Planning Committees: Reform
Debate between Gideon Amos and Lindsay Hoyle(1 week, 6 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
As there are 8.5 million people in England with unmet housing need, the Liberal Democrats welcome the plans for further house building. For us, the priority has to be the delivery of social homes. We need 150,000 annually, and we need housing that local people can genuinely afford. On the topic of social housing, I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Let us be clear: when Whitehall takes planning decisions out of the hands of local councillors, it is taking decisions out of the hands of local people. That is undemocratic, and we would reverse that. Instead, Government should unblock the thousands of permitted homes that are not being built—for example, through “use it or lose it” permissions, by having more than just one extra planning officer per local authority, and by allowing councils to set their fees and to ringfence that income for planning departments. Will the Minister allow councils to set their application fees, and ensure that that funding is ringfenced for planning departments?