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Local Government and Planning (Parkland and Windfall Development) Bill

I hear what the hon. Lady says, but clause 2(2) also imposes a duty on a local authority in terms of the representative nature of an association. I suspect that no local authority would adopt that permissive power, because it would create far more problems than it would be worth. However, in a given area—we all have such areas—two or three local people might be very exercised about a particular issue, while others might be half-interested and most not interested at all. The latter group might be rather more representative of the community, by definition, than those who have taken a specific interest. It would be very difficult to ensure that such an association was appropriately diverse in ethnicity, age, occupation, interest and so on, particularly in a very diverse multicultural constituency such as mine, where a plethora of different groups and interests would need to be represented. So such a way forward is rather a pious hope. Clause 3 gives rise to a very important issue that is at the heart of the debate surrounding development and affordable homes. In my area, one often finds on turning a street corner that the old houses have been knocked down and a block of flats has gone up. That happens far too much, particularly on the main roads in my constituency, and it seems to be a trend that is impossible to stop. We need to think about how we can protect back gardens from overdevelopment, but to be entirely prescriptive in the manner of the Bill is to over-egg the pudding, because the Bill provides none of the balance that might be needed in a particular area. I am with the hon. Member for Solihull, in that this issue has to be taken into account. However, the Bill gives no indication of the size of garden in question. In my area, gardens range from several acres, at the rich end of the constituency, to postage stamps at the poor end. Different considerations might well apply to those two extremes and to the range in between. The development of back gardens is a major concern for residents of Mill Hill, in my constituency, where the big gardens and houses happen to be located. Some people have sold off their back gardens to developers, who have applied for planning consent to build four or five houses on that land. That raises access issues, as well as the question of overdevelopment. However, if what are virtually slum clearance projects relating to houses with very small back gardens were caught by the provision, that could work against the benefit that the hon. Member for Solihull is trying to achieve. Perhaps she therefore needs to think a little more about that, although the broad thrust of trying to protect back gardens and zoning them as greenfield sites is appropriate. We must do something to protect what is, certainly in my constituency, part of the green belt, even if it is not formally defined as such. We must not, however, allow nimbyism to get in the way of trying to provide homes for people in our areas who need them. There is a desperate housing shortage in my constituency, which the London borough of Barnet seems to be doing very little to address. Its new housing strategy does not seem to put anything like sufficient emphasis on, for example, the need for social housing. In London, the purchase of what are termed affordable homes, even with the subsidised schemes available to buy properties, is still way beyond the means of many Londoners, including in my constituency. The only real hope of new housing for such people is social housing, which, unfortunately, the London borough of Barnet—completely wrongly, in my view—seems little concerned to provide. Whatever conditions and ideas are put forward on planning, we must make sure that they do not prevent people from having the housing that they desperately need.