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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department plans to take to promote the construction of modern, high-quality prefabricated housing.

Government wants to see a significant increase in the number of new homes being built of all types and tenures.

To increase housing supply, we need a diversified housing market where all firms embrace innovation to build homes more quickly and deliver a better product to the consumer.

The use of modern methods of construction, including offsite techniques, has the potential to improve productivity and speed up the supply of high-quality, high-performance homes.

We are encouraging modern methods of construction through our housing and planning programmes including our Affordable Homes 2016-21, Build to Rent and Housing Zones programmes and through our National Planning Practice Guidance.

In October the Secretary of State launched the £3 billion Home Building Fund, which aims to deliver 225,000 homes. £1 billion of this fund will contribute to projects that will directly deliver housing in this Parliament, increasing supply by providing support to builders using modern methods of construction, in addition to custom builders, small and medium-sized builders and new entrants to the market.

We will also continue to promote the Build Offsite Property Assurance Scheme (www.bopas.org), which seeks to provide assurance to mortgage lenders about the quality and durability of offsite systems.

We will announce further measures in the Housing White Paper.