I am grateful to the Minister for Pensions for finishing early and look forward to an expanded explanation from the Minister for Housing and Planning, who has responsibility for London. I am glad to have this opportunity to discuss the issue and know that my constituents are grateful that I have the opportunity to raise it on their behalf.

You may not know much about Beckenham, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am not sure that the Minister does, although he represents a south London seat—one needs to take out one's passport to come to Bromley. I will describe my constituency so that he appreciates the pressures that it is under.

Beckenham is part of Bromley borough, the largest borough in London in terms of acres—or should I say hectares. Bromley's slogan has long been "Green and clean", and half of it is designated as green belt. Beckenham is primarily suburban, with the area around Crystal Palace more like an inner city. The area developed from villages that were surrounded by large estates into an area of primarily large Victorian and Edwardian suburbs, with large family houses on large plots. Those are typical of late 19th and early 20th century buildings. Some of the gardens were sold off to become smaller family houses in the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s. Many of the mansion houses were turned into flats. Obviously, there was bomb damage in the second world war.

Since the 1960s, there has been further development of those Victorian and Edwardian plots into town houses and blocks of flats, which have met the increasing demand for one or two-bedroomed properties as families have fragmented and our parents have lived longer. Alongside the privately owned houses, there is a lot of social housing that is indistinguishable from the surrounding buildings. There are large areas of substantial four to six-bedroom houses as well as many semi-detached properties.

In recent months, residents have voiced their concern to me, to councillors and to the local papers that the pace of development has speeded up. They feel powerless and without a voice, despite the best efforts of their many vocal residents associations. They believe that their environment is changing irrevocably. They do not like that and feel that neither they nor the council can do anything to stop it. Yesterday I received an e-mail from a constituent who lives in the same road as I do. It reads:

"I am appalled at what is happening to Beckenham with regard to more and more single family homes being torn down and replaced with apartment buildings. The new builds are not providing off-street parking. The volume of traffic has increased, and commuters park in the streets around Beckenham Junction making it miserable for those of us who live in these streets. I enjoy living in Beckenham—but only just".

That is the authentic cry of despair of a local resident.

Residents also criticise Bromley council for not preventing developments although, in fact, many planning applications are overturned on appeal, so it is not the council's fault. Indeed, Bromley has one of the highest rates of appeal to the planning inspectorate. Bromley council has a historic commitment to provide 8,650 units between 1992 and 2006. Its current agreed housing target, set out in the unitary development plan, is for 11,450 units between 1997 and 2016, with an average annual target of 573 units. It is sad to call houses units, but that is a quick way of describing a wide variety of dwellings. Originally those figures, derived from the London housing capacity study of 2000, were regarded as capacity figures, as opposed to minimum targets.

It would be remiss of me not to make it clear that the borough has a waiting list for social housing—just in case the Minister gives that as the reason for the imposed minimum targets. In my surgery, second only to immigration cases are appeals to be housed, and I am sure that I am not alone in finding that. Bromley is on target to provide 2,300 houses by 2016, and with the reduction to 15 in the number of units that would need to include social housing, we expect a higher density to be achieved.

I am obliged to Stuart McMillan, the chief planner, and Claire Glavin, the planning policy planner, at Bromley council for advising me on the technicalities that I am about to describe. They tell me that the capacity figures have become minimum targets because section 38(2) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 defines the development plan in Greater London as

"the spatial development strategy and the development plan documents (taken as a whole) which have been adopted or approved in relation to that area."

Section 38(5) specifies that if a policy contained within a development plan—including, for example, the London plan and the UDP—conflicts with another policy in the development plan, the conflict must be resolved in favour of the policy contained in the last document to be adopted. That sounds like an obscure mathematical formula, but I am sure it is not. The London plan is considered to be the last up-to-date adopted plan because the revised deposit UDP is still progressing through to adoption. That appears to be how the capacity figure has become the minimum target.

One of the excuses for changing the capacity figure to a minimum target is that housing completions are falling short of the planning permissions given by the council. That is no consolation to my residents, but it appears to be the basis on which the housing inspector, in her part-report on the UDP dated 25 August 2004, has insisted that the borough is 1,000 dwellings short in addition to the agreed total of 573 units each year. She has therefore gone back to the bad old ways of predict and provide, rather than taking the Government's preferred approach of plan, monitor and manage. If developers think that they can sell only 76 per cent. of the 573 units, even when they have been given planning permission for 110 per cent. of those units, then the inspector is challenging the market—not an approach that this Government allegedly espouse.

