Let me start by making something clear: the communities I represent are not NIMBYs. They understand the need for housing. What they cannot understand is a planning system that hands power to developers while taking it away from communities, that doubles housing targets without doubling infrastructure investment, and that expects local people to sacrifice precious landscapes for homes their own children still cannot afford.
This is not a parochial concern. It is a structural failure playing out across England, and it demands a fundamental rethink of how we manage planning.
The Numbers Game
Labour has continued the top-down numbers legacy the Conservatives left behind and, in some cases, made it significantly worse. The new methodology for calculating housing supply has hit councils hard. In some councils like St Albans, targets have almost doubled.
These are not abstract figures. They translate into substantial developments that could increase some of our market towns by 40 per cent or more. As one resident in Tring put it simply: “It makes no sense… our roads can’t handle it.” This is a town that received its market charter over 700 years ago, with the roads to match.
Grey Belt, Wide Open Door
I warned the Government from the outset that the “grey belt” policy would hand the advantage to developers, not communities. That is exactly what has happened.
The unclear definition creates a wide-open door for speculative development. Crucially, by focusing protections on towns rather than villages, the guidance leaves smaller settlements, often with fewer services and weaker infrastructure, far more vulnerable.
In Redbourn, a village in my constituency, a proposed 1,000-home development sits outside the local plan but claims grey belt status. Combined with other sites, this village faces a potential pipeline that could see it grow by over 70 per cent. As one resident told me: “I am hugely concerned that there is no local democracy that allows villages to stop disproportionate housing development.”
The Infrastructure Gap
Here lies the fundamental problem: speculative and unallocated developments sit entirely outside planned growth modelling. These unplanned sites are assessed in isolation, with no cumulative view of what they mean together for roads, buses, rail, cycling, schools, GPs or dentists.
Councils need to be supported by central government to ensure that development of national infrastructure like airport expansions, theme parks, and rail freight terminals can be adequately maintained in the context of their local plans.
When councils do secure investment through Section 106 or Community Infrastructure Levy contributions, viability criteria often allow developers to reduce affordable housing commitments or limit infrastructure investment. There is no guarantee on delivery or timing, because major infrastructure depends on external bodies and funding cycles that operate entirely separately from planning decisions.
The Reality on the Ground
Consider what this means in practice. In Hertfordshire, bus mileage was cut by 56.5 per cent between 2017 and 2023, the highest reduction in England. In some areas, you simply need a car to get around.
On the trains, only a handful of daily services from my constituency stations to London ran 100% on time over the past month. Infrastructure bottlenecks on Thameslink mean when one part fails, the whole network fails. Pressure is only building as development accelerates.
These are old towns and villages, many with roads originally designed for horse-drawn traffic, now gridlocked with commuter cars. Yet there is not a single mention of topography in the National Planning Policy Framework. Valley towns, hill villages, narrow medieval streets: one size is expected to fit all.
The Affordability Illusion
If this top-down approach were delivering genuinely affordable homes, that would be one thing. But with average house prices in my constituency exceeding £650,000, and even up to £900,000 in the town of Harpenden, and so-called “affordable” homes priced at 80 per cent of market value, we are asking communities to sacrifice green belt for homes their children and grandchildren still cannot afford.
A Better Way
Communities shouldn’t have to choose between housing and infrastructure. They need both, planned together, from the start.
The Liberal Democrats have long called for an infrastructure-first approach that empowers communities to shape their own futures. That means giving local councils the powers and funding to take a cumulative view of development impact. It means protecting villages from the same grey belt loopholes that expose them to disproportionate growth. It means ensuring transport, health and education infrastructure is delivered before or alongside housing, not as an afterthought.
Local people understand the housing challenge. What they will not accept is a system that treats their communities as numbers on a spreadsheet while developers, quite literally, have a field day.
Infrastructure-first, community-led development. It is the least our communities deserve.
