranteed until the paper is written, the case is successfully made and a decision to finance it taken. There’s still plenty of scope for disappointment. Nonetheless, it is a welcome move forward, after previous requests have been met with replies saying the money has to come from developer contributions, or saying that the scheme would not pass the financial tests.

Whilst flood prevention is in our thoughts again, I would welcome more thinking on this from the planning officers at Wokingham. Now we are rapidly moving to a world where more planning decisions are taken on local initiative rather than in response to national and regional policy, we need locally to rethink our attitude towards flood alleviation and prevention.

One of the worst consequences of the last decade of top down housing targets and other planning requirements has been large areas of water meadow and field disappearing under hard surfaces and concrete in low lying areas. This causes a double flooding threat.

There is less land to absorb the excess water which runs off in periods of heavy rain, less space for oveflowing rivers to fill with excess water. There is also much faster run-off of the water from the concrete than from the muddy fields that pre-dated it.

Every new housing estate, road and platform for windmills, every new school or industrial building places on floodplain jeopardises existing homes and workplaces from these two forces pushing too much water into the wrong places.

One of the main guides in our new local plans should be the wish to avoid further damage to the floodplain, as we take action to deal with the backlog of problems from too many years of building too much on open fields near rivers and streams and too much development pushing more water too rapidly into watercourses.

As Wokingham considers applications for homes, wind farms, industrial parks and the like, it should make clear on its planning map that it will now act to protect the low-lying damp areas from dangerous attrition. We also need to protect green gaps between settlements, leisure land and good quality agricultural land, which planners can now opt to do.

I am sure it would be popular in the public consultations which follow any such proposed change of course.

If there is to be large-scale future development of course the developer of that should include in the plans and his costings the ncessary water management measures to ensure the development does not make things worse.

As Wokingham is rightly rethinking its development strategy we should not rely on the arrival of large-scale new development. It is more difficult to expect developers of new estates to pick up the bill for past flooding errors.

That is why I welcome the opportunity to back a proposal to do something about part of our flooding problem from within existing flood alleviation public budgets.

As so many people have public sector spending on the mind as we approach decisions on next year’s budgets, I thought it might interest readers to know a bit more about the financial health of our Borough Council.

I am pleased to report that they enter the budget review with £29 million in reserves and Section 106 monies. They have been prudently keeping money for a rainy day. In 2010-11 they plan to spend £260 million excluding the ring fenced housing account. That’s 8% more than last year’s £240 million.

To help them do this the government is sending them £159 million in grants and business tax receipts, paying 61 pence for every pound they spend. The biggest single grant is the £103.45 million sent to run the schools.

My wish is to persuade the government that there need be no cut in the schools money next year. After all, total public spending will go up in cash terms again next year. Schools will be high up my list of priorities with hospitals and surgeries.The Council should be able to carry on spending over £103 million on education in 2011-12.

This year the Council is spending £52.5 million on capital investment, including new computer systems, safety works and school refurbishment. This is 38% more than last year. They plan to bring this back down next year, which is sensible in the circumstances.

The balance of the spending, the other £105 million, goes on a range of services and also pays for all the Council officers, the Partnerships, strategies, compliance and monitoring. Here the abolition of the government’s Comprehensive Area Assessment system should lead to useful savings, as Wokingham will no longer need to comply with all this. I hope the savings will be made by good personnel management, using natural wastage to effect the economies.

I want to see the local community through the budget adjustments nationally with minimum disruption. The overall figures are far less threatening than the blood curdling stories of 25% and 40% cuts. I just hope locally we can proceed without such alarms, and look at getting better value for money in a reasonable and sensible way. My constituents want local and national government to do more for less. They do not want lumps taken out of decent public services. They expect to see us in the public sector cutting our own costs, and succeeding in economising on the office overheads as others have to do in the private sector.

For many years my electors have told me that they like living in the Wokingham area, but they think development has been too fast. We have seen many new houses built. The last government did not send our Council money for new roads, railway lines, schools and surgeries to go with all the development. I took up the cause on behalf of local people, but was rebuffed by Labour Ministers determined to drive through housing without the supporting facilities.

I persuaded the Conservatives – along with some other like minded MPs – to adopt a policy of allowing Councils to make their own local decisions about how much housing and other development. I was therefore delighted to see the Coalition government move rapidly to implement this policy once they took over in May. The first important act of the new Secretary of State for Communities was to announce the end of regional targets and regional plans. Following discussions with MPs and Councils he repeated the statement he made in a letter making it crystal clear that Councils now have new freedoms.

