House Building Targets: North East Bedfordshire

Christopher Pincher Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

It is a great pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham, and a great pleasure to reply to the debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), who is a doughty champion for his constituents. I am grateful to him for his kind words. He is right; we will always continue to engage in dialogue to make sure that we get planning reforms right, particularly for his constituency. I think I am speaking to him and his Bedfordshire colleagues later today. We will continue to maintain that dialogue.

I begin by reminding hon. Members that our country does not have enough homes. The average house price in England is about eight times higher than average gross earnings. In London and other parts of the country, including parts of the OxCam arc, it is around 12 times higher. I am pleased that the figures from 2019 to 2020 demonstrate that housing supply increased by some 244,000 new homes—the highest increase in more than 30 years—but we have an unwavering commitment to build more and, by the middle of this decade, to deliver at least 300,000 new homes each year, to ensure that we address the housing challenge.

We have already brought forward a number of proposals with the planning White Paper to improve housing supply—changes to permitted development rights, for example, and changes to use class orders, which make for a more flexible and responsive system and which will allow for the more gentle densification of urban and suburban areas, meaning that the weight can thereby be taken off some of the greener spaces that we all want to protect and enjoy.

We have a bold and ambitious vision for the future of planning and house building in our country, much of which was set out in the White Paper. We will bring forward the planning Bill in this Session of Parliament, which will make the planning process clearer, more accessible and more certain for all users, improving the quality, quantity and speed of home building.

Engagement, as my hon. Friend said, is absolutely crucial. It is not just about building more homes; it is also about engaging more people, and I will say a little bit more about that later in my remarks. We must ensure that the right homes are delivered in the right places for communities across our country and that new development brings with it the schools, hospitals, GP surgeries and transport links that local communities need and that my hon. Friend champions, while at the same time protecting our unmatchable natural environment.

My hon. Friend made a few remarks about local housing need. Let me just say in context that the local housing need numbers for his constituency remain those that we posited back in 2018. They have not changed as a result of the consultation we undertook last year. I also remind him that the standard method for local housing need calculation does not set a target; it is simply a starting point in the process of planning for new homes. Local authorities will still need to consider any constraints that they face locally to assess how many homes can be built in their area, as opposed to how many the local housing need calculation may suggest. I point him to my “Dear colleague” letter—from memory, I think it was on 18 December last year—which makes that very clear. I congratulate him on the work that his own council is doing in making sure that homes are built.

The “Planning for the future” White Paper, which we published last year, sets out our vision for the planning system. We had some 44,000 responses to the consultation, which was a very substantial amount of interest. We are working our way through them and consulting stakeholders big and small, as well as colleagues in the House, to ensure that we fully understand the feedback and that we represent and reflect it as best we can. We want to get this right; we do not want to just get it done quickly, and we are taking our time to address the feedback.

Our proposals for reforming the planning system will make it simpler, quicker and more accessible for local people to engage in, which is what I think my hon. Friend wants for his constituents. Now, something like 1% of local people get involved in local plan making—1%. That is not many more than the planning officials in a local authority and their blood relations. The number who get involved in an individual planning application rises to a whacking 3% of the local population. Yet, after what is oftentimes a very tortuous process—planning applications can take five years to go through—nine in every 10, 90%, are passed. That suggests to me a system that is not particularly engaging and not necessarily a very democratic one, in which communities have a real say in what is built around them. We want to change that with our reforms. We want to modernise the system and, through digitalisation, local communities can have a much clearer say in what is built for them, how it looks, where it goes, what the infrastructure should be and what the design of the buildings should be, too.

My hon. Friend pointed out the importance of “infrastructure first”. We agree with that. I will certainly be very happy to take forward his request with my colleagues in the Department for Education and in the Department of Health and Social Care, but let me say that the infrastructure levy that we propose is designed to ensure that developers pay for their fair share of affordable housing and infrastructure through a simpler, faster and more transparent infrastructure levy. We all know that section 106, which takes up the lion’s share of developer contributions, is slow, rather like the planning system; is opaque, rather like the planning system; and results, rather like the planning system, in outcomes that were not necessarily expected by the local community at the outset of their expectations.

