Speeches by Pennycook.

“That is a really good question. Through the NPPF we have tried to limit the discretion of local authorities to put in place their own standards when there are national standards in place. We are working through all this right now. On energy efficiency and internal layout, what is the amount of discretion that is approp…”

“I will chase a reply on that, Chair.”

“I will come back to you with a final comment. You can hold us to the theoretical 100% standard that the previous Government committed to and had no plan to deliver, or you can hold us to the very significant uptick that we are seeking through this 40% minimum and discretion, given that lots of local areas are planning …”

“Maybe we can share that question, and I will do the resourcing first. We are relying on local authorities to enforce and are giving them significant amounts of money to help them do so. We provided £18.2 million in 2025-26 and £41.1 million in 2026-27 to support the new enforcement responsibilities that local authoriti…”

“The only thing I would say—not to excuse the regulator of all failings, which I would not do—in terms of the new consumer standards is that they were obviously only legislated for in 2023 and they are only being rolled out now. I get regular monitoring reports of RPs that have fallen short and where performance measure…”

“I am not going to speculate on its contents, but again that is a really good example that gets at the Committee’s thinking, because we have a whole digital planning programme that we are rolling out with the Extract and APD tools. We made a recent announcement on this. There is lots of detail out there. The absence to …”

“I do not know about the Department; it has not been raised with me directly. I remember I was really seized of it at the time because some powers to bring forward regulations on digital planning were in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which I scrutinised as the shadow Minister at the time. In terms of that digi…”

“Just to supplement that, the bar for an exemption has to be extremely compelling in my mind. Let us see the evidence as to whether or not this type of lease meets that bar.”

“That is a tough question. I hear bandied about fairly often that as a Government we came into office without a plan.”

“That is precisely what we sought to investigate further through the pre-legislative scrutiny process. In the policy document that we published on ground rents specifically, you will remember that we sought further evidence on whether there is a justification for certain exemptions. We drew particular attention to negot…”

“We do not need a wholesale, fresh consultation on the ground rent cap, just this brief technical exercise to try to get a bit more evidence and supplement what little we got through the PLS process in terms of specifically negotiating quid pro quo leases.”

“Let me take those in two parts, with a caveat on the last one that I am not the Minister responsible for building regulations specifically, but I am more than happy to talk to them. Again, there is a slightly complex picture, which I can hopefully explain in a way that the Committee can follow. When I go back to the ge…”

“To give you a specific example, the HHSRS system was introduced in 2004 so that residents had a means of redress when it came to particular hazards. As I said, overheating is a hazard. When it comes to a tenant being able to seek redress for that particular problem—I am just trying to explain how the system works—it is…”

“No. The proposed framework is very clear that you must plan to meet local housing need. You should be assessing the need for M4(3) properties. We are just saying in the sense that where on M4(2) there is a floor and that discretion to adjust for need, on M4(3) there is complete discretion, to be brought forward through…”

“From memory the feedback we have had to the NPPF is that a minimum threshold of M4(3) is not particularly appropriate in the way that a minimum percentage of M4(2) is. It is a very different product.”

“I feel like I am dominating. Let me bring in Emma or Jo to talk through some of the challenges. It goes to the size of some providers.”

“I cannot make a judgment on whether it would definitely reject x local plan or not; it would be looking at the plan in the round and judging whether it was sound, but it would have to take this into account. This is all subject to whether we confirm the 40% M4(2) in the final NPPF; as I say we are working through the f…”

“We are seized by the urgency as well. It is worth pointing out a slightly bigger-picture conceptual argument that I want to register with the Committee. The new decent homes standard requires a landlord to address category 1 hazards. Over time we want to have that standard driving up overall standards, as the previous …”

“We will strain every sinew as a Government to get to 100%. I am accounting for the fact that that may not be possible, but we will do everything we can as a Government to ensure that we hit that standard. It is important to note—Emma may want to touch on this—that the decent homes standard obviously incorporates MEES, …”

“At that point I thought it would be published shortly. I am afraid I cannot give you a date. One reason why I brought this document, and many other things, is that I want—”