The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local
Government ()
I would like to make a statement expanding on the housing measures
set out in yesterday’s Budget. I have deposited a document in the
Library setting out our vision for the future of the planning
system.
A home is so much more than four walls and a roof. It is about
security, a stake in our society and investing for our future.
The expansion of home ownership over the 20th century created a
fairer Britain, with prosperity and opportunity spread more
evenly. That is why this Government believe in supporting people
who are working hard to own their own home, and ensuring that
young people and future generations have the same opportunities
as those who came before them.
We are making progress. Last year, we built over 241,000
homes—more new homes than at any point in the last 30
years—taking the total delivered since 2010 to 1.5 million. The
proportion of young homeowners has increased, after declining for
more than a decade. Yet a great deal more is required to be done.
Many are still trapped paying high rents and struggling to save
for a deposit. Home ownership seems like a dream that remains out
of reach. Our children should be able to put down roots in the
places where they grew up, but the simple truth is that too many
will continue to be priced out if we do not build many more homes
and take the action now that is required to remove barriers to
people getting on to the housing ladder.
To achieve this, the Government are prepared to take bold action
across the board. We will be introducing a building safety Bill
to bring about the biggest change in building safety for a
generation, and a renters reform Bill to provide greater
stability to those who rent. We will be making sure that those in
social homes will be treated with the dignity and the respect
that they deserve through our social housing White Paper. We will
be working hard to end rough sleeping. We will be bringing
forward an ambitious planning White Paper in the spring to create
a planning system that is truly fit for the 21st century—a
planning system that supports the delivery of the number of homes
we need as a country, but homes that local people want to live
in, with more beautiful, safer and greener communities.
The way we work and live has changed beyond recognition since the
Town and Country Planning Act 1947. The planning system has not
kept pace. We intend to change this, so we will be reviewing our
approach to planning to ensure that our system enables more homes
to come forward in the places that people most want to live, with
jobs, transport links and other amenities on their doorstep. This
means making the best use of land and existing transport
infrastructure.
To that end, I am announcing that we will review the formula for
calculating local housing need, taking a fresh approach that
means building more homes, but also encouraging greater building
in urban areas. We will make the most of our transport hubs, and
I am announcing a call for proposals to invite innovative
solutions for building housing above and around stations. We will
be backing brownfield sites for development, and we will work
with ambitious mayors and councils of all political persuasions
in all parts of the country. We will be beginning by investing
£400 million to regenerate brownfield sites across the country,
and we are launching a new national brownfield sites map so that
anyone—member of the public, entrepreneur or local authority—can
understand where those sites are.
Local authorities need to play their part through their local
plans. Today, I am setting a deadline of December 2023 for all
local plans to be in place, before the Government will have to
intervene. In addition, in the coming months, through the White
Paper, we will lay the foundations for a modern, dramatically
accelerated planning system. This will be a digital planning
system that harnesses technology for the first time, and one
where it is far easier for local communities to play a real role
in the decisions that affect them, shortening and simplifying the
plan-making process. As part of that, we will reform planning
fees and link them to performance to create a world-class and
properly resourced planning service. We will explore the use of
tools such as zoning, and for the first time we will make clear
who actually owns land across the country, by requiring complete
transparency on land options. Where permissions are granted, we
will bring forward proposals to ensure that they are turned into
homes more quickly.
We are not waiting for the White Paper to begin our actions. We
are encouraging local communities to take innovative routes to
meet housing needs in their areas through new planning freedoms,
and we are also introducing the freedom to build upwards on
existing buildings. Today I am announcing a new right to allow
vacant, commercial, industrial and residential blocks to be
demolished and replaced with well-designed, new residential units
that meet high-quality standards, including on new natural light
standards. We are granting permission to get building across the
country.
We know that we need to deliver at scale, and at a pace that we
have not seen in recent years, and yesterday’s Budget set out
that those vital planning changes will be underpinned by serious
additional investment. The £12 billion that we are putting into
affordable homes represents the biggest cash investment in the
sector for a decade. We are finalising details for a new
affordable homes programme, which will deliver homes for social
rent, as well as for affordable rent, shared ownership and
supported housing. There will be a route to ownership for all,
regardless of the tenure at which people begin.
We are taking an infrastructure-first approach and yesterday £1.1
billion was allocated to build new communities and unlock 70,000
new homes in total. That is more than £4 billion invested through
the housing infrastructure fund. Building on that, we will
introduce a new long-term flexible single housing infrastructure
fund of at least £10 billion.
I have made safety a personal priority of mine since I became
Secretary of State last year. With that in mind, the Government
are bringing forward the most important improvements to our
building safety regime in a generation, and I am pleased that, as
the Chancellor set out yesterday, in addition to the £600 million
already made available, there will be an extra £1 billion to make
buildings in the social and private sectors safe. I am pleased
that in the private sector that investment will benefit
leaseholders, many of whom I met recently, and I fully appreciate
the pain and stress that they have been through by feeling
trapped in their homes.