The levy will be collected and spent at local level, with up-front infrastructure priorities such as schools and GP surgeries being at the heart of the proposition. It will also, incidentally, enable the speedy introduction of our First Homes initiative, which will enable local first-time buyers, including key workers, to get on the housing ladder by providing them with discounted properties. In constituencies such as my hon. Friend’s, and nearby constituencies, where the cost of housing is oftentimes significantly above average earnings, that will be a mechanism to help his local constituents stay local, get on the property ladder and achieve their aspiration of having a stake in the country.

That is outwith the national home building fund, which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced at the spending review and also at the Budget. It will be some £7.1 billion of funding for infrastructure, which we reckon will unlock something like 860,000 units for housing development across our country.

We also want to create more beautiful places by asking local authorities to develop their own design code, setting the standards that new developments will be expected to meet. One of the biggest concerns that many of our constituents have about new development that is proposed around them is what it will look like: “Is it going to look the way I would like my community to look?” Giving local people and local stakeholders much more say in what those design codes will be will make our planning system that much more consensual. It will also make the design of new builds really coherent with the local community, doing away with the “anywheresville” development that perhaps too many places have suffered from for too long.

We will publish the responses to the White Paper as soon as we can. However, as I said, we want to get this right and get it done quickly. There will be plenty of opportunities for colleagues across the House to continue to talk to Ministers to ensure that we get the proposals right.

My hon. Friend raised a number of questions about the OxCam arc. Let me say in introduction that we believe the OxCam arc, over quite a period of time—to the middle of this century—can support the creation of 2 million extra jobs and add over £110 billion a year to our economy. It is one of the fastest growing economic areas of our country, so there is a real opportunity to engender prosperity and growth for people. However, I am conscious that he has some concerns, so let me say that the ambition to build 1 million homes in the OxCam arc was a recommendation of the National Infrastructure Commission’s “Partnering for Prosperity” report. While we want to see more homes built, and let us remember that the OxCam arc is not a small space—it stretches from the north of Northamptonshire right down to the border with London—let me be clear that the 1 million homes number is not a specific Government policy or indeed a target. However, we do want to maximise the number of homes that can be built across the country.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the importance of the environment. We want to ensure that we are baking the Environment Bill’s requirements for biodiversity net gain and nature recovery networks into our planning reforms. We are working out how most effectively to do that as the Environment Bill becomes an Act and we need to take it into account.

My hon. Friend also mentioned East West Rail. The railway will pass through North East Bedfordshire. I point him to the commitment that the Government have made to explore new settlement opportunities around stations such as Tempsford and the St Neots area so that, subject to appropriate community consultation, development can be delivered in the right places and in the right way. We are supporting Bedford Borough Council to develop its locally led vision for the realisation of the full benefits of East West Rail. I am sure that my hon. Friend has contributed to the consultation, which closes today, and I encourage anybody else who still has the time to do so. However, may I reinforce the message that while we are working with places, including Bedford, to understand opportunities for more housing and what advantages East West Rail will bring, housing targets continue to be determined by planning policy and by local plans?

My hon. Friend also asked to hear a commitment from the Government about the involvement of local people and local communities in the planning process, and when changes are made their voices need to be heard. Let me agree with him. It is absolutely our intent to engage more people in the planning process at an earlier point in the process so they can have a real say in how their communities are designed—what should go where and what it should look like. We believe that the proposals, which we are refining and will bring forward shortly, will achieve that purpose of more engagement and more say where it counts.

If I have not answered my hon. Friend’s remaining questions, I am happy to write to him, meet him or speak to him through whatever forum to allay any concerns or address any ideas he has. May I congratulate him on securing this important debate for his constituents? I hope that he and you, Sir Graham, will see that the Government are committed to delivering a planning system that will truly level up for all communities in our country; a system that is fit for purpose and that works for all. It will deliver a faster, more transparent and more predictable outcome for everybody, so that we build the homes that we need, to the design that we want and to the standards that we expect, with the infrastructure that communities need, and we can all be proud of our planning for the future.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No.10(6)).