Tory MP vows to fight ‘nonsense’ plan for more housebuilding in Cambridge as Gove includes it in his new homes initiative – UK politics live | Politics

The Conservative MP Anthony Browne, who represents South Cambridgeshire, has posted a thread on Twitter explaining why he is opposed to more housebuilding in Cambridge. It starts here.

Brown says there is not enough water available. Unless the government can address the water shortage, he says, the proposal for a new urban quarter in Cambridge will be “dead on arrival”, he says.

Cambridge already has about the highest housebuilding in the country, and under the local plans that is set to double with 50,000 new homes by 2050, effectively doubling the size of Cambridge. But there is one major problem: we have run out of water.

For the first time ever, the Environment Agency is systematically blocking all major new development around Cambridge because there is no water for them. We are the driest part of the country with the highest population growth.

I have campaigned for a new reservoir, and there are now plans for two: one in the Fens and one in Lincolnshire. But they will take nearly 20 years to build. I have written to the water companies to speed up construction but they say they can’t.

Our rivers, streams and ponds already run dry. The wetland reserve at Fowlmere where I grew up now only has water in summer because the Environment Agency pumps it there.

There is not enough water for existing housing; there is not enough for the major expansion of housing already planned; and there is not enough for any govt plans for a new quarter. As I say, unless the Govt can say where the water will come from, it’s plans are dead on arrival

In the news release issued overnight ahead of Gove’s speech, the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities said the government was planning “a new urban quarter in Cambridge which will unlock the city’s full potential as a source of innovation and talent”.

But this morning Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, has condemned the proposals as “nonsense” and vowed to do everything he can to stop them.

I will do everything I can to stop the government’s nonsense plans to impose mass housebuilding on Cambridge, where all major developments are now blocked by the Environment Agency because we have quite literally run out of water. Our streams, rivers and ponds already run dry.

The Browne tweet supports the claim made by Keir Starmer, when he announced Labour’s housing plan, that the Conservatives cannot be the party of mass housebuilding because their MPs routinely block these initiatives on behalf of their “nimby” constituents. But the Tories point out that many Labour frontbenchers have also opposed building projects in their constituencies.

Michael Gove is deliving his speech on housebuilding.

He starts by joking that it is a pleasure to be “Guardian-adjacent”. He is speaking at King’s Cross, near the Guardian’s HQ.

There is a live feed at the top of the blog.

Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, told the Today programme this morning that she was not impressed by what the government has briefed overnight about its plans to boost urban housebuilding. (See 9.12am.) Here are the main points from her interview.

• Henderson said a “much bigger” housebuilding plan was needed. She said that, although there were some positive features in the announcement, more ambition was needed. She said:

From what we’ve heard this morning, there’s some ambition there to develop in cities, which is absolutely needed. And Michael Gove is very ambitious about housing and social housing in particular.

But from what I’ve seen today so far … this is relatively piecemeal. We have such a severe shortage of housing in this country, 4.2 million people are currently in need of a social home and 2 million children are living in overcrowding. So there’s some positive signs today but this is nowhere near the scale of ambition that we need to meet housing need in this country ….

We need 90,000 socially rented homes each year, and last year, we built around 6,500. So against those key metrics, we need to have a much more ambitious plan …

We need something much bigger … I mean, wouldn’t it be great to have a long term plan that looked at ending children, families being stuck in temporary accommodation? Or ending children, families being stuck in overcrowding?

I’m afraid we can’t meet our housing need just by building in towns and cities. We will need to think about building in rural areas too.

Good morning. The Commons is in recess, but the government is not on holiday and this morning it is making a housing announcement that seems mostly intended as a swipe at Labour.

The overnight press release is headlined: “We will fulfil promise to build 1m new homes, says the prime minister.” Normally a government saying it will do what it promised – the 2019 manifesto said the Tories would “build at least a million more homes, of all tenures, over the next parliament, in the areas that really need them” – does not count as news, even in August. But given that last year, Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, suggested the government was no longer committed to the target, also in the manifesto, of building 300,000 new homes a year, perhaps this is worth noting.

But the meat of the briefing is in a quote from Rishi Sunak included in the news release. He said:

Today I can confirm that we will meet our manifesto commitment to build 1m homes over this parliament. That’s a beautiful new home for a million individual families in every corner of our country.

We need to keep going because we want more people to realise the dream of owning their own home.

We won’t do that by concreting over the countryside – our plan is to build the right homes where there is the most need and where there is local support, in the heart of Britain’s great cities.

“Concreting over the countryside” is a reference to Labour’s housing policy, which was unveiled by Keir Starmer earlier this year and which would involve some green belt development. Gove made the same argument in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph published yesterday, claiming Labour was the party of “suburban sprawl” that wants to “devour the green belt”.

To support its claim that it will be able to build 1m homes over the course of this parliament, the government is announcing moves to clear planning backlogs, as well confirming proposals, which have been floated before, to relax some of the rules holding back urban development. This is how it describes them.

The government will also take steps to unblock the bottlenecks in the planning system that are choking and slowing down development, and stopping growth and investment by:

– Immediately launching a £24m planning skills delivery fund to clear backlogs and get the right skills in place.

– Setting up a new “super-squad” team of leading planners and other experts charged with working across the planning system to unblock major housing developments. The team will first be deployed in Cambridge to turbocharge our plans in the city.

Developers will also be asked to contribute more through fees, to help support a higher quality more efficient planning service.

New flexibilities to convert shops, takeaways and betting shops into homes will help to rejuvenate the high street. Meanwhile, red tape will be cut to enable barn conversions and the repurposing agricultural buildings and disused warehouses.

New freedoms to extend homes, convert lofts and renovate new buildings will help to convert existing properties into new accommodation. A review into the extension of permitted development rights will make it easier for homeowners to build upwards and outwards – with new extensions and loft conversions – whilst ensuring neighbours’ interests are protected.

This morning Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, told the Today programme these plans contained “nowhere near the scale of ambition that we need to meet housing need in this country”. I will post more from her interview shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning:

9.30am: Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, gives a speech on housing.

Morning: Rishi Sunak is on a visit in the West Midlands.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

2.30pm: Charlotte Owen, the youngest person to be made a life peer, and Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, are introduced as new peers in the House of Lords.

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