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Parish Councils (Planning)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) on securing the debate and I am grateful to him for his offer to take up some of the remaining time available. I also appreciate the indulgence of the Minister. It gives me the opportunity to complete the set of the four levels of local government that I have raised with him. I have mentioned regional assemblies, Northamptonshire county council, Daventry district council and Kettering borough council on previous occasions and tonight is a wonderful opportunity to raise the first level—as the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) rightly reminded us—with the Minister. In my limited experience of this House, it appears that when residents of parishes wish to raise planning issues, they go to either their parish council or their Member of Parliament, ignoring the various levels of councils in between. I have the privilege of being a borough councillor in Kettering and of chairing the Kettering borough rural forum, which involved the quarterly meeting of all 22 parish councils in the borough. Our next meeting is on 16 February. It is an honour for me to chair the forum and I am keen to continue to do so, because it keeps me closely in touch with the issues of most importance to parish councillors. Planning is, of course, one of those issues, along with policing and the other rural issues with which we are all familiar. The role of parish councils in the planning process is far from perfect, but having a parish council does give local residents a far greater say in some of the important planning issues that affect their area. An example is that of Barton Seagrave in Kettering borough which, until a few years ago, was not a parished area and had no parish council. A campaign was started to parish Barton Seagrave and, after a long process involving the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, permission was eventually granted and Barton Seagrave had its parish council. I am delighted to say that the Conservatives have a majority on it. Recently, a major planning application was made by the supermarket firm Morrisons to build one of its largest warehouses in the country on the border between Barton Seagrave parish council and Burton Latimer parish council. The Morrisons development was a good thing for Burton Latimer parish council, as it brought jobs and enterprise to the area. However, it threatened to cause all sorts of problems for the residents of Barton Seagrave, not least the possibility of heavy traffic flows along residential streets, particularly Polwell lane. The parish council, especially Mr. and Mrs. Arthur and Margaret Mitchelson, put in a tremendous amount of work representing the concerns of local residents about the planning application. About 1,500 letters of objection flooded into Kettering borough council, such was the outrage locally, but it was effectively channelled by the parish council and other local protest groups into extremely constructive local meetings, one of which I attended at Latimer arts college in Barton Seagrave, where about 800 local residents heard a briefing on the planning application from borough council planning officers and others. Without Barton Seagrave parish council, that effective community involvement would not have happened. I am extremely pleased that Barton Seagrave has its parish council and was able to change a major planning application in several serious respects. Congratulations must go to all the parish councillors and other residents involved.