Maria Miller, MP for Basingstoke is sponsoring a bid to bring in new laws regarding the funding of local services to support future house building.
The Private Members Bill, sponsored Maria and tabled by Fareham MP, Mark Hoban, calls for it to be mandatory for local authorities and the Government to agree on the infrastructure required to support large housing development and, crucially, for an agreement on who is to pay, to be reached before work starts.
Maria said, “All too often new houses are planned without the appropriate improvements in local services being properly planned, costed, funded and then built. We saw this graphically illustrated when the Planning Inspector threw out the Borough Councils plans for Manydown and Bramley which were felt to be ‘unsustainable’ as a result of a lack of infrastructure. There are even examples in our town where improvements to local services have been agreed as part of planning permission and we then see those planned improvements simply evaporate when house building is underway. We cannot allow this to continue. House building has to go hand in hand with the necessary improvements to local services. The current system is a waste of time and local tax payers money.”
“With mounting pressure from John Prescott’s office for more and more building, we need a fresh approach to how we plan, cost and expand our local services. This bill will force the Government to work with local councils to agree in advance what improvements are needed and importantly who will pay. It is astonishing that the present system has been allowed to continue and this Bill would mean a far more sensible approach all round.”
