Philip Davies: Housebuilding arms race is driven by our open borders

The Shipley constituency is served, if that is the right word, by City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council.

The Bradford district has a rising population, so the council wishes to build more homes. The rising population is actually in the centre of Bradford, but to boost its house building numbers, the council is seeking to build as many houses as possible in the outskirts of the district.

The planning permission granted by Bradford Council for more than 300 houses in Menston – I want to focus on that – will not do anything to alleviate housing demand in the centre of Bradford. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of people who come to live in Menston are from outside the district.

This housing numbers game will therefore do nothing to alleviate the housing needs of the district, but it will ruin the nature of the villages in my constituency. What is the sense of this approach?

There is clearly far more demand for housing than supply. That is why all political parties are anxious to outbid each other on how many new houses they will build. However, there should be just as much focus on demand as on supply.

The reason why there is so much demand for housing is largely immigration, particularly the unlimited immigration from the EU caused by our open borders, which means that we cannot control the numbers who come into this country.

The public would much prefer the supply and demand of housing to be solved by controlling demand – by controlling immigration – than by simply concentrating on supply, which will eventually lead to every green field being built on.

The only sustainable position is to control demand, and I hope that the Government will reflect on that rather than indulge in an unsustainable house building arms race.

There are many examples in my constituency of Labour-run Bradford council, which only seems to care about its political heartlands, riding roughshod over the wishes of local residents.

In discussing the planning matters in Menston, I want to begin by paying tribute to the whole community, who have come together to fight the planning applications and have done all they can to protect their village.

The planning applications for Menston have been treated in the most cack-handed way it is possible to imagine by Bradford Council. The process has been littered with errors in process, particularly the issue of flooding.

Everyone will remember the communities that were flooded earlier this year, especially in Somerset, and the devastation that was caused.

I must mention a distinguished Menston resident, Professor Rhodes. He is a distinguished scientist and businessman, who has spent a great deal of time and money on commissioning experts to look at the flood risk at the sites. His most recent project used a supercomputer and the best software available to provide simulations of the area to check the viability of the land for development.

From that, he has absolute proof that building on the proposed sites is not viable. He fed that information back to Bradford Council just before Easter, but has received, in his words, “zero feedback to date”. It is deeply regrettable – indeed, it is a total and utter disgrace – that Bradford Council has not taken that independent expert opinion into account.

Diverting the water could lead to flooding downstream, and developing that site creates the possibility that we could endanger someone else’s home.

Rules stipulate that there is only a small window of opportunity for residents to oppose a planning application. This clearly leads to an imbalance in representations between developers and objectors. There is frequent input by developers throughout the process, but no further challenge is allowed by local residents. The process should be evened out, so that each side is given equal time to present their cases.

Let me conclude by reiterating that flooding due to groundwater emergence is now of national importance and needs to be addressed – not just for my constituents in Shipley, but for the thousands who lost their homes in the floods earlier this year and the thousands who believe that homes should certainly not be built on a site in danger of flooding or groundwater emergence.

I find it ludicrous that a number of specialist organisations cannot offer an opinion in the planning decision.

Finally, planning departments have a duty of care when making their decisions, and it is clear that Bradford Council is not acting in the best interests of the public it is supposed to be serving.

Philip Davies is the Conservative MP for Shipley who spoke in a Parliamentary debate on planning. This is an edited version.