Mid Bedfordshire’s Conservative MP Blake Stephenson is calling on the Government to revamp the planning system to prevent further bad development across the county.
The local MP secured a Westminster Hall debate to highlight his concerns with Labour’s plans to build 1.5 million new houses over the next Parliament.
He referenced the ongoing failure to deliver a GP surgery for Wixams and increasing flood risk from yet more development in Maulden as examples of poor development in recent years.
Blake is now urging the Government to create a planning system that focuses on ‘building communities’ and prevents ‘soulless developments’.
In his speech, he said: “I am not a nimby or a blocker, but if the Government are serious about building houses and critical infrastructure, we need to ensure that we do so in a way that is future-proof and resilient.
We need to turn blockers into builders, rather than create a new generation of blockers. In my experience, most of the people whom this Government have labelled as blockers are not ideological obsessives standing in front of the bulldozers of progress; they are people fed up with bad development.
“They are fed up of developers throwing up housing estates but not building communities, of soulless developments that could be found anywhere, and, most importantly, of developments that worsen quality of life.”
Since being elected as the Member of Parliament for Mid Bedfordshire last year Blake has been working to hold the Government and developers to account on housebuilding in his constituency.
He was part of a group of Conservative MPs who met with management company FirstPort to demand better value for money for residents faced with ever-increasing service charges.
Blake has also raised his concerns with Government Ministers about how their plans to build ‘new towns’ across the country risk a ‘double whammy’ of housebuilding in places like Bedfordshire.
You can see the full debate on Blake’s YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/LfYASLXinKc
