Affordable Rural Housing

David Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Bailey]

I am pleased that the Government are acting to level the playing field for first-time buyers, and I am sure that the Minister will elaborate further on that in his statement today.

[David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr Twigg. Similarly, in my constituency, the county council has built just 15,000 homes since 2013 and only 3,700 affordable homes, yet 2,000 people are in urgent need of housing. I am also delighted by this Government’s commitment to building 1.5 million homes, and I am sure my hon. Friend agrees that it would be fantastic to see an allocation within that for rural areas in the country.

[Olivia Bailey]

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend that we need more affordable housing in our rural areas; that is what I am seeking to address with this debate.

I will focus first on rural exception sites, which allow the delivery of small developments of affordable housing on the edges of rural communities, solely for local people. The role of rural housing enablers to deliver those are crucial, and I consider Connecting Communities in Berkshire to be the gold standard there. The team works in partnership with developers, landowners, local authorities, parish councils and local people to try to build truly affordable housing in rural exception sites. It is currently working to deliver affordable housing in Beenham, identifying housing need and suitable land in partnership with the parish council and the local community.

The Government are committed to funding the rural housing enabler programme until the end of March, and I know my constituents would welcome an update on its future from the Minister today. More widely, I also ask the Minister to provide an update on how he plans to promote exception sites as he prepares to consult on national development management policies in the coming months.

We also need to consider the impact of affordable and social housing stock being sold off by developers and moving out of the hands of the local community. I welcome the Government’s focus on the needs of social renters in the revised national planning policy framework and the commitment to explore how national policy can support social housing.

Sadly, constituents have shared with me that Sovereign, which owns a significant proportion of social housing in West Berkshire, has been selling off older properties in West Berkshire’s villages, which means that swathes of perfectly usable social housing stock is going into the private sector to be sold or rented at unaffordable prices. Housing that could be offered for social rent to local people who cannot afford to buy in their village is now being bought up and taken out of the community. I share the frustration of parish councils, who are working to increase the amount of affordable housing available through developing rural exception sites, when they see a social landlord putting existing affordable properties in the village up for sale. Will the Minister consider this particular problem as he consults on national policy to support the delivery of social housing?

Rural communities in Reading West and Mid Berkshire are at a turning point. They desperately need affordable housing in their local areas and they finally have a Labour Government laser-focused on delivering the housing that this country needs, focusing on policy reforms that enable local authorities to build the affordable homes that will keep communities together and supporting the work of organisations such as Connecting Communities in Berkshire and local parish councils such as Beenham. These communities need a local council to match that ambition.

I look forward to working with the Lib Dems in West Berkshire council to deliver vibrant villages, ending the era of bodged planning processes, internal politics and inaction, the era of being aware of the issue and acknowledging that something must be done, but being unwilling to take the action to tackle it. I am incredibly optimistic that we can achieve that, having seen the brilliant work that people in my constituency are doing to secure the future of their villages. I am confident that this Labour Government can and will deliver for them. From Beech Hill to Mortimer, from Beenham to Compton, from Hampstead Norreys to East and West llsley, and from Upper Bucklebury to Upper Basildon, we can build the affordable housing that is so vital for these beautiful villages to continue thriving far into the future.