Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

We need more homes, affordable and safe, but homes built in the right place, and it is vital that we take a brownfield-first approach. I want to focus on the hard work of shaping places. That way, colleagues who insist that their own constituencies would be wrong for new housing can instead support the necessary investments to address the viability constraints faced in many cities, such as Stoke-on-Trent, that are happy to build.

Just to put this into context, despite the viability challenges last year, Stoke-on-Trent built more than the average London borough, and 99% on brownfield sites. The decades of decline we saw under Labour have ended. Stoke-on-Trent is on the up, and according to projections from the World Population Review, it will hit a new post-war population peak towards the end of this decade. It is vital that we receive investment to help deliver new homes and overcome the current constraints of a relatively low-value market.

The Government’s levelling-up fund and brownfield fund are hugely welcome, and Stoke-on-Trent must receive its fair share. This support will enable us to overcome the remediation of the most challenging sites and convert empty town centre properties to new uses. This is particularly important for Longton to build on the work of the heritage action zone and the nearly £1 million PSICA—partnership schemes in conservation areas—scheme set up by the city council and Historic England. Further investment locally is likely to realise significant results and leverage private investment on top.

Although values remain relatively low, we are seeing strong growth, and Zoopla recently reported Stoke-on-Trent as being in the top five busiest housing markets. In some tenures, the Stoke-on-Trent market is relatively untested, but when new types of development do happen, developers have consistently been surprised by how high demand has been.

Affordability is less of an issue. It is certainly not a non-issue, just less of an issue in north Staffordshire. I do not in any way want to underplay this, however. In parts of my constituency, such as Newstead and Blurton South, the average property price is 7.9 times the average salary, as reported by the Stoke Sentinel, but this is more of an issue of low wages. Stoke-on-Trent has one of the lowest-paid workforces in the entire country. That is why it is also hugely welcome to see the proposals for the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, helping ensure our workforce have the skills they need to access better-paid work and get on to the housing ladder.

We also desperately need to mitigate past transport planning mistakes. Indeed, this was raised only last week at the launch of our city forum. It should be not just an afterthought to development. In particular, it is vital that the Government support our bids to reopen the Stoke-Leek line and to reopen the station at Meir. It will also be essential for north Staffordshire to receive bus funding.

There is a real opportunity to level up towns and cities so that they become increasingly the right place for affordable and safe new homes. With the right support from Government, cities such as Stoke-on-Trent, with multiple hectares of brownfield land, can be the key part of meeting the Government’s housing needs and building back better.