Land Use (Gardens Protection etc) Bill

Part of Orders of the Day – in the House of Commons at 10:20 am on 2 February 2007.

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Photo of Brian Jenkins Brian Jenkins Labour, Tamworth 10:20, 2 February 2007

I understand where the right hon. Gentleman is coming from. Of course, in any representative democracy, we have different levels. We have a regional participant to make representations on what development each area can stand and what each area requires. It is incumbent on the local authority to pass up the system its requirements and what it can deal with. So it should not come as a great surprise to discover, for instance, that in the west midlands, with which I am more familiar, we require an extra 55,000 units and some of them can be allocated in the west midlands and some of them outside the west midlands. We continue to take overspill from the west midlands, although we no longer have an overspill agreement. We know what each area in the ring around the north of Birmingham is capable of absorbing.