Housing and Planning Bill (First sitting)

Marcus Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Brandon Lewis]

Q 24 Okay, I have two other areas that I want to touch on. I know my colleague wants to jump in as well. The current Mayor and your office have had some fairly ambitious targets around housing provision for London and have achieved some really good numbers. I know you have big ambitions going forward—on Second Reading we heard my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry) outline some of his ambitions, which involved having more extra homes built in London for every home sold, which is the point you were making. With the brownfield registers, planning permission in principle, the compulsory purchase order changes, the section 106 changes and so on that are outlined in the Housing Bill, and the work that the London Land Commission is doing, what do you think that means for affordable housing provision in London and for the work of your office?

Richard Blakeway: I think it strengthens our ability to drive house building within the capital, and it helps us to achieve our target of seeing 49,000 homes completed each year—a level that has not been seen since the 1930s. Clearly, it gives a stronger role to the Mayor to build upon his existing strategic planning powers. It also enables new roles in relation to co-ordinating affordable products in the capital, particularly around low cost of ownership, and enabling surplus land to come forward and identifying brownfield opportunities. So I think the combination of those measures will help us to achieve our goal to double house building.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)]

Q 25 Good morning, Mr Blakeway. Much of the Bill is rightly predicated on supply, but using the existing stock we have to support people into housing is also extremely important. How do you think the Bill will support landlords in recovering properties that have been abandoned?

Richard Blakeway: It is clearly useful that the Bill seeks to enable landlords to do that. We need to undertake a full analysis of how it would work in the capital, but we think it is a useful measure that has been introduced.