Speeches by Pennycook.

“I cannot give you that commitment. We intend, as I said, to publish a government response alongside the report. At the point we are able to do that, I am more than happy to come and update the House on both what the taskforce has reported back to us in terms of appropriate locations and all the other issues we asked th…”

“You tempt me into giving you a timeline and I cannot give you one. We want to see those locations made public, and the Government’s response and how we intend to proceed made public, as soon as possible. We have no reason to hold back.”

“We are planning to release it with a government response alongside, and we will do that in a sensible timeframe after the report is delivered to us.”

“What is my definition of British summer? Is there not a well‑understood, well‑recognised definition of summer? I would have hoped so. I understand the appetite for seeing the report delivered to the Department, Mr Curtis, but I cannot give you a commitment here today that Sir Michael will deliver it on Mo…”

“We are expecting them, as we have consistently said, to submit their final report in the summer.”

“No.”

“Yes, as an example of a local authority that is not taking the West Berkshire approach to reimburse residents.”

“You are right that some councils have given refunds. West Berkshire is a good example of one that has chosen to take that path. There are two things to say. First, a series of households across the country have been very badly hit by this. It is very clear to us that the CIL regulations in question are not intended to …”

“That was a series of very pertinent but, in some ways, technical questions. Starting with CIL, it is a discretionary charge locally led by local planning authorities. That is why the main data is locally driven and published, including through the legal requirements that are in place to publish infrastructure funding s…”

“I would add to that in the sense of reinforcing what Will said, in that every planning application decision is a decision by the decision maker, or PINS on appeal, as to planning judgment in the round, based on material considerations where national policy has significant weight. The other thing I would add is—and we t…”

“Not by 31 December, no. It will be far sooner than that.”

“It will be as soon as possible this year.”

“I will give you a few thoughts and then bring Will in, because it is fair to say that we went round the houses on this extensively at the point of the NPPF refresh in December. We have not dropped the policy of benchmark land values, but we are undertaking further work to assess how benchmark land values, on green-belt…”

“I understand the concerns around it. Is it worth me detailing to this Committee precisely the problem as I see it? It might be valuable. It goes without saying that private developers require sufficient incentive—profit—to build out schemes. They should, of course, be able to use viability assessments to reduce contrib…”

“We can do that.”

“And proportionate.”

“Temporary accommodation lies outside my area of responsibilities as a Minister.”

“I would say two things. I know about this from a constituency point of view. There are creative solutions to some of this happening. For example, some local authorities are using local authority housing fund funds to take up some of these units and to remove people off their TA rolls. That is happening. Local authoriti…”

“It is 1,500 as of last week, but that does not tally with, for example, the Home Builders Federation telling us that there are 17,400 of these units out there in the country. I wrote to the HBF recently asking for a detailed breakdown of the ownership and location of those 17,400 section 106 units that it references in…”

“There was new data last week on how many have gone through our clearing service. It was 800 in the early stages. I think we have new numbers.”