My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, and the noble Lord, Lord Best, for raising these important points about buildout.
I will address the noble Baroness’s amendment first. Too many developers choose to land bank having achieved planning permission on a particular site. We know from Local Government Association data that there are more than 1 million housing units with existing planning consent that have not been built. The question we need to ask is: why, when as a country we are desperate for new houses, are we failing to take action to ensure that sites are developed promptly? Is the Minister able to provide any explanation for the long delays in developing sites? Will the Government provide proposals to prevent such delays?
I think we are all keen to have more housing units built, so we should focus on any delays in the system and try to improve buildout. From local experience I am aware of some of the reasons for delay. Where there are several sites with planning consent in the same locality, developers choose to delay construction in order not to have too many units on the market at the same time. That is an understandable commercial decision, but it delays the building of units of housing, which we desperately need. Developers also, understandably, want to create a steady flow of sites to develop as part of their business plans. These extend into several years, so it is not surprising that there is a slow output of new homes. What actions do the Government intend to take to address this issue?
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The key issue in these amendments is the rate of buildout. One site in my locality has consent for 300 houses and plans to build out over an eight-year timescale. It wants only 30 to 40 new units on the market at any one time, to maximise its profit. That is a commercial decision, which I can understand, but it does not help the country in building a number of new homes very quickly, which is what is needed. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister how the Government can address that issue.
Amendment 269 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, raises the important issues, which we have discussed to some extent in previous debates, of how we get more social housing on a site, how we get more housing appropriate for older people and how we get sites developed that reflect the needs of a particular locality. I agree totally with the objective of his amendment, but currently we have a landowner-led, developer-led process for building homes. At the outset of a local plan, the first step is the request to landowners to bring forward sites. Landowners do this because, once they get planning consent, the value of their land rises considerably.
The whole housing development process is in the hands of the providers, which provide what people may want and not what communities need. All our debates on planning so far have been about how we address need. The way the planning process is currently constructed enables developers to build what is wanted and not what is needed. There are very few levers, as I have tried to explain, to push developers to build what local areas need. Can the Minister explain how
local and national plan policies can be enforced or at least implemented, which they cannot be to any great extent now? A negotiation goes on between the local planning authority and a developer; each pushes and negotiates, but in the end the commercial interest has the upper hand, in my experience.
For me, those are the issues at the heart of this. We have an urgent need for new housing in this country. The Government are not using the levers that the country needs to enable housebuilding to occur and to provide for the needs of our communities, rather than the needs of commercial construction and development companies.