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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what specific legislative measures they have taken since the publication of Fixing our broken housing market (Cm 9352) on 7 February 2017.

In February 2017 we published our Housing White Paper setting out our strategy for fixing our broken housing market. We have taken forward or sponsored four major pieces of relevant legislation since then, as part of our comprehensive package of reform which implements the White Paper and builds on it further. These reforms will make our housing market work better and support our ambition to raise housing supply to 300,000 per year by the mid-2020s.

The legislative measures we have implemented include the Neighbourhood Planning Act, which received Royal Assent on 27 April 2017. It introduced wide ranging changes to neighbourhood planning, planning conditions and compulsory purchase.

In 2017, we backed the Homelessness Reduction Act, which transforms the culture of homelessness service delivery. From April 2018, the Act has ensured that, for the first time, local authorities, public services and the third sector will work together to actively prevent homelessness for people at risk.

We also backed the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, which came into force in March and empowers tenants to hold their landlords to account if they fail to keep the property fit for human habitation.

Most recently, we brought forward the Tenant Fees Act 2019, which bans unfair letting fees paid by tenants in the private rented sector and caps tenancy deposits in England. This is part of a wider package of measures aimed at rebalancing the relationship between tenants and landlords to deliver a fairer, good quality and more affordable private rented sector. The ban on unfair letting fees will come into force on 1 June 2019.

More widely, the Government has bought forward at least £44 billion of financial support to 2022/23 to increase housing supply and diversify the housing market, as well as reforms such as the revision of the National Planning Policy Framework to ensure more land is available for housing whilst protecting the Green Belt.