Housing: New Homes Target

Question

11:17:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they will meet their target of building 1.5 million new homes by 2029.

My Lords, the Government remain committed to our ambitious target of delivering 1.5 million homes over this Parliament. We have already taken decisive action to increase the supply of new homes, including bold reforms to the planning system and the launch of the new homes accelerator to tackle delayed housing schemes. In our Spring Statement, we announced a £2 billion down payment to deliver 18,000 new social and affordable homes and we are investing £600 million in construction job training that will help deliver those further homes.

My Lords, I welcome the measures the Government have just mentioned to increase supply, but is not the real threat now to the Government’s ambitious target the lack of effective demand? Housebuilders will not build unless there is a buyer, and with the recent increase in stamp duty and the reduced growth forecasts, there is now uncertainty in the market. What is the role of the Government’s promised new mortgage guarantee scheme, due in a few weeks’ time, in rebuilding that confidence, and, crucially, will it help first-time buyers with a deposit for their first home?

I agree with the noble Lord that we have to pay attention to the demand side as well; today’s under-30s are less than half as likely to be home owners as those of the same age in 1990, so there are real affordability challenges which we are determined to tackle. In addition to increasing the supply of homes, we have committed to launching a new, permanent comprehensive mortgage guarantee scheme, meaning that first-time buyers will be able to take their crucial first step on the property ladder with only a small deposit. New details of that will be announced in due course. Alongside that, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury has written to the Financial Conduct Authority setting out the Government’s support for its proposal to review mortgage rules. The Government have made it clear that they want the FCA’s review to be as ambitious and as rapid as possible.

My Lords, I invite the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, to participate remotely.

My Lords, in Nijmegen in Holland and Hammarby in Sweden, they built housing for sale in special zones on agricultural-priced land, thereby reducing housing costs—an issue I have previously raised in housing debates. Now, with a Labour Government, why cannot we similarly designate land and, to block quick resale profit-taking, introduce measures such as new forms of title, disincentives in taxation and Section 52-type planning occupancy restrictions? Can Ministers at least give new ideas a thought? Solving the housing crisis requires original thinking.

I thank my noble friend for his question, and he is quite right to say that we must always be open to listen to new and original ideas. We have indeed completely revised the National Planning Policy Framework to kick-start this pro-growth planning system, changing our strategic approach to green belt release and introducing “golden rules” to ensure that releases deliver in the public interest. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which is being debated in the Commons and will come to this House in due course, will play a key role in unlocking that growth. We are happy to listen to all ideas as we go through that Bill’s process.

The Government are quite right to concentrate on supply. It has been one of the greatest failures of public policy in the past 25 years that we have not built enough homes. Do the Government really believe, however, that the measures that they have announced are going to go anywhere near to meeting that target and are they now working out further contingency planning to get the houses built while they have this unique opportunity, with a huge majority in the Commons, to push through measures that would otherwise be crippled by nimbyism?

My Lords, I hope that I have partly covered that in my Answer to the Question from the noble Lord, Lord Young. We are taking decisive steps around the planning system, developing construction skills, the new homes accelerator and, of course, building new towns—the New Towns Taskforce has set about its work effectively and rapidly. We hope that that will start to deliver the 1.5 million homes that we need. We have a sophisticated new digital tool to map what is going on and to detect where there are still issues. We hope that that will help us to deliver the target.

My Lords, I draw attention to my declarations in the register of interests. I think that most of us here have some doubt that the Government will meet their target, although their target is important. The reason for that is that they are having to deal with a legacy of underprovision under successive Governments of land for development. Post-war, there was success in delivering homes because the emphasis was on 15 to 20-year visions of place rather than five-year allocations of land. Will the Government consider returning to the principle that where the land has been made available for long-term place-making it should be open for development, rather than sequentially rationing the land year by year?

The noble Lord is quite right to say that the post-war building boom, of which my town was very much a part, was critical to delivering the housing that we needed throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and then things slowed down. We have to kick-start that again. The New Towns Taskforce is working on that, and that is part of the answer, but so is our long-term housing strategy, which I have talked about before in this Chamber. It needs to cover all aspects of housing, and we hope that that, alongside the planning changes that we have made, will create a long-term vision for housing, as will the creation of the strategic element to planning which is built into the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

My Lords, but does the Minister agree with the OBR’s experts that the Government are set to miss their 1.5 million homes target?

I thank the noble Baroness. The OBR’s economic and fiscal outlook forecast net additions to the UK housing stock to be 1.3 million, but we have to take alongside that the work that we have done since then on skills, the new homes accelerator and government funding for social and affordable housing. The trajectory of all that is very much in the right direction. We know there is more work to do; we are determined to do it; and we are very happy to stick with our ambitious target.

My Lords, I am sure that the Minister would agree that we need to end our dependency on the handful of volume housebuilders, who are never going to produce the quality, let alone the quantity, of homes that we need. Will the Government publish their plans for the new development corporations, not just for new towns but for all major developments, whereby the development corporation acquires the land, has a master plan, parcels it out to SMEs, housing associations and others, and takes back control of place-making?

I know that the noble Lord is as passionate about development corporations as I am, and I look forward to seeing the outcome of the new towns programme. We have already had an interim report from the task force, and in February it published its update on progress in developing recommendations for a new generation of new towns, outlining the programme’s unique benefits, vision and aims, and publishing its emerging principles for what makes a great new town. In the summer, we expect a further, more detailed report from the task force. I look forward to seeing that, because I agree with the noble Lord that in master planning, making sure that infrastructure is in place and developing the homes that we need alongside the growth of the country, there could not be a more important challenge that we face.

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We will hear from my noble friend Lord Browne next, please.

My Lords, is my noble friend on behalf of the Government able confirm that projects such as east Biggleswade—highlighted within days of the general election by the Deputy Prime Minister as a priority and capable of delivering in the order of 10,000 homes—are being prioritised, and are tools such as local development orders-plus being employed to do this?

I thank my noble friend. Homes England is working to unlock and accelerate the delivery of around 1,500 homes at Biggleswade Garden Community. Those garden communities are provided with capacity funding, and that has been allocated to the local authority to further progress the opportunities that exist on that site. It is important that funding from the Housing Infrastructure Fund helps unlock the delivery of garden communities such as the one at Biggleswade. We really celebrate those kinds of development, and we are very supportive of such innovative approaches to unlock housing delivery across the country.