Living on the edge of a large urban area, our green spaces and surrounding green belt are particularly important to us in Dudley.
Last week, I was lucky to be drawn out of the ballot to ask the Prime Minister a question at Prime Minister’s Questions.
I emailed constituents in Dudley South to see what issue they wanted me to raise with Boris, and it wasn’t a surprise that, out of the hundreds of responses, by far the most popular question was about protecting our precious green belt and green spaces by instead building on disused industrial plots and other brownfield sites.
I put this to the Prime Minister and was pleased to hear him commit to protecting our green belt, and making sure that councils and developers take a brownfield-first approach.
Councils must give full weight to the views of local people who would be affected by new development – including those who live the other side of local authority boundaries, as is the case with many potential sites that are in South Staffordshire but where the biggest impact would fall on neighbouring communities in Wall Heath, Kingswinford, Wordsley, Wollaston and Norton.
Inappropriate and unnecessary development is a threat that would irretrievably destroy valuable green spaces, but there are other – albeit more temporary – threats that spoil people’s enjoyment of those areas.
Every summer, many of our parks and green spaces are taken over by unauthorised encampments. Not only do they stop local people from using those parks and play areas, but too often they leave horrific mess and damage behind, with council taxpayers left to pay for the clean-up costs.
I invited Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, to Dudley South to show her some of the damage done by a small and thoughtless minority who by no means represent the wider traveller community. The Home Secretary promised that the police would be given new powers to deal with unauthorised encampments and criminal penalties for those who refuse to comply, protecting the law-abiding majority.
This week she has kept that promise, with the Government’s new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. It delivers not only on that commitment but on many of the other pledges which we made during the last election campaign.
It will enshrine the police covenant into law, double maximum sentences for assaults on emergency workers, allow the police to break up protests that are causing severe disruption to the public, create new Serious Violence Reduction Orders so that police can stop and search people with a history of carrying illegal knives, introduce Whole Life Orders for the premeditated murder of a child, bring in new powers to halt the automatic early release of offenders who pose a danger to the public, as well as making many other changes which local people have long called for.
As many of you will know, I work closely with the Home Secretary as her (unpaid) Parliamentary Private Secretary, and I am delighted to see these common-sense reforms. They will make a big difference for our local communities.
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