Housing Delivery Test

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Young for his question about local plans. Those local planning authorises without an up-to-date local plan will be set a deadline of 23 December to adopt a new plan. At present, 90% of local planning authorities have adopted a local plan, but I should add that it is slightly more nuanced than that. If the five-year review looks at the plan and decides that it does not need to be updated, it can carry on; so, technically, it is feasible to have a plan older than five years that is still up to date. As my noble friend says, it is most important that local authorities have an active and current local plan.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I declare my relevant interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. We often discuss housing and planning in this House but I want to take the noble Earl back to the fact that well over 250,000 planning applications have been approved by local authorities with not a brick laid. That is the problem: getting these homes built.

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes a good point. Where these planning permissions are current, the building process must continue. This is why we have committed £44 billion of funding over five years to build more houses, simplify the planning system for the public and small builders, and renew the affordable homes programme to build thousands of affordable homes. This is all about trying to get more bricks put in the ground so that we can have more houses for everybody who needs them.