Select committee: Built Environment Committee
Conclusion 166
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)
Witnesses set out how increased funding for local planning authorities could be resourced. We heard that planning fees do not recover the costs of running the process, requiring an additional £180 million of public subsidy. 252 Councillor Dr Ed Turner said that in other areas of local authority activity councils “retain the ring-fenced budget, you are not allowed to cross-subsidise other services, but you charge what the service costs.” He said, given the “acuteness of the situation”, increasing planning fees so they cover the costs of the system “would be the right way to enable us to get in some of the expertise we need, at least in the medium and longer term.” 253 Berkeley Homes suggested that some Help to Buy funding could be reallocated to local authority planning resources, which would do more to ensure that sites are built out. 254
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".