Jess Brown-Fuller MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Jul 2025 · Infant Feeding · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for sharing her personal story and for advocating for other breastfeeding and formula-feeding parents in her constituency. She highlights that there is a postcode lottery when it comes to that support. We need to see safe spaces across the board for all parents who are feeding. In the group I attended, there were not just breastfeeding mums, but mums who were combination feeding, in the process of introducing solids or planning their feeding journey as they navigated returning to work. Some of those women became my closest friends and I still have them in my life all these years later.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sure my hon. Friend knows his legislation very well, but the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 stated that Ministers have a duty to further the purposes of protected landscapes such as national landscapes. Does he think that we have missed an opportunity in this Bill by not giving national landscapes a seat at the table as statutory consultees, like, for instance, Chichester harbour in my constituency?

• 9 Jun 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Three hundred social homes are at risk in my Chichester constituency, despite having outline planning permission, because developers are rejecting offers from registered providers. Will the Minister commit to action to stop developers evading their obligation, and will he meet me to help me protect the delivery of these social homes?

• 13 May 2025 · Local Housing Need Assessment Reform · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse, for the first time, I think. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne) on securing this vital debate. My constituency of Chichester has been grappling with serious housing challenges, which have been continually worsened by a deeply flawed planning process. The demand for social housing vastly outstrips supply. Private rentals are prohibitively expensive, and sky-rocketing house prices have made home ownership increasingly out of reach for those who have grown up in my constituency. Housing developments should enhance our communities, delivering affordable, sustainable homes alongside essential infrastructure, but the current approach does the opposite. The standard method for assessing housing need imposes arbitrary national targets on local authorities, which ignore the specific needs and constraints of each area. It fails to deliver genuinely affordable homes and does little to reflect local demand or geography. As my hon. Friend highlighted, the standard method fails to address above-inflation house price rises. Our average house price in Chichester, according to the Office for National Statistics, is £454,000. In just one year, to February 2025, the price of a semi-detached house in Chichester rose by 8.1%, yet Chichester has seen huge-scale development in recent years. Meanwhile, the average salary in my constituency is under £30,000, which is below the UK median. When new homes are delivered, they often enter the market at prices higher than the local median, as the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) mentioned. That artificially inflates the affordability ratio, which then increases future housing targets, creating a vicious cycle that drives prices even further out of reach. It does nothing to address the real challenges that my constituents face in getting on the housing ladder. Instead, it leaves new developments affordable only to those who are moving into the area, not those already living there. At the same time, councils face an uphill battle in trying to ensure that developments, required by the same standard method, include adequate levels of social and affordable housing. At present, we have over 2,000 families on the wait list for social homes in Chichester. Any development of 11 homes or more is expected to provide at least 10% as affordable housing. Both Chichester and Arun district councils, which sit within my constituency, request 30% social and affordable housing in their local plans to address some of the unmet need locally, but those targets are continuously undermined by viability assessments submitted by the developers, because of the high land prices in our constituency. A recent example is a 2,200 home development to the west of Bersted, approved by Arun district council on the basis that it was included in the Conservative local plan from 2022. There is strong opposition in the community to the proposal, not only because those homes will add to the strain on local infrastructure, but because only 10% of those homes will be “affordable”. The very definition of affordable is fundamentally flawed when even 80% of unaffordable is still unaffordable for so many people. The developer claimed that a higher proportion of social and affordable homes on the site would have made the project commercially unviable, so the council was left with no power to enforce its requested levels of social and affordable houses. That is why I was pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) tabled an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, calling on the Government to adopt a separate social housing target. I am sure that would be welcomed by local authorities up and down the UK, because they are best placed to know what their communities need, not the developers that are trying to build in them. The standard method also fundamentally fails to consider any geographical constraints, which ties the hands of councils during land allocation. In my area, 70% of Chichester district is covered by national park, with an additional 5% designated as national landscape at Chichester harbour. That means that our ambitious housing target, which has doubled under the Labour Government, must be met within just 25% of available land, yet the housing target remains unadjusted. We need a method for assessing local housing that actually works for communities—one that recognises local constraints, delivers genuinely affordable housing, protects the national landscape and ensures that every development contributes positively to the places that we call home. This will not change until the top-down approach of the standard method for assessing local housing need is reformed to genuinely reflect community need, and until local authorities are given the power to challenge and regulate developers effectively. I beg the Minister to look again at the standard method so that we can truly address the local housing need for areas such as mine in Chichester.