Select committee: Built Environment Committee
Conclusion 173
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)
Like other aspects of the housing challenge, a standardised approach to setting housing targets has a different effect in the north of England and areas with lower land values and less pressure on affordability. Lancashire County Council argued that the baseline calculations under the standard method, even with the update, “produce significantly increased housing numbers in the south and south east of the country, whilst setting low and decreasing baseline numbers in the north.” 262 In these areas, the councils’ local plan targets are higher than those set by central government—for example in Blackburn with Darwen the local plan has identified 625 sites but the new standard methodology calculated a need for only 154 sites. 263 Lancashire County Council said that this can make it harder to gain public approval of local plans and does not match the Government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda. 264 Figure 12 shows that overall, housing completions are more likely to outperform needs assessments in the North and North East than the South East and London. 265 Figure 12: Overall completions relative to housing need or number of homes planned for Source: Written evidence from Home Builders Federation ( UKH0044 )
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".