Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Morgan of Cotes Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

We all want more affordable homes, including of course in our capital city, and that is why over £3 billion was given to London for affordable housing in the spring Budget. It was the biggest ever settlement, and it was welcomed by the Mayor. Yet despite that, we have seen a fall in affordable housing delivery under Sadiq Khan. That is not acceptable: he needs to do much better.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

8. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the time taken to build new homes.

[The Minister for Housing (Dominic Raab)]

Last week, the Government published the national planning policy framework for consultation, which, with clearer guidance to councils and developers, will help to deliver more homes and do so more quickly.

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the Minister for that answer. Charnwood Borough Council—for the sake for disclosure, I should say that my husband is the leader, although I refuse to call him that—has planning permissions for 10 years of housing, but the difficulty is getting the developers to start building. If that does not happen, that affects the five-year land supply, which leaves other sites vulnerable to development. Will the Minister tell the House what the Government are planning to do to speed up delivery by developers on planning permissions they already have?

[Dominic Raab]

The good news is that, in 2017, we saw 160,000 new homes registered to be built, which is the highest number since the financial crash. My right hon. Friend is right about speed. The NPPF will help to deliver that through the housing delivery test, and my right hon. Friend for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) is reviewing build-out rates.

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[The Minister for Housing (Dominic Raab)]

I understand the issue the hon. Lady raises. I would just say that the numbers on social housing waiting lists are down by half a million since 2010, and the number of affordable homes in total, including social housing, is higher in the last seven years than in the last seven years of the last Labour Government. However, we are anxious to do even more. I am not sure that fiddling with the criteria for how these things are measured is the answer. We need to build more homes across the board and I welcome the hon. Lady’s support in that regard.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

T7. My hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) has already raised the issue of fairer funding for Leicestershire County Council. The county council is broadly supportive of the Government’s consultation, but does the Minister agree that the overall funding formula needs to be looked at in detail, because if the baseline is not addressed Leicestershire will still be falling behind other county councils?

[Sajid Javid]

I very much agree with my right hon. Friend, and Leicestershire in particular has done much work on this, which will certainly feed into the consultation on fairer funding that is closing today. My hon. Friend the Minister for Housing recently met with Leicestershire and I would be very happy to meet my right hon. Friend to discuss this further.