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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will grant powers to local councils to set deadlines for the completion of roads in new developments.

It is right that developers are required to mitigate the impacts of development, and pay for the cumulative impacts of development on the infrastructure in their area.

Section 106 planning obligations (s278 in the case of highway requirements) are negotiated legal agreements between developers and local authorities. They are used to make development acceptable through delivery of affordable housing or infrastructure, or requiring development to be used in a particular way, and can be used to specify at what point in the development the infrastructure must be completed.

The planning reform package, which includes the revised draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and the reforms to developer contributions, are fundamental to delivering the homes we need and set out a comprehensive approach to ensure that we get the right homes built in the right places of the right quality.

The reforms to developer contributions could provide a springboard for going further, and the Government will continue to explore options to create a clearer and more robust developer contribution system that really delivers for prospective homeowners and communities accommodating new development.