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The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts; we normally meet in other circumstances—equally pleasurable, I may say. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton), who is a determined and doughty campaigner for his constituents, on securing this debate and on seeing so many colleagues here from the south-west, including my hon. Friends the Members for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti), for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) and for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), as well as an interloper from Oxfordshire, my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), who is never knowingly under-represented. It is very good to see them all here in this important debate.
The Government are committed to increasing the supply of affordable housing. We have been doing that since 2010. We have delivered some 542,000 new affordable homes in that time, including 382,000 affordable homes for rent, of which 149,000 are homes for social rent. In the south-west, an area that my colleagues know well, we have delivered over 83,000 new affordable homes, including 25,800 affordable homes for ownership and nearly 55,000 affordable homes for rent, so we are committed to driving up affordable home ownership.
We all know that the housing sector is a bellwether in our country for our economy and growth. That is why we have done all we can to keep the industry, more than any other sector, open and active during the pandemic. It is also why we are investing £12 billion in affordable housing—the largest investment since 2010—and that includes £11.5 billion in our affordable homes programme, which will deliver, economic conditions permitting, 180,000 new homes across the country. Approximately half of those will be for affordable home ownership, supporting aspirant homeowners, as my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome made clear should be a Government priority. It will also double the number of social rented homes, with around 32,000 supplied through this programme.
We have already made significant progress with the programme. Just last week we announced the first allocations for strategic partnerships under the programme, committing around £8.5 billion to boost home ownership and build homes that the country needs, including more social and affordable rental homes. In the south-west we are placing more than £1 billion—one of the largest allocations—to deliver 17,500 new affordable homes across the region. We are confident that that investment will support our determination, not just to build more homes but build more homes of the right type in the right places for local people.
We know that in the end that it is not just about supply, it is about quality. Most of us want to live in strong communities, with a unique character, heritage and culture, that is reflected in the buildings, streets, neighbourhoods, parks and places in which we pass our daily lives. The national planning policy framework has been amended to make it easier for residents and planners to embrace beautiful, practical design, while rejecting the ugly, unsustainable and that of poor quality.
An expectation has been set that all councils should develop a local design code—an illustrated design guide that sets the standard for a local area—with input from local people. We have published a national model design code, a toolkit to empower councils and local people to set these standards. In addition to the changes that Government are making to improve design quality in the current planning system, we believe design performs a key component of the fundamental changes that we have set out in the “Planning for the Future” White Paper. I will say a little more about that in a moment.
We are also committed to improving the energy performance of all properties, not just new build, not only because it will help us achieve our ambitions to reduce emissions as well as reduce fuel poverty, but because warm homes mean healthier homes. The data published by the English housing survey on the condition and the energy efficiency of homes show a marked increase in the energy performance certificate ratings of houses across England over the past 10 years, reflecting the continuous improvement of energy efficiency across our housing stock.
Since 2009, the percentage of homes with an energy performance certificate rating of C or higher in the south-west has nearly doubled. That is a success of which we can be truly proud. From 2025, homes built to the future homes standard will be expected to have at least 75% lower carbon emissions and be zero-carbon ready, without the need for expensive retrofitting. That is no easy task, but it is vital if we are to keep up the momentum. It will mean better quality homes, and homes that are of a higher energy efficiency standard, and it will mean homes that will not have to be changed further as our electricity grid changes and improves.
My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome mentioned levelling up. As we all know, that is at the heart of the Government’s agenda. We are committed to raising productivity and growth in all places, increasing opportunity for everyone and improving public services. That is why, alongside the investment through the affordable homes programme, the Government are investing over £400 million to support levelling up in the south-west, through the getting building fund, the future high streets fund, and the towns fund. From Glastonbury to Penzance, we are investing in infrastructure to improve everyday life.
In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome, we are investing £800,000 in the Bruton enterprise centre—I suspect that he knows this as well as I—to provide modern high-quality office and light industrial space to help the next generation of small and medium-sized enterprises to grow and thrive, and to give his local community jobs and income commensurate with their desire to have good homes that they can afford to live in. Slightly further afield, his constituents will also benefit from the Yeovil western corridor, which is supporting the delivery of 1,160 much-needed homes for local people, and about 1,670 new jobs. We want people across places to feel that they can get on in their lives in their local areas, and we want people in places such as Somerton and Frome and the rest of the south west to have confidence that the Government are delivering their economic and social priorities.
