Building Homes

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Thursday 12 December.

“With your permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on our plan to build the homes our country so desperately needs.

This Labour Government were elected five months ago with a mandate to deliver national renewal. Standing on the steps of Downing Street on 5 July, the Prime Minister made it clear that work on that urgent task would begin immediately, and it did. Within our first month in office, we proposed a bold set of reforms to overhaul a planning system that is faltering on all fronts after a decade of piecemeal and inept tinkering by the Conservative Party. Today I confirm to the House that we are delivering the change we promised by publishing an updated National Planning Policy Framework, meeting our commitment to do so before the end of the year, and supporting our ambitious Plan for Change milestone of building 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament.

The case for grasping the nettle of planning reform in order significantly to boost housing supply and unleash economic growth is incontrovertible. England is in the grip of an acute and entrenched housing crisis, and as you, Mr Speaker, and every Member of the House will know, its detrimental consequences are now all pervasive: a generation locked out of home ownership; 1.3 million people languishing on social housing waiting lists; millions of low-income households forced into insecure, unaffordable and far too often substandard private rented housing; and, to our shame as a nation, just shy of 160,000 homeless children living right now in temporary accommodation. Our economy and the public services that our constituents rely on are also suffering, because as well as blighting countless lives, the housing crisis is consuming ever larger amounts of public money in the form of a rapidly rising housing benefit bill. It is also hampering economic growth and productivity by reducing labour mobility and undermining the capacity of our great towns and cities to realise their full economic potential.

The Government are under no illusions about the scale of the task before us or the challenges that must be overcome and the pitfalls avoided if we are to succeed. But we are absolutely determined to tackle this crisis head on. The previous Government, of course, took a different view. Not only did they fail to meet, even once, the target of 300,000 homes a year that they set themselves, but in a forlorn attempt to appease their anti-housebuilding Back-Benchers, they consciously and deliberately chose to exacerbate the housing crisis by making changes to national planning policy that have contributed to plummeting housing supply. We know that the changes required to start putting things right will be uncomfortable for some. We know we will face resistance from vested interests. But this Labour Government will not duck the hard choices that must be confronted to tackle the housing crisis, because the alternative is a future in which a decent, safe, secure and affordable home is a privilege enjoyed only by some, rather than being the birthright of all working people.

Let me turn to the changes that we are making to the framework. We received more than 10,000 responses to our consultation, alongside which my officials and I have held extensive engagement with private housebuilders, affordable housing providers, local authorities and other organisations from the sector. The views shared with us have been invaluable in helping to refine our initial proposals so that we are able to introduce an effective package of reforms.

Before I set out a number of important areas in which we have made changes, let me touch briefly on some of the proposals that we intend to implement unamended. First, we have reversed the anti-supply changes introduced by the last Government almost exactly a year ago. From the abandonment of mandatory housing targets to the softening of land supply and delivery test provisions, the policies that gave local authorities the freedom to plan for less housing than their nominal targets implied are no more. Secondly, we have made explicit the importance of growth supporting development, from labs to data centres, to supply chains and logistics. In the same vein, we have made clear that the default position for renewable energy deployment should be yes. Thirdly, we strongly promoted mixed-tenure development, reflecting robust evidence that attests to the fact that such developments build out faster and create diverse communities. Fourthly, we have made a series of changes to bolster affordable housing delivery and enable local authorities to determine the right mix of affordable housing for their communities. That will support our commitment to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation.

There are four important areas where we have refined our proposals, and I will turn first to housing targets. As we made clear when launching the consultation in July, restoring a mandatory standard method for assessing housing needs is insufficient if the method itself is not up to the job. As the House will know, we proposed a bold change, increasing the total annual national target from 300,000 to 370,000, ending the reliance on decade-old population projections, and removing the arbitrary 35% urban uplift that resulted in a skewed national distribution that was disproportionately focused on London to the detriment of the rest of the country. We fully intend to maintain the level of ambition outlined in July, but we heard through the consultation a clear view that we should do more to target housing growth in those places where affordability pressures are most acute. We have therefore made the method more responsive to demand, redistributing housing targets towards those places where housing is least affordable, while maintaining the overall target envelope.

