Rachel Maclean: The Government is committed to increasing the supply of affordable housing. We are currently investing £11.5 billion through our Affordable Homes Programme which will deliver tens of thousands of homes for rent and sale right across the country. Since 2010 we have delivered over 632,600 new affordable homes, including over 441,612 affordable homes for rent, of which over 162,800 homes have...
Rachel Maclean: ...232,000 homes for the last year for which data is available – over 75% of the way towards our goal of ensuring there are 300,000 new homes a year. We have announced £10 billion investment in housing supply since the start of this Parliament, with our housing supply interventions due to ultimately unlock over 1 million new homes over the Spending Review 2021 period and beyond. We are...
Rachel Maclean: ...Howden (Mr Davis) for securing this important debate. It is a tribute to him that so many people have come to the Chamber to reflect the experiences of their constituents and to speak about local housing conditions. I thank the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western); the two former Housing Ministers who spoke, my right hon. Friends the Members for North West Hampshire (Kit...
Rachel Maclean: ...Government, and it is fantastic compared with the woeful record of the last Labour Government. At the same time, we are not complacent about the scale of the challenges that have dogged England’s housing market for decades, as many hon. Members have mentioned: demand outstripping supply, local shortages and residents being priced out of the places they grew up in. That is why we have...
Rachel Maclean: ...forgive me, because I have a lot to get on the record. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden has passionately advocated for new towns. We agree that an ambitious pipeline of housing and regeneration opportunities is crucial. I am a representative of a new town, Redditch, which currently houses about 70,000 people, so I know how successful and how important those...
Rachel Maclean: ..., I hope, hear the remarks about that later in my speech. Unfortunately, I cannot do justice to all the questions that are being asked, but I will touch on the importance of a healthy and diverse housing market, including the SME builders that were rightly mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South. We have launched the levelling up home building fund, which provides...
Rachel Maclean: ...to conclude my remarks, so let me reiterate my huge thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden. He is absolutely right to articulate so powerfully the case for driving up housing supply. That is our ambition—to build the homes that this country needs—and that is what this Conservative Government, working with Members on all sides of the House, will achieve.
Rachel Maclean: ...Howden (Mr Davis) for securing this important debate. It is a tribute to him that so many people have come to the Chamber to reflect the experiences of their constituents and to speak about local housing conditions. I thank the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western); the two former Housing Ministers who spoke, my right hon. Friends the Members for North West Hampshire (Kit...
Rachel Maclean: ...Government, and it is fantastic compared with the woeful record of the last Labour Government. At the same time, we are not complacent about the scale of the challenges that have dogged England’s housing market for decades, as many hon. Members have mentioned: demand outstripping supply, local shortages and residents being priced out of the places they grew up in. That is why we have...
Rachel Maclean: ...forgive me, because I have a lot to get on the record. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden has passionately advocated for new towns. We agree that an ambitious pipeline of housing and regeneration opportunities is crucial. I am a representative of a new town, Redditch, which currently houses about 70,000 people, so I know how successful and how important those...
Rachel Maclean: ..., I hope, hear the remarks about that later in my speech. Unfortunately, I cannot do justice to all the questions that are being asked, but I will touch on the importance of a healthy and diverse housing market, including the SME builders that were rightly mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South. We have launched the levelling up home building fund, which provides...
Rachel Maclean: ...to conclude my remarks, so let me reiterate my huge thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden. He is absolutely right to articulate so powerfully the case for driving up housing supply. That is our ambition—to build the homes that this country needs—and that is what this Conservative Government, working with Members on all sides of the House, will achieve.
Rachel Maclean: I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this important matter to the House’s attention. Where authorities fall behind, as in the case of that Lib Dem-run local authority, which he has highlighted effectively, we will not hesitate to take action. We are working to provide all local authorities with the support they need, including by increasing planning fees and ensuring that planning...
Rachel Maclean: ...of a short-term let use class and associated permitted development rights. Those changes would give councils more control over the number of new short-term lets and help them to meet local housing needs.
Rachel Maclean: ...steps to make sure that we get the balance right between tourists visiting an area, bringing in vital income and supporting local businesses, and those local communities having the necessary housing for people and workers to live in and to buy. We are progressing this consultation as quickly as possible and will make further announcements in due course.
Rachel Maclean: I do not agree that there has been dither and delay. We have already capped ground rents for significant numbers of leaseholders. We are committed to creating a housing system that works for everyone. We are determined to better protect and empower leaseholders to challenge unreasonable costs, extend the benefits of freehold ownership to more homeowners, and introduce more legislation within...
Rachel Maclean: Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right and I thank her for bringing the concerns of her residents to the Floor of the House. We are determined to reform this system. It is a hugely complex reform. I point out to the House that Labour had the opportunity to do this in its 13 years in government and did nothing.
Rachel Maclean: It is right to point out to the hon. Lady that, since the Government’s announcement in December 2017 that we would ban the sale of leasehold houses, the number of newbuild leasehold houses coming on to the market has significantly decreased. Land Registry records show that 1.2 % of newbuild houses were registered as leasehold in 2020 compared with 17% previously, so the Government’s...
Rachel Maclean: I thank my hon. Friend for his determination in bringing forward this innovative measure, which will enable the Government to meet their ambition of delivering the houses that are needed all over our community. He is right to say that local communities should be able to set their own local design codes. That will be a fantastic way for them to create a huge number of houses, building up, out...
Rachel Maclean: The hon. Lady is quite right: not just in Bristol, but across the country, pressures on infrastructure are one reason why communities sometimes have concerns about new housing developments. It is right that we are reforming the planning system to make that infrastructure available in advance of developments so that we can deliver the housing the country needs, in Bristol and elsewhere.