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  My constituents and I know how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful part of the United Kingdom. We need to see growth so that our young people can stay in their local communities, buy homes in the areas in which they have grown up, and continue to contribute to the local economy and keep Chichester thriving for generations to come; but the reality is that the planning system in my little patch of the country is not fit for purpose. With the district council’s footprint covering 70% of national park and 5% of national landscape, the ambitious total for housing allocation in our area is confined to just 25% of the available land in a ribbon that is causing coastal squeeze. This has led to high-density developments built without adequate infrastructure, leaving my residents facing daily challenges navigating the horrendous congestion on the A27, finding local school places for their children, or simply obtaining an appointment with a GP. The current system has left my communities frustrated, my local businesses unable to grow, and local councils tied up in red tape, unable to plan. Housing developers have a duty to create communities, not just buildings, but the very nature of the current planning system means that developers are putting forward proposals that look only at the patches that they are trying to develop rather than the wider picture surrounding it, and the councillors who are elected to represent their areas are fighting with their hands tied behind their backs. In both Chichester and Arun district councils, an application may be refused by the planning committees—perhaps owing to flooding risks, loss of grade 1 agricultural land or inadequate infrastructure in the area—only for that to be overturned at appeal, which is a costly, time-consuming process, taking planners out of the departments where they are trying to plan. The previous administration in Chichester district council allowed the local plan to expire, which left developers riding roughshod over areas on the Manhood peninsula, a low-lying coastal plain that is susceptible to extreme flooding which seems to be getting worse and worse. The new administration in 2023 focused on producing a robust local plan, which has now been through inspection—to the relief of communities across Chichester—and protects areas such as the Manhood peninsula while prioritising brownfield development, which all of us, on both sides of the House, agree should be the priority for planning. However, the Government’s ambitious new housing target could force the council back to square one and put all the power back into the hands of developers, because we are being asked to increase our housing target by nearly 100%. We do not have a planning crisis; we have a building crisis. Developers are land-banking consents rather than getting on with delivering the homes that we need, because demand drives up prices. Since 2007, more than 1.4 million homes given fully consented permissions have not been built. The Bill does not tackle the workforce issues or the supply chain issues, and it also does not acknowledge that water companies, which are responsible for vital infrastructure to ensure that that their reliance on storm overflows can reduce over time, are not consulted over individual planning applications because they are not statutory consultees. As the Minister knows, I have called for such consultation in other debates. Finally, there is no target for social homes in the Bill. Registered providers in Chichester are currently refusing to take on the social homes on smaller mixed-use sites, favouring the larger developments and prioritising upgrading their existing housing stock, which is putting the viability of social homes in my area at serious risk—and they are homes that we are desperately crying out for.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Housing Development Planning: Water Companies · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for securing today’s important and timely debate on an issue that is critical for my constituents in Chichester and for people up and down the country. The challenges facing our water infrastructure are well documented, and waste water treatment works across the country have been operating well beyond their capacity for years, with serious consequences. During the general election, I knocked on the door of a lady in my constituency called Alison, who I had not seen in many years. She is a wheelchair user, and she told me how delighted she was to have been moved to a new social home. She had lived there happily for two and a half years until a new development was built in the field just next door. Suddenly her toilets no longer flushed, and she had no access to her wet room. When she spoke to her water company about sewage rising up in her toilet, it recommended that she go to the local pub to use its facilities. That is totally unacceptable for Alison and for every single constituent facing such situations. When our systems become overwhelmed, storm overflows and sewage spills pollute our rivers, harbours and coastline—failures that are visible nationwide. Water companies have a duty not only to provide clean water, but to manage waste water safely and effectively. Yet the system has been failing for many years. In my constituency alone, there were 990 recorded sewage spills last year, which lasted over 17,000 hours.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Housing Development Planning: Water Companies · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we are tough on water companies—and so we should be. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire said, they have made large profits and they have a duty to make sure that every single constituent in this country has access to clean and safe water and that it is disposed of appropriately. But I absolutely agree that they should also be included as a strategic partner, and I will come on to that. Those failures harm our environment, endanger public health and threaten local economies, particularly tourism, which relies on clean water and a thriving natural landscape. In the Government’s plan for change, they set out an ambitious proposal to build 1.5 million homes in England and accelerate planning decisions. While there is no doubt that new homes are needed, they must be accompanied by the appropriate infrastructure to support them. Water companies have a duty to maintain, improve and extend their water supply networks to account for future water needs, but they are currently excluded from the planning process by not being listed as a statutory consultee. That omission means that, when a development is proposed for a site where there is no capacity, water companies lack the opportunity to formally object or to insist on necessary infrastructure improvements before the permission is granted. The issue is compounded by how capacity in our waste water treatment plants is measured. Instead of assessing the real-world resilience of our waste water infrastructure, capacity is gauged by measuring dry spells over a 12-month period. That means that a company’s capacity can change year on year, depending on the weather. With an ever-changing climate, that is not an accurate measure of the capacity that a site can cope with. It is not a realistic reflection of demand on new developments. If they were statutory consultees, water companies could highlight those inefficiencies at an earlier stage, ensuring that essential upgrades are planned and delivered before new developments are approved. In Chichester, we are currently dealing with the absence of a proactive water management system; a lack of capacity at a specific waste water treatment works in Apuldram is delaying the regeneration that the city centre so desperately needs. To address these challenges, we must adopt a more proactive and consistent approach to waste water management. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire mentioned, sustainable drainage systems—otherwise known as SUDS—are a key element of this. I am pleased that Chichester district council has included SUDS as part of its local plan, which is currently being consulted on, but they should not be applied on an authority-by-authority basis; we should have legislation making SUDS the standard across the country.