Next, let me turn to our reforms to the green belt. As the House knows, ours is a brownfield-first approach to development. As a result of a number of targeted changes we are making to the framework, and our proposals for a brownfield passport, we are prioritising and fast-tracking building on previously developed urban land wherever possible, but we know that there are simply not enough sites on brownfield land registers to deliver the volume of homes that the country needs each year, let alone enough that are viable and in the right location.

In the summer, we proposed that local authorities take a sequential approach to releasing land to meet their housing need: brownfield first, followed by low-quality land in the green belt and only then higher-performing land. To identify low-performing sites we proposed a definition of grey-belt land that reflected the fact that there are areas currently designated as green belt that contribute little by way of aesthetic, public access or ecological value. That approach received broad support through the consultation, but a strong desire was expressed to limit the room for subjectivity. We have therefore set out a clearer description of how to assess whether land meets the definition of grey belt, and we will be providing further guidance to local authorities in the new year to support them with green- belt reviews.

At the centre of our green-belt reforms lies our golden rules, which are designed to make sure that where green-belt land is released, the public derive real benefit from development on it, including more affordable housing to meet local need. In the consultation, we proposed a flat 50% affordable housing target, but we recognise that because land values vary across the country, the limited use of viability assessments should be permitted. Through the consultation, we have recognised that that approach risked uncertainty. If flexibility was needed in some parts of the country because land values were lower, the precise amount of affordable housing to be secured would become a protracted site-by-site negotiation. If a local authority did not allow flexibility, there would be a risk that sites were rendered unviable, with the result that no houses, affordable or otherwise, would get built.

Our final policy therefore takes a different approach to managing variation in land values. Rather than a single 50% target, we are introducing a 15 percentage point premium on top of targets set in local plans, up to a maximum of 50%. Because that means the target itself will be responsive to local circumstances, we will be restricting the ability for site-specific viability assessments until such time as we have amended viability guidance in the spring of next year. By prioritising pragmatism over purity, the golden rules we are putting in place today will give communities the confidence that they will be met and will maximise the number of affordable homes delivered across the country.

Another area where we have made changes is to the presumption in favour of sustainable development. The presumption sits at the heart of the National Planning Policy Framework and means that where a local authority has underdelivered or an up-to-date local plan is not in place, the balance of decision-making is tilted in favour of approval. We are determined to ensure that where the presumption applies, it will have real teeth. At the same time, we are clear that development consented through it must be consistent with the clear requirements in national policy relating to sustainability, density, design and the provision of affordable homes. The changes we have made deliver on both those fronts.

Finally, in the consultation we sought views on how our changes apply to local authorities at an advanced stage of plan making. Our proposed transitional arrangements aim to strike a balance between maintaining the progress of plans at more advanced stages of preparation, while maximising proactive planning for the homes our communities need. The core of our proposal—that we only hold back a draft plan where there is a significant gap between the current proposed housing requirement and the new housing target— was well supported. However, we are making three changes.

First, we have taken on board concerns that the transitional period was too tight, so we will provide local planning authorities with an extra two months to progress their plans, extending the transitional period from one month to three. Secondly, and again responding to an ask we heard repeatedly from councils, the transitional arrangements will apply where the draft housing requirement in the plan meets at least 80% of local housing need, rather than the numerical 200 homes threshold we originally proposed. In those instances, the plan will not be held back. Thirdly, where plans are adopted under these arrangements, and where there are existing plans based on the old targets due to run for a number of years yet, we want to see the level of ambition raised sooner rather than later. As a result, from 1 July 2026, we will expect authorities with plans adopted under the old standard method to provide an extra year’s worth of homes in their housing pipeline, helping to accelerate the delivery of new homes.