In line with our commitment to end rough sleeping, we are putting
in more than £640 million over this Parliament for new “move on”
accommodation, and vital support for substance misuse services.
That work will be spearheaded by my Department, and by the new
and urgent review I have set up, which is led by Dame Louise
Casey.
I am also mindful of our huge responsibility to future
generations, and to ensuring that as we build more, we also build
better. That is why I will be updating the national planning
policy framework to embed the principles of good design and place
making. As recommended in the recent report by the Building
Better, Building Beautiful Commission, we will introduce a “fast
track for beauty” and mandate that tree-lined streets should be
the norm in this country in future.
We are backing a broader green revolution, including plans to
establish a net-zero development in Toton in the east midlands,
which I hope will be one of Europe’s most exciting new
environmentally sustainable communities. We are seeking to
establish similarly high-quality and environmentally sustainable
communities through up to four new development corporations in
the Oxford to Cambridge arc: around Bedford, St Neots and Sandy,
Cambourne, and near Cambridge.
We should seize this opportunity to consider how the built and
natural environments can work together more harmoniously, and in
that spirit, I will be reviewing our policy to prevent building
in areas of high flood risk. Given the recent devastation
suffered by so many of our communities, we are putting an extra
£5.2 billion into flood defences.
The real work begins today. Over the spring and the summer, I
will work with local authorities, SME housebuilders and larger
developers, local groups and, I hope, Members from all parts of
the House. Our mission is clear: we will build more homes, we
will help more people on to the housing ladder, and we will do
our duty to future generations by ensuring that those homes are
built in a way that is beautiful and sustainable, creating a
legacy of which we can all be proud. That is what it means to
level up and to unite our country. I commend this statement to
the House.
11.30 am
(Wentworth and Dearne)
(Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his
statement, which arrived half an hour ago.
This is indeed a follow up to the Budget and the Treasury’s
flawed thinking runs throughout. After nearly 10 years there is
still no plan to fix the country’s housing crisis, while the
promise of the White Paper is a threat to give big developers a
freer hand to do what they want, ignoring quality, affordability
and sustainability. Of course planning requires reform, but
planning is not the major constraint on the new homes the country
needs when 365,000 were given permission last year and only
213,000 were built; when only 6,200 new social homes were built
last year when more than 1 million people are on housing waiting
lists; and when, of course, big developers can dodge all planning
permission to
“abuse permitted development rights to provide accommodation of
the lowest quality.”
Those are not my words, but those of the Government’s own
Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission.
The Secretary of State has a number of questions on the planning
front. In 2015, the Government set a deadline of early 2017 for
all councils to have a local plan in place. Why is he now waiting
another three years until the end of 2023? Will local areas have
social housing targets, not just total targets, in this review of
the formula for local housing need? Will new standards be set for
greener zero-carbon homes? How much extra funding will the
Government provide to beef up the capacity of our council
planning services, which have been cut by a half over the past
decade? The White Paper is a red warning. It could strip local
communities of the powers they have to say no to big developers
taking the easy option of building on the green belt. It could
impose Whitehall’s total housebuilding numbers on local
communities without the new affordable housing that local
residents need. It could mean more unsuitable business buildings
turned into slum housing, with no planning permission needed at
all.
We welcome the new money in the Budget for replacing dangerous
cladding and I welcome the Secretary of State’s personal
commitment to building safety. Since the weeks immediately after
Grenfell, we have argued that no resident should have to pay
simply to make their home safe. Only the Government can fix this
problem. It is a profound failure that thousands are in this
position nearly three years on from Grenfell. How many fire risk
buildings will this new fund have to cover? Will it fund
essential fire safety work to retrofit sprinklers? Will he
guarantee that this fund means no leaseholder will now have to
pay the costs to make their buildings safe?
The Secretary of State’s Department released new building safety
figures just over an hour ago, which he has not mentioned this
morning—and no wonder. Nearly three years on from Grenfell, 266
high rise blocks still have the same Grenfell-style ACM cladding.
The Secretary of State has still not published the test results
or the numbers of those blocks with unsafe non-ACM cladding. The
existing fund for private sector ACM cladding has already been in
place for 10 months, so it is clear that funding alone will not
fix the problems. Will he now also back Labour proposals for
simple emergency legislation to force block owners to do and pay
for this work?
Finally, with one or two minor exceptions, yesterday’s Budget was
a golden, but wasted opportunity on housing. When the
Government’s borrowing costs are at rock bottom and the
Chancellor promises a capital spending spree, the Secretary of
State must be deeply disappointed by how little funding he has
for new affordable homes. Over five years, there will be just
£12.2 billion, and a quarter of that is not even new money. This
means an average of £2.4 billion a year. In real terms, that is
only half the level of affordable housing investment made in the
last year of the last Labour Government. Over five years, it will
be less than housing organisations—from the National Housing
Federation to Shelter—say is needed every year. Will he concede
that on housing, it will be business as it was before the
Budget—a continuation of 10 years of Conservative failure on
housing, with no plan to fix the housing crisis—and will he admit
that despite the Chancellor’s constant Budget boast on housing,
this is a Government that do not “get it done”?