The question now turns to Wokingham Borough Council. How should they use this new freedom? My job is done – as MP I am responsible with colleagues for the national policy and legal framework. This now allows Councillors to do as they and our electors wish. It is not for me to tell them how to do their job, if for no other reason than they would not welcome that. The Councillors are sitting down with their planning officers to review what is desirable in the new climate. Speed is of the essence. Because they put through a Core Strategy that conformed with the outgoing government’s top down planning policy, they need to announce promptly their intention to change that policy and in general terms how they are going to change it if they wish to do so. Then they do not have to grant all the planning applications that will now be accelerated by developers fearing the climate for permissions is about to deteriorate for them.

One national policy issue which remains to be resolved is the future of Arborfield Garrison. I have written to Ministers and talked to Ministers about this. They cannot reach a decision before October, as the future of Arborfield is part of a much wider defence review which I agree does need to be carried out. However, the good news is this does not have to delay any new planning policy by WBC. The Council should come up with two housing figures, one for the redevelopment of the Garrison if the site becomes available and one for the rest of the Borough. They are free to do so in the new more liberal regime.

Nor need the five year supply of land be a constraint. The requirement to keep a five year supply is based on the housing target. If they lower the housing target then they of course automatically lower the land required for a five year supply. Under the new regime if they want to stop some of the old Core Strategy sites or scale any back, they can do so.

Some Councillors say they are worried that a cut in the housing target would lead to a cut in the amount of money they can obtain from developers to pay for new facilities. That may well be true. However, the money for the new facilities usually only buys, at best, the facilities we need for all the extra people. Developer contributions normally fail to provide the extra investments we need to catch up with all the housing we already have.

My suggestion is that the Council set out a new planning policy based on the views of our community. I think we want proper green gaps between settlements, the defence of Green Belt, the protection of high grade agricultural land and important natural sites, lower densities of development than in the last decade, an end to town cramming and back garden development in many places, and an end to building on flood plain. Once planners have shown on a map all the land that needs to be protected from development to meet these objectives, then they can see what is left and how many homes it would be sensible to accommodate. They would be wise to add that in future they will only allow developments of more than a few homes where the developer contribution is tied up in advance and linked to the necessary projects that the extra people require. The building industry still has plenty of opportunities in the District from the large investment at Winnersh triangle, and the big plans for redevelopment in Wokingham, including more residential in the town centre.

There’s good news from the government. They are honouring their promise to free Councils to make decisions on behalf of local people. Out goes the regional top down housing targets, as we have discussed. But also out goes the whole grisly package of the Comprehensive Area Assessments, a raft of boxes to tick, forms to fill in , Inspectors to handle and guidance to follow from Whitehall. The idea is to give Councillors more control and authority. It sweeps away a lot of the expensive back office work that Labour insisted on, and gives Councils more freedom to decide what they will do – and more importantly what they need not do.

Some Councillors are asking how they should use their new freedoms. I hope they will set new housing targets that are much more realistic, to keep more of our greenfields and to protect existing homes from backland development and town cramming. I trust they will sweep away the framework of partnerships, bureaucratic responses to Whitehall and the monitoring industry which has been forced on them in recent years. They can slim down the administration, and just collect the modest range of facts and figures they need to run the main services and report to the electors. When I first pressed for the abolition of the target and monitoring regime it cost around 5% of total local authority expenditure, so it’s removal gives good scope for reducing costs on things we don’t need.

This has been a long personal campaign for me. I first proposed greater freedom for Councils in the 2001-5 Parliament, and got much of it adopted for the 2005 Conservative Manifesto. Caroline Spelman, as Shadow Secretary of State in the last Parliament was happy to pick it up and run with it, and now Eric Pickles turns out to be a great reforming Secretary of State who is pushing ahead rapidly to let Councils out of their Whitehall prison.

I would like to reassure Councillors that I see no need for 40% cuts in important services, or even the mooted 25% cuts. I am arguing against any such extreme, as the overall figures for public spending for the next five years show small cash increases. One good thing that Labour did do for Wokingham Borough was ensure that the schools budget is 100% grant financed from the centre, putting an end to the many arguments we had had over the years about whether Wokingham received enough grant for schools. As this is the biggest single service, and as I expect the schools budget to end up with similar cash spending figures to today’s for subsequent years, the pressures should be containable on the main service.

As I said before the election, Labour had found no cash for a new Wokingham school and I did not expect any new government after 2010 top be able to afford one in the next few years either. So it has proved. It is another reason to be low on the housing targets. The non schools services will need to do more for less, but the more that the central overhead can be trimmed in response to new freedoms, the more the important social services and others can be protected. We need to get as much private capital into the Town Centre scheme as possible, as we do not have surplus taxpayer cash from here to carry out what needs to be a commercial development. What Segro are doing at Winnersh triangle shows, the way, where huge private investment is going into creating the places for the local jobs of the future.

