Housing, Planning and the Green Belt — House of Commons, 2018-02-06
Topic: Housing
Dominic Rennie Raab (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) on securing the debate. He made some powerful points about the supply of new homes, the type of stock and the wider issues about affordability. They were tenaciously made and duly noted by the Government. I also pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), for the sterling job that he did. I know that he will take that energy and focus into the Department for Work and Pensions Today, we have had a thoughtful and very well-informed debate, with valuable insights from hon. Members across the House representing a range of communities, whether those are urban, rural or suburban communities like my own. Building the homes that Britain needs is one of the great social challenges of our generation—a national mission—but we must carry local communities with us. We have heard a lot about that today. From my point of view, I see that dual mission not as a zero-sum game, but as two sides of the same coin. We must get an effective set of outcomes that work not only for the country, but for communities The most recent data from the English housing survey shows that the proportion of households owning their own home has steadily declined since 2003 to its current level. It stabilised around 2013 and has remained broadly stable since. We are therefore at a crossroads. It is time to turn this challenge into an opportunity and grasp it with both hands There are some positive signs. Last year, we saw 217,000 homes delivered, the highest number in all but one of the last 30 years. Just last week, the Halifax survey showed that the number of first-time buyers in 2017 was the highest in 10 years—since the financial crash—while the National House Building Council survey showed the highest number of new homes registered to be built since the financial crash. That, though, must be the point of departure, not the point of arrival. We need to deliver in the region of 300,000 homes each year, if we are to provide the homes Britain needs and make them more affordable—for the nurse, for the teacher, for those young families on low and middling incomes trying to get on to the housing ladder This is not just about those who are buying, of course: increasing the supply of new homes is vital for bringing down the cost of renting, too. The Government have an ambitious plan and we are restless to get more homes built. There is no silver bullet, as hon. Members pointed out. There are just various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and we must be assiduous in putting them all together. The first policy lever is the national planning policy framework. I am pleased to say that we will be consulting on changes to the NPPF to reduce obstacles to home building. In that context, I listened carefully to the range of concerns raised by hon. Members across the House I will not pre-empt publication, but as the House will know from the Secretary of State’s statement, we intend to consult on changes, for example, to density to free up local authorities to build perhaps one or two storeys higher—whether apartments, terraced homes or other designs—if that is in keeping with their local area and in accordance with what local constituents and communities want. That will provide greater flexibility in towns and urban areas, where demand is particularly high. The points about regional variations in demand and affordability were well made by hon. Members across the House. We want to encourage homes to be built—we want to clear away those obstacles—and to promote local design, buy-in and support for this national mission. We will therefore publish a revised draft of the NPPF and launch our consultation by Easter I want to be clear on one issue on which feelings always run high—I know from my own local experience how important it is: the green belt, which is cherished by hon. Members and their constituents and communities. Our NPPF makes it clear that most new building on green-belt land is inappropriate and should be refused planning permission, except in very specific circumstances, and only in exceptional circumstances may a local authority alter the green-belt boundary, after consulting local people and submitting a revised local plan for formal examination. Broadly, since 1997, the proportion of green-belt land has stayed relatively steady at 13% There is a broader point here about home building and the overriding need to carry local communities with us, whether rural, suburban or urban communities. That is why last week the Government announced the first wave of money being allocated from the homes infrastructure fund. Last week alone, we targeted £866 million of investment, or 133 local housing projects, from London to Manchester, Cornwall to County Durham, to unlock building capacity for up to 200,000 new homes. We recognise we need more homes, but we also know that communities worry about new developments —my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) made this point very well—and ask some reasonable questions: what will it mean for congestion on the roads, and what will it mean for pressures on schools and local NHS services? There is certainly a link with pressures from immigration. Once we have left the EU, we will have greater scope and control over that to get the balance right. The Government hear those concerns loud and clear. That is what the homes infrastructure fund helps to address. We will be having a further round of funding in about a month’s time to deal with bigger infrastructure projects. The key is that, by investing in local authority-led projects in areas where demand is greatest, we can build not just more homes but stronger communities at the same time, which is crucial to the strategy the Government have presented I come now to the next public policy lever that we must yank even harder to speed up the rate of building—the shadow Minister and Members on the Conservative Benches made this point. There is, I think, a cross-party consensus on the objective, although whether there is such a consensus on the means is another question. The point was made very well by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) and also by the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) Let me put this in context. In the year ending March 2017, 304,000 planning permissions for new homes were granted, an increase of 15% on the previous year and of 70% on five years ago. The latest figures—which, admittedly, date from 2016—show that detailed planning permission was granted to 684,000 homes that had not been completed The Government’s position is clear: new homes should be built as soon as possible once planning permission has been granted. Our housing White Paper contains a range of proposals to tackle issues that delay or prevent the building out of developments. They include proposals to give local authorities stronger tools with which to ensure that sites with planning permission are built out, to provide more transparent data on housing delivery and to tackle delays associated with, in particular, pre-commencement conditions My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) is leading a review of the gap between the number of planning permissions being granted and the new homes actually delivered, with a view to reducing it. The review panel will make its recommendations for closing the gap and will report on its findings later this year. We want to establish what more can be done to ensure that developers cannot wriggle out of commitments to build more affordable homes in the right places, after planning permission has been granted. That is another important piece of the jigsaw: another important element of the strategy that we are presenting today Members across the House made the point that Governments must lead by example. This is not really about a private sector monopoly; the state has a role to play. That argument was made especially clearly and saliently by the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins). Releasing more surplus public sector land to boost the supply of new homes is obviously a powerful way of achieving our goal. We will be pressing Whitehall Departments to release more of that surplus public sector land, with a view to generating a further 160,000 new homes. Homes England can help them by providing expertise and targeted investment Let me return to the objectives to which I referred at the beginning of my speech. The release of public sector land offers opportunities to provide less expensive homes for essential public sector workers such as nurses, teachers and police officers.