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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to analyse the extent of the use of options agreements in the English land market in order to understand how a shift to a zonal planning system will increase the amounts of land being made available to small and medium sized developers.

My Department is currently consulting on options for increasing the transparency of contractual controls, including options agreements, used to exercise control over land. The consultation can be found at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/907213/Call_for_evidence_on_Contractual_Controls.pdf. It closes on 30 October 2020.