Shropshire MPs' column: Devolution is not about overruling and ignoring Shropshire concerns

When Andy Burnham became Prime Minister, I warned that being Prime Minister is not the same as being mayor of a major city.

Three months later, it is clear Labour still doesn’t understand constituencies like The Wrekin.

One of the Prime Minister’s first announcements was he wanted to lower energy bills. While he cut VAT for electricity, he didn’t do the same for heating oil, leaving one in three households in Shropshire without any financial support whatsoever.

The government’s top-down housebuilding targets also disproportionately penalise areas like The Wrekin.

Despite housing shortages in many cities, Labour have slashed housing targets in London and Birmingham, while massively increasing them in Shropshire, whilst also allowing Black Country councils to offload their housing quotas onto The Wrekin. Shropshire is not a dumping ground for the houses other councils don’t want to build in their own areas.

Labour led Telford and Wrekin Council plans to put around 10,000 new houses in The Wrekin parliamentary constituency but fewer than 1,000 in the Telford parliamentary constituency. This is unfair and I will fight it all the way. Many local roads are already congested, and this level of housing also puts huge pressure on schools and GP surgeries.

I am not against new housing, and there certainly need to be more affordable homes, but they must be in the right place and at the right scale, and with the necessary public services to support them.

There is also the huge impact on the local environment and habitats which make this part of Shropshire such a special place to live. I will fight to keep the borough’s green lungs and open spaces.

To speed up its plans to bulldoze swathes of Shropshire countryside, the government is giving itself more powers to overrule the views of people in rural and semi-rural areas.

Over the summer, the government announced that local council planning committees will be banned from discussing many planning applications. This removes the rights of local councillors – and local residents – to have their say.

I spoke at the recent public inquiry on plans to build 800 homes in Albrighton - a speculative application, outside of the Local Plan, and inside the Green Belt. More than 3,500 local people signed a petition objecting to the plans.

The public inquiry was led by an independent planning inspector who was supposed to decide whether the development could go ahead. However, two days into the inquiry, Housing Secretary Angela Rayner announced that she would now take that decision. Again, the views of local people are being cast aside.

The Prime Minister likes to talk about ‘devolution’, but devolution means giving more power to local communities, not overruling their opinions and ignoring their genuine concerns.

I will continue to stand up to protect Shropshire's green spaces, ecology, and environment.