Affordable Rural Housing

Helena Dollimore Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[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.

[Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

May I just check that the Member has sought permission to speak?

--- Later in debate ---

[Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West and Mid Berkshire (Olivia Bailey) on securing this debate on the important topic of the affordability of housing in our rural communities. I represent a seaside community; around 30% of my constituency is coastal villages, where we acutely feel the pressures of the rural housing crisis. As other Members have spoken about, our community has seen the rise of Airbnbs and second homes, putting on real pressure and pushing up rental prices and house prices in our community. We have not seen enough affordable homes built in our communities. The situation now facing our villages and rural areas is that many young people find that they cannot afford to live in the villages they grew up in and are forced to move away from family.

[John Whitby (Derbyshire Dales) (Lab)]

My constituency faces a chronic lack of housing as well, which disproportionately impacts young people; they face a future where they cannot afford to live in the place where they grew up. Some 8.4% of all residential properties in the dales are not the primary homes of residents. Does my hon. Friend recognise the significant impact that second homes and holiday lets have on housing supply and prices in rural areas?

[Helena Dollimore]

That is a pressure that many of our rural communities face. There is definitely a contribution that holiday lets can make to the local tourism economy, but many of us agree that we need to get the right balance between supporting tourism and providing homes for local families.

It is so often the case that many local people in the rural areas of my constituency cannot afford to rent or buy in the areas they grew up in and are forced to move further away. We also see that, when developments do happen in those villages, too often new-build developments are given the green light with zero affordable homes on those sites. Just last year, in Peasmarsh in my constituency, 41 homes were given the green light on a greenfield site, with zero affordable homes. We see developers using loopholes around viability to wriggle out of their responsibility to deliver affordable housing, and too often councillors feel that their hands are tied by the current legislation. I urge the Government, as part of the reforms to the planning system, to ensure we stop developers getting away with wriggling out of their responsibility to deliver affordable homes.

It is also clear that, with the right focus and the right local leadership, we can get this right. I draw attention to a brilliant local community-led housing scheme in Icklesham, a small village in my constituency just outside Hastings. The village came together to form the Icklesham Parish Community Land Trust and built 15 housing units for local people, all for social rent. If a village the size of Icklesham can do it—let me tell hon. Members, it is a very small area; I would be delighted to welcome the Minister there—anywhere can deliver affordable social housing, whether rural or urban. That is what we need to build on.

As we move forward with the vital mission of building 1.5 million homes under this Labour Government, we must ensure that our rural communities see the benefit and that developers cannot wriggle out of their commitments to deliver affordable housing.