Baroness Pinnock (LD)

My Lords, it is 1 am, and here we are debating a very important group of amendments. Whether all our brains will work well enough to give them the justice that they deserve, we will see. I have considerable sympathy with the amendments in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Hodgson. If the Government wish to achieve their targets of 300,000 new homes a year, one of the easier ways to do so is by ensuring that those sites that already have planning consent are built out—and built out rapidly. However, that is not in the interests of the developers. I will give one or two examples that I hope the Minister will be able to respond to. We have already heard that the ONS report—last year, I think—assessed that, of the 2.7 million homes given planning consent since 2015, only 1.5 million have actually been constructed. That obviously leaves 1.2 million homes already with planning consent that have yet to be constructed—which, interestingly, is four years’ worth of the Government’s targets for this Parliament. What are the reasons for this inactivity? Obviously, some are valid, including a lack of skills or materials that prevent developers getting going with their sites. However, in my experience, one cause is that major housebuilders deliberately phase the construction of a big site over many years to keep the selling price of their units as high as possible. In other words, they do not want too many new housing units on the market, which may depress the selling value that they would be able to get for those homes. I will give one simple example. Where I live, a developer has had consent, I think for three years, for a site of nearly 300 homes, which the developer claims will take 10 years to build out. If the Government are genuine about getting more homes, this amendment is an easy way of making progress by putting some oomph behind developers to get the sites built. I just noticed the Government Chief Whip sighing—well, it is not my fault we are here at 1.05 am. Another way in which housebuilders delay construction is by, having got planning consent, delaying the start by then putting in a series of amending planning applications, to keep their original planning consent alive. Although they are running out of time on the original consent—usually three years—they put in these amending applications to keep the site alive. Those sites will be within that £1.2 million. What will the Government do about that? The tactics create considerable delay in meeting the housing targets, which we are all concerned to see met. The only beneficiaries of this are the housebuilders, who benefit further from how the planning system is designed. When councils develop their local plans, they must have a five-year housing supply. What housebuilders do is quickly gobble up the housing sites indicated on the local plan. They do not always build them out; they keep them hanging on. When the five-year supply has run out, they then say, “Ah, you haven’t got a five-year supply of housing. We will now build on any site we like in the green belt”, which is what the Government permit. There is a big problem here, which I hope the Minister will be able to address when she responds. There are issues, which the amendments partially address, around trying to force developers to build out their sites once they have received planning consent. That is why I have a lot of sympathy for the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, in putting a bit of oomph behind all this to get things going. We want houses, but housebuilders should build them once they have received planning consent—it seems easy to me; that is what should happen. If they do not build, they should be deprived of the consent.