Karen Buck, the Labour MP for Westminster North, has introduced a Parliamentary Bill designed to give planning authorities greater control over new basements and extensions to basements.
She told the Commons: ‘The fact is that only a change in the law can help local councils do what they want to do to protect their residents.’
‘They need-our urban neighbourhoods and their residents need-statutory protection to underpin policies that would, for example, limit excavations to one storey and ensure that they are not built under listed buildings, that they do not take up more than 50 per cent of gardens, that traffic management plans are in place, that the amount of space that is taken up is reduced from the current 85 per cent, that they require the compulsory installation of pumps to prevent flooding from sewers, and much more.’
Read the Commons Hansard report (12 November 2013, column 820) at: LINK
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