We built more homes in this country last year—240,000 homes—than
were built in any of the last 30 years. The right hon. Gentleman
left house building in this country at the lowest level since the
1920s when he was the Housing Secretary. Today, it is at the
highest level for 32 years. We have built more affordable homes
in this country on average since 2010 under a Conservative
Government than under the last Labour Government. We built more
council houses in this country in one year last year than in the
13 years of the last Labour Government combined. In Wales, which
Labour has control of, how many council houses were built last
year? Fifty seven. How many the year before? Eighty. How many in
the three years before that? Zero, so I will take no lectures
from him on our record.
This was a great Budget for housing. We saw the largest
investment for 10 years in affordable housing—over £12 billion.
We saw further investment in infrastructure to unlock homes in
all parts of the country and the commitment to bring forward a
new larger single housing infrastructure fund later this year. As
he rightly pointed out, we saw a further £1 billion investment in
building safety, which is an incredibly important step forward to
give safety, security and confidence to leaseholders who are
feeling concerned in their homes. Together, this package will
help us to lay the foundations for the housing reforms that we
intend to introduce during this Parliament and which the White
Paper that I will publish later this year will take forward at
pace.
The right hon. Gentleman asked me a few questions, including
about the affordable homes programme. This has been welcomed by
everybody in the sector, including Kate Henderson, who leads for
housing federations—she warmly welcomed this. The housing and
homelessness charities welcomed the announcements that we made as
a very significant step forward in investing in this area.
We have also announced more money for brownfield land, so this is
not about the ruination of the countryside or needless urban
sprawl. It is about getting more homes in the places where they
are most needed and backing ambitious councils and Mayors such as
in the west midlands, who want
to get going and unlock the parcels of brownfield land.
The building safety fund will be open as soon as possible. We
want to work with leaseholders who are in properties over 18
metres and ensure that they can access the funding.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the publication of the
Building Research Establishment’s research. That will happen in
the coming weeks, but the research is already available; it is
simply that we have not consolidated and published the final
findings. We do not expect those findings to be any different
from the ones that are already in the public domain.
Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked about legislation, as he
did the other day, and he did not listen to the answer then. We
will bring forward our fire safety legislation in the coming
months, and I hope, from what he said today, that he intends to
support it. That will give the powers to fire and rescue services
across the country to do exactly what he wishes.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am going to let this run until about 12.10 pm.
(South Norfolk)
(Con)
Even if the shadow Secretary of State does not, may I warmly
welcome the new money for affordable housing? I ask the Secretary
of State to make sure that some of it finds its way to innovators
such as the National Community Land Trust Network and the Right
to Build Task Force, because the new ideas that will help us to
change our whole approach to how we do housing are coming from
them.
I do support groups such as community housing organisations—I
know my hon. Friend has an Adjournment debate later today to
which the Minister for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member
for Tamworth () will respond—and we
want to ensure that they are properly resourced to take that
forward. We want to help smaller communities, particularly in
rural areas, to build small numbers of homes—five, 10, 15,
whatever might be appropriate for their community—through rural
exception sites and the other things he has championed over the
years, such as self-building. We will bring forward more measures
in the White Paper to help facilitate that.
(Sheffield South East) (Lab)
There are many things in the statement that I welcome and which I
am sure the Select Committee will welcome and will want to look
at. Shortly after Grenfell, the Select Committee recommended that
all cladding not of limited combustibility be taken off existing
high-rise buildings and banned from new buildings, and the £1
billion is a step in that direction, but we will want to analyse
whether it is sufficient. On the planning review, in the past the
Committee has suggested a comprehensive review of planning,
particularly of the changes since 2010. Will the review look at
what has worked and what has not worked with regards to the
changes and also at the recommendation of the Building Better,
Building Beautiful Commission that there be reform to the
permitted development system to ensure minimum standards?
Finally, will the Secretary of State have another look at reform
of the Land Compensation Act 1961, which we suggested, so as to
run down the cost of land, which is an obstacle to development?
On the housing needs assessment reforms, which again I welcome,
the first changes the Government made actually shifted
development from the north to the south. Will he look at whether
the system should not be going in reverse and trying to level up
by putting more development into the north?
I will pay close attention to all those points. Everything the
hon. Member listed is within the scope of the planning White
Paper, and I would welcome his views and those of the members of
his Committee. In reviewing local housing need, we will take
account of the need to level up and rebalance the economy, both
geographically, from the south to the north, and between
areas—for example, by trying to ensure that cities that have
depopulated in our lifetime can have more homes built in them to
get people and families back into and living in some of our great
cities where sadly fewer people are living now than 20 or 30
years ago. I welcome the work he did on the building safety fund,
and I hope this will now make a significant difference in helping
leaseholders, particularly in private buildings, move forward. We
have also opened it up to the social sector, because some housing
associations, particularly small ones, and some smaller councils
do not have the finances readily available or the ability to
borrow to do the work now required. This fund will be open to
them to do that, so money should not be a barrier to their moving
forward with the remediation works required.
