Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Steff Aquarone Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew George]

It is clear that we are today debating methodologies, rather than values. Certainly, I do not dispute the Minister’s values at all; we all want to see the growing need met, and the environment protected. The question that we are debating today is the best methodologies for achieving those outcomes. I have submitted a number of amendments covering three areas, which I will rattle through as quickly as I can, all of which support the themes that my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) advanced today, and indeed that he has pursued in Committee in previous weeks.

Amendment 148 relates to housing targets. It proposes allowing local authorities to adopt targets that reduce housing need, rather than simply targets to build homes. House building targets are in many areas part of the problem, rather than the solution to housing need. For example, since the 1960s, Cornwall’s housing stock has been among the fastest growing in the United Kingdom. It has almost trebled, yet housing problems for local people have got significantly worse over that time.

Simply setting house building targets results in massive hope value being attached to every single community around Cornwall. Having worked as a chief executive of a charity that tries to build affordable homes, I can say that establishing house building targets makes it more difficult to address the housing needs of local people. Targets that are about reducing need would change the dynamics of the planning system in places that face these problems.

Unfortunately, the approach to house building targets that has been adopted by parties over the previous decade is built on the delusion that private developers will collude with Governments to drive down the price of their finished product. We can no longer carry on in that delusion. We cannot and should not pursue counterproductive methodologies. Amendment 149 and new clause 108 are consequential on the fundamental change proposed in amendment 148.

My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington has spoken about introducing a new class order to address the prevalence of non-permanent occupancy in some areas. The previous Government were looking at bringing in a new class order for holiday lets, but that should be extended to second homes and all homes of non-permanent occupancy. New clause 92, which is consequential on new clause 91, proposes introducing a sunset clause for planning permission to ensure that there is not a perverse incentive for people to apply to change a property’s use in order to enhance the value of their property when they sell it. This is not about the politics of envy but the politics of social justice. I think those who represent areas or constituencies with large numbers of second homes properly understand how these things operate.

Finally, I tabled a number of amendments relating to affordability, including new clause 89 on affordable development and new clause 90. New clause 89 would prohibit cross-subsidy—or at least open-market development—on rural exception sites. Those sites should not be called rural exception sites; they should be called rural norm sites. That should be the methodology for delivering affordable homes in rural areas. It should be driven by wanting to have affordable homes in such locations.

[Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. In North Norfolk, people want house building that genuinely meets local need and helps address the housing crisis, which is affecting everyone in my constituency. On affordability, does he agree that we need to empower local authorities to define what “affordable” means in their areas?

[Andrew George]

My hon. Friend is right about that. Affordability is defined for rented accommodation—either 80% of market rent or the local housing allowance, whichever is lower—but it is not sufficiently defined for the intermediate market in rural areas, which includes shared ownership and discounted sale. There are ways that affordability can be achieved, and that should be done within local planning. We should give local authorities the power to define, for the purposes of their communities, what is and is not affordable, and we should strengthen the role of neighbourhood development plans in that respect as well.

New clause 90 would put a cap on developer profit. A lot of people do not understand how planning authorities make their viability assessment when developments are brought forward. There is an assumption of a developer profit of 20%, but when developers ask for amendments to the way that their planning applications are viewed, they will often have undertaken two different valuations, and will come with both. One they present to the planning authority, and one they keep in their back pocket. One of the valuations comes with violins, and a sob story about how they will lose out because of the development, and how they are doing it only for the community. The other valuation is the reality. We know that they are making a killing out of other people’s poverty.