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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to increase house building in the West Midlands Combined Authority area.

Over 1,111,000 additional homes have been delivered in England since April 2010, with 217,350 net additional dwellings in 2016-17, up 15 per cent on 2015-16 and 50 per cent on 2009-10.

But the Prime Minister has been clear – this should be a country that works for everyone. This means building more of the right homes, in the right places, and ensuring the housing market works for all parts of our community.

So at Autumn Budget 2017, we announced further reforms to tackle our broken housing market, including Planning reforms to ensure more land is available for housing and maximise the potential of our cities and towns to build new homes whilst protecting the Green Belt; more than £15 billion of new financial support over the next five years, taking total financial support to at least £44 billion to 2022/2023, and expanding the Homes and Communities Agency to become Homes England, bringing together money, expertise, planning and compulsory purchase powers.

We also agreed a second Devolution Deal with the West Midlands, which included support for a new Mayoral Housing Delivery Team, and are continuing work on a Housing Deal to increase the supply of land and housing delivery across the West Midlands.