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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent assessment she has made of trends in the level of new housing developments in Essex.

My Department publishes an annual release entitled ‘Housing supply: net additional dwellings, England’, which is the primary and most comprehensive measure of housing supply. This includes estimates of new homes built in each local authority, in each financial year, and can be found in Live Table 123 on gov.uk here. This is then used to inform the Housing Delivery Test, which measures this delivery against the number of homes required.

The Department also publishes a quarterly release entitled ‘Housing supply: Indicators of New Supply, England’, which includes more timely estimates of new build starts and completions in England, and in each local authority and can be found in Table 253a on gov.uk here. This dataset covers new build dwellings only and should be regarded as a leading indicator of overall housing supply.

Through the revised National Planning Policy Framework, published in December 2024, we implemented a new standard method for assessing housing needs which aligns with the governments ambition for 1.5 million new homes over this parliament, and better directs new homes to where they are most needed and least affordable.

The standard method provides a starting point for local councils to inform the preparation of their local plans. The indicative annual housing need figures for all local authorities under the new standard method can be found on gov.uk here.

Whilst the standard method is used to identify the total number of homes needed in an area, the National Planning Policy Framework is clear that it is for local authorities to identify the size, type and tenure of homes needed for different groups in the community and reflect this in planning policies.