In a recent application form for a conference on historic suburbs run by the Institute of Historic Building Conservation and supported by the Government's own English Heritage, it was said that suburbs are

"an integral and equal part of great towns and cities and have a crucial role to play in regeneration and development. They can engender fierce loyalties and intense civic pride yet their conservation is often misunderstood or sidelined."

Bromley council well understands the needs and aspirations of its suburbs. Its policy on housing design states that it

"will resist designs which are out of scale or character with the surrounding area."

On residential density, it states:

"on sites of 0.4 hectares or more, the council will normally expect schemes not to exceed the existing density of the immediately surrounding area except on sites within town centres and on sites where the immediately surrounding area has no readily identifiable residential character."

Where possible, the council is already giving planning permission using brownfield sites to allow development of higher densities, often against the wishes of local residents who actively prefer the lower densities in which they have opted to live.

In the town centres in my constituency, including Beckenham and Penge, buildings tend to be up to five storeys high, and hence are denser, in compliance with the council's own planning guidance. In the tree-lined residential streets, buildings are not more than four storeys high, or roughly up to the tree line. We have some very pleasant streets and wonderful trees, and the streets often have wide grass verges in addition to pavements.

However, Beckenham faces a new threat from density. Close to Beckenham Junction station, and defined as being in the town centre, the British Railways Board built a seven-storey block of offices back in the 1960s which has lain empty for some 10 years. In the seven years or so that I have represented the constituency, its dereliction has been of more and more concern to residents and council alike. It is now being developed into flats, which is welcome, but the problem is that it is seven storeys high.

As someone who lived on the 39th floor of the Barbican in the City of London for seven years, and within the Barbican in other properties for a total of 10 more years, I cannot be accused of not enjoying high-density living. However, people do not move to the suburbs to enjoy high-density living. They move there because they like to be surrounded by space, enjoy and are proud of their gardens, and appreciate a degree of peace and quiet that is missing from city centres. I can confirm that Beckenham during the week is quieter than the City of London at the weekend.

A major change seems to be on the way because the seven-storey precedent has been set. Already, within 50 m of the block of offices, another seven-storey residential building is under construction. However, it is in a pleasant residential street, where Bromley borough council's own planning guidelines suggest that it should be no more than four storeys high. If I were to be nimbyist about this, I would not admit that it is the street in which I live, but it is. I live within 50 m of that new development, and if my worst fears and those of my constituents are realised, I can well understand and sympathise with neighbours who are unable to resist the siren call of their bank accounts when approached by developers seeking to build yet another seven-storey block. Once the precedent has been set, we have discovered in our borough that it is extraordinarily difficult to resist such developments.

In Shortlands, another area of Beckenham, a developer has assembled a series of back-garden plots where none has been developed before. So far, the council has resisted that development. We hope and pray that it will continue to be resisted, but it is extraordinarily difficult. Developers may go to appeal and be turned down, but they go away, rethink their case and return to have another go. They persist until the precedent is set, and once it is set, we will lose control over the development of a street. I am surrounded by examples of that in Beckenham. When one Edwardian or Victorian house is sold—I do not blame the people who sell their houses, because it is difficult not to accept a bonus on the value of one's house—the rest fall like dominoes and the whole area changes.

It is not beyond the wit of any of us to understand that the pressure will soon be on to build more tall buildings in that pleasant residential area which are well over the level of the tree line, despite the council's insistence that in residential streets the height of buildings should be only up to the tree line. Within a few years, the whole complexion of the area could change dramatically. Yes, it will provide higher-density housing, but the character of the surrounding area will have been destroyed. The council's carefully thought-through policies will have turned to dust and the pressure on schools, roads, rail transport—Bromley is well provided with rail links and I think I hold the title of the MP with the most railway stations in a constituency, with 13—and health services will be intolerable.

A new senior school has just been built in Bromley to meet the demand for high-quality education in the borough. If the borough has to follow the demands of the inspectorate, the Mayor's London plan and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's figures, the infrastructure is also needed. However, there is no land because of the demands imposed by housing. My hon. Friend Mr. Horam raised that point with the Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Yvette Cooper, in his Adjournment debate on 1 February. He pointed out that the Environmental Audit Committee, of which he is a distinguished member and was the first Chairman, has been astounded that no Department has carried out an environmental impact assessment of the house building targets that are being imposed not only in Beckenham and the wider borough of Bromley, but all over the country.

The inspector at the unitary development plan inquiry recommended releasing some sites from the green belt, metropolitan open land, urban open land or employment designations after carrying out a sequential test. As a Scot growing up in Scotland in the 1950s, I witnessed what happens when housing is built without any care for the impact on the environment. I saw Easterhouse being built. Everybody uses it as an example of what happens when house building goes wrong. Houses were built, but there were no shops, no pubs, no churches, no community facilities and no schools. The reverberations on the families trans-shipped there by Labour-run Glasgow council are still being felt today, 50 years later. Although I do not for a minute expect such a drastic change of character in Bromley, it is an awful warning of the impact of ill-considered housing changes.