(Henley) (Con)
As the Secretary of State is aware, I have been much involved in
reform of the planning system under previous Governments, and I
urge him to be radical when he produces his White Paper. I am
glad he has retained his commitment to involve local communities.
Strengthening the role of neighbourhood plans against the
problems put in their way by district councils would be a very
good way of taking that forward.
My hon. Friend raises an important point. There is evidence that
some local plans have been undermined and that the hard work put
in by local communities has not reaped the benefits those areas
would have liked—they can spend years creating plans only to see
development happening on other sites, not those they have chosen
themselves. We are reviewing that, taking examples from across
the country where we think that has happened and trying to learn
lesson from it, and I hope that will feed into our work and
create a strengthened plan-making system in the future.
(Dulwich and West Norwood)
(Lab)
The built environment and planning professions have a core role
to play in tackling the climate emergency, yet in his statement
the Secretary of State made only tangential mention of the
climate emergency. I gently say to him: he will not achieve a
green revolution with one single net-zero development across the
whole UK. Can I encourage him to think again about this most
urgent of challenges, to enshrine the climate emergency as a core
purpose and responsibility of the planning system and to set the
highest possible standards for net-zero development across our
planning system to ensure we are not building new homes that will
need to be retrofitted in the future?
We are committed to a green revolution in the housing industry.
We are doing that in many different ways, most notably through
the future homes standard, which we have just consulted on. We
have received more than 3,000 responses and will bring forward
our final proposals shortly. We have consulted on a substantial
reduction in CO2 emissions in new homes of between 75% and 80%. I
do not want to pre-empt what we might choose to do, having
listened to the views in the consultation. However, the evidence
that we saw prior to the consultation was that that was the most
credible reduction in CO2 emissions that we could deliver across
the whole of the country, although some parts could go further
and faster if they chose to do so. We are listening to the
responses, and I want to see the industry respond, change and
have much higher levels of energy efficiency and to see new
heating systems come in as quickly as possible.
(Thirsk and Malton)
(Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Supply alone will not
solve all the affordability problems in the housing market. It
will require intervention, such as his excellent First Homes
initiative. Will he consider extending that initiative to
directly commissioning first homes on public land and perhaps
combining First Homes with Help to Buy to further improve the
affordability of home purchase?
That is a very interesting idea, and one that I will give careful
thought to. My hon. Friend and I worked together on the creation
of First Homes, and I am very grateful for his views on that. He
is absolutely right that this will require both supply and
demand-side reforms. That is why the planning system is so
important in unlocking more land in the places where people want
to live, but it is also important to have ways of getting people
on to the housing ladder, and First Homes is just one of those
options. It will enable people in their local area to get 30%
discounts on new homes. I recently met the major house builders,
who are fully supportive, and I hope that we will see those homes
on the market in this country by the end of the year.
(Warwick and Leamington)
(Lab)
I am sure the Secretary of State is aware that we are building at
some of the lowest densities in Europe, which is causing us to
have to build on floodplains—although I appreciate what he said
earlier. If we are really talking about sustainable development,
surely we have to build at density in and around our towns, as
opposed to allowing the spread into our rural communities.
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I hope that that
is what he took away from the tone and substance of my earlier
remarks. In reviewing the planning system and how we calculate
local housing need, we will be trying to push development towards
urban areas and existing clusters, and away from needless urban
sprawl and the ruination of the countryside. We will be using the
planning system to encourage that. Some of the planning freedoms,
for example, will help people in their everyday lives, allowing
them to extend their own properties or build upwards on their
homes, and allow entrepreneurs to buy derelict, disused buildings
and turn them into housing, to get housing going in towns and
cities at a pace that we have not seen for many years.
(Harrow East) (Con)
On Monday, the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local
Government heard some rather extraordinary claims from certain
London councils about the cost of building council homes in
London. My right hon. Friend’s announcement and the Budget are an
excellent start on building new council homes. Can he set out how
many council homes he expects to see and what safeguards he will
put in place to ensure that those council homes can be brought
under the right to buy and that the receipts from right to buy
are then reinvested in new housing?
The new affordable homes programme, which we announced yesterday,
will be over £12 billion. We have not yet finalised the details,
but will set them out shortly. They will show the proportion of
those homes that will be for different tenures, from shared
ownership and affordable rent to social rent. We want a
significant increase in the number of those homes in the social
rent category. I hope we can make a positive announcement on that
shortly, when we have finalised the details, having spoken to and
listened to the sector.