The new government promised change, and is beginning to deliver it. We are promised a scheme to freeze Council Tax next year, which will offer some welcome relief for family budgets. The Chancellor is offering bigger increases in the tax free allowance for Income Tax which will also help many.

Meanwhile over at the Department of Transport they have announced an end to funding more Speed cameras. These have proved very contentious, with many people seeing them as cash cows. Certainly the decline in deaths and serious accidents has been much slower than before the camera era. Studies show that Vehicle Automated Signs are cheaper and more effective. We need better designed junctions and better enforcement of provisions against dangerous driving to accelerate the reduction in accidents we all want to see. Excessive speed is not the cause of most accidents.

Our planning and local government Ministers have been in overdrive to demolish the much unloved regional housing targets and regional plans,and to offer greater freedom to local authorities to choose their own planning policies. I look forward to Wokingham Borough sparing the back gardens and more of the greenfields under the new dispensation.

There has been much written about how tough public spending is going to be. The good news is the proportion to be cut from public sector budgets is going to be much less than the proportions many in private sector industry and business had to slice off in the recession. The only visible casualty of my 10% off my Parliamentary costs in each of the last two years was ending the three times a year glossy news sheet I used to send out. I keep constituents up to date if they are interested through www.johnredwood.com instead – cheaper and easier.

I do hope all the Chief Executives in local quangos and Councils will approach the need to control costs in a positive and sensible spirit. We do not want or need lists of valued services which they plan to cut. We want a sensible squeeze on consultants, glossy brochures, regulations, temporary labour, conferences and seminars, and foreign trips. We need to stop nice to have or why do we need that projects, and concentrate on delivering the best possible quality service where it really matters. We do need any more aggressive kerbs or chicanes, humps and bumps on the roads. We do not need any more public sector spin doctors, communications advisers and partnerships between different parts of the public sector who could ring each other up if they have an issue to sort out.

It is also a time for people in the public sector to come up with new and better ways of doing things. There are opportunities for public employees to buy out or franchise out parts of their service, and for charities, not for profits and companies to come up with better solutions to government problems. We need innovation and a wind of change to sweep through our public sector.

I would like to thank all the voters of the Wokingham constituency for their interest in the election, to thank all those who voted for me for their support, and pay a special tribute to all those who joined my campaign team. I am delighted to have the honour to represent everyone, and fascinated to be part of such a different Parliament. It is full of hope, at a time of danger for our country.

I would also like to thank all the other candidates and their teams for making their contribution to democracy by offering choice and debating some of the issues. I will dedicate myself to represent Wokingham well in Westminster, and to contribute to a better, stronger and more purposeful Parliament than last time.

So much has changed since I last wrote in this paper. A new Coalition government has formed. Let me reassure you. It does not mean I have woken up in a new age and have ditched all my principles and beliefs. I have not suddenly become a convert to more European government or to higher taxes. No more have Lib Dem MPs suddenly become converts to all my ideas. I think the Coalition represents the best chance we have for stable and sensible government, given the outcome of the Election, and I wish it well. I will be its friend and supporter, but may sometimes have to disagree or criticise it.

I have always thought some of the political divisions in the UK second order at best or artificial at worst. At the highest level most sensible Conservatives and Lib Dems – and indeed Labour supporters as well – want peace and greater prosperity. We want an expanding economy, jobs for all of working age, freedom to speak and act as we wish subject to protection of the rights of others. Recent political rows over when and how much to cut public spending to tackle borrowing are tactical rather than fundamental rows over direction. Arguments over which tax to cut is less important than whether you cut taxes on saving, enterprise and effort or not.

Iam pleased to say the Coalition government is moving swiftly to fulfil two of the promises I made during the election. The government will scrap the top down housing targets and regional plans that forced Wokingham Borough Council to propose development sites that local opinion does not favour. Under the new regime Councillors will be able to choose their own housing targets. I advise them to revisit their Core Strategy and follow local wishes on the need to protect more of our greenfields. This is something that will be entirely in the power of Councillors. My job was to get the national government out of the way. Now it is the Councillors’ job to come to a wide conclusion.

The government has also said it will make an early announcement about compensation for the victims of Equitable Life, which will be welcomed by the savers concerned.

