Asked by
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in
meeting their target of delivering 300,000 homes per year by the
mid-2020s.
(Con)
My Lords, last year over 240,000 new homes were delivered, the
highest number in over 30 years, taking the total delivered to
over 1.5 million new homes since 2010. This is very encouraging,
but we know that there is more to do, which is why we are
reviewing the levers at our disposal, including planning reforms
and housing infrastructure. Taken together, our actions will
continue progress towards 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s.
(Con)
I am grateful to my noble friend for outlining the progress the
Government are making towards meeting their ambitious target. In
the 10 years from 1974 there were two Housing Ministers, who did
roughly five years each, and annual output of housing in England
averaged 200,000 a year, against some difficult economic
circumstances. In the 10 years since 2010, we have had 10 Housing
Ministers and annual completions have fallen to 130,000, against
a more benign economic environment. Does my noble friend think
those statistics might be connected? Would she agree that capable
Ministers, of whom there are many in your Lordships’ House,
should stay longer in post if they are to have a chance of
delivering the Government’s policy objectives?
That does not bode very well for me in my post, does it? My noble
friend speaks with great authority on this issue, having himself
been a rather longer-serving Housing Minister than many of his
successors. However, despite that turnover, we can be proud of
the Government’s housebuilding record since 2010. Having
consulted on this issue before today’s Question, I would say that
a greater issue of concern is the number of planning officers and
the proportion of them who are job sharing, which is having a
great impact on the efficiency of the planning process and
inhibiting our ability to deliver.
(Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the Government’s commitment to a renewed
larger affordable homes programme, but the current lack of detail
about the size and scope of the programme is affecting the social
housing sector’s ability to deliver much-needed homes. I declare
an interest as chair of the National Housing Federation. The
upcoming Budget presents a great opportunity to be bold in
committing to the 10-year programme that will be needed to
deliver the Government’s 300,000 target. What conversations has
the Minister had with her colleagues in the other place about the
upcoming Budget and government investment in the building of
affordable and social homes?
I am afraid that I cannot speak for my colleagues in the other
place about what is intended in the Budget. What I can say is
that there are a number of reviews of the planning process and of
the sections dealing with accessibility. All these will help us
to deliver our target. While there is still work to do, levels of
housebuilding have recovered from the financial crisis of
2008-09, and this country has now delivered over 241,000
additional homes, the highest number in over 30 years. We are
driving forward an ambitious agenda with everyone involved in
housebuilding, including housing associations, small and large
private developers and councils. We are all working hard to
deliver this target.
(LD)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the promised homes,
hospitals, schools, prisons, HS2, Northern Powerhouse Rail and
more require a growth in the construction sector of 35%, but the
sector is projected at the moment to shrink in workforce by 9%
post Brexit? Does she agree that those sums simply do not add up?
What urgent action will the Government take to grow this sector,
or will the desperately needed housebuilding pipeline simply be a
pipe dream?
The Government are taking many measures to tackle the skills
crisis in this sector. For example, the Department for
Education’s £24 million construction skills fund is supporting 26
on-site hubs focusing on housing. The EU exit does create
opportunities to grow our own workforce, but the industry is best
placed to step up and train the workforce that it knows it will
need. The Government are doing their part by improving skills
provision, supporting modernisation to increase productivity and
creating a fair migration system.
(CB)
My Lords, to rescue the country from the small number of volume
housebuilders who do 70% of all our housebuilding, have the
Government made any progress with Sir Oliver Letwin’s radical and
important proposals for local authorities to set up corporations
that would acquire sites and capture the value for the public
good, instead of leaving it to those volume housebuilders who, I
am afraid, let us down every time?
The Government fully recognise the importance of increasing the
number of small and medium-sized housebuilders in providing the
housing in this country. He is absolutely right to point out the
dominance of the large housebuilders. We have done quite a lot to
encourage SMEs in this space, and at the last Budget we announced
up to £1 billion of new guarantee support schemes for SMEs, to be
implemented by the British Business Bank. To go further into Sir
Oliver Letwin’s report, I would rather write to the noble Lord
with a fuller reply.
My Lords, will the Minister say whether the Government are
planning to look at different versions of what affordability
might mean in relation to housing? I am sure noble Lords know
that the West Midlands Combined Authority has been looking at
income rather than market value. This has brought house prices
within easier reach of more people in lower income brackets.
We have done much to increase affordability for individuals. The
affordable rent was introduced to maximise taxpayers’ money,
which has allowed us to build more homes for every pound of
government investment, because local authorities have had greater
income at their disposal to spend on new houses. Removing the cap
has also enabled them to invest much more in housing.
(Con)
My Lords, does the Minister recall that, when it comes to 300,000
houses, we have been there before with Ernie Marples in the early
1960s? In 1965, before the Conservative Government fell, they
were planning to build more than 400,000 houses that year. If we
could do it then, surely today, with modern fabrication methods,
we could certainly do it now.
My noble friend makes a very good point. I heard the earlier
point about our past history in building houses but, with modern
methods of construction, he is absolutely right to say that we
should be able to build a larger volume of houses more
efficiently. The Government are committed to building more homes
using modern methods of construction, including off-site and
smart techniques. Indeed, there was a report from the Science and
Technology Committee on this very subject quite recently. The
Government have also created a working group to address barriers
to modern methods of construction, chaired by an industry expert,
the MMC housebuilding champion Mark Farmer, to develop a
standardised definition of this. They are also taking forward
work on a memorandum of understanding between the main warranty
and insurance providers.
