Affordable Rural Housing

John Whitby Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[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.