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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps the Government will take with respect to councils who do not meet the targets set out in the National Policy Planning Framework, announced on 12 December 2024.

The government expects local planning authorities to explore and exhaust all options to deliver the homes their communities need.

An authority’s ability to meet their housing need through plan-making will be tested at a public examination, which will assess whether there are any justified reasons for not being able to meet a target in full.

There are two tests of whether authorities are meeting housing need: the Housing Delivery Test, which measures authorities’ delivery record over the previous three years, and the ‘five-year housing land supply’ policy, which tests whether authorities have allocated sufficient land to provide a housing pipeline.

Where authorities fail against these tests, ‘the presumption’ in favour of sustainable development kicks in. The government are clear that ‘the presumption’ cannot be a gateway to poor quality housing, and through the revised National Planning Policy Framework published on 12 December we have added new safeguards to ensure this is the case.