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Housing (Hertfordshire)

I raised that point in our last debate on this matter. We suffer in exactly the same way. Property developers are placing Government pronouncements on their websites to encourage people to hope that there is value in buying up such pieces of green land. Unless we are going to bow down to the god of ever-increasing prosperity at the expense of ever-decreasing quality of life, we must ensure that an environmental impact of continually escalating housing targets is rigorously assessed. If we are to avoid fuelling a transport-intensive, pollution-generating commuter hell, then we must take account of local economic activity and ensure that we are not building more and more houses that are developer-led but not necessarily the type of homes that local people want or particularly need. Inevitably, it is leading to swathes of high-density, flatted developments dominating our towns and villages which are frequently snapped up by property developers. The Government and the Minister seem to draw great comfort from coupling the huge increase in building with newly introduced targets for energy consumption, recycling and water use. I am sorry to disabuse them of that environmental comfort blanket, but noting the concern and allocating the problem a target will not resolve it, and it does not address the current status quo. In my constituency water is currently at a critical point. We have important chalk streams, which are sensitive to the increased pressures to build. Does the Minister know that the chalk streams in our area are unique in Europe? They are recognised by eminent environmentalists as the European aquatic equivalent of the rain forest. She has a chance to respond, but does not do so. The future of the streams is already under severe threat due to drought. That more water is extracted from the Ver area of recharge than is naturally returned to its aquifer by annual rainfall is incredibly worrying and already a source of deep concern to local environmentalists, who care about the environment and have written to the Minister on that point. Therefore, irrespective of the new housing targets, the most recent Environment Agency study of the Ver since the implementation of the alleviation of low flow scheme in the early 1990s shows that the river is still falling. Despite an effort to conserve our scant water resources by having a hosepipe ban last year that lasted for 10 out of 12 months, our rivers are still falling. If those rivers fail, as they frequently do in periods of drought, even with current demands for water, the whole biodiversity and fragile ecology of the area will ultimately begin to fail. Does the Minister even begin to appreciate the ecological and environmental vandalism that the new housing target proposals will potentially wreak on the biodiversity of Hertfordshire and of my beautiful constituency? The Minister does not address the current infrastructure and environmental deficit of the hot-spot areas, such as St. Albans, where many thousands of houses are to be built. She does not seem to recognise that simply putting in green building measures for the new homes will not solve all the attendant pollution issues of the existing housing stock and the occupants of that housing stock. It is crucial, if we are to have a degree of intergenerational environmental legacy, for us to look at the environment in which the houses are to be placed, to assess and evaluate the current environmental pressures, and to calculate the impact that those new houses and occupants will have on the established community and that environment. That is not a cutting-edge environmental objective when considering housing totals for growth areas. Over the years we have had a long series of worthy recommendations from various committees urging us to consider the impact of rapid building on the environment. The Minister must feel that the casual coupling of ““sustainable? and ““community? in recent reports means that the public will rest assured that the environment is being taken seriously and implies that the relevant assessments of the environmental capacity of the projected increase have been taken into account. But that is not the case. The process for determining the housing targets appears to be totally devoid of any rigorous environmental or even strategic assessment. The complete lack of strategic assessment has led to the Government’s erroneous belief that proposed new floor figures of at least 83,000, and possibly 93,000, extra homes for Hertfordshire are environmentally sustainable. The issue of housing targets has presented challenges for many years, particularly in the south and east, and I remind the Minister of a 1996 report from the Select Committee on the Environment which looked at the problem when considering housing need and housing targets. Crucially, that Committee noted an effort to ensure that housing targets were not being imposed in an unsustainable fashion without recognising the environmental impact, and it welcomed and encouraged the Government of the day’s intention to commission research into one important aspect, namely environmental capacity, with a view to producing good practice and guidance for future development programmes. That was a perceptive solution and a genuine attempt to ensure that any future communities were truly sustainable. Indeed, it was supported on a cross-party basis, so we might wonder how much note was made of that recommendation in light of today’s concerns about the environmental sustainability of the proposed housing targets. In 1997, an exposition on the concept of environmental capacity entitled ““Making sense of environmental capacity? was undertaken by Michael Jacobs for the Council to Protect Rural England. Mr. Jacobs may not be unknown to the Minister as he is currently advising the Government in his capacity on the council of economic advisers. Most tellingly, Mr. Jacobs pointed out then that"““if environmental capacity is taken seriously and assessed in detail, it would generate specific, quantifiable constraints in the volume and location of development.?" That is exactly why the Committee and the Government of the day recommended environmental capacity reports to ensure that housing targets were not too great or burdensome for any area. They are absolutely crucial and should be integral to this Government’s assessment of any increased housing targets for Hertfordshire. If these studies had taken place, it would help to support any assertions from the Minister, which she made in the last debate, that the proposed changes to the draft plan represent a new benchmark in reconciling the growth need that we need with sustainability. Yet, only last week, I asked the Department for Communities and Local Government whether this Government prepare any studies on environmental capacity to accept any housing in particular areas in relation to regional spatial strategies. I was told:"““The Government does not prepare any such documents?," and that"““the initial housing projections are based upon demographic and not environmental considerations.?" That is straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. The Government’s view is that if a number of people want to form households in that region, the housing has to be provided. It is not a case of whether the environmental capacity can endure it, but that the housing will be provided. The Department went on to say:"““The regional assembly has to take environmental factors into account in preparing the regional spatial strategy, but there is no single Government document priding guidance on how to estimate the environmental capacity of an area.?" There we have it: a new benchmark for the environment is to ignore it. If developers want to build, so be it, and our countryside can go to hell in a handcart. How bizarrely perverse that according to the Minister’s own Department, we have a situation that when a draft regional spatial strategy has an examination in public by a planning inspector, the environmental argument underpinning the proposals may be challenged, but that would not be based on the Government’s environmental estimate, because the Government have not made one. We accept that defining the environmental capacity of an area such as Hertfordshire is not easy. It is, after all, easy to measure the capacity of a road to accommodate traffic because we know how many cars can fit on to it, going at a certain speed with appropriate margins of safety. Helpfully, we can also measure the attendant pollution. That does not mean that we should not try to estimate and look for environmental capacity, but the Government are not even trying. Pollution is a huge worry in my constituency and these ever-increasing housing targets are fuelling that concern. My constituents are fearful that the Government merely pay lip service to the evidence of congestion and increasing levels of local pollution. According to the RAC, the stretch of the M25 between junctions 20 and 21, which runs over my constituency, is among the most congested in Britain. It does not take the skills of a highways engineer to realise that that situation, compounded by the M1 and the A1(M), results in a toxic U-shape around St. Albans, with the M10 piercing the city, bringing much heavy congestion and pollution.