Select committee: Built Environment Committee
Conclusion 178
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)
Sir Oliver Letwin’s review of build out, published in 2018, considered the significant gap in many developments between housing completions and the amount of land allocated in areas of high housing demand. The review concluded that there was “no evidence” that major developers were carrying out ‘landbanking’—i.e. buying undeveloped land purely as an investment with no specific plans for its development. As we heard on our visit to the St Modwen Kingsgrove development, developers are not going to build homes faster than they can sell them. 270 The recommendations in Sir Oliver Letwin’s report included proposals for new planning rules that would require developers to offer a range of different property types on sites with more than 1,500 homes. Other recommendations included a new National Expert Committee to advise councils, incentives for housebuilders and more powers for councils to undertake their own developments.
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".