My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 83B to enable us to have what I hope will be a short but interesting debate on custom-build housing. This will give the Minister an opportunity to respond with
examples of the Government’s enthusiasm for it, which I know is there. I am conscious that this time on a Thursday evening is probably not the best time to initiate such an enthusiastic debate. I am not suggesting for one moment that this is the answer to the housing crisis we discussed earlier today. Plainly, it is not but it is a small and useful part of the answer. There is a growing interest in custom-build housing so perhaps I should be clear for the record what is meant by that. It includes both self-build housing, where the owner builds it himself, and those where individual commissions for building are of a house. I think that the phrase custom-build housing has now been adopted to cover both.
The LGA tells me that one in 10 new houses in the UK is custom-built. If that is the case, as I am sure it is, it is a small but significant part. It is one which is growing and in which there is considerable interest. My part of the Government are certainly very keen to encourage it and if this fairly simple amendment—which, as I said, was intended to create a debate—were enacted it would encourage local authorities to make provision for custom-build housing in their assembly of land. It would give further stimulus and encouragement to what is, as I say, a growing market and make a contribution—perhaps a relatively small contribution but a useful one—to meeting the housing need. It would also meet it in a way which most directly meets the needs of those who wish to use that housing, because it is their housing in every sense of the word. With that brief explanation and introduction, I beg to move.