Conservatives pledge to scrap Labour’s housing plans - Dan Byles meets Grant Shapps

A clear dividing line has emerged between the Conservatives and Labour at the next General Election – over housebuilding. Labour’s controversial Regional Spatial Strategy has come under fire locally after it was revealed that up to 15,000 houses will be imposed on Nuneaton & Bedworth by central government.

Local councils will have no say, and local greenbelt land – including the Woodlands – could have to be concreted over to squeeze thousands of new houses into the area as people spill out of Coventry.

The local Conservative Parliamentary candidate, former soldier Dan Byles, has been to London to discuss the issue with Conservative shadow housing minister Grant Shapps.

Grant Shapps has pledged that, under a Conservative Government, Labour’s top down housebuilding plans will be torn up and decisions over housing will be handed back to locally elected councils.

Speaking after his meeting with Mr Shapps, Dan said: “The issue of housebuilding in Bedworth is fast becoming a major dividing line between Labour and the Conservatives.

“I have long been opposed to Labour’s Stalinist, top down plans for local services. Housbuilding is a classic example of New Labour control freakery.

“Under Labour’s plan, first drawn up by John Prescott, up to 15,000 houses will be imposed on Nuneaton and Bedworth by Gordon Brown’s ministers in London.

“It hasn’t been debated locally. It hasn’t been voted on locally. It doesn’t have the support of local people.

“That’s why I’m delighted that Grant Shapps, who will be the Housing Minister if the Conservatives win the next General Election, has pledged to tear up these plans and to allow local councils to make decisions on housebuilding.

“The choice at the next election is clear.

“If you want to protect our green spaces from the bulldozers, and if you want decisions over whether to build thousands of new houses to be made by locally elected and accountable councillors rather than imposed by central government, then you need to support the Conservatives at the next General Election.”