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Housing and Regeneration Bill

My principal concern is about powers that are exactly analogous to those held by other quangos—powers to consult but never to change the decisions being consulted on. For instance, 8,100 houses in Cheltenham have been accepted by everybody locally for development in the urban area, but that has been pushed up to 13,800 houses, which will therefore overflow into urban sprawl, over miles and miles of green land and green-belt areas. Inevitably, we now have a growing cross-party campaign called ““Save the Countryside””. When we have bodies that trust the people, new housing will be accepted. That is the gist of many of the amendments that we discussed earlier.