I care passionately about preserving our beautiful landscapes, villages and towns. Therefore, fixing our broken planning system and fighting cowboy developers is one of my top priorities.
At the national level, I've written reports on this (one of which can be found by following the link here), and led numerous debates in Parliament.
At a local level I am pressing for more transparency about our council’s local plan making process, and opposing plans by the government to build a new town between Oadby and Great Glen.
As a minister, I wrote legislation - now coming into effect - which will see a greater proportion of housing delivered through brownfield regeneration in our cities, rather than concreting over more and more of the green spaces we value. I got the law changed to make sure more of the profits created by development flow to the community, not just developers, and ensure that when new homes are built they always come with the infrastructure that's needed.
I have helped people affected by cowboy developers, using Parliament to name and shame companies who have treated residents badly, and forcing them to make improvements.
I have also given numerous speeches in Parliament on “Fleecehold” – and tried to help local people who have been ripped off by estate management companies. I am pressing at both the national and local level to get back to the better system where councils adopted shared spaces on new estates and developers contributed to their upkeep.
We do need to build more houses and I want to see a system that does all we can to achieve people’s consent to this, involving local residents and councillors, so local people are part of the process and not an afterthought.
