Select committee: Built Environment Committee
Conclusion 125
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)
We received a significant volume of evidence which recommended reforms of the local plan-making process, but which stopped short of the zoning proposals in the Government’s White Paper. These suggestions included: Make the preparation and adoption of 10-year local plans mandatory, to set out clearly the housing numbers required (including affordable homes) and subject to rolling (at least five yearly) reviews 196 Strategic oversight of local plans through introducing regional plans 197 Meaningful sanctions, which are enforced, for those who continually fail to provide a local plan 198 Simplification of the plethora of strategic plans required and their competing timeframes; it is hard for a local plan to consider a 15–20 year timeframe when utility companies only have a 5year plan 199 Simplification of the requirements on the local plan-making process Increase resources for councils, to enable them to recruit the necessary skills and expertise to deliver a local plan (we discuss this further in Chapter 6).
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".