It is important to my constituents that they live in a green and clean borough. When representatives of the Copers Cope area residents association heard that I had secured this debate, they rang me up to say how glad they were that I would be raising their concerns. The London borough of Bromley residents federation wonders how we can build a better Bromley when the density of housing imposed by the Government and the Greater London authority is being increased.

The council is so concerned that, despite its overwhelming Conservative majority, a cross-party select committee—almost unique in the history of the Conservative-run Bromley borough—is being set up to inquire into the threats posed by the new residential developments proposed by the Mayor and the Government. Will the Minister assess the harm done to the democratic process when the Government impose housing targets without the agreement of the local community? He should look again at the imposition of targets, rather than agreed capacity levels, ensure that one Department or another carries out an environmental impact assessment of the imposed new housing, and give control over planning back to local councils.

The backlash that I am witnessing as a local MP to the changes to the suburbs and constituency of Beckenham causes me grave concern about the health of the body politic. It should concern the Minister, too, as a democrat. I seek his assurance that he will look again at the change from a capacity figure for housing to a minimum target, and ensure that Bromley looks forward to being in control of its own housing policies.

I congratulate Mrs. Lait on using this opportunity to secure a debate on overdevelopment in Beckenham. I note that three weeks ago the borough of Bromley debated a motion that more or less rejected the housing target in the London plan. The motion disputed that there is such housing need and asked for it to be reviewed.

The borough's attitude to housing provision concerns me. Housing figures are not made up out of thin air. They are based on real people's needs. If we deny those needs, we harm only ourselves, our families and our communities. Part of my understanding of community is the importance of maintaining family links, which means at least allowing for the possibility of families living reasonably close to each other. If we reject the case for new housing in a locality, our sons and daughters will not get on the housing ladder locally. Why deny them that opportunity? The need for new housing means that the problem of affordable housing will grow, as will homelessness. The economic vibrancy of our towns will also be stifled.

Housing figures are not imposed—if that is what the hon. Lady suggested—by Government or regional bodies such as the GLA. That is a myth. The starting point for working out our housing needs are population and household projections, which are policy neutral. Population projections are carried out by the Office for National Statistics, whose expertise and impartiality are beyond question. Those figures enable us to get a grasp of the scale of what we face in the future. Experience has shown them to be fairly accurate, and they have proved useful for decades to get an idea of future regional housing needs. Indeed, the Opposition supported that methodology when they were in government.

Local authorities then work out what their area can sustain. Their housing capacity studies enable them to identify supplies of potential brownfield sites over the next 10 to 15 years. Each authority then agrees those capacity figures. The last set of figures was assembled by the London boroughs in 1999, and published by their representative body, the London Planning Advisory Committee, in 2000. Regional planning bodies use all that information to apportion housing figures between authorities. In London, those figures were subject to a wide-ranging public examination in 2003 and endorsed by an independent panel.

Bromley supported the last housing capacity study. It was even on the steering group. It included the housing figures for those capacities implied in its plan, and then consulted on them and took them to an inquiry. Clearly, the inspector's report on the UDP raised some important questions for the borough. She did not say that the green belt should be built on, but prompted Bromley to demonstrate the site supply that it said was available. She suggested that the borough should face up to its affordable housing needs, and proposed that density levels could be increased to reduce the threat to greenfield sites.

It is for Bromley to decide what to do now. It cannot pretend that its housing-needs problem and the London plan do not exist. Its members cannot pretend that they are not part of London or the south-east—a region that is commonly recognised to be under a great deal of housing pressure.

Bromley has always agreed to the capacity plan. It is working on the basis of 573 units and is providing extra social housing. It is the increased targets to which it objects—the increase of units to more than 573 and increases to the housing association list.

I appreciate the hon. Lady's point, but I shall go on to argue—if there is time—that it is imperative that Bromley proceeds to meet its commitments on housing capacity, because there is no point having local plans that have been properly consulted on and independently tested sitting on the shelf and not put into practice.

