New Social Housing: Rural Towns and Villages
1/27. What steps he is taking to support the building of social housing in rural towns and villages.
The £39 billion social and affordable homes programme will support a wide range of social and affordable housing, including council housing, supported housing, community-led housing and, of course, rural housing. The Government will also consider how planning policy can better promote rural affordable housing through our work on national policies, which will be brought forward for decision making later in the year.
I thank the Secretary of State for that response. Cornwall has been given an ambitious annual target of 4,400 homes, and I sincerely hope that a large proportion of those will be for the 25,000 Cornish families on the housing waiting list. I meet so many constituents in social and private housing who have been left high and dry by dodgy developers who go into liquidation before they can deliver vital infrastructure, such as roads and sewerage works. Will the Secretary of State please meet me to discuss the enforcement tools that local authorities need to properly hold those developers to account?
I certainly recognise the problem that the hon. Member describes; it is an issue in North Cornwall and right across the country. On the developer contribution, we are looking at how we can strengthen enforcement, so that where commitments are made, they are delivered on, and local communities are not stranded and left high and dry because the vital infrastructure to support the homes never appears.