Olly Glover

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I also praise the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for his passion for nature and the topics we are discussing. My constituency has seen some of the fastest housing growth in the country: 8,000 new houses added between 2011 and 2021. I understand the need for housing, but a major concern for local residents is how to balance the objective of more housing with the objectives of protecting our green environment and ensuring that amenities are there to protect the housing. The constituency has many wonderful and rare habitats that require protection. If we fail to do that, there will be wide-reaching, catastrophic impacts to our environment. The Letcombe Brook chalk stream is a precious habitat running from Letcombe Regis to East Hanney, providing water for local use. The Letcombe Brook project does great work protecting it. The River Thames, which also runs through my constituency, has often been subject to sewage dumping, due to the well documented issues with Thames Water. I pay tribute to local organisations that do so much to protect nature and make it accessible. I recently met members of the Earth Trust in Little Wittenham, who took me on a walk around the Wittenham Clumps. Their work is transformative, including the recent restoration of a neglected coppice in Little Wittenham wood into a thriving, biodiverse habitat, encouraging bees with new apiaries on their farm and levelling up opportunities for environmental education by removing barriers of cost and transport to resource-stretched schools. In the towns in my constituency, Sustainable Didcot, Sustainable Wantage and Sustainable Wallingford are doing fantastic work to lead community climate change action through projects on waste, transport, food, biodiversity and social justice. Finally, the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust manages nature reserves, monitors species and runs projects to support declining species such as water voles. All those organisations need Government support to ensure that they can continue to play their part in protecting nature and our environment.