YORK Central MP Rachael Maskell has been chosen by Labour to sit on a key committee to scrutinise proposed new planning and regeneration laws.

Ms Maskell said the Bill Committee would take part in a line-by-line scrutiny of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill and she would be pressing the Government for changes to planning law, following her experience of working on York’s Local Plan, taking up local planning concerns and looking closely at major projects such as York Central.

She claimed: “Planning currently fails local people, by developing the wrong kind of housing in the wrong places, and allows developer profit to shape our communities, meaning we are failing to create places that local people can afford and want to live in. "I will be making the case in the Bill Committee that local people must be meaningfully included in planning decisions, and that developers are no longer able to sit on land to increase their profits, but instead must get on with developing the housing local people urgently need.

"The York Central development, as it stands, chokes off economic opportunity in favour of luxury apartments which local people will not be able to afford."