Housing and Planning Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Matthew Pennycook

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Part 4 of the Bill aims to address the simple problem of supply and demand, which of course controls the housing market. We are simply not building enough homes. The United Kingdom needs 230,000 homes a year. We have seen huge improvements over the past five years: 88,000 homes were started in the depths of the housing recession and there were 136,000 housing starts in England in 2015—a 56% increase. Planning permission consents numbered more than 240,000, so there has clearly been great progress along the track towards building more homes.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Is the hon. Gentleman at all concerned by the Office for Budget Responsibility’s downward revision of its estimate for new homes to 185,000? The estimate is down 34,400 since the election.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

There is no doubt that, in my constituency alone, we have seen a 100% increase in the amount of building in 2015 versus 2014. If the hon. Gentleman looks at his figures, I am sure he will see a similar increase in his constituency. Has he looked at his figures? There is no doubt that the data on the direction of travel in my constituency and many others like it are very clear—there is a 56% increase. Planning consents are increasing, too, but there is more to be done. The Bill is about releasing more land, particularly brownfield land, and expediting the whole planning process to ensure that local authorities properly staff their planning departments. The Bill allows planning in principle, giving developers more certainty about the land they are acquiring so that they can build properties on that land.

The other key thing that we need to address in the housing market is affordability, and of course those challenges are about lack of supply, which we also hope to address with some of the measures in the Bill. Owner-occupation has fallen in recent years, largely due to the recession, and it is something that we desperately want to address. I was lucky enough to buy a home in my early 20s, and I imagine that most people in this room own their own home. Why should we lock people out of that opportunity to own their own home? The Bill contains provisions on starter homes and, as in this clause, on voluntary agreement on right to buy. It is absolutely right to use our public assets more efficiently and effectively, and to release them to allow more building. Opposition Members have asked several times whether the affected homes will be replaced, and time and again we have seen evidence showing that the answer is yes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Absolutely. Many of the provisions in the Bill that we have discussed, such as planning in principle for starter homes, will help to solve that problem.

[Matthew Pennycook]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Riverside Housing, which said in its written submission that

“one for one replacement will be very challenging”.

Does he think that that is wrong and that the organisation will ultimately be able to provide one-for-one replacement, or are we talking about replacement in different areas, across different tenures?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Challenging does not mean impossible. There are great challenges in the housing market and we need to rise to those challenges. As for one-for-one replacement, I feel that replacement is the wrong term: it should be an addition. It is an additional home, because the people who are buying that home were previously renting, and were locked out of the housing market with no prospect of getting on to the housing ladder. They are buying that home and will still live in that home. They will benefit from the place where they have lived, and most of them will live in that home for many years to come.

Housing and Planning Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Matthew Pennycook

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q 225 We know that effective place making requires decent infrastructure. Do you have concerns, if starter homes are exempt from the community infrastructure levy, that the necessary infrastructure to build sustainable communities will not be there?

Mike Kiely: Almost certainly. It seems an odd public policy to take money away from necessary infrastructure and subsidise a five-year reduction, and then that individual gets the benefit of that public subsidy. When you set your CIL, there is always a huge gap between the moneys that you can bring in through section 106 and CIL and the necessary infrastructure bill. It is always a challenge to provide the infrastructure, and we need to try and get as much money as we can into the public purse to deliver that supportive infrastructure. This will clearly reduce that, and will mean we are less able to provide the schools, highway improvements or whatever that facilitate the functioning of communities. It will be harder for us to do that.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Q 226 Ms Alafat, you mentioned in your submission the need for local planning and development teams to have more resources. Do you not feel that the changes contained in the Bill on the planning system—to require a local plan by 2017, to make time timely decisions, and on planning in principle—will effectively ensure that local authorities properly provide the resources for their planning departments and prioritise that to ensure economic development?

Terrie Alafat: As Trudi has already mentioned, the reality is that local authority planning departments have been under significant pressure already. It is worth thinking about the implementation of this, given how important planning is, to try to make certain that we have the right resources at local level, but also the right skills. I think that is an important implementation issue. In terms of the Housing and Planning Bill, there are other very good measures being taken—for example, in the private rented sector—that require local authorities to do more on enforcement, but we need to look at the resourcing of that as well.