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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the publication of the White Paper <i>Fixing our broken housing market</i>, what are the "sharper tools" they hope to deploy in the attempt to drive up the delivery of new homes.

The Government wants to ensure that new homes are built out as quickly as possible once planning permission is granted. The Housing White Paper seeks views on a range of new and improved tools to help local authorities to hold developers to account for delivery. The proposed tools include greater scrutiny of a site’s delivery prospects where earlier permissions have not been implemented; shorter timescales for implementing permissions; more streamlined completion notice procedures and new guidance encouraging more active use of compulsory purchase powers at stalled housing sites.

To support the use of these tools, the White Paper also proposes new requirements for developers to provide information about housing delivery – both at the planning application stage and after permission is granted. These requirements are intended to improve the quantity, quality and consistency of information about build out rates that local authorities have at their disposal.