House Building Targets
1/41. What plans she has to support councils with house building targets.
The Government are supporting local planning authorities to facilitate the delivery of more high-quality, well-designed homes, but we know that capacity is a problem with councils and that is why we have also announced a £46 million package of investment to support capacity and capability in local planning authorities, including 300 new planners and support to local authorities with delivering their local plans and green belt reviews. We will also make changes to planning fees so that councils can recover the costs of planning applications.
In Waverley and East Hampshire, housing targets from this Government are doubling. When my constituents move into those homes when they are built, the infrastructure and services are simply not there. By “services”, I do not mean a phalanx of civil servants to help them move house; I mean the schools, play areas, supermarkets and road networks. Will the Secretary of State come to my constituency of Farnham and Bordon to see where we need that infrastructure, so that she can understand the implications that her housing targets have for my community?
We know that we need infrastructure as part of our planning reforms and the mandatory housing targets that we have put forward, and this Government will make sure that that infrastructure is there. I would say to the hon. Gentleman that it was his Government who allowed speculative housing developments, who failed to meet their housing targets and who left people without the houses they desperately needed.
We have a number of schemes for social housing in Cornwall that rely on the affordable homes programme that ends in 2026. Can the Secretary of State confirm that there will not be a gap in the provision of funding so that the provision of those homes can continue?
We have set out another £500 million for the affordable homes programme and we will set out further requirements as we get to the spending review.
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
The increase in housing delivery that the Secretary of State is committed to requires a 50% uplift across the board in housing numbers, yet according to the House of Commons Library, urban and major conurbations have seen an increase of 17% while mainly rural areas are seeing an average increase of 115%. How is that fair?
The shadow Secretary of State will know that our mandatory housing targets were based on affordability and were introduced to ensure that people are able to get the houses they desperately need. His Government removed the mandatory housing targets, we saw speculative development, and they failed, year on year, to deliver the housing that this country desperately needs. We are going to deliver the houses where they failed.