We recognise that we are asking much from many local authorities, and we are determined to support local leaders trying in good faith to deliver homes for their communities. That is why across dedicated local plan funding, the planning capacity and capability support announced at the Budget and income from raised fees, we will be injecting more than £100 million into the system in the coming year.

We are confident that the revised framework that we are introducing today will support significantly higher rates of housebuilding and sustained economic growth. We have listened carefully to the views expressed in the consultation and adjusted several areas of policy accordingly; now it is for others to do their part. Developers must turn supportive words into action, bringing forward new sites and building them out at pace. Local authorities must embrace the challenge of higher targets and push for more and better development in their areas.

We have moved fast. We have not held back. We have not shied away from controversial decisions, or wavered in the face of those who have sought to chip away at our resolve. With focus and determination, we have pushed on to ensure that we are putting in place a planning system geared toward meeting housing need in full and unleashing economic growth. Change will take time as homes are not built overnight and our dire inheritance means that the climb out of the trough we are in will be a steep one, but by implementing this revised framework today, we have taken another decisive step toward a future in which everyone will enjoy a decent, safe, secure and affordable home in which to live”.

19:35

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a councillor in Central Bedfordshire. I thank the Minister for the Statement from the other place.

I think we can all agree that we need more homes. However, they must be in the right places, with the right infrastructure, and constructed in a way that fosters a sense of home and community—homes that will stand the test of time. Under the Conservative Government, between 2013 and 2023 we saw a record level of new housing, greater than in any other period since the 1960s. We also delivered 550,000 affordable homes since 2010, including some 63,000 in 2022-23 alone.

The Government have taken a one-size-fits-all approach to a region-specific issue. Many rural areas, which do not have the requisite infrastructure to support rapid population growth, are facing sky-high housing target increases. In Westmorland and Furness it is 487%, in North East Lincolnshire it is 272%, in North Yorkshire it is 200% and in the New Forest it is 106%, while London and Birmingham see a reduction. How will the Minister achieve these targets while still ensuring that the required local facilities and infrastructure are in place? The Centre for Cities and the OBR have both said the Government are going to manage only around 1.1 million homes this Parliament.

I do not disagree that the planning system needs improving. It is too complex and takes too long. However, concreting over green fields rather than focusing on supporting building in urban areas will not solve this problem—nor will removing the local democratic accountability of planning committees, or the suggestion that regional mayors allocate housing with call-in powers and greater call-in by the Secretary of State. I must ask the Minister to assure the House that the Government do not intend to bulldoze through low-quality developments in rural areas just to hit their housing targets.

The Government are demanding that all councils rapidly review their local plans to deliver the new mandatory targets. Having spent eight years trying to get a local plan over the line, and succeeding, I know how difficult it can be to get local plans through, particularly when challenged by landowners who are incentivised to challenge the plan. These proposals risk making local plans harder to deliver. What will the Government do to make local plans easier and speedier to deliver?

I would also like to raise some concerns about mandatory housing targets. These are based on a flawed methodology. Affordability is a reasonable metric to look at, but it needs to compare similar properties. Comparing the cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Camden with a three-bedroom home in Stevenage, for instance, is not a fair comparison. Will the Minister look at the affordability ratio on a cost per square metre basis?

There are other challenges regarding the delivery of homes. We need to look at capacity to build, the use of judicial review and the impact of other legislation, such as on nutrient neutrality. Can the Minister tell the House what the Government are doing to address these?

I must also add, even though I may be accused of stating the blindingly obvious, that councils do not actually build homes, or not that many; developers do. To that end, will the Government provide local councils with adequate powers to ensure that allocated and permissioned sites actually get built?

The Government have said that they want brownfield first, but other than rhetoric, what evidence is there of this? All we have seen so far is substantial housing target increases for rural areas, where brownfield sites are somewhat thin on the ground. Will the Government continue with the previous Conservative Government’s proposal of a strong presumption in favour of brownfield development? I suggest that this is the best way of protecting the green belt and our countryside, and focusing development on where it is most needed.

