Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Amanda Martin and Olly Glover

Committee stage
Thursday 24th April 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Amanda Martin]

Q Minister Pennycook, how will this help SMEs, obviously when we have unlocked that grid?

Matthew Pennycook: There are a variety of ways in which the Bill will help SMEs. It is probably worth my saying, because we have had a variety of questions on issues that are not directly within the scope of the Bill—the new towns taskforce and programme, and build-out rates where the Government have taken action and are exploring what further steps we can take—that this is not the totality of the interventions that we are introducing to support SMEs.

However, to go back to Mr Murphy’s question, a good example would be the nature restoration fund. We know that nutrient neutrality and diffuse constraints of that kind are particularly affecting SME house builders in those sensitive river catchments, so there are a number of ways in which the provisions in the Bill will directly benefit small and medium house builders.

[Olly Glover]

Q Recent Government announcements on housing targets—around 1.5 million, but only 18,000 will be social homes—have led some to ask whether the Government are doing enough to promote affordable and social housing. Does the Bill go far enough, particularly in relation to spatial development strategies, to mandate more affordable and social housing provision?

Matthew Pennycook: To correct you on a point made there, I think the figure of 18,000 that you referenced is solely what we think could be delivered through the £2 billion we secured recently and announced as a down payment on the future grant funding through the successor programme to the affordable homes programme. It is not 18,000 affordable homes as social out of 1.5 million—that would be completely unacceptable. We are trying to, through all of our reforms, deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation.