Rough Sleeping: Families with Children

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing this important debate. I will repeat and add to a couple of points that we have already heard.

It is not an unfortunate inevitability but a national disgrace that, in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth, families with children are still being pushed into homelessness and, in some cases, on to the streets. We are a country with immense resources and capacity to solve problems—one that spends tens of billions of pounds on weapons every year, and that has just opened Crossrail, the Elizabeth line, after one of Europe’s largest construction projects—yet we cannot guarantee that every child in this country has a safe and secure roof over their head when they go to sleep at night. That is a fundamentally moral contradiction, and it should weigh heavily on all of us, as parliamentarians with the collective power to change that status quo.

The statistics alone paint a bleak picture. In autumn 2025, an estimated 4,793 people were sleeping rough on a single night in England: a record high, and a 171% increase since 2010. We must remember that the figure, which is a snapshot of just one night, is widely acknowledged to have been undercounted. Even more shockingly, recent reports suggest that families with young children have been forced to sleep rough after being refused emergency local authority accommodation, in direct contravention of the law.

As we know, children in temporary accommodation are still classed as homeless, and the numbers show that over 175,000 children are currently homeless in temporary accommodation. Based on the most recent council-level data, as of June 2025 more than 600 children were living in temporary accommodation in Kirklees, where my Dewsbury and Batley constituency sits. These children are part of the around 375 family households in Kirklees in temporary accommodation as of March 2025. That temporary accommodation is costing Kirklees between £7 million and £8 million, which is money that could be better spent providing other public services.

Recent reports have shockingly suggested that families with young children are being forced to sleep rough after being refused emergency local authority accommodation, despite that being in direct contravention of the law. If families are reaching the point where they are unable to prevent their children from sleeping on the streets, in cars or anywhere else not designed for human habitation, then something in the system is clearly broken and the state is failing in its most basic obligations to its citizens.

One constituent, who has been contacting me regularly over the past several weeks, is a single mother with three children, one of whom has autism and asthma. The council has been unable to provide suitable accommodation for her and her children, and she has been sleeping in her car for the past several weeks. Her car is now uninhabitable, as it has been written off. She has been forced to accept temporary bed and breakfast accommodation. It is not suitable for her children, but she has nowhere else to go. I am sure that Kirklees is doing everything it can to help the family, but given the lack of resources and the lack of adequate family social housing, such examples are not as rare as they should be.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

The hon. Member is right to highlight the resource challenges that local authorities have. From an outward perspective, my Chichester constituency is a very affluent area, with lower levels of homelessness, but in 1989 a gentleman died on our streets, and so a charity called Stonepillow was formed. It has gone on to support thousands of people experiencing homelessness across the Chichester and Bognor area. Does the hon. Member agree that although the charitable and voluntary sector has admirably stepped in where local authorities are too poorly funded to support people, it should not have to do so?

[Iqbal Mohamed]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. We all pay tribute to all the charities across the country, including the one in her constituency, that are stepping in to help people in times of desperate need, when Government and councils have not been able to provide the necessary support. I pay tribute to all those charities, but they should not have to step in to provide the basic necessities for children and families in our country.

Part of the failure undoubtedly lies with the immense financial pressures facing local authorities. Councils across the country are struggling to meet their duties to house those at risk of homelessness, including children, because of skyrocketing costs, limited housing supply and shockingly overstretched budgets. The cost of temporary accommodation alone has placed extraordinary financial strain on local government, with councils now covering more than half of those costs themselves, according to a recent analysis by the Institute for Government.

I see the consequences of this crisis at first hand in my constituency, where housing and homelessness are among the issues most frequently raised by my constituents. My office regularly hears from families who are on the brink of losing their homes and from people facing unfair evictions, struggling with rising rents or desperately seeking emergency accommodation at a time of unimaginable crisis. Increasingly, we see that these are not isolated individuals, but families with children who are living with the constant fear of having nowhere to go. Local authorities want to help, but they are operating with limited resources in the face of overwhelming demand.

Another shocking incident, reported by local media at the start of this year, is that a single mum of three, including a 12-year-old daughter with cancer, has been housed by my local authority in a one-bedroom flat with damp and mould for the past two years, after a no-fault eviction by a private landlord who wanted to sell their property. Such stories mean that we must be honest about the scale of the challenge facing us and the requisite ambition to adequately address it.

I have a number of questions for the Minister. First, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that no local authority unlawfully refuses emergency accommodation to families with children, and how will compliance with the statutory duties be monitored? Secondly, what additional financial support will be provided to councils that are struggling with the costs of temporary accommodation? Finally, what specific measures within the Government’s homelessness strategy are targeted at preventing families with children from ever reaching the point of rough sleeping in the first place?

Ultimately, this debate is about the kind of country we want to be. A society that allows children to sleep on the streets is a society that has lost sight of its most basic humanity. Ending rough sleeping among families is not simply a policy challenge, it is a moral imperative, and one that this Parliament must treat with the urgency it deserves.

Local Government Reorganisation

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

That decision was taken under different legislation and in different circumstances. It is very important that local government reorganisation is completed before going ahead with the mayoral elections, to which we remain committed, so that this happens in an ordered way.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

West Sussex county council should never have been offered the opportunity to postpone for a second year running, effectively gifting the Conservative-controlled administration a seven-year term. Now, with democracy restored, there are just 74 days until the polls, so will West Sussex still be expected to work to the original timescale for the creation of unitary authorities and a combined authority that will sit with the mayoralty, or will that also be delayed? How much additional support will be provided to the council, and specifically to the staff at West Sussex, who are now working to a very tight schedule to deliver elections for their residents?

[Steve Reed]

We are proceeding to local government reorganisation on the agreed timetable, with no changes envisaged. We have made additional funding available to support capacity needs, to ensure that reorganisation can go ahead as expected, and I am not aware of any concerns from councils about their ability to deliver these elections. Indeed, councils have delivered snap general elections across the whole country in less time than remains between now and the date of the local elections in May.

Local Government Reorganisation: Referendums

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Rosindell]

I am not going to give way because I know what the hon. Member is going to say. In my borough there have been no delays or restructuring for many years, so it has not affected my area. That is why I have not spoken about delayed elections in other areas; that is for other Members to have done during those restructures.

I would love local government to be restructured in the Greater London area—I have been calling for that for many years. Sadly, my former party refused to countenance such a thing. Tony Blair recreated the GLC under the guise of the GLA and introduced the elected Mayor of London, which nobody really wants and is very costly. We had the opportunity for 14 years to do something about that.

The hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) also has concerns about the way that the Mayor of London and the GLA have operated, and he will reply from the Opposition Front Bench later. I am interested to hear whether a future Government that the Conservatives are part of will be radical and actually do something about the artificial local government structure that has been imposed on us in the Greater London area.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight a democratic deficit. West Sussex county council, which is Conservative-led, has chosen to delays its elections for another year, which means that its county councillors will end up serving seven-year terms, without seeking a democratic mandate since 2021. Does he share my concern that the constituents of Romford did not elect a Reform MP?

--- Later in debate ---

[Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a Norfolk county councillor. I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) on securing the debate. Might I say how welcome it is that, unlike the Norfolk Conservatives, he is a Conservative who thinks that local government reorganisation requires more democracy, not less?

The Labour Government’s novel approach of centralised devolution has put an enormous strain on local authorities and caused a great deal of concern for my local residents. North Norfolk is an area with unique characteristics, and we have been well served in recent years by a Liberal Democrat-led district council that is well armed with local knowledge to deliver for my constituents.

We have the oldest population in the country, an economy that relies heavily on tourism, and unique environmental factors ranging from England’s largest seal colony to the fastest-eroding coastline in north-west Europe. It beggars belief that the Government, and Norfolk county council’s Conservatives, think that all that could be easily handled by one local authority that also has to contend with the needs of a further 800,000 people and 1,700 square miles of county. Whitehall’s demand to arbitrarily find populations of 500,000 or more for authorities proves that they have not taken the reality of rural areas into account.

Across the Government’s programme for local government reorganisation, little consideration has been given to the specific needs and characteristics of rural and coastal communities. Trying to bundle us together with inland areas completely misunderstands the unique challenges and opportunities we face, and risks worsening both. Furthermore, lumping in our rural economy to compete for funding and resources with an urban economic centre in Norwich and the surrounding area risks pulling support from our local businesses and preventing us from unleashing the rural powerhouse that North Norfolk can be. That is why I, and the vast majority of Norfolk’s councils and MPs, support the Future Norfolk proposal for three local authorities, and I strongly urge the Minister’s Department to go ahead with that.

I know that similar concerns and challenges are felt across the country, with Whitehall trying to dictate devolution and fundamentally misunderstanding much of how the world works outside SW1. It was deeply disappointing to see the Government delay our mayoral election for two further years. Devolution is important in Norfolk and Suffolk to deliver a brighter future for both counties and seize upon the new powers and funding from Government to drive change forward. We are left behind yet again.

I am concerned about the financial black hole that the decision has left, not only in Norfolk but for many authorities with delayed elections. We have heard today about the end of the shared prosperity fund, which was set to coincide with the arrival of combined authority funding and allow for a smooth transition to continue funding for important work done by local authorities. However, the delay means that we now see a cliff edge in September this year, with no support until we elect our mayors in May 2028. Will the Minister confirm what consideration the Department gave to that issue when it delayed our elections? What support is she going to provide for the stretched local authorities that have seen their balance sheets take yet another hit from the Government?

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Our mayoral election in Sussex has been postponed until 2028, but the statutory instrument for the creation of combined authorities is still going ahead, and two elected representatives from each local authority are going to form the combined authority. That means Conservative councillors who have not had a democratic mandate since 2021 will create the combined authority; does my hon. Friend agree that that is the reason why they are holding on and delaying elections?

[Steff Aquarone]

Not only do I cynically agree with my hon. Friend, but I think that is precisely why it is so important to have local elections, because of not just the time that will have elapsed but the very important the decisions that authorities will make as part of the local government reorganisation that, as she pointed out, has already been legislated for.

I thank the Minister’s colleague in the Lords, Baroness Taylor, who made the picturesque journey all the way to Cromer to meet local leaders in North Norfolk, and who also made time to meet me and hear my concerns. Frustratingly, her considered approach does not seem to be reflected across Government. On much of the devolution agenda, the left hand does not seem to know what the right hand is doing. The Government are giving councils new statutory responsibilities and costs, which must be delivered ahead of LGR, but without providing any certainty about how to ensure that capital investment and budgetary decisions will be well suited to the set-up in a couple of years’ time.

There are valid reasons for, and drawbacks to, having referendums around the programme of local government reorganisation. I can understand sympathetic arguments from both sides. However, I fully understand why, given the track record of Norfolk Conservatives, my constituents are very worried about the blank cheque that the Government handed to them to work on LGR and devolution. Our devolution was delayed for years under the last Government, while the Tories in Norfolk fought among themselves as to who would be coronated as the elected leader. Our devolution was then pulled entirely, before being redrawn by the Labour Government.

When we look at how the Conservatives have run Norfolk since 2017, is it any wonder that my constituents might find the prospect of a referendum on their work appealing? The Conservatives rode roughshod over the views of local residents, threatened to evict people with bailiffs, and acted like playground bullies because people in Sheringham dared to oppose their plans to bulldoze the bus shelter. They are denying children in Holt a long-promised primary school, despite being given the money by the Government and the site being there to build on, and they have allowed our transport system to crumble, spending millions on shiny new buses in Norwich rather than embarking on a much-needed rural transport overhaul.

The Conservatives in Norfolk are also allowing the loss of vital convalescence care beds in Cromer and Cossey, which is worsening our healthcare crisis. They have driven our council to the brink of bankruptcy and are now having to go cap in hand to the Government to get bailed out after blowing £50 million on the white elephant that is the Norwich western link road, without an inch of road to show for it.

Now, to the shock of nobody, the Conservatives in Norfolk want to chicken out of elections for a second year running. They do not even have the guts to admit it: the letter from their administration to the Government was so unclear that they were asked to write it again and explain what they meant. Their assessment of whether our election should be cancelled read like a letter from Vicky Pollard: “Yeah, but no, but—”.

I made the point to a previous Secretary of State that the Conservative administration in Norfolk is totally unfit to preside over Norfolk’s future, and I remain steadfast in that opinion. Failing Conservative administrations have been propped up by the Government and allowed to do this across the country—[Interruption.] Sorry, Ms McVey.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I am more than happy to sit down with my hon. Friend and discuss the matter in more detail.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

Constituents on a new build estate in Chichester were ordered without warning to pay an extra £180 a month on top of the £212 that they were already paying. When the Government bring forward their planned legislation, will they stamp out these enormous price hikes and will they hold road management companies to account?

[Matthew Pennycook]

As I have said, we are intending to switch on the relevant provisions in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 that provide consumers with protections. I would encourage the hon. Lady to submit her views to the consultation, and I am more than happy to pick this up with her outside the Chamber.

Planning Reform

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I have a lot of time for the hon. Gentleman. It sounds to me—I may be guessing here—that he has a specific constituency matter that he might like to discuss with me, and I would be happy to do so.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

The Minister referred in his statement to the housing crisis we face, yet there are an estimated 1.4 million homes with planning permissions that are yet to be built. We know that developers favour land banking—waiting until the situation is so acute that they can then deliver those homes for more money, or renege on their commitment to deliver social homes by claiming that the cost pressures mean that they can no longer be delivered. We have seen that in my constituency. Does the Minister therefore agree that “use it or lose it” planning permission would get houses built, and that he does not have a housing crisis, but a building crisis?

[Matthew Pennycook]

There are real challenges with housing delivery. I refer the hon. Lady to the proposals on build-out generally that we have outlined and sought feedback on. She is absolutely right in the thrust of her question: we are overly reliant as a country on a handful of volume developers. That is precisely why we are encouraging other providers to get in the game through the package we have announced today for small and medium-sized house builders, so that we can have the diversified house building market that we need to bring forward delivery in the volumes the country requires.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend has long championed co-operatives, and I recognise his commitment to expanding co-ops in London and across the country. With that example, he draws our attention to the benefits that they can provide. We are considering opportunities to legislate to establish a legal framework for a co-operative housing tenure, which would help formalise the rights and responsibilities of both co-operatives and their tenants, and make co-operative housing a more attractive option. As my hon. Friend will know, I am more than happy to discuss the matter with him further at a suitable opportunity in the near future.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

In my Chichester constituency, a lack of available land drives high-density schemes in rural villages that lack the necessary infrastructure, and the schemes quickly become unpopular locally. Community land trusts such as the Westbourne Land Trust gain local support and deliver affordable homes, and that gives communities a real stake in that development. Does the Minister agree that community buy-in is essential if the Government are to reach their target for building homes? What steps are being taken to help community land trusts go from the planning phase to building homes?

[Matthew Pennycook]

The hon. Lady outlined another benefit of community land trusts: getting local buy-in. The availability of land is an issue for CLTs. I have already set out some of the ways that we are supporting them through new investment. As the Secretary of State said earlier, the new social and affordable housing programme will be designed with the flexibility necessary to support a greater diversity of social and affordable housing supply, including community-led housing.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Vikki Slade]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern that some areas risk being left behind by this muddled approach. I ask the Secretary of State for assurances on how she will ensure that such areas do not fall further behind neighbours that are further along in the programme.

We Liberal Democrats are pleased that the Government are reversing the Conservatives’ disastrous decision to use first past the post for mayoral and police commissioner elections—it is ridiculous that one of the mayors elected this May won on just 25% of the vote—but the Government must go further in making votes fair. We believe that the Government should bring in the alternative vote system so that voters’ voices are properly heard. We maintain that if the Government believe in majority support for elected officials, they should extend that mandate to MPs and councillors, too.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

The Sussex mayoral elections that are due to take place in May next year will use the current first-past-the-post system rather than the proposed system that the Government say they favour. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is totally unfair on Sussex residents that everybody who is a year behind in the programme will get to vote using a better system?

[Vikki Slade]

I will come to that later in my speech, when I will share the concerns of electoral officials about whether the legislation can deliver in time for any of the changes scheduled for next year. Although I recognise that there is an anomaly for next year, even electoral officials are worried about the Bill’s timeline and the ability to make any changes for 2026 and for those who have already had elections delayed.

Across the sector, there are serious concerns about the power of the commissioners that will be appointed by mayors—people with significant influence but little scrutiny. There is concern that they will hold more sway than elected leaders of local authorities but without any democratic accountability. In the very centre, the Secretary of State will retain sweeping powers to merge authorities and extend functions without parliamentary oversight or local consent. I am seeking an explanation of how and when those powers would be used, so that we can assure our local leaders that they will not be overridden.

There is widespread concern about the loss of highly skilled, experienced councillors through the removal of district councils. I noted the Secretary of State’s concerns about putting power into the hands of too few people. How will she ensure that there is not a democratic and skills deficit and that people are properly represented across these larger regions?

For the last decade, the Conservative Government have cut funding to councils but forced them to do more. Their economic mismanagement and failure to fix social care has left many councils on the brink of collapse. This Bill was an opportunity for real local government reform, but it is an opportunity missed.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos]

It has been an honour and a privilege to represent the Liberal Democrats at the pleasure of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill in Committee and at all stages of the Bill. I thank my staff team for their work and my colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches for their spirited amendments across all topics; in fact, we put forward 78 amendments in Committee, which I can only imagine was an absolute joy for the Minister and his officials to respond to.

I pay tribute to Members across the House for their work on this Bill. It has stimulated amendments from all corners of the House, as well as great debate, including my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) working with the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) on their amendment on rural housing exception sites, to give just one example of the cross-party approach from different corners of the House towards improving the Bill.

On Second Reading, where the Liberal Democrats were the only party—except Plaid Cymru—to vote against the Bill because of our principled concerns about it, we set out to address our concerns about people’s rights, communities and fairness, and the effects the Bill will have on nature. We sought to address all those topics with our amendments.

First, on rights for people and individuals, as the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), pointed out yesterday, what greater right could there be than the right to a decent, affordable home to bring up one’s family? We championed our proposal for 150,000 social homes a year to be built as a key target for this Government, and continue to encourage them through all means, including votes in this place, to move towards a target for building social homes, rather than simply a target for building millions of homes; without that, the target will be led by private market housing, which, on its own, is no solution to the problems we face.

We sought to address communities and fairness by seeking to remove the power that the Government will grant themselves, and all future Governments, to interfere in the running of councils and to give decisions to employees and planning consultants over and above the heads of the councillors who employ them, and who are meant to be accountable for those decisions. For the first time, decisions could be made by council officers and consultants, and, though every single elected councillor of that authority may disagree, those decisions will stand in their name, and councillors will not have the power to do anything to change them. That cannot be right.

It will undermine communities’ trust in politics and our planning system—a system in which people engage more at a local level than perhaps any other aspect of local government. The more people see the centralisation of planning powers, the standard method and guidance written by Whitehall, the appeals process dominated by Whitehall, and now even their own councillors not allowed to make decisions, the more we will damage communities’ trust in politics and their belief in the planning system and the system of local democracy, which is so important to our country. That is the principal reason that we object so strongly to the removal of powers from councillors in the Bill.

We support a number of the measures in the Bill; there are many good measures. In passing, I pay tribute to the Minister for his work on bringing back strategic planning, on which he has worked for a number of years. However, we are gravely concerned about its effect on nature. The National Trust has called the Bill a “licence to kill nature”. It is right, of course, to bring in a system for phosphates, for instance, which could be mitigated at a strategic level through environmental delivery plans, but it is wrong to completely remove from that process the principle of “first do no harm” on the site on which we are developing. We should enshrine the mitigation hierarchy in this new system in the Bill, so that, first, we seek to avoid harm to the site, then to mitigate it and, finally, to offset it, but only where that is absolutely necessary. Our new clause 1 would have put that protection of nature into this new system.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

I am sure my hon. Friend knows his legislation very well, but the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 stated that Ministers have a duty to further the purposes of protected landscapes such as national landscapes. Does he think that we have missed an opportunity in this Bill by not giving national landscapes a seat at the table as statutory consultees, like, for instance, Chichester harbour in my constituency?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend. I know she has had constructive conversations with the Minister with responsibility for building safety, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North and Kimberley (Alex Norris), but I am happy to meet her.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

Three hundred social homes are at risk in my Chichester constituency, despite having outline planning permission, because developers are rejecting offers from registered providers. Will the Minister commit to action to stop developers evading their obligation, and will he meet me to help me protect the delivery of these social homes?

