Statement on the Planning White Paper

Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government

The Rt Hon Ruth Kelly MP

Monday 21st May 2007

Hansard Volume 460, No 94

Column 988

Question by Nicholas Soames to the Secretary of State:-

Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex) (Con): I am sure that there are things in the White Paper that, on close study, will prove useful, but does the right hon. Lady accept that her Government have been telling us for a long time now that planning applications for large numbers of houses, particularly in the south-east of England, where we acknowledge they are needed in some places, will be matched by infrastructure to support that level of building, but so far there is absolutely no sign of that happening anywhere? For example, in the major proposal for East Grinstead, there is no infrastructure at all planned by the Government. Will the right hon. Lady give me some assurance that the Government will reconsider those plans in the light of what she has said today?

Following Nicholas Soames’s question to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Ruth Kelly MP, during her statement on the Planning White Paper yesterday in the House of Commons, Nicholas Soames said;

“I remain convinced that whilst it is clear there is a need for housing in East Grinstead the scale of what is proposed is out of all proportion to the town and the infrastructure which is available to sustain an already very crowded area.”