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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to support local authorities to ensure that unused brownfield sites are redeveloped for housing.

On 5 March 2018 the Government issued for consultation our proposed revision of the National Planning Policy Framework, which sets out stronger and clearer expectations of local planning authorities in their approach to making full, efficient use of brownfield land. The Draft Framework says that local planning policies and decisions should give substantial weight to the value of using suitable brownfield within settlements for homes, support opportunities to remediate degraded land and promote the development of under-utilised land and space above buildings and infrastructure, especially for housing. Consultation continues to 10 May 2018.

Each local authority is now required to publish a register of the brownfield land in its area suitable for new homes. So far, around 28,000 hectares of developable land, on over 17,000 sites, have been drawn to the attention of house-builders by this method. Local authorities can also grant permission in principle to sites on these registers, providing early certainty about the possible extent of housing-led development on a site.