New Homes: Target

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The funding in the £39 billion programme will see a great increase in the building of council homes, as will the ability of councils to use that funding as top-up funding for the 100% of receipts they can now keep from right-to-buy sales. My noble friend makes a good point on modern methods of construction. We need to boost their use. They are critical to improving productivity in the construction sector, delivering high-quality, energy-efficient homes more quickly, and creating new and diverse jobs in the sector.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, according to Historic England, up to 670,000 additional homes could be created through the repair and repurposing of existing historic buildings. Have the Government had any conversations with Historic England about this?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I do not know whether the noble Lord has yet had a chance to look at the new National Planning Policy Framework. We are, rightly, focusing attention on how we use the resource of historic and heritage buildings to deliver the kind of homes that we need. The National Planning Policy Framework is undergoing consultation; it is there for people to comment on, and if the noble Lord would like to put his comments into that, I would welcome them. Historic and heritage buildings are clearly an area that we need to examine in great detail to get towards the provision of 1.5 million homes that we know we need.