Housing: North Somerset — House of Commons, 2020-11-03
Topic: Housing
Christopher John Pincher (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) on securing this debate and on his, as ever, eloquent contribution. I am always keen to hear his views. I am also keen and happy to look at his maths, and happy to discuss what the colouring of the maps might be. I am grateful for the insights that he has given to us. The issue of housing, including housing numbers, is of great importance to many Members across the House, including my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), who also spoke with great prescience and insight, and I am happy to discuss his ideas at some future point I think we would all agree that, to achieve the aims of our manifesto commitment of building 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s, we need to find the right balance, which is ambitious in its vision for the future of our planning system and house building, and fair. That is why we recently set out our long-term vision in our planning White Paper, "Planning for the future", the consultation on which closed last week We believe that the proposals will create a reformed system that not only delivers the houses that we need, but puts communities at the heart of a process that encourages more community engagement from the very beginning, so that people play a fuller part in the proactive place-making of their environment. Right now, something like 2% of local populations take an active role in individual planning applications. That percentage can fall as low as 1% in the development of local plans The proposals will also encourage fairer contributions from developers—a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset—with a new infrastructure levy to fund critical infrastructure and affordable housing. The proposals will contribute to more beautiful homes and communities through local design codes, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare, with pattern book approaches. They will also deliver stronger environmental outcomes, protecting our green belt and our precious green spaces At the same time as we launched the planning White Paper, we set out our proposals for the shorter term in our consultation on changes to the current planning system and local housing need calculation. As I said in the Backbench Business debate on the issue a couple of weeks ago, however, some of the numbers we have seen bandied around from the Commons Library or the Lichfields assessment are entirely speculative The consultation on the local housing need methodology closed on 1 October, and we are working through the feedback from it. I have heard today, in the Backbench Business debate and in discussions with right hon. and hon. Members across the Chamber, concerns that have been expressed about the proposed changes, in particular some areas that might see increased levels that they will find difficult to plan for We have tried to approach the process fairly, based on evidence, because the evidence shows that for too many people homes are simply unaffordable. That is why I should be clear that both the current and the proposed standard method have a focus on affordability, because it cannot be right that in areas where, historically, supply has simply not kept up with demand, people are prevented from living where they most want to, or where they most need to, in the places that perhaps they call home Indeed, it is a question of intergenerational fairness. We need to build more homes to help young people on to the housing ladder and also help some of the most vulnerable people in society—some of our elderly. We must consider the question of affordability. However, as I said, I have heard hon. Members, most recently my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset and my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare, who are concerned about the effect that this might have on the geographical balance of our country—that there may be too many homes in the south and not enough in the north That is why we are looking at other levers, such as stock renewal—regeneration of places—where it is required, generally in the industrial west midlands and the industrial north. We are looking at all-important city regeneration, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare. We are committed, in the national planning policy framework and in our consultation proposals, to further brownfield development, and we are committed to reimagining our town and city centres That is why we have introduced permitted development rights statutory instruments that allow for the demolition and rebuilding of commercial property to make it easier to turn that into residential property. We have introduced changes to use classification to make it easier for town centres to accommodate more residential accommodation so that they can once again become the places they used to be before, perhaps, the 1970s and the 1960s—places where people live as well as work I am in no doubt that achieving the right balance is critical. We need to challenge the affordability issues that bedevil so many people in our country and the places that they want to live.