Select committee: Built Environment Committee
Conclusion 172
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 heard concerns from councils about their ability to meet the new housing targets. Grant Butterworth said in Leicester, due to the limited number of sites in the city district, the council had agreed with neighbouring districts to accommodate their unmet need of around 7,000 homes (of a total housing need assessment of 30,000 homes). However, with the new assessment, the figure for unmet need is now 18,000 homes. He predicted that the 35% uplift is “going to cause huge issues” because the “pressure on the districts around the large cities is going to grow and grow.” 260 The West of England Combined Authority wrote that “A further potential consequence of the Bristol 35% uplift will be to make the community acceptance of the housing numbers in the Spatial Development Strategy (and Local Plans) more challenging, particularly if, as anticipated, some of this growth uplift is distributed beyond the Bristol boundary.” 261
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".