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Labour is 'ignoring concerns of local communities' in drive for new homes, Hollinrake claims
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Jun 9, 2025
The Shadow Levelling-Up Secretary has launched a scathing attack on the Government's housing strategy, accusing ministers of disregarding local communities' wishes in their push to increase home building.Kevin Hollinrake told GB News that the Government was "hollowing out communities" by redirecting housing targets away from urban areas towards greenfield and greenbelt sites.FULL STORY HERE.
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Let's cross live now to Westminster and talk to the Shadow Secretary for levelling up, Kevin Hollenrake
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Kevin, good morning. Thank you for joining us this morning. Good morning. Now, I understand that you are concerned about the government's housing targets
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whether or not they may reach them, but also how they're planning to develop housing across the country
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Can you explain more? well yes how they're doing it i mean how delivering houses isn't just a numbers game
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it's also about pride of place and um what the government is doing effectively is
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hollowing out communities it's moving these housing targets from the urban areas into
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into green field sites and green belt sites which isn't where the communities are now
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and at the same time as well the overriding protections that we put in place to make sure
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we deliver new housing alongside good nature conservation. We are conservatives and we conserve, and that's not what's happening
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Once you've concreted over a badger set, those badgers are finished forever
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You may be able to replace them elsewhere, and this is what the government's planning to do with Natural England
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taking responsibility for relocating those kind of nature sites. But Kevin, I'm sure many people will share your concern for badgers
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but people are even more concerned about people and the fact is that over the last 10-15 years
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sadly far too few houses have been built, far too many people have come to this country
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and now the pressure on housing is so great that we just need to build and really is adding more barriers to building going to help Well we shown you can do both During the last 10 years in office we had record numbers of housing delivery
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and average of 207,000 net additions, which is highest for 50 years
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At the same time, putting in place very important environmental protections because people just don't want to live in a house, they want to live in a home
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And homes depend upon their communities, but also the balance with nature
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you can do these two things together. We're not against all the plans the government's making
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We're not against a higher target for homes. We just want to make sure those homes are of high quality
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not these soulless homes. And what they're looking to do, the way they're going to do this
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typical of a Labour government, they're looking to completely override local opposition
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by saying that local elected councillors won't have a vote on the majority of planning applications
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We think that is totally wrong and we'll oppose those measures. It's very interesting what you raised there about the natural world, Kevin
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BBC at the moment, they're running a series called Springwatch and what they're doing is they're hiding cameras in people's back gardens in a town
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and you would be amazed to see the amount of wildlife that exists in your back garden
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and my back garden. Badgers, foxes, the whole lot, owls, they're all there
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Exactly, and we want to retain that kind of biodiversity and improve upon it
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And we've shown you can do this. We legislated for this on the Environment Act, including biodiversity net gain, which is all deliverable
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It right to make those regulations more easy to comply with so you get more rapid housing development but the right kind of houses the right kind of design and that something else Angela Rayne has done
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We had something called the Office for Place, which is requiring developers to build beautiful
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so beautiful housing estates with trees and open spaces, full of biodiversity
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These are the right things to do that developers could comply with. There are some changes that need to be made
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and we support some of those changes around constantly challenging by judicial review, for example
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But nevertheless, it should not be either or. Kevin, there's a big story on the front of the sun today about the amount of money that this country is now spending on asylum hotels
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And actually, if you take the full taxes paid by nearly 600,000 people, it consumes that entire sum of taxation
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Should the last government have pushed much harder to get the Rwanda plan over the line
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Oh, my God. I mean, they blocked it every term, Miriam. As you know, you were there at the time
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They voted against Rwanda 132 times. But the Conservatives had a majority
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The Rwanda was deterring people coming over that border. The Conservatives had a majority
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Well, we don't have a Conservative majority in the Lords, as you know
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which was the biggest problem, Miriam, 132 times. In the Lords, those measures were opposed
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We finally passed that legislation. It meant for the first time we detained illegal migrants
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with pending their removal to Rwanda, the first thing Labour do when they come into office
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is completely scrap those plans, which means more people are coming to the UK the number at record levels and we seen as an easy touch by the international community that on the move That can be the case You got to have a deterrent
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as well as making sure that we have legal migration under control
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we've got to have that illegal migration under control as well. You cannot do that without that kind of Rwanda deterrent
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What about the deterrent President Trump's introducing in LA? My God, there's a worry in scenes, but to be fair, I don't think it's right that foreign governments can comment on our domestic situation in terms of what's going in the UK
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And we probably shouldn't do the same with other countries. But there are parallels, aren't there? I mean, we know that we've got big problems in this country, not just with illegal migrants, as we've been talking about, but people who have overstayed their visas
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Some estimates reckon that there are as many as a million people in this country that shouldn't be here
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What would the Conservatives do to remove those people, to enforce the law, as people rightly expect, if not to copy what Trump is attempting
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Yeah, and I agree with that. Those people shouldn't be here. We should have a better system of making sure we can check on people who overstay visas
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But also foreign national offenders. You know, we brought forward the deportation bill, which says every single foreign national offender will be removed from this country
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That's about around 20,000 people. That's a big job. We're committed to doing it
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It's absolutely right that we're doing those kind of things. So, yes, it's right to say we've got our own problems
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and we're keen to fix them. OK. Kevin, got to leave it there
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Thank you for your time this morning. Appreciate it and look after your badgers
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Thank you. Cheers. Thank you very much
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