And then we can move onto rebuilding Sheerness and reconnecting it to the sea, rebuilding the heart of Sittingbourne and bringing its high street back to its former glory, and getting good homes for everyone locally who needs them to live a healthy, happy and prosperous life.

Rant over.

It’s why I was so happy last night to vote for the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill, because my towns need it to break through the logjam local planning has become

Every delay is a delay to fixing our biggest local challenges, so I’m hoping the House of Lords this time passes the bill

And yes, all of this is key to the government’s mission, which is why it was essential it was evaluated by the planning inspector to see if it was viable

Hopefully we should get an answer one way or another on this soon

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This last year that may have gone up by over £800k to fight an infrastructure led proposal, where the houses built will pay for the new relief road for Sittingbourne, connecting its industrial quarter, to its innovation centre at Kent Science Park and the M2

www.kentonline.co.uk/sittingbourn...

A few years ago my local district council was spending about £250k a year fighting, and loosing, developers. That’s our local council taxes spent on that rather than on services. It also reduced section 106 money that could have built the schools and GP surgeries we need

Fine. But their fighting and squabbling means we don’t have a legal local plan, so we can’t stop building happening in those places and can’t direct or incentivise building and regeneration in the town centres. It has also led to a lack of money from developers to build the infrastructure we need

This anger has been coopted locally by politicians, most of whom don’t live in the poorest neighbourhoods, fighting each other to keep housebuilding away from their outlying villages.

That leads to a very natural resistance to any new building and it is one of the big challenges to social cohesion

It creates fertile ground for populist politicians and their simplistic “press this one magic button” and all will be miraculously fixed, with no extra costs to anyone

We also have to acknowledge the real anger locally at housing projects that have been built that have not alleviated any of these deep problems and which lots of local residents believe have only made things worse

This can’t simply be dismissed, disparaged or ignored

There are lots of reasons for this. Partly it is because piecemeal attempts of building on smaller bits of land are not viable enough for developers. Partly because a bigger strategic vision is needed, so that lots of overlapping , otherwise conflicting needs can be balanced across the whole area

Yet this is an area with a strong local industrial economy, with many businesses expanding

It should be thriving. We should be seeing these twin towns regenerating

Instead the renewal of these town centres has been seen as too tough to fix, with increasing despair locally at the state of our them

Add in the way the two towns in my constituency, Sheerness and Sittingbourne, both have a shortage of one and two bed starter homes, increasing numbers of HMOs (Houses in Multiple Occupation) in their poorest districts & lots of older buildings in poor condition, worsened by tough weather by the sea

It’s crazy to me that we simply don’t know what the actual population size is here, and this is true in other parts of the UK too, especially in coastal areas where lots of these sites are located and which already struggle due to poor transport connectivity

In fact the local councils and other services don’t know how many people live here full time, leading to a mismatch in funding

This in an area containing multiple neighbourhoods that are in the most deprived in the country, where poor public transport exacerbates the lack of local services

People are living here in large numbers all year round, on sites only licensed for part of the year, leaving them vulnerable and with far fewer legal protections even now

Add in the local challenge in Sittingbourne and Sheppey, which being in the South East with its housing costs and pressures, and also being blessed by lovely beaches, has a load of holiday parks & caravan sites that have become housing of last resort for people priced out of the rest of the region

Problems with poor or inadequate housing are the most common issue constituents come to me with, followed by SEND, health, transport and cost of living. Of course Bluesky is full of people who know all these are linked, so this isn’t news here

These new rights are vital, but can only be a start

And as someone only 8.5 years off being in the same situation as people in this piece, it’s not lost on me that while the challenges of renting tend to be thought of as a younger working age issue, renting could rapidly become default in the UK across all ages

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...