Will the Government’s proposals actually improve the planning system? Will they simplify the system? Will they help councils to deliver quality homes in the quantity and locations needed? Will they speed up the planning process? Will they encourage developers to build where homes are most needed? I fear not. I thank the Minister once again for repeating this Statement and I look forward to hearing her response and answers to my questions.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I too have relevant interests, primarily as a councillor in a metropolitan authority in west Yorkshire.

This is the season of good will, so I am going to start by sharing the areas of agreement with the Minister. There is an agreement in principle on the fundamental need for considerably more housing units, and we on these Benches broadly agree with the total numbers being proposed. We agree that housebuilding is a stimulant for economic growth, although not on its own. We agree with the notion of strategic planning at a sub-regional or mayoral level, and we agree that all councils should have an up-to-date local plan. I am still shocked that only 30% do; how that has escaped past Governments, I have no idea.

Now I will have to move on to the areas where there is less agreement. First, on strategic planning, there has to be a greater element of democratic and community involvement in making judgments about areas and sites within a strategic plan. The single mayor and leaders system simply does not enable that. Will the Minister spell out how the Government anticipate community involvement and wider democratic involvement in developing such plans?

The second area of less agreement—the Minister will not be surprised to hear me say this—is that there is a constant confusion in government thinking, probably deliberate, between so-called affordable housing and social housing. There is a need for about 150,000 homes for social rent every year. That is essential, and it must be a priority, so why is it not? Why does the plan not say that, within the 370,000 homes the Government are committing to, they will commit to build whatever number they choose—I would choose 150,000—of homes for social rent?

That brings me on to land use, which we are now colour-coding, apparently. Who thought we would colour-code land use? Green belt, grey belt and brown belt—well, brownfield. The NPPF accepts that green belt has a role to play. That definition of green belt is being nibbled away at, though, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, suggested, in rural areas there could be considerable use of green-belt land where there is not already brownfield or grey belt. I am not sure how acceptable that is going to be to those local communities. Local plans currently have to consider the green-belt boundary. How do the Government anticipate that that will now work, given what is said in the NPPF?

The grey belt, our next colour, is very grey because it is not very well defined. I was at a seminar this morning on all this, where it was suggested that it is so poorly defined that it will be open to constant legal challenge as it stands. Perhaps the Minister will spell out how the Government will get greater definition of the grey belt.

It must be 25 years ago or so that I first heard the phrase “brownfield first”. That is interesting, because in my own town there is still a large area of brownfield land that has planning consent but has still not been built on.

I shall now move away from land use and on to the planning process. It seems to me that we are moving to a more top-down planning approach, and I do not think that is acceptable to local people and their democratic representatives. Power currently remains in the hands of landowners; they can still offer up their sites in the system and challenge local plans, as has been said. The major housebuilders have the power to determine what is or is not built. How will the Government influence or constrain that power, so that the types of housing tenures defined by local councils are actually built by developers? Unless we do that, we are not going to get, as the Statement says, houses in the numbers and types of tenures that we need.

I turn to the issue of the five-year supply, the lack of which leaves local councils open to speculative building. It has always struck me that the five-year supply ought to include sites that already have permission but have not been built or even started. That is a game developers play: they get planning permission and then they can say, “There is not a five-year supply”, and more sites are allocated but we still not have the homes we desperately need. I hope that the Government are considering dealing with that sleight of hand by developers.

Finally, I emphasise that we on these Benches will completely oppose any suggestion that reduces the democratic nature of our planning committees. Planning committees have an important role to play. They enable a local voice to be heard. They enable the experience and knowledge of local people to be shared, and I will give one example. Where I am, of course, there are a lot of Victorian mineshafts, which are not recorded. Fortunately for a builder, some local people knew exactly where they were, which is not where he thought they were. That would not have come out unless there had been a planning committee where they could speak. We need a local voice, local decisions and local influence. I hope that the noble Baroness agrees.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their questions. I have only six minutes left, so I shall probably struggle to answer all of them in the time allotted, but please be assured that I will respond in writing to anything that I do not manage to cover.

