Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stuart Andrew and Huw Merriman

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Stuart Andrew)]

The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill will improve our planning system and give residents more involvement in local development. The Bill will strengthen and scale up neighbourhood planning and enable the piloting of street votes supported by new digital tools to give communities more say in the developments that affect them.

[Huw Merriman]

The 2020 White Paper promised us a once-in-a-generation reform to planning policy. The present proposals appear somewhat unambitious and modest in contrast. Can I meet the Minister so he can explain to me how we can deal with the following situation in my constituency? Wealden and Rother District Councils have issued 10,000 planning permissions that have not been built out, and yet they still have to deliver 2,000 new homes between them each year. The developers responsible for building the homes deliver only 1,000 new homes. Surely, at the very least, we can have annual housing targets that take into account houses that are not yet built out, so that developers build rather than land bank.

[Stuart Andrew]

I am more than happy to meet my hon. Friend. There are measures in the Bill to try to address build-out rates, which are an important element that we have to tackle. Under the Bill, it will be necessary to supply the local authority with a commencement notice, an agreement on the number of houses that will be built each year and a completion notice. We are absolutely on this, and I assure my hon. Friend that we will do everything we can to ensure that the houses that have got permission are built.