I am very sympathetic to the argument that my hon. Friend has
made in the past about properties that are not eligible for right
to buy and, indeed, about some councils and housing associations
that are making it more difficult. I would like to work with him
to take action on that. We need to ensure that the Mayor of
London, , takes housing seriously. As I
have said before, we will never be able to meet our housing
targets and ambitions as a country unless London pulls its
weight, and I am afraid that at the moment we have a Mayor whose
ambitions are way below what we should all be expecting at every
level of the market. As long as he continues in place, which I
hope is not for very much longer, the Mayor needs to get building
in London.
(Oxford East)
(Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State has just been talking about the delivery
of homes for social rent, but I would like to ask him about the
impact of two of his Government’s policies on the delivery of
homes for social rent. The first is yesterday’s changes to the
Public Works Loan Board when it comes to the delivery of homes
for social rent by local housing companies. The second is the
First Homes policy, which, because it is delivered through
section 106 as it is currently designed, is likely to lead to a
reduction in the production of homes for social rent by local
councils. What is his response?
The hon. Lady will know as a follower of Treasury matters that
what we announced yesterday in the Budget with reform of the
Public Works Loan Board makes it cheaper for councils to borrow
to invest in housing and regeneration. I hope that she will
support the changes that we made. The changes we are making to
the PWLB will make it harder for councils to waste money on
speculative investments outside of their boundaries and get
highly indebted, and make it easier to spend money on things that
really matter. We have lifted the housing revenue account
borrowing cap, and many councils across the country are
responding to that and building council houses at a pace that we
have not seen for many years, as was reflected in the statistics
I gave earlier. We built more council houses last year than we
have done for many years, and I hope that her local council in
Oxford will do the same, if that is what she wishes.
(Telford) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. It is
absolutely right that we look afresh at the planning system, and
I am so glad that he is doing just that. My right hon. Friend
knows a great deal about the challenges that new-build housing
can create for existing communities as well as for owners. What
more can he do to ensure that developers properly consider the
rights and needs of local communities, as well as of the new
build home owners, which are often impacted by their behaviours?
Quality is extremely important, and we have seen evidence of
poor-quality development in this country in recent years,
including by some of the most prominent house builders. That
needs to change, and if we are going to reform the planning
system to make it easier to build, then house builders must
respond in turn by ensuring that homes are well designed, safe
and environmentally sustainable. My hon. Friend has seen examples
of poor practice in Telford and has campaigned on that. We are
placing the new homes ombudsman on a statutory footing, and that
will ensure that anyone who purchased a home has a proper system
for redress if the usual complaints mechanism of the house
builder does not suffice. I hope that that will see a big change
in the quality of output from house builders very rapidly.
(Mitcham and Morden)
(Lab)
The car valeting site in Tottenham Hale, the illegal waste tip in
Hillingdon, the tip in Ealing that is inaccessible: what happens
to these ungreen green-belt sites that could provide a million
new homes close to London train stations? Any London MP knows
that we desperately need such homes for people who may never be
able to afford to buy.
There are sites like that in all parts of the country. It
requires good local councils and, perhaps in this case, the Mayor
of London, to get involved and to help unlock the land for
development. I appreciate that there can be complexities in many
cases, not least with illegal waste sites, for example. We
created a fund in the last Budget to tackle that—a £20 million
fund that perhaps the hon. Lady would consider bidding into. We
announced in this Budget a £400 million fund to unlock brownfield
sites, and that will be available for ambitious Mayors and local
councils across the country to bid into very shortly. I hope that
she will take us up on that.
(North East
Bedfordshire) (Con)
I welcome the wide-ranging initiatives in the statement,
particularly the potential for four development corporations on
the Oxford-Cambridge arc. My right hon. Friend will be aware of
the pressures on public access to public services, particularly
GPs, where there are significant increases in housing demand,
especially in my constituency. Will those development
corporations have specific accountability for filling gaps in
access to public services? If not, what measures will he take to
ensure that there is better co-ordination?
My hon. Friend understands this issue well and has represented
two constituencies with very serious affordability issues, but
where there is also a great opportunity to build housing. We need
to ensure that that is done in a very sensitive way and that the
infrastructure flows with the new housing. That is the objective
of creating the development corporations, which will be
partnerships between the local community and the Government, and
we hope that this will be well planned, environmentally
sustainable, good quality, beautiful housing and that the
services—GP surgeries, schools, roads, utilities—flow with the
housing and meet the demands. I really hope that I can work with
all of those communities to ensure that they are great successes.
(Leeds Central) (Lab)
I welcome the £1 billion cladding fund that was announced
yesterday. It is a start but, as the Secretary of State knows,
the devil is in the detail. May I encourage him to set up a
contact group with representatives of leaseholders, freeholders,
managing agents, fire services, local authorities, mortgage
companies and his officials, perhaps chaired by the Housing
Minister, to work through that detail so that it does not take
another two and a half years for all the unsafe cladding to be
removed?
