Planning Reform

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

No Minister could be doing more than my hon. Friend to try to drive forward the house building that we need, and that will be greatly welcomed by many of those who are struggling to get hold of a property. I am also pleased about what he said in response to the question from the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster). However, many of us are concerned about developers who sit for years on planning applications without bringing them forward. Planning permission was given to the former North East Derbyshire district council site in my constituency more than four and a half years ago, but nothing has been built, and the building is running to rack and ruin. Can my hon. Friend say any more about the powers enabling councils and central Government to work together, so we can ensure that the errant developers who will not get on and build are brought to book and that they pull their weight as well?

[Matthew Pennycook]

It is difficult to make blanket statements about individual development sites. There are many reasons why sites across the country are held up, but sometimes they are legitimate reasons to do with viability. As I have said, we are experiencing a housing market downturn, although we are hopefully coming out of it with the assistance of some of these policies. Viability is a challenge across the whole country and is particularly acute in places such as London, but where development could be coming forward and is viable but developers are not proceeding with it, we want to look at further measures on build-out to ensure that it does come forward. We are providing central Government support through the new homes accelerator to unlock the large strategic sites that have already received consent. That is the low-hanging fruit when it comes to bringing forward new homes in this Parliament.