Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps the Government is taking to prevent land banking in local communities.

It is important that once a planning permission for new homes is in place, work to deliver those homes should begin as soon as possible. The Government wants to see homes built faster and expects house builders to deliver more homes, more quickly and to a high quality standard.

However, it is important to recognise that after planning permission for new homes is granted, a variety of factors can slow down delivery. Rather than focusing on a single issue, the Housing White Paper acknowledged that all parties in the development process need to play their part in speeding up the delivery of much-needed new homes. That is why the Housing White Paper set out a wide ranging approach to driving up build out of planning permissions.

We have already taken important steps to help unblock sites, such as the introduction of the Housing Infrastructure Fund and we are considering how to take forward other elements of the Housing White Paper. In addition, we have recently consulted on what further action could be taken to increase build rates as part of our consultation on calculating local housing need. This consultation closed on 9 November and analysis of the responses is now underway.