I welcome the work my right hon. Friend the Housing Minister has
done on this issue, and I will take that away. We want to work
progressively with all the stakeholders. We have built an
effective operation on ACM above 18 metres in recent months. We
have named contacts for all the buildings, and all, bar a very
small number, now have plans to remediate.
By opening the fund’s scope much more widely to other dangerous
materials above 18 metres, we will have to put in place the same
procedures for those materials to understand exactly where the
buildings are, to understand who are the right people to work
with us and to make sure that work is tendered for and that
workers get on site as quickly as possible. That will be a very
complex piece of work. At the moment, it can take up to six
months to get workers on site to do ACM remediation, and some
projects can take up to two years to complete. I do not
underestimate the scale of the challenge, but I am keen to work
with anybody who is interested to make sure it begins as quickly
as possible.
(South Holland and The
Deepings) (Con)
A sense of place informs our personal and communal sense of
worth. As one of those who served on the Building Better,
Building Beautiful Commission, I welcome this statement and, in
particular, the Secretary of State’s commitment to a fast track
for beauty. In considering these matters, will he also look at
sprawl and out-of-town and edge-of-town developments, both in
retail and housing? If we can revitalise and rejuvenate our town
centres, it will refresh the spirit of our people.
My right hon. Friend is heavily involved in the Building Better,
Building Beautiful Commission, and I commend its superb report to
anyone interested in these issues. One point it raises, which we
will now be taking forward, is the need to mitigate against the
urban sprawl and the damage to the countryside we have seen over
the past 50 or 60 years and more.
The answer to that is gentle density in urban areas, building
upwards where appropriate—perhaps where there are existing
clusters of high-rise buildings—and, building gently where
building upwards is not appropriate. There are plenty of examples
in the report of where that can be done in an attractive way that
local communities could support. We need to ensure more homes are
built in our town centres and around our high streets. The high
streets and town centres fund that we have created through the
£3.6 billion towns fund provides funding to many parts of the
country to do exactly that.
(Stretford and Urmston)
(Lab)
I look forward to the forthcoming building safety Bill. As the
Secretary of State knows, homebuyers in my constituency have had
some very poor experiences of safety issues in their new homes,
but can he explain how the Bill will bring about not just tighter
regulation but culture change in the industry, upskilling of the
workforce and adequate resources for enforcement and local
authorities?
All those things need to happen. We are undergoing the greatest
change in our building safety regime in most of our lifetimes.
That will take time and will require a significant change in the
culture of the industry. The new regime, which is now being
established in shadow form and will be legislated for later this
year, will place new duties on those involved in the construction
industry and on those responsible for looking after buildings
once they have been built.
An individual or entity will be criminally responsible for
safety, from the moment construction begins, throughout a
building’s occupation, many years into the future. That will be
managed through our building safety regulator, which will sit
within the Health and Safety Executive. The HSE has a lot of
experience in this field and has seen significant changes and
improvements in safety in other fields, such as oil and gas, in
our lifetime.
(Guildford)
(Con)
To keep families together and strengthen our communities in
Guildford and Cranleigh, it is vital that we can ensure we have
the right homes in the right place at the right price. What plans
does my right hon. Friend have to make it easier for people to
get on the housing ladder in their local area?
Part of the answer is building more homes in the places where
they are most in demand. That will be at the heart of the reforms
we will bring forward, and my hon. Friend represents an area that
is in great demand. Some of the freedoms that we are
encouraging—to build upwards gently and to reimagine town centres
and high streets—will ensure that more homes are built
sensitively in places such as Guildford, but we are also bringing
forward a fleet of policies to help home ownership. One of them
is our First Homes policy, which will enable local first-time
buyers in her area to get a 30% discount on their first home. We
are also looking at long-term fixed-rate mortgages, so that it is
much cheaper and more certain when you are taking out your first
mortgage. Of course, the Help to Buy scheme and our existing home
ownership schemes have helped more than 600,000 first-time buyers
on to the housing ladder since 2010.
(East Ham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is right to acknowledge the anxiety for
leaseholders living in blocks with unsafe cladding. Will he
confirm that it is his intention that no leaseholder should have
to pay for the replacement of cladding on their block? How long
does he think it will take before all the unsafe cladding on
residential buildings around the country above 18 metres has been
replaced?
We will publish shortly the exact details of the new scheme, but
it is our intention that it will be available for both the
private and social sectors and that this will encompass all
unsafe materials above 18 metres for what are commonly considered
high-rise buildings. I would like it to include those buildings
that are just below 18 metres, because there are some buildings
where there has been a gaming of the system by some developers,
such as the building in Bolton, for example, that was 17.8
metres. There will be a small degree of flexibility to resolve
that issue, and this should enable no leaseholder to be trapped
in their building. The funding should be available for all who
require it, and, as I say, in the social sector it will be
available to the relatively small number, but an important
number, of housing associations and councils that do not have the
resources available to do the work themselves.
(Crawley) (Con)
The Secretary of State is right to say that under the planning
system there should be a presumption not to build on green fields
or on floodplains and that there should also be environmental
sustainability. Does he therefore share my concerns that the west
of Ifield Homes England development represents none of those
criteria?