In our first month in office, we proposed this bold set of reforms to overhaul the planning system. We have met our commitment, following extensive consultation, to meet publication by the end of the year. This will support our ambitious target of building 1.5 million new homes this Parliament. We needed to grasp the nettle of planning reform to both boost housing supply and unleash the economic growth that we want, and I hope that is incontrovertible. We received over 10,000 responses and have had extensive engagement with housebuilders, affordable housing providers, local authorities and other organisations, which led to the publication yesterday of this plan.

Before I set out a number of the important areas in which we have made changes, I will touch on some of the proposals that we intend to implement unamended, because they answer some of the questions raised by the noble Lord and the noble Baroness. First, we have reversed the anti-supply changes introduced by the last Government a year ago and reverted to mandatory housing targets. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, I say that we have done detailed work on how to set up these targets, and I will come on to some more information about how we are doing that in a moment.

Secondly, we have made explicit the importance of growth supporting development, from labs to data centres, to supply chains and logistics. In the same vein, we have made it clear that the default position for renewable energy deployment should be “yes”. Thirdly, we have strongly promoted mixed tenure developments, reflecting the robust evidence which attests to the fact that they build out faster and create better, more diverse communities.

Fourthly, we have made a series of changes to bolster affordable housing delivery and enable local authorities to determine the right mix of affordable housing for their communities. That includes separating out houses for social rent and affordable housing, so local councils when making their plans are now able to do that. That will support our commitment to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation.

Then there are four important areas where we have refined our proposals. I will speak first about housing targets. We made it clear when we launched the consultation in July that restoring a mandatory standard method for assessing housing needs would be insufficient if the method itself was not up to the job. We proposed a bold change, increasing the total annual target from 300,000 to 370,000, ending the reliance on the decade-old population projections and removing the arbitrary 35% urban uplift that resulted in the skewed national distribution.

We fully intend to maintain that level of ambition set out in July, but we heard a clear view that we should do more to target housing growth on the places where affordability pressures were the most acute, and that is the way we have designed the formula. We have made the method more responsive to demand, redistributing housing targets towards those places where housing is least affordable, while maintaining the overall target envelope.

I turn next to reforms to the green belt, another subject on which noble Lords questioned me. Ours is a “brownfield first” approach to development. As a result of a number of targeted changes we are making to the framework and our proposals for a brownfield passport, we are prioritising and fast-tracking building on previously developed urban land wherever possible, but we know that there are simply not enough sites on brownfield land registers to deliver the volume of homes that we need, let alone enough that are viable and in the right locations.

In the summer, we proposed that local authorities should take a sequential approach to releasing land to meet their housing needs—so brownfield first, followed by low-quality land in the green belt, and only then higher-performing land. We have therefore set out a clearer description of how to assess whether land meets the definition of grey belt, and we will provide further guidance to local authorities in the new year—a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson—to support them with green-belt reviews.

At the centre of our green-belt reforms lie our golden rules. They are designed to make sure that where green-belt land is released, the public derive real benefit from development on it, including more affordable housing to meet local need.

Our final policy takes a different approach to managing variation in land values. We have adjusted social housing need due to consultation responses so, rather than a single 50% target, we are introducing that 15 percentage-point premium on top of the targets set in local plans. That will be up to a maximum of 50%. Because that means the target itself will be responsive to local circumstances, we will be restricting the ability for site-specific viability assessments until such time as we have amended viability guidance in spring next year.

