Listening to some of the speeches by Labour Members made me feel that they were in deep denial about what happened at the back end of the previous decade, which had a significant, if not catastrophic, impact on the construction industry and the house-building programme. I gently remind the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) that it was the previous Labour Government who brought the economy to its knees, causing problems which had such a devastating impact on the construction industry that there was no possibility of providing the houses that were needed. Frankly, it is living in cloud cuckoo land to suggest that there has been no improvement since then. Since April 2010, 445,000 new homes have been delivered. That, to me, is quite an achievement. We have seen a reduction in the number of empty properties, and rightly so. Just over 200,000 planning permissions were granted last year. Those are signs of the beginning of improvements in a market that had been brought to its knees.
Having said that, I agree with everyone who has spoken that it is crucial that we meet the housing needs and requirements of a growing population. My own local authority, Chelmsford, has been extremely good. Between 2001 and 2020, we are being required to provide 16,000 extra homes to meet local demand. The council has been imaginative and innovative in identifying brownfield sites, to start with, throughout the borough and providing new planning permissions for housing on them. Owing to the scale of the housing provision required, it is moving on to greenfield sites in the north-east of Chelmsford, where we are hoping to get a new station as a result of a new almost-ward of just over 3,000 properties, of which 35% will be affordable housing to meet the needs of local people who will benefit from it.
I would like to raise an issue with my hon. Friend the Minister about affordable housing. The main provider of social housing in Chelmsford is Chelmer Housing Partnership. That housing was originally the housing stock of Chelmsford borough council, as it was then. Chelmer Housing Partnership has had an imaginative way of developing its properties since it took them over about 20 years ago. For example, all the houses have had central heating put in, which means that no one comes to my surgeries any more complaining about massive condensation. It has improved the fabric of the buildings, and, through its imaginative policies, is investing in building more housing stock for its tenants.
The other housing associations vary as to the quality of the service that they provide to their tenants, and that worries me. Chelmer Housing Partnerships operates a policy of housing for local people. The problem in Chelmsford—I am sure it is not unique—is that significant numbers of young people are leaving school or university and living at home because they cannot afford, at that stage in their lives, to buy a property. Meanwhile, there is not enough social housing available, because most of the housing associations have a policy whereby half the allocations are for local people and the other half are up to the housing association. A lot of people from outside the borough, often from London, are being rehoused in social housing in Chelmsford. If we had a surfeit of properties, that would be perfectly reasonable, but we have long waiting lists for housing. Realistically,
a 21-year-old in Chelmsford who is single, has no children and lives with their parents would be on a housing waiting list for a minimum of 10 years before they might get anywhere consideration for an offer. I believe that is wrong.
Local housing should, first, be for local people, and if there is then spare capacity, people from elsewhere may certainly be encouraged to go to live there. Chelmsford is a very attractive place. It has two of the finest grammar schools in the nation. It has good communications with London. About 8,000 of my constituents commute by train down to London to work. It is an area with good shopping, and so on. That means that there is constant demand for housing in the borough. We therefore need to look at this issue again, to make sure that local residents who were born there and whose families have lived there all their lives are able to get housing, along with other family members who may wish to come back to Chelmsford to help to look after elderly or ailing family members and parents.
I make a plea to my hon. Friend the Minister: is there any way of fine-tuning the allocation of social housing to make sure that local people are given greater priority, rather than having to compete with people who have no connection with the area and, in effect, queue-jump? That causes tensions within the community, because people ask why they have to wait so long to get housing when people who have never been there before and have no connections can get an allocation through a housing association and come to live in a very attractive and vibrant city.
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