The Government are keen to make home ownership more widely available and to ensure that sufficient affordable housing is provided. We are considering how to respond to Kate Barker's recommendations on increasing housing supply. In the meantime, all current commitments to housing supply must be honoured. The Government, the GLA and the Association of London Government have launched a housing delivery plan for London, part of which involves looking at the areas in which housing completions have fallen, and working out what measures various parties can take to deal with that. Bromley was such an area from 1997 to 2001, and I am glad to say that the council has been most co-operative in considering what can be done. It worked with the Government office for London to produce a housing action plan, which examines how to overcome obstacles to new housing so that the problems that Bromley claims exist can be addressed. The Government are using this process to ensure that all the wider infrastructure issues that the hon. Lady identified, such as health, education and transport, are co- ordinated with the borough's housing needs. What we need now is for Bromley to start putting that housing action plan into practice.

The hon. Lady specifically mentioned what she terms "overdevelopment". I hope that she will accept that that expression can be both unclear and somewhat subjective. Government guidance is very clear about how authorities should plan for new homes. The guidance on planning for housing—planning policy guidance note 3—establishes that the first aim is for authorities to focus new development, wherever possible, on brownfield sites. That is the most sustainable choice. In London, some 90 per cent. of all new development is on brownfield sites. That is a fantastic record. That also holds true in Bromley, where the figure is about 93 per cent.

PPG3 says that greenfield development is allowable, but only where brownfield sites are completely unviable or simply not there. It is also clear that authorities should be developing policies in their plans to ensure that the most effective use is made of existing brownfield sites. Opportunities for new development should not be wasted with low-density schemes, especially when those are in accessible areas. Not only will low-density developments not work towards building sustainable communities, they will exacerbate the need to release greenfield sites.

Unfortunately this is one area where Bromley could do much better. Average London densities are around 53 dwellings per hectare. In Bromley the rate is only about 28 dwellings per hectare. Bromley seems unwilling even to achieve the average for outer London boroughs, which is 40 dwellings per hectare. This means that Bromley itself is causing a lot of the pressure on greenfield sites. It should not blame the Government or the GLA for that.

I hear what the hon. Lady says about some of the recent developments in Bromley being ugly, or out of scale, and that densities in the town centre are unacceptable. I cannot comment on individual cases, but I would not seek to deny that some developments have left much to be desired. However, there is a positive and creative way to address that. Good design can help to ensure that higher densities blend in and even enhance an area. Some of the most attractive and valued parts of London, such as Chelsea, are at surprisingly high densities. Planning guidance is clear that new developments should be in scale with their surroundings and design qualities should be of a high standard. It is open to local planning authorities to reject applications on grounds of scale and design. Indeed, as Planning Minister I have frequently drawn attention to these powers. There is some evidence to show that planning authorities are increasingly willing to use them. Ministers have also been willing to sustain those judgments.

The Government have produced many excellent good practice examples that show what can be done without compromising or damaging the character of an area, which is the usual criticism of density. Authorities should not dismiss higher densities in a knee-jerk reaction. They need to explain to their communities what opportunities are available. There is a leadership role to consider.

The hon. Lady also raised the threat to the Bromley green belt. I have already pointed out that through the housing capacity study, and its plan, Bromley has maintained that it has sufficient brownfield sites over the lifetime of the plan to accommodate the future housing needs of its own community, but if Bromley now concludes that it cannot do this, and needs to release greenfield or green belt sites, it will be for Bromley to make the case for it. It should happen only once other options have been fully explored, such as increasing the number of high-quality design and greater-density homes. Only then should greenfield sites in the most sustainable locations be released.

The Government are very supportive of the green belt policy, as set out in PPG2. Indeed the policy remains unchanged from that of the previous Conservative Administration. There are no proposals to relax it and it is as strong as ever. Indeed, our target is for each English region to maintain or increase the current area designated as green belt in local plans, even in regions containing housing growth areas. Between 1997, when the Government came to power, and 2003, the size of the green belt nationally increased by more than 19,000 hectares, with a further 12,000 hectares proposed in emerging plans. Under this Government, the amount of green belt land being developed has fallen when compared with that allowed for under the Conservatives in the 1980s and 1990s, and we propose to strengthen the green belt policy even more. We will shortly be consulting on a new green belt direction, which will require inappropriate planning applications to be referred to the Secretary of State.

The London plan was adopted last year and, as programmed in that plan, a review and another housing capacity study are under way. The Greater London authority is hoping to consult on the emerging strategy next year and we understand that Bromley is contributing to the new capacity study. However, the new plan is for the future, and boroughs need to respond to the existing London plan, which addresses today's needs.

We face serious affordable housing problems and we should not play petty politics with people's need for decent homes. There are some fantastic opportunities and we should work together to address London's housing needs in a way that protects greenfield sites and promotes sustainable development. I sincerely hope that the hon. Lady will encourage her local authority, Bromley, to face up to its responsibilities.

Sitting suspended until Two o'clock.