The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, referred to changes to the presumption in favour of sustainable development. The presumption sits at the heart of the NPPF and means that where a local authority has underdelivered or an up-to-date plan is not in place, the balance of decision-making is tilted in favour of approval. We are determined to ensure that where the presumption applies, it will have real teeth. At the same time, we are clear that development consented through it must be consistent with the clear requirements in the national policy relating to sustainability, density, design and the provision of affordable homes. The changes we have made deliver on both these fronts.

Finally, in respect of the local authorities at an advanced stage of plan making, we have sought views on how to deal with those and have made proposals on transitional arrangements for local authorities in those late stages. We recognise that we are asking much from local authorities. The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, referred to capacity and capability. That is why across dedicated local plan funding, the planning capacity and capability support announced at the Budget—income raised from fees—will inject more than £100 million into the system in the coming year.

With focus and determination, we have pushed on to ensure that we put in place a planning system geared towards meeting housing need in full and unleashing economic growth. I understand the points about community engagement; there are no real changes to the involvement that communities are able to have in plan-making processes. In fact, there is a specific part of the National Planning Policy Framework that refers to neighbourhood plans, and we want to support and encourage further engagement in those as well.

As I said, I did not think that I was going to get through all the questions in the time permitted, but anything that I have not picked up on I will respond to in writing. In terms of the buildout that the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, referred to, there is a whole section in the report setting out what sanctions are available to local authorities where developers have failed to build out.

I hope I have set out as clearly as possible what we have been doing with the National Planning Policy Framework and thank noble Lords very much for their contributions.

19:57

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my declared interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. Indeed, I am glad that the Minister has seen for herself the scale and the quality of the developments taking place in Cambridgeshire. Among those building out on those sites, one of the principal difficulties is that the Section 106 agreements for the delivery of affordable housing are not often able to be supported by contracts with registered providers.

Has the Minister seen the report from the Home Builders Federation today, which says that there are 17,000 such affordable homes that are not contracted for by RPs? Will she respond to that report? The Home Builders Federation is asking for a Written Ministerial Statement that would encourage local planning authorities to use cascade mechanisms under the Section 106 agreements to promote the delivery of those affordable homes. Will she and other Ministers direct Homes England to step in and take over these contracts, and themselves maintain the delivery of affordable homes?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for that question, because in a housing crisis where we have so many people in need of affordable homes, it has been such a shame that Section 106 homes that could have been funded were unable to be picked up because of the lack of capacity within affordable housing providers.

The Government have been very aware of the problems affecting the sale of Section 106 affordable housing. Alongside the National Planning Policy Framework, Homes England also launched a new clearing service to help unblock the delivery of these homes. This is a great role for Homes England to fulfil. The Government are now calling on all developers with uncontracted Section 106 affordable homes to proactively and pragmatically engage with this new service. We hope that this will be able to unlock some of the stalled Section 106 affordable homes which we know are there, waiting for those families who are desperate for housing. I hope that this service will take things forward.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, this Statement is about building the homes we need, but it talks about housing targets, not targets for homes, particularly homes for families to live in. What is the Government’s view on office conversions, potentially of poor quality, masquerading as homes when they are not and are simply contributing to a 370,000 a year housing target? What steps will the Government take to ensure that homes are of sufficient quality to merit the term “homes”, as opposed simply to being part of the achievement of a housing target?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. We have an Oral Question on exactly the same topic tomorrow, when I am sure I will be able to give a fuller answer.

The noble Lord is quite right. As I come from a new town, I recognise the benefit of not just designing the homes but planning the areas where they are to be situated. They should, of course, be sustainable, healthy and have all the infrastructure that everybody needs. The Government are committed to taking steps to ensure that we not only build more homes but that they are high quality, well designed and sustainable. That is why we have made changes to the NPPF to make clear the importance of achieving well-designed places, and how this can be achieved holistically through local design policies, design codes and guidance. We will be pushing this forward further in the new year.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, that there is much in the Statement to be welcomed. It is right that the Government should have a target of 1.5 million, although it is an ambitious one. If any Government are to hit a national target, they must have the levers through setting mandatory targets for local authorities. This was my Government’s policy until 2022. Of course, I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, that these targets must be right. I welcome the recognition that, without some erosion of the green belt, we are not going to get anywhere near the target.

