Written questions by Vickers.

Communities and Local Government, for what reason the publication of the draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill was delayed.

As per our manifesto commitment, this government is taking the steps necessary to finally bring the feudal leasehold system to an end in this Parliament. Publication of the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill was delayed by a matter of weeks to finalise elements of policy and drafting. The draft Bill was published yesterday, and I refer the hon. Member to the Written Ministerial Statement made (HCWS1278).

Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of the timing of the publication of the draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill on leaseholders.

As per our manifesto commitment, this government is taking the steps necessary to finally bring the feudal leasehold system to an end in this Parliament. Publication of the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill was delayed by a matter of weeks to finalise elements of policy and drafting. The draft Bill was published yesterday, and I refer the hon. Member to the Written Ministerial Statement made (HCWS1278).

Communities and Local Government, what discussions his Department has had with freehold investors and their representatives on the (a) content and (b) timing of the draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill since July 2024.

Officials in my Department engage regularly with representatives of freeholders, leaseholders, managing agents and other professional bodies with an interest in the leasehold sector in England and Wales.The draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill was published yesterday, and I refer the hon. Member to the Written Ministerial Statement made (HCWS1278).

Communities and Local Government, whether he has had discussions with operators of housing-with-care schemes on international best practice in relation to tenure.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to Question UIN 87630 on 11 November 2025.

Communities and Local Government, what estimate his Department has made of the number of properties whose ground rent has been raised to over £250 each year, in the last five years.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to Question UIN 73504 on 15 September 2025.

Communities and Local Government, whether he has made a recent estimate of the market value of properties subject to a ground rent of more than £250 in each of the last five years.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to Question UIN 73504 on 15 September 2025.

Communities and Local Government, what information his Department holds on the number of leases that have been forfeited because the leaseholder fell into ground rent arrears of 3 months in each of the last five years.

My Department does not hold data on long leases that have been treated as assured shorthold tenancies as a result of ground rent increases. Nor does it hold data on the number of leases that have been forfeited due to ground rent arrears.The government has acted through the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 to ensure that leases granted for more than 21 years will be excluded from the assured tenancy regime. The relevant provisions will come into force on 27 December 2025 and will mean that from that date it will no longer be the case that, under provisions of the Housing Act 1988, leaseholders paying a ground rent of more than £250 a year (or more than £1,000 in London) can be legally regarded as assured tenants, and as such can have their home repossessed if they fall behind on their ground rents.We also recognise that under the current legal framework, landlords may rely on a contractual right to forfeit a lease where a leaseholder breaches a covenant – such as the failure to pay ground rent. The availability of forfeiture as a remedy can create a significant power imbalance between landlords and leaseholders, with its use resulting in the leaseholder losing both their home and any equity accrued in the property.We will address this through the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill by removing the disproportionate and draconian threat of forfeiture as a means of enforcing lease compliance. The Government also remains committed to addressing unregulated and unaffordable ground rents and doing so in legislation.

Communities and Local Government, what information his Department holds on the number of long leases that have been turned into Assured Shorthold Tenancies because their ground rent was increased to more than £250.

My Department does not hold data on long leases that have been treated as assured shorthold tenancies as a result of ground rent increases. Nor does it hold data on the number of leases that have been forfeited due to ground rent arrears.The government has acted through the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 to ensure that leases granted for more than 21 years will be excluded from the assured tenancy regime. The relevant provisions will come into force on 27 December 2025 and will mean that from that date it will no longer be the case that, under provisions of the Housing Act 1988, leaseholders paying a ground rent of more than £250 a year (or more than £1,000 in London) can be legally regarded as assured tenants, and as such can have their home repossessed if they fall behind on their ground rents.We also recognise that under the current legal framework, landlords may rely on a contractual right to forfeit a lease where a leaseholder breaches a covenant – such as the failure to pay ground rent. The availability of forfeiture as a remedy can create a significant power imbalance between landlords and leaseholders, with its use resulting in the leaseholder losing both their home and any equity accrued in the property.We will address this through the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill by removing the disproportionate and draconian threat of forfeiture as a means of enforcing lease compliance. The Government also remains committed to addressing unregulated and unaffordable ground rents and doing so in legislation.

Communities and Local Government, what recent discussions she has had with fire and rescue services on recruitment and retention.

Responsibility for the recruitment and retention of firefighters rests with individual fire and rescue authorities.Since the transfer of Ministerial responsibility for all fire functions from the Home Office to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) on 1 April 2025, MHCLG has continued to engage with the fire and rescue sector through a number of forums, including the Ministerial Advisory Group on Fire and Rescue Reform, to discuss a range of issues affecting services.

Communities and Local Government, what additional resources have been allocated to Cleveland Fire Brigade in the last three financial years.

On 3 February, the Ministry published the 2025/26 Local Government Finance Settlement (LGFS) which sets out funding allocations for all local authorities, including Fire and Rescue Authorities. to support their operational and capital needs.These allocations, which include the National Insurance Contribution Grant, will see standalone fire and rescue authorities including Cleveland Fire Brigade receiving an increase in core spending power of £69.1 million in 2025/26. This is an increase of 3.6 per cent in cash terms compared to 2024/25.For 2025/26, Cleveland Fire Brigade will have a core spending power of £36.1 million, an increase of £1.2 million (3.4%) compared to 2024/25.In addition to the annual funding Settlement, the Government has allocated a number of extra resources to Cleveland Fire Brigade including the Fire Pensions Grant, the Protection Grant and the Fire New Dimension Grant.