I am aware of my hon. Friend’s opposition to those proposals and
I am happy to continue to work with him to ensure that Homes
England answers his questions and refines the schemes as much as
possible to try to meet the concerns of the local community. I
hope more broadly that the announcement I have made today of a
review of how the planning system interacts with floodplains and
the increased risk of flooding that we are seeing in many parts
of the country will be good news to those parts of the country
that have seen floods in the last few weeks, and that we can
bring forward changes in the coming months.
(Hammersmith) (Lab)
The money allocated in the Budget for cladding removal applies
only to buildings over 18 metres, and the Government guidelines
issued in January say:
“We strongly advise building owners to consider the risks of any
external wall system…irrespective of the height of the building”.
Consequently, any leaseholder in a low-rise building is
struggling to get approvals to sell, to get a bigger share of the
property or to remortgage. What are the Government going to do
about that? Those leaseholders are currently marooned.
The fund that we have announced this week is for high-rise
buildings, and that was on the advice of our expert panel and
Dame Judith Hackitt, who has advised the Government for some time
and is helping to set up the new building safety regulator. The
expert advice is that height is the main factor in determining
safety, but it is not the only factor, and that is why earlier in
the year I set in train work on what other factors we should be
taking into consideration. It is none the less the most important
factor as far as we are guided by advice. For buildings below 18
metres, which will not be eligible for the fund, we will continue
working with lenders and insurers to get the market working
faster. The new form that has been created in partnership between
the Government and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors
appears to be working in some cases, but not in all, and we need
to make sure that that happens faster.
(Hazel Grove) (Con)
Inexplicably, the Mayor of Greater Manchester has delayed the
publication of the spatial framework to build on local green-belt
land until after the mayoral election in May. In the meantime,
what can my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State do to stop
speculative applications on the green belt, such as that in
Bredbury Parkway in my constituency?
I am very aware of my hon. Friend’s opposition to this plan and
that of many of his colleagues—I would say Conservative
colleagues, but it is not even exclusively Conservative
colleagues. Indeed, I believe the shadow Secretary of State is
opposed to Andy Burnham’s plan. It is clearly not proving popular
in my hon. Friend’s part of Greater Manchester. We will have to
see what happens in the mayoral elections, but I am sure my hon.
Friend will campaigning strongly to protect the wishes of local
people in his community.
(Ellesmere Port and Neston)
(Lab)
The announcement on the new cladding fund is welcome, but it
remains to be seen whether it will be sufficient to cover all the
issues that have been talked about today. I have a specific
question about the detail. Leaseholders are paying an awful lot
of money for waking watches at the moment. Will that be
reimbursed as part of this fund?
The fund will operate like the 18-metre ACM fund, in that it will
be available only for the costs of the remediation works
themselves, not for any service charge fees that might be
incurred in the interim. We want to see this work done as quickly
as possible, because I am very conscious of the fact that those
waking watches are causing meaningful costs to people. There are
cases where people are finding it extremely difficult to meet
those costs.
(Buckingham) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s words on the presumption
of brownfield development. Will he give me an assurance that
councils such as Aylesbury Vale District Council in my
constituency, which are high in the league table for new-build
housing, at significant loss to our countryside, will not be
pressured, so long as we bring forward all of the brownfield
developments in Buckinghamshire?
We want to support and reward the many councils across the
country that are making often difficult decisions to allocate
land, aggressively build out brownfield sites, re-imagine town
centres and, above all, meet the local housing need of their
communities. We want to encourage those that are failing to meet
the housing needs of their communities to take such a lead,
because it is not fair that people are not able to live and bring
up their family in their own communities. That causes housing
pressure to be pushed out to other areas, perhaps such as the one
my hon. Friend represents, forcing the building of even more
homes and putting even more pressure on local services and the
countryside in some parts of the country, particularly in the
south-east.
(Strangford) (DUP)
Building can go ahead if action is taken to address potential
flooding risks: more retention ponds or reservoirs to keep water
on adjoining lands; and the planting of willow trees—the willow
absorbs moisture and water, and can be cropped and harvested.
That will involve a concerted partnership between the Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Ministers and the
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to preserve
the environment. Will that be done? Will we have a good,
sensible, intensive planning strategy now, for the future?
Absolutely. The Environment Secretary and I will be working
closely together as we see what further steps might be needed in
the planning framework to ensure that homes are built in the
right places. The planning system today seeks to do that, but
clearly we have seen examples in recent weeks and months where it
has not succeeded, and so some change may be required now,
particularly as the flood risk facing some parts of the country
appears to be more regular and more acute than we have ever known
it.
(Cleethorpes) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, particularly his
comments about wanting more people to live in safer, greener,
beautiful areas—I am sure we would all welcome that. Some people
are fortunate enough to live in such areas already, and they will
be concerned about over-development. Will he assure me that they
will be fully consulted? One route is a local plan, which he
referred to, but many councils struggle to meet the deadlines.
