Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what guidance is available to Local Planning Authorities on lowering house building targets.

In our recent consultation on reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework, we proposed making the standard method for assessing housing needs mandatory, requiring local authorities to plan for the resulting housing need figure, planning for a lower figure only when they can demonstrate hard constraints and that they have exhausted all other options