The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
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.
Christopher Pincher
I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman, because I am sure he wants to raise a point about North Somerset.
Matt Western
The Minister is very generous. I want to concentrate on that point about affordability. In his vision, does he see that there is a role for council house or council flat building? Surely, as the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) illustrated about his area—I am sure it is true across the country—truly affordable accommodation must be delivered through council house building as well.
Christopher Pincher
The hon. Gentleman will know that we have made it easier for councils to build council houses. He will know that, through the affordable homes programme that the Chancellor and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced in September, over the next five years we will inject £12.2 billion into house building. We will build 180,000 new homes in our country, about 50% of which will be affordable and for social rent. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman raised that point, and I am pleased to have been able to make the point to him that we are building those affordable homes where they are necessary.
That is why we are looking at housing need now, considering carefully how each element of the formula that I described works together so that we can ensure that we achieve the right distribution of homes in the most appropriate places and address any perceived imbalances. We have consulted, as I said, on each element of the indicative formula, and we are reflecting carefully on the feedback we have received.
Dr Fox
May I take my right hon. Friend back to what the market has actually delivered over time? Does he accept that if councils are given targets for housing that are utterly unrealistic in relation to the numbers that have been built over time, the Government are likely to miss their own house building target, because houses will not be built in those areas to the extent that the Government would like, and that the process can be self-defeating if the correct balance is not achieved?
Christopher Pincher
My right hon. Friend makes a good point. That is why I said that we are looking very closely at the consultation feedback that we have received. As part of the consultation on the “Planning for the future” White Paper, we have asked providers of feedback to consider how we can improve the duty to co-operate between local authorities so that we get the right sorts of homes spread over the regions of our country. We know that political geography does not always map easily on to economic or physical geography, so I recognise what my right hon. Friend says.
I will make a couple more points before the fickle finger of time points us towards the door of the Chamber. My right hon. Friend raised the issue of infrastructure. We recognise that the present system of infrastructure levy does not work. We have heard that 80% of local authorities think that the system of section 106 contributions is too slow, and negotiations between councils and developers cannot be relied on fully to provide what communities truly need, when they need it. That is why, in the White Paper, we have proposed a more widely set infrastructure levy. That will simplify the system and ensure fairer contributions from developers.
Crucially, we want to ensure that the levy provides funds up front for the required infrastructure—the schools, roads, clinics and playgrounds that local people expect to see if new, good-quality, sustainable homes are being built around them. We are consulting on whether the levy should be set nationally, or locally or regionally to take account of regional economies.
My right hon. Friend raised the question of build-out and land-banking. He will know that Sir Oliver Letwin produced a report on build-out a couple of years ago. He found no evidence of speculative land-banking, but we all recognise that developers do not always build out at the pace that we would like. Our proposals will help to achieve that speedier build-out, but I look forward to considering the ideas in the consultation, so that we can better incentivise developers to build out.
My right hon. Friend referred to flooding. He will know that we are considering carefully whether we need to make further changes to the national planning policy framework to protect areas at risk of flooding from unnecessary and inappropriate building. We should not lose sight of the Government’s successes over the past 10 years. There have been half a million additional new homes since 2010, and 240,000 of those were built in England last year alone. We can be proud of that.
I thank everybody who has contributed to this debate. We need to get this right, and that depends on what we build, and where we build. I look forward to reading the many contributions of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset and my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare to the two consultations that have just concluded, and look forward to further debates on this matter.
Question put and agreed to.