Housebuilding

Lord Best Excerpts

Thursday 21st September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My noble friend and former Chief Whip is exactly right. He is a formidable campaigner on issues of home building. I pay tribute to my right honourable friend the Minister for Housing, who is absolutely right; the current Spelthorne local plan is nearly 15 years old, meaning that the policies in it will not be up to date. Withdrawing the plan from examination could lead only to significant further delay and additional expense while a new plan is prepared. Local authorities are more at risk from appeals and speculative planning applications being successful if they do not have a local plan setting out an up-to-date housing requirement, as the presumption in favour of sustainable development applies. Intervening in this plan will accelerate plan production, given that the current plan is submitted and an examination will ensure that an up-to-date plan is in place sooner, therefore preventing speculative developments taking place. Local plans should be reviewed every five years. The good people of Spelthorne should expect better from their local politicians of all colours.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, the Government are absolutely right to try to put more resources into the hands of local planning authorities, because that is what they desperately need to process all the applications. But with house prices falling and interest rates rising, a lot of big housebuilders are pulling back and reducing their output. They are selling off some of their big sites. Is this not the perfect moment, while prices are falling, to get a really big programme of social housing on the go? Let us have a real go at it now.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord. Our £11.5 billion affordable homes programme will deliver thousands of new homes across the country, and a large number of these will be for social rent. Local authorities have a key role to play in increasing the supply of social housing; in 2021-22 they delivered nearly 800,000 affordable homes, which represented 13% of the overall affordable housing delivery and the highest recorded number of local authority completions since 1991-92.