• 3 Mar 2025 · Social Housing · Hansard source

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  Chichester’s planning policy dictates that 30% of all homes in new developments should be social and affordable housing. However, we have recently noticed a worrying trend of registered providers refusing to take on contracts in smaller and medium-sized developments, and favouring larger developments. That is putting a lot of the social housing in Chichester at risk. What is the Minister doing to ensure that registered providers continue to take on smaller contracts in mixed-use developments?

• 16 Dec 2024 · “Get Britain Working” White Paper · Hansard source

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  Fedcap, a national organisation, is running a scheme to get economically inactive people to become the next generation of solar panel engineers. More such schemes will be necessary to plug the skills gap that developers report, especially if the Government are to meet their ambitious housing target. Will the Secretary of State commit to continued funding for schemes that are delivered by such organisations via jobcentres?

• 11 Dec 2024 · Responsibilities of Housing Developers · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I thank the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) for securing today’s debate. Housing developers have a duty to create communities, not just buildings, yet the current planning system prioritises developers over the very people who live, work and raise their families in the areas. Chichester district council, where most of my constituency lies, sits within the South Downs national park to the north and Chichester harbour to the south, which is a national landscape with protected status. That leaves a belt of only 20% of the land available for housing. The limited space has led to high-density developments that stretch infrastructure to breaking point. I commend Chichester district council’s focus and determination to get its local plan to inspection stage, but I am worried that Labour’s new ambitious target will take it back to the drawing board, with developers proposing unsuitable land outside the plan. Over in Bersted and Pagham, covered by Arun district council, the housing target is the highest of any planning authority outside Greater London. The area is currently experiencing repeated catastrophic flooding as a low-lying coastal plain. People feel as if decisions are being made for them, not with them, and trust in the planning process over many years has been completely eroded. Our planning authorities feel as if they are fighting with their hands tied behind their backs, because if they refuse applications for very reasonable reasons, such as the site being a designated floodplain or key agricultural land, there being next to no local infrastructure, or the water companies saying that they have no more capacity at their local water treatment sites, developers then take the authorities to appeal and the inspector finds in favour of the developers. If a local authority refuses 10% of large-scale developments, it risks being designated, which gives developers the right to totally skip the local planning process and go straight to appeal. To add insult to injury, developers in my constituency regularly deliver sites with far fewer than the mandated 30% social and affordable homes. The homes that are being built are not for local people, and developers are regularly not delivering the infrastructure promised in the lovely glossy brochure. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for meaningful reforms. We propose a “use it or lose it” system for planning permissions to end the practice of land banking. There are currently over 1 million homes across the country with planning permission that have yet to be built, which suggests that the responsibility to deliver homes lies with those developers, not the planning authorities. We demand stricter accountability for developers who build their homes poorly to ensure that the burden of remediation does not fall on those already struggling residents. Critically, we call for a planning system that truly engages with communities, placing their needs and voices at the heart of the process.

• 28 Oct 2024 · Social Housing Supply · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to Westbourne community land trust, which, after six long hard years, has finally started delivering affordable homes for its community. That is exciting for the trust, and I was delighted to put a spade in the ground when it started building. Does the Secretary of State agree that communities are best placed to understand the need for housing in their area? Will she make it easier for community land trusts to acquire land and build homes quickly?