Where I have some difficulty with the Statement is reading it in conjunction with the plans for devolution. Under the Statement which the noble Baroness has repeated, the basic unit is the local plan, and all the districts have to get ahead with theirs. Under the devolution White Paper, they must find partners—other districts—in order to reach the 500,000 target; then, presumably, there will have to be a new district plan for that. At the same time, the Government want to impose mayors everywhere. We read on page 48 that the mayors will be responsible for strategic planning and housing growth. Later on, it says that mayors will have

“an increasingly central role in housing delivery.”

Then, of course, the mayor can set up a development corporation and override the objections of any district. On top of this, the Government can set up a new town corporation. It is not absolutely clear to me how all the moving parts of the planning system fit together.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

There are clear links between the new National Planning Policy Framework and the English devolution programme. The English Devolution White Paper, which was published yesterday, is a consultation document, and we will be taking views on it as time goes on. The noble Lord, Lord Young, is right to say that there is a proposal in that White Paper for mayors to have strategic spatial planning powers. Across those sub-regional areas—we are talking about areas with a population of around 1.5 million—they will be looking at transport, infra- structure, probably housing numbers across the whole area, and other issues that are strategic in nature.

I do not believe that this undermines in any way the status of local plans. Where there is local government reorganisation, there will be some consolidation of plans to make this work at the level of the new councils. The strength of the local plan will be retained in determining where the allocations in the strategic spatial plan will be located. I do not think the intention of spatial planning is to undermine local plans. I remember the days of regional planning; we are not going back to that, because people felt it was too big a scale. It makes a lot of sense to do this at sub-regional level. When planning an economy, infrastructure and housing growth, you start at sub-regional level and then the local plans fit in with that.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, the average house price is 8.6 times the average household disposable income. Last week, the ONS said that only about 10% of the population could afford to buy a house. This means that the Government will have to find ways to drastically reduce property prices and/or drastically increase the workers’ share of GDP, which cannot be done without reducing the capital share of GDP. It would be helpful to know how the Government are going to proceed.

The second part of my question follows from a Question I asked last week. On 11 December, I drew attention to some of the resource constraints on housebuilding and asked the Minister to

“publish a detailed report showing how each of the constraints on housebuilding is to be alleviated”.—[Official Report, 11/12/24; col. 1762.]

The Minister did not directly answer that question. I am assuming that someone somewhere has done some kind of risk analysis. If so, can the Minister now assure the House that the report will be published?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for both his questions. We are very aware of the point he raises about the affordability of housing, which is why, in spite of a very difficult Budget round, we have put a great deal of money into enhancing the ability to deliver affordable housing and social housing—a total of around £1.3 billion, with £500 million announced in the Budget. Some of the changes we have made to the planning process—for example, to require local authorities to determine not just how many homes they need but the tenure of those homes—will help with that as well.

To identify the obstacles to housebuilding, the housing accelerator programme has, with the industry, local authorities and other stakeholders, looked at what the key barriers have been to delivering the homes we need. It is working with specific sites where building has stalled and more generally to look at the barriers and how we overcome them. We have identified capacity in the planning system as one of those barriers, which is why we have put in additional funding this year to improve the capability and capacity of planning departments. We will be working further with our colleagues in the Department for Education to improve the number of planners coming through the training system. We have made changes to the planning fee process as part of this which will increase the quantum of funding that local authorities will have available in the planning process. The new homes accelerator has looked across all those barriers.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, you cannot live in a planning permission and you cannot wish new homes magically into existence. All the encouragement in the world will not help if builders cannot find the staff, materials and finance to put roofs over people’s heads. I have led a council, and I really want to ensure that we can put this rhetoric into reality.

