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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent assessment he has made of the potential effect of the proposals of the Planning for the Future White Paper published in August 2020 on the time between granting planning permission and completing builds.

Sir Oliver Letwin's 2018 Review of Build Out concluded that the primary reason for the rate of housing completions following the grant of planning permission was market absorption and the best way of increasing build out rates was greater diversification of housing on large sites.

The White Paper has put forward proposals to support build out through planning, including revising national policy to encourage masterplans and design codes for substantial development sites to see a variety of development types by different builders come forward at once. We will be exploring further options to support faster build out as part of the wider package of reforms.