I am currently mobilising opinion behind my suggestions on how to reform Capital Gains Tax in a way which reconciles Lib Dem and Conservative view points without damaging revenues, long term savers and investors. If the government raised the rate to 40% from 18%, only allowing narrow exemptions for entrepreneurial small firms, it could end up with less revenue and many unhappy people who have been prudent and saved for their future

The present government has used its powers and its passion for regional planning to demand that districts like Wokingham accommodate large numbers of extra houses in the years ahead. They have done so at a time of unprecedented collapse in the housing market, with record lows for the numbers of new homes being started and completed. They have done so despite the strong feelings in many pleasant parts of the country that there should be some limit on the amount of green space swallowed up, and a further limit on how densely settlements can be packed with homes.

I and my Parliamentary colleagues have argued consistently for two big changes. The first is, we want to see more power granted to local Councils to make local judgements about how many homes should be built in each place. Conservatives have promised to grant more independence to Councils, should we win the Election. We want to cut back on the large amount of unelected regional government which dictates or overrides local democratic feeling on these matters.

The second is we have argued that government targets and requirements have imposed too high a density of new development in inappropriate places, have required too much backland and back garden development where local communities wish to preserve the existing character of the place, and have forced too much green field development. This is eroding gaps between settlements and other areas, and is forcing building on floodplains, when we already have flooding problems.

The result of the present government’s enthusiasm for high targets for new homes and their wish to see many of them imposed on the crowded south-east is the Wokingham Core Strategy. There remain many uncertainties for the planners. Will Arborfield Garrison close on schedule? Will this present government promise anything by way of guaranteed capital money to build the roads, schools and other facilities that large scale development would clearly need? What would it all look like if there were a change of government shortly, and a new administration removed regional dictates and left our community freer to make its own decisions?

The government should think again about its regional strategy in the light of very different circumstances over the provision of mortgage finance and the demand for new homes than in the boom years when the government first conceived the high targets. There is much less real pressure to build today, because mortgage finance is less available and because many people are struggling with their personal budgets. The present government is unlikely to come up with the large sums of new capital needed to make the investment to support large scale South-east development. Any successor government will inherit very strained finances, and will find it equally difficult to produce large extra sums for public spending.

Sometimes people come to see me at my surgery with debt problems. They often have a large mortgage, and on top have borrowed too much on the Credit card and personal loans. The first advice I always give them is to go through all their spending and see how they can cut it. If each month you need to borrow more you end up on the road to personal bankruptcy. More and more of your income is swallowed paying interest on what you overspent in previous months, and in trying to meet the repayments of your debts. Most people cannot suddenly increase their incomes or win the lottery. If you start reining in your spending early enough, it is just the luxuries and the nice to have items that need to go from the budget. If you leave it too long, you can’t afford some of the necessities either.

So it is with a government running a county. If you allow your spending to exceed your income each month, each month your debt increases. If you do this for short period when your tax income is temporarily depressed by a poor economy, that can make sense. When the economy recovers revenues bounce back and you can get your finances back into order. The trouble with the UK today is two fold. We went into the recession spending and borrowing too much, before we lost tax revenue. We also relied on massive tax revenues from banking and other City activities, and from buying and selling expensive properties. Some of this income has gone for ever, now the bubble has been punctured.

In Parliament we keep returning to this central problem. All parties now agree the deficit needs to be at least halved. That means an astonishing £90 billion a year less spending, if you do it all by cutting spending. No previous government has ever attempted anything like that. The remaining argument is over how soon you start. As my advice to an overborrowed constituent implies, I think the sooner the better. The sooner you start the less damage you do in the longer run. Every extra pound the public sector spends today is another pound we the taxpayers have to pay back soon. In the meantime it is another pound we have to pay interest on. If you tried to do it by increasing tax rates you could end up with less revenue, as people and businesses moved elsewhere.

There is no such thing as government money. There is just taxpayers’ money. Every penny the government borrows, they expect you and me to repay. Their debt is our debt. The advice I have been giving to the odd constituent I now have give to Parliament as a whole. If they carry on like this we all end up in deep debt, debt we did not want and debt we cannot afford.

The good news is much of the extra spending being undertaken is money not well spent. I do not wish to see Wokingham losing teachers, nurses, police and doctors from the payroll, and there is no need for that to happen if we act now. What I do want to see is less bureaucracy, fewer high paid quango heads and quangos, the end to unwanted South east regional government, the end to ID cards, and expensive centralised computer schemes. It is quite easy to do more for less in the public sector, and that is what all of us working in it have to do. The private sector in a cruel recession has had to work share, keep pay down, remove bonuses, cancel prestige projects and favoured new schemes, and work smarter. Now it is our turn in the public sector to do the same.