My hon. Friend raised home ownership, and quoted Noel Skelton. This Government are as committed as Margaret Thatcher’s to helping to make the dream of home ownership a reality. We are operating a range of different schemes to achieve that. More than 734 households have been helped to purchase homes since spring 2010 by the Government-backed Help to Buy and right to buy schemes. We are now introducing First Homes, which will be sold to first-time buyers with a discount of at least 30% on full market value, making deposits and mortgage requirements cheaper and opening up the dream of home ownership to more people. The discount is set in perpetuity. It is passed on to future buyers, so the local community can benefit in the long term. When I say local community, I mean local community, because we know that local first-time buyers find it difficult to afford homes in the areas where they want to live and work.
Key workers can find themselves unable to live in the communities they serve, so crucially with new homes local authorities will be able to set local connections for key workers through the First Homes base criteria, based on the needs of their local communities. We will deliver 1,500 First Homes via a nationwide pilot, the first of which will be available towards the end of this year. Beyond that, we have introduced an expectation that a minimum of 25% of all affordable homes secured through developer contributions should be First Homes. That will deliver at scale 10,000 new first homes every year for local people to benefit from. We have also introduced a new type of exception site, so that sites wholly focused on delivering First Homes will be able to come forward for planning permission outside local plans. That means that in local communities where the ability to buy is challenging and communities are struggling there will be more opportunities to purchase homes.
My hon. Friend and others also raised second homes. We all recognise the benefits that second homes can bring to local economies. During the staycation of 2021, large parts of the south-west benefited from a lot of people coming to spend their money in the area, but I recognise that large numbers of second homes can have an adverse effect on some areas. That is why we have introduced a series of measures to help to mitigate those effects. In 2013, the Government removed the requirement for local authorities to offer a council tax discount on second homes. Some 96% of second home owners are currently charged at the full rate. That means that the owners of those properties will be paying 100% council tax, contributing fully to their local communities. In 2016, the Government introduced higher rates of stamp duty land tax for those purchasing additional properties at three percentage points above the current rate, which are part of the Government’s commitment to support first-time buyers.
I am very happy—in fact, keen—to discuss with colleagues other measures that we may sensibly employ to ensure that there are adequate homes available to local people in such a way that we are mindful of unintended, undesirable consequences, such as the increase in house prices. I am very happy to discuss those ideas with colleagues.
My hon. Friend also raised the issue of phosphates and asked that we work closely with DEFRA to deal with the challenge of nitrates and nitrate neutrality in developing the right number of homes in the right places for local people to enjoy. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) and I set up a taskforce between DEFRA and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to find short, medium and long-term solutions to the problem, such as providing nutrient neutrality calculators and better local catchment maps, provided by Natural England, as short-term measures to help local authorities plan ahead; medium-term measures, such as better waste water treatment; and longer term measures, such as changes in agricultural practices, to ensure that we reduce nitrate and phosphate issues to enable us to build the sorts of homes that we need to build. He is quite right that the issue affects significant numbers of potential planning applications, which has a negative consequence for local authorities in terms of council tax and fees forgone. It is an issue beyond the bricks and mortar that people want to live in.
I strongly share my hon. Friend’s passion for the supply of affordable, good quality housing for his constituents, the south-west and the rest of the country. It is a key priority for our Government. As I have said, we have made some real progress and continue to invest in the supply of new, good quality, affordable homes, but we must not be under any illusion that our work has stopped or can stop soon. We will continue to improve standards. We will continue to reform to ensure that good quality, healthier homes are delivered as fast as possible as we exit the pandemic. We have an ambitious housing agenda that underlines our determination to build the homes that the country needs, build back better, build back stronger and ensure that people in the south-west and in Somerton and Frome have the homes they want and deserve, so that they can have a great quality of life with their friends and families.
Question put and agreed to.