New Build Homes Standards: North Yorkshire

Jacob Young Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) for securing this important debate. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety has asked me to offer him a meeting to discuss these matters in greater detail.

As a fellow Yorkshireman, born and bred, I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough shares my enormous pride in representing a constituency in God’s own country. I have huge respect for his tireless work over the years to promote the interests of the hard-working people and families of north Yorkshire. His constituency, like mine, is made up of strong communities that are proud of their past and aspirational for their future, which he and I know must be built on a bedrock of good-quality housing—safe, warm, decent, affordable homes that provide the solid foundation that people need to get on in life and unlock their potential.

Good homes hold the key to our plans to level up opportunity across Yorkshire and around the country, while helping our local economies to grow. That is why I am proud to support the Secretary of State and the Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety in delivering those homes through our long-term plan for housing, with 2.5 million new homes built in total since 2010, 180,000 of which are in Yorkshire and the Humber.

However, as my hon. Friend rightly said, the standard of some new builds, and the estates that they are part of, are simply not up to scratch. Like him, I have heard of cases where developers are moving on to new projects before the places that they are building are properly finished, leaving residents to deal with the extensive snagging or to live in limbo on unadopted roads, such as those in the estates that he mentioned. That is not fair, not right, and frankly not on.

While recognising that most new developments across the country are already of a decent standard, constructed by the many good building firms operating nationwide, we are clear that more needs to be done to address homebuyers’ concerns where standards have fallen short. We have been taking action to ensure that happens: reforming building control as part of the biggest changes to the construction sector in a generation; and strengthening warranties to give homebuyers greater protection.

My hon. Friend asked how my Department monitors quality in our work with the sector, and whether the new homes ombudsman will play a bigger role. I am pleased to tell him that quality is at the heart of our plans, from the future homes standards to our work to improve redress with the new homes ombudsman, which once launched will help to drive up quality across the industry. My hon. Friend also asked what happens if a developer is not registered with the new homes quality code. The new homes quality code is voluntary, but through the Building Safety Act 2022 we legislated so that we can bring forward a single code of conduct, which will be statutory. That was also recommended in the recent Competition and Markets Authority report, to which we will soon publish our response.

My hon. Friend asked about the shortage of relevant skills in the workforce and whether apprenticeships can help to address it. As a former apprentice, that subject is close to my heart, as I know it is to his. That is why I am delighted to tell him that we are already working to boost skills training across the industry by fully funding, for young people up to the age of 21, new apprenticeships working for small businesses, and that we have amended the apprenticeship levy so that small and medium-sized enterprises will have greater opportunities to develop the skills that the industry needs.

My hon. Friend requested an update on future homes and building standards, particularly in relation to energy efficiency. I can tell him that from next year, the future homes standard will ensure that all new homes produce, on average, upwards of 75% less carbon dioxide emissions than those built to the 2013 requirement. Through the work of our new Building Safety Regulator—introduced under the Building Safety Act 2022—we are improving construction standards across the industry.

Let me directly address some of the constituency matters that my hon. Friend raised. Local authorities can use section 106 planning obligations to secure a commitment from developers to provide appropriate facilities for new build projects such as those he mentioned, including play areas, roads and drainage. It is up to developers and local planning authorities to agree matters relating to the timing and funding of delivery, and it is right that local authorities retain such decisions.

In the meantime, we are working with the building industry to ensure that it takes this issue seriously. Ultimately, it is private developers, not the state, that hold the key to raising standards. Only by local and central Government working together with developers can we ensure that new homes being built in Yorkshire and across the country are safe, decent, warm and finished to a high standard, and that buyers in my hon. Friend’s constituency and elsewhere are treated fairly. We must all play our part to ensure that that happens.

Question put and agreed to.