Communities and Local Government, what steps her Department has taken to support community (a) cohesion and (b) integration.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is leading cross-Government efforts to develop a longer-term, more strategic approach to community cohesion and integration working in partnership with communities and local stakeholders to rebuild, renew and address the deep-seated issues.The Government is providing communities with the resources and capacity to deliver on this – in June we announced funding for up to 350 places, which will serve as the cornerstone of this Government’s support for communities, incorporating the existing 75 Plan for Neighbourhoods areas that were announced in March, and the 25 trailblazer neighbourhoods announced at Spending Review, who will receive up to £20 million over the next decade.This funding will support improvements people can see on their doorstep, champion local leadership, foster community engagement and strengthen social cohesion.

Communities and Local Government, how many brownfield housing starts have been recorded in the last 12 months.

Figures on the number of housing starts specifically on brownfield sites are not centrally collected.

Communities and Local Government, what steps her Department plans to take to improve the quality of private rented accommodation.

The Renters’ Rights Bill enables the Decent Homes Standard to be applied to the private rented sector for the first time and provides local authorities with effective and proportionate powers to enforce it.The Bill will allow ‘Awaab’s Law’ to be applied to the private rented sector. It will enable timeframes to be set out in regulations within which private rented sector landlords and licensors must make homes safe where they contain serious hazards.

Communities and Local Government, what steps she has taken to increase local planning capacity.

Supporting local planning authorities to attract, retain and develop skilled planners is crucial to ensuring they provide a proactive, efficient planning service for local communities and that new developments are well designed and facilitate local growth. The government appreciates that planning departments across the country are experiencing challenges with recruitment, retention, and skills gaps and that in many cases these issues are having a negative impact on service delivery. At the Budget last year, the Chanceller announced a £46 million package of investment into the planning system as a one-year settlement for 2025-2026. Our manifesto committed us to appointing 300 new planning officers into LPAs. We are on track to meet that commitment through two routes, namely graduate recruitment through the Pathways to Planning scheme run by the Local Government Association and mid-career recruitment through Public Practice. On 27 February 2025, the government announced funding to support salaries and complement graduate bursaries. Further information can be found in the Written Ministerial Statement I made on 27 February 2025 (HCWS480). On 25 February 2025, the draft Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2025 were agreed. These regulations increase planning fees for householder and other applications, with a view to providing much-needed additional resources for hard-pressed LPAs. More broadly, the Department’s established Planning Capacity and Capability programme is also developing a wider programme of support, working with partners across the planning sector, to ensure that LPAs have the skills and capacity they need, both now and in the future, to modernise local plans and speed up decision making, including through innovative use of digital planning data and software. Lastly, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill includes provisions that will allow LPAs to set planning fees or charges at a level that reflects the individual costs to the LPA to carry out the function for which it is imposed and to ensure that the income from planning fees or charges is applied towards the delivery of the planning function.

Communities and Local Government, what steps she is taking to provide support to councils with high levels of financial distress.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to Question UIN 60682 on 24 June 2025 and to the Written Ministerial Statement made on 20 June 2025 entitled Fair Funding Review 2.0 and Modernising and Improving the Administration of Council Tax (HCWS724).Any council that has concerns about its ability to set or maintain a balanced budget should approach MHCLG in the first instance where we will treat all discussions in confidence, with respect and determination to find a solution together.

Communities and Local Government, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the delivery of affordable housing targets in 2023–24.

My Department published an update on targets for the 2021-26 Affordable Homes Programme on 30 July 2024. This covers the 2023-24 period under the previous government. It can be found on gov.uk here.

Communities and Local Government, what recent steps her Department has taken to (a) strengthen electoral integrity and (b) tackle voter fraud.

This Government is committed to strengthening the UK’s democracy and upholding the integrity of elections. It has already taken steps in this area including the work undertaken to review and reform the voter identification policy, successfully passing legislation which allows use of the HM Armed Forces Veteran Card as identification at polling stations.The Government will be setting out its approach to elections and electoral reform for this Parliament in an overall Government Strategy for Elections, to be published later this year, where it will set out plans for further strengthening the integrity of elections and encouraging participation in democracy.

Communities and Local Government, what steps she is taking to encourage developers establishing new buildings to have (a) solar panels, (b) batteries and (c) heat pumps fitted; and what support is available to those developers.

The Government is committed to ensuring that the 1.5 million homes we will build over the course of this parliament will be high quality, well designed and sustainable. Renewable and low carbon technologies, such as solar panels, batteries and heat pumps, are a key part of our strategy to get to net zero via a decarbonised electricity grid. We must therefore take the opportunity, where appropriate, to encourage their adoption in new buildings.In 2021 the Government introduce an uplift in energy efficiency standards. New buildings are now required to produce significantly less CO2 emissions compared to those built to previous standards. Already we have seen many homes being built with solar panels and heat pumps.Future standards, to be introduced later this year, will set new buildings on a path that moves away from relying on volatile fossil fuels, ensuring they are fit for a net zero future. These buildings will be future proofed with low carbon heating and high levels of energy efficiency. No further energy efficiency retrofit work will be necessary to enable them to become zero-carbon over time as the electricity grid continues to decarbonise.A consultation setting out proposals for what the new standards should entail was published in December 2023 and closed in March 2024. We are carefully considering the feedback received and will publish the Government response, setting our more detail on the content of the standards, in due course.

Communities and Local Government, what funding Thornaby on Tees will receive from the (a) Town Deal programme and (b) long-term plan for towns.

The Towns Fund has allocated £23.9 million pounds to Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council to deliver 4 projects in the Thornaby area. The projects are now being delivered as part of the Simplification Pathfinder Pilot, a model that brings local growth funding...