Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Jane Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)]

At the heart of the Queen’s Speech was a commitment to our nation’s recovery and to building back better, greener and stronger. Planning reform is fundamental to achieving that, and I welcome the announcement in the Queen’s Speech that reform will focus on ensuring that homes and infrastructure can be delivered more quickly and, crucially, that local plans will now be able to provide more certainty on the type, scale and design of development permitted on different categories of land. Beautiful villages such as Wymeswold, with its concentric circles of development over centuries and little nooks and crannies of growth over time, need to be able to maintain their character while some growth takes place.

Since becoming an MP, I have advocated more power being transferred from developers and officials such as the Planning Inspectorate and put into the hands of local communities, and local plans becoming, in effect, the tender document of local residents, instructing the market on what local people want and what will work for their community. Grown-up conversations need to take place at local level, recognising that we need housing development but equally recognising the needs of local people and the communities in which they live. For too long, developments have been imposed on communities by the lack of a five-year land supply, or by taking surplus housing numbers from adjoining places—from Labour-run Leicester City Council, for example—into Sileby, Barrow and Shepshed. That needs to change. Linked with a 30-month timeframe to produce a local plan, that will transform the current set-up of delay, repetition of action and the inevitable outcome of piecemeal development, which often carries with it local criticism, to the unwarranted detriment of local planners, whose expertise is not currently recognised.

The average house price in Loughborough is nearly £199,000, but median earnings are £31,000—a house price to earnings ratio of 6.4. That is not an easy target for young and first-time buyers and those on low incomes. We need local people to be able to afford to stay in the area where they grew up, so I was delighted that, alongside planning reform, the Government last week reaffirmed their commitment to helping more people own their own home through the affordable homes programme, the new mortgage guarantee scheme and first homes programme. Furthermore, if the focus is put on turning empty floors above shops into affordable homes, we can also help to create a strong customer base for our high streets and town centres and so aid recovery while protecting our essential green spaces and areas of separation between settlements.

On the subject of rental reform, we have a thriving lettings market in my constituency, thanks in part to our large student population. While the vast majority of landlords provide safe accommodation and treat their tenants well, from time to time I hear of tenants who are in distress because they are living in unacceptable conditions, or their tenancy is cut short. I look forward to hearing the Government’s plans on housing and planning in greater detail over the coming months.