Will he assure me that help will be available to councils to meet
those deadlines?
Yes, there will be. We want to find a better plan-making process.
Plans are taking too long and we would like not only the time
taken to produce them to be reduced significantly, but for
people’s views to be genuinely taken into consideration. We are
also, through our new digital agenda, seeing whether there are
ways in which that can be done in a much more modern,
21st-century manner, on people’s smartphones, so that their views
can be taken into consideration.
(Poplar and Limehouse)
(Lab)
Does the Secretary of State agree that even more needs to be done
to ensure that developers are accountable and that local
communities are empowered even more to be centrally involved in
the decisions made in their area? Will he be willing to meet me
to discuss the Westferry Printworks development application,
which he approved on 14 January?
I or the Housing Minister would be happy to meet the hon. Lady to
discuss that matter. I believe it is subject to a judicial
review, so it may not be possible, but I am happy to consult my
colleagues in the Department to see whether it is appropriate for
me to meet her at the moment.
(Wimbledon) (Con)
I am sure the Secretary of State is aware that one reason why the
number of completions quite often does not meet the number of
consents is that there is a problem in getting utilities to
sites. He is absolutely right to point out that much has changed
since 1947, including the way we build houses and the
developments in modular building. Will his planning review
specifically look at those two issues? That would allow us to
meet the desire of the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne
() to align completions and
consents.
Absolutely. A lot of important work has been done on utilities,
not least by the National Infrastructure Commission, and I would
like to take that forward. On the broader challenge relating to
modern methods of construction, that will absolutely be at the
heart of not just the planning work we are going to do but our
broader housing strategy. There is a huge opportunity for us as a
country to lead the world in new construction technology and to
build good-quality homes at pace. I really want us to take that
forward.
(Beaconsfield)
(Con)
To discourage the needless urban sprawl on our green belt, what
steps is the Secretary of State taking to encourage councils to
unlock unused brownfield sites first and to work with SME
builders, rather than moving toward huge green-belt release and
working with large developers?
We absolutely we want to have a brownfield-first policy—that is
at the heart of everything that we are trying to do in this
policy area. It is why we have created the brownfield fund, which
is available to those councils that really want to seize this
opportunity to unlock those parcels of land. It is also driving
our interest in some of the planning freedoms, such as the
ability for a small builder or an entrepreneur to use the new
permitted development rights that I have announced this week to
purchase a disused office building with the knowledge and
certainty that he or she can knock that down and turn it into
good-quality housing as quickly as possible. We do not want to
see the needless ruination of the countryside—we all want to see
it preserved for future generations—but we have to balance that
with ensuring that homes are available for the next generation in
those parts of the country where people really want to live.
(Newcastle-under-Lyme)
(Con)
I heard what the Secretary of State said about the importance of
completing local plans. Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council is
working together with our friends and neighbours in
Stoke-on-Trent on a joint local plan. Will the Secretary of State
assure me and them that as we get Britain building homes, the
Government will also invest in infrastructure such as the
schools, roads, public transport and GP services that are needed
to support new developments?
I am pleased to hear that Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent
are working closely together—I am not surprised now that both are
represented exclusively by Conservative MPs for the first time.
We absolutely want to ensure more investment in infrastructure.
As we set out in our manifesto, the infrastructure should flow
first. We need well-planned, modern communities, which is why we
have invested through the housing infrastructure fund. We will be
succeeding that with a new, larger and longer-term single housing
infrastructure fund, which will ensure that at least £10 billion
is available for local areas to plan for the future and ensure
that the roads, GP surgeries, utilities and hospitals are there
to meet people’s demands.
(Blackpool South) (Con)
What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to ensure that local
authorities such as Blackpool include adequate provisions for the
environment in their local plans?
That is already a requirement and we are going to do work to see
whether further action can be taken. The future homes standard,
the final details of which we will announce shortly, will mean
that from 2025 no new home is built in this country unless it has
very high levels of energy efficiency and sustainability—at least
a 75% reduction in CO2 emissions. If a council is in the process
of making a plan, or will be soon, it will need to plan for all
homes to be meeting that standard, or higher, in the years ahead.
(Warrington South) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. Town centres such
as Warrington’s can thrive again if we focus on regeneration
before we use the green belt. What steps is the Secretary of
State taking to make sure that that is a reality?
With our £3.6 billion towns fund, the Government are setting out
to do exactly that: to help local communities to come together
and to work with the business community to harness private sector
investment, unlock pieces of land and get more homes built in
town centres. There are great examples throughout the country of
councils planning significant numbers of new homes in the town
centre. For example, the other day I was in Loughborough, a
relatively small town that now has a plan for 1,000 extra homes
to be built, some above shops and some on brownfield sites. That
is exactly what needs to happen in every town centre in the
country to get footfall and create new, vibrant life in town
centres.
