Select committee: Built Environment Committee
Conclusion 114
1st Report - Meeting housing demand
Published 10 Jan 2022
Built Environment Committee Meeting the UK’s housing demand All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
Over the last 30 years, successive governments have expressed concern with the planning system and its ability to deliver the number of homes needed; our inquiry is not the first to consider these issues. Dame Kate Barker’s first report on housing supply, published in 2003, said “The long-term upward trend in house prices and recent problems of affordability are the clearest manifestations of a housing shortage in the UK”. 189 Subsequent major reviews of these issues include: the 2004 Barker report on housing supply, the 2006 Barker Review of land use and the 2018 Letwin review of ‘build out’ rates, the rate at which agreed developments are completed. Parliamentary reports include the 2018 Lords Economic Affairs Committee’s Building more homes report and, more recently, the Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee’s report on the Planning White Paper. 190 The thorough exploration of these issues raises questions as to why the planning system’s impact on meeting housing demand has not been successfully addressed.
From: Built Environment Committee, 1st Report - Meeting housing demand, 10 January 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 28 March 2022 (deadline 10 March 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government welcomes the Committee's report and says it is "taking action on a number of the issues identified", agreeing with some recommendations while disagreeing with others, including on home ownership schemes and the Apprenticeship Levy.
- It "disagrees with the report's assessment that homeownership schemes do not provide good value for money", citing independent evaluations and its own evaluation of Help to Buy.
- On older people's housing, it is launching a new taskforce "this year", chaired by the Minister for Housing, to look at better choice, quality and security of housing.
- It does "not intend to set out a proportion" of Affordable Homes Programme funding for social housing, though "around half" of the affordable homes are to be for social and affordable rent.
- On the Apprenticeship Levy it says it has "no plans to review" it. On planning fees it is "exploring options" to increase them, and on local plans it will make an announcement "in due course".