In cities where Labour tells us that people want to live, the targets have been reduced. That makes the mountain to climb elsewhere even steeper. I will highlight the case of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, where the new targets are nearly three times the best housing delivery that that district borough has ever achieved. Does the Minister think that setting these unachievable targets brings the planning system into disrepute?

I want to place on record a story I read in the Financial Times this week about the best quarterly housing completions ever in the last 50 years. In 1978, 75,000 houses were completed in a single quarter. The targets mean that, for the rest of this Parliament, a sustained completion of 90,000 is needed. The Minister and I have worked closely over the years to get homes built. I have helped her in a small way with PINS; she has helped me with parishioners. My concern is that the Government are pinning the blame on councils. That is unfair, and I think she knows that.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

Question.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

What steps will the Government take to ensure that the national agencies that have single-handedly held up hundreds of thousands of homes being delivered over the last three years—such as Natural England, Highways England and National Rail, or whatever it is called nowadays—will roll up their sleeves and stop blocking building so we can get the nation building?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord. I gave an explanation of how we set the targets in response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson. The fact is that everyone and every area has to play a part in this if we are to deliver these challenging housing targets. It is important that the new formula takes account of affordability and the demand for housing in local areas. Where they have challenging targets, it is because there is a demand in those areas, including a demand for more affordable housing.

We all know that statutory consultees play an important role in the planning system, providing advice on technical matters to ensure that new development is good quality, safe and situated in the right place. It is important that statutory consultees play their role too, to ensure that the planning system supports the housing and infrastructure development that we need. We will work with them over the next year to achieve that. Part of our work on the new homes accelerator will be to look at the statutory consultees to try to understand why the delays have come into the system, in relation to the responses of statutory consultees, and to see how we can work with them to alleviate some of those blockages and barriers.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. My first question follows on from that of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and her focus on social housing and genuinely affordable housing. The Green Party has a target of 150,000 homes a year for that. This Statement is all about so-called affordable housing. Have the Government taken account of the housing Select Committee report from March this year, which looks at the increasing and deeply concerning problems with shared purchase, also known as “part rent, part buy”? That is very much included in those so-called affordable targets. The report finds that

“rents, service charges, and the complexity of … leases make shared ownership an unbearable reality for many people”.

Will the Government take action to deal with this issue, which surely has to be a big part of the affordable housing target?

On the other side of the target issue, are the Government taking adequate account of the physical limits of this country? In Cambridge, a major development was recently turned down because there was no water supply. Many places are thinking about building on flood plains. The flood plain is not beside the river; it is part of the river. Where will we find suitable locations and how will we have the resources needed to make this possible?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness. She will know that we are working through a process—for example, some changes were made to leasehold arrangements. She is quite right to say that the tenure of a property is critical, and we do not want to trap people into tenures that cause them problems. We are working through the process of designing a new Bill on commonhold. Where there are issues with shared ownership, we will look at them. We are trying to eradicate some of the more knotty issues people have had with that type of property ownership. Sometimes people think that they are buying a home, but some elements of leasehold tenure mean that they do not have the ownership of the property that they thought they were buying into. We are very aware of that and have taken account of it, and we will work on that further in the new year as we make our way towards the new commonhold Bill. There will be plenty of opportunity to comment on that as we go through the process.

I turn to the physical limits that the noble Baroness described. I made two recent visits to Cambridge: one to visit the development forum of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and another to look at South Cambridgeshire. The great thing is that some very good and innovative solutions are coming up there to look at the water issues. That does not mean that that is everything we need to do, but solutions are coming forward. I do not have time to repeat it all now, but there is a big section in the report about flood mitigation and how we are tackling the issue of flooding. That is all contained in the new NPPF. I hope the noble Baroness will look at that. If she has further questions afterwards, she can by all means come back to me.

These problems are not going away. We need to be creative with the solutions we provide, because we have to build the homes that people need. I add that about 10% of the country is currently built on, while 13% is green belt. There should be land to build these houses on.