Building Homes

Chris Curtis Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Chris Curtis, who I should have called earlier as a member of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee—my apologies.

[Chris Curtis (Milton Keynes North) (Lab)]

That is okay. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thanks to the failure of the Conservative party, over 150,000 children will be waking up on Christmas day in temporary accommodation. If that is a record to be proud about, I have absolutely no idea what would make Opposition Members feel any shame. May I get two reassurances from the Minister? First, business needs certainty, so will he assure me that we will not see the chopping and changing we saw from the Conservative party and that we will stick by the policies? Secondly, the issue is not just about the planning rules but about capacity in our local councils, so what will he do to speed up the process of getting more planners into our local councils to add capacity to the system?

[Matthew Pennycook]

We need consistency in national policy. We had too many changes to the national planning policy framework under previous Governments. We intend this to be the big change in terms of substantial policy development. There will come a point next year when we will look to consult on NDMPs, and we will have to make changes to the framework to account for the evolution of those. As I said, today’s statement sets out the big changes we intend to make, and we want them to hold and to be delivered through this Parliament.

On local planning capacity and capability, I made reference in my statement to the £100 million of funding that is being injected into the system, in particular as part of the transitional arrangements to help local authorities that will fall foul of the requirements set out in the new framework today.