In Basingstoke, we have built new homes for 150,000 people over the past five decades, which is double the rate of the rest of the country. We can never be accused of being "NIMBYs".

But residents know we badly need to slow down our levels of house building so the NHS and other local services can catch up. Exceptional levels of house building have led to exceptional changes in our demographics too.

Large numbers of people moved to our community with their families at the same time in the 70s, 80s and 90s, they were a similar age and are all getting older at the same time. As a result, we have one of the most rapidly ageing populations in the country, contributing to an average 30 per cent increase in demand for GP appointments.

We must slow down house building, not just for a few years as the borough council planners are currently proposing but permanently. Now, as a result of long-fought changes to planning laws by MPs, we can do just that. But the Basingstoke councillors responsible have to act. The planning regulations have changed and the thinking of Basingstoke councillors must change too as they start to take forward their next Local Plan. 

Local plans are prepared by councils every 20 years or so and lay out the council’s vision for our area which, crucially for Basingstoke, includes how many new houses will be built. Basingstoke and Deane are due to begin a public consultation on their draft local plan later this month which, when adopted, will be in place until 2040.

The stakes are high, and the effects will be long-lasting. It is really important that the community has a say in these proposals, and that the council listens. There has already been a vote in full council with overwhelming support for house-building levels to be cut significantly. 

On whatever metric you use, Basingstoke is an absolute outlier when it comes to housebuilding. The new changes to planning regulations mean this evidence can be more easily used to plead "exceptional circumstances " and reduce the number of new houses to be built. There is a risk property developers could challenge that approach, but it's clear residents want to change because of the massive levels of house building over decades, and the new planning rules mean that is a legitimate factor that the council can take into account.

In the past, the ‘standard model’ formula was used by councils for calculating local housing needs and these figures were then translated unchanged into what was in effect prescribed building rates. This approach didn’t work for places like Basingstoke, primarily because it failed to consider our exceptionally high historic build rate.  

Along with other MPs, I have been campaigning for a significant change in planning law and the Government has acted. After a lengthy consultation, the updated planning rules came into effect before Christmas and made it clear that housebuilding figures generated by the Standard Model should only ever be seen as a starting point, never as a final requirement.

These changes pave the way for towns like Basingstoke, to legitimately argue for a changed future build figure because of our "exceptional circumstances ", reflecting the concerns of thousands of residents including those who took part in the petition I presented to full council last year urging a change in the council's approach. 

It's not too late. Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council's plans to continue to ratchet up housebuilding to ever higher levels through a so-called ‘stepped approach’ can be binned and the new rules used to prepare a new plan which better reflects residents' concerns.

The council's current draft plan, drawn up before the government's changes were published, cannot be allowed to go forward. If these plans were ever reasonable, they certainly are not now.

They threaten to mortgage our town’s future by ushering in another wave of excessively high house building, based not on the needs of Basingstoke residents but on the fact that we have long been building for surrounding communities and beyond. That has always been the wrong approach. And now it can be challenged through the new National Planning Framework rules. Times have moved on, and the borough council must quickly follow suit.