[Matthew Pennycook]

We recognise the challenges around uncontracted section 106 units. A complex array of factors has led us to this point, but we are giving serious consideration to how we unblock the problem, and how we get those section 106 homes allocated and people living in them.

Local Housing Need Assessment Reform

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse, for the first time, I think. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne) on securing this vital debate. My constituency of Chichester has been grappling with serious housing challenges, which have been continually worsened by a deeply flawed planning process. The demand for social housing vastly outstrips supply. Private rentals are prohibitively expensive, and sky-rocketing house prices have made home ownership increasingly out of reach for those who have grown up in my constituency.

Housing developments should enhance our communities, delivering affordable, sustainable homes alongside essential infrastructure, but the current approach does the opposite. The standard method for assessing housing need imposes arbitrary national targets on local authorities, which ignore the specific needs and constraints of each area. It fails to deliver genuinely affordable homes and does little to reflect local demand or geography. As my hon. Friend highlighted, the standard method fails to address above-inflation house price rises. Our average house price in Chichester, according to the Office for National Statistics, is £454,000. In just one year, to February 2025, the price of a semi-detached house in Chichester rose by 8.1%, yet Chichester has seen huge-scale development in recent years. Meanwhile, the average salary in my constituency is under £30,000, which is below the UK median.

When new homes are delivered, they often enter the market at prices higher than the local median, as the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) mentioned. That artificially inflates the affordability ratio, which then increases future housing targets, creating a vicious cycle that drives prices even further out of reach. It does nothing to address the real challenges that my constituents face in getting on the housing ladder. Instead, it leaves new developments affordable only to those who are moving into the area, not those already living there. At the same time, councils face an uphill battle in trying to ensure that developments, required by the same standard method, include adequate levels of social and affordable housing.

At present, we have over 2,000 families on the wait list for social homes in Chichester. Any development of 11 homes or more is expected to provide at least 10% as affordable housing. Both Chichester and Arun district councils, which sit within my constituency, request 30% social and affordable housing in their local plans to address some of the unmet need locally, but those targets are continuously undermined by viability assessments submitted by the developers, because of the high land prices in our constituency.

A recent example is a 2,200 home development to the west of Bersted, approved by Arun district council on the basis that it was included in the Conservative local plan from 2022. There is strong opposition in the community to the proposal, not only because those homes will add to the strain on local infrastructure, but because only 10% of those homes will be “affordable”. The very definition of affordable is fundamentally flawed when even 80% of unaffordable is still unaffordable for so many people. The developer claimed that a higher proportion of social and affordable homes on the site would have made the project commercially unviable, so the council was left with no power to enforce its requested levels of social and affordable houses.

That is why I was pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) tabled an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, calling on the Government to adopt a separate social housing target. I am sure that would be welcomed by local authorities up and down the UK, because they are best placed to know what their communities need, not the developers that are trying to build in them.

The standard method also fundamentally fails to consider any geographical constraints, which ties the hands of councils during land allocation. In my area, 70% of Chichester district is covered by national park, with an additional 5% designated as national landscape at Chichester harbour. That means that our ambitious housing target, which has doubled under the Labour Government, must be met within just 25% of available land, yet the housing target remains unadjusted.

We need a method for assessing local housing that actually works for communities—one that recognises local constraints, delivers genuinely affordable housing, protects the national landscape and ensures that every development contributes positively to the places that we call home. This will not change until the top-down approach of the standard method for assessing local housing need is reformed to genuinely reflect community need, and until local authorities are given the power to challenge and regulate developers effectively. I beg the Minister to look again at the standard method so that we can truly address the local housing need for areas such as mine in Chichester.