Andrew George

My hon. Friend is right about that. Affordability is defined for rented accommodation—either 80% of market rent or the local housing allowance, whichever is lower—but it is not sufficiently defined for the intermediate market in rural areas, which includes shared ownership and discounted sale. There are ways that affordability can be achieved, and that should be done within local planning. We should give local authorities the power to define, for the purposes of their communities, what is and is not affordable, and we should strengthen the role of neighbourhood development plans in that respect as well. New clause 90 would put a cap on developer profit. A lot of people do not understand how planning authorities make their viability assessment when developments are brought forward. There is an assumption of a developer profit of 20%, but when developers ask for amendments to the way that their planning applications are viewed, they will often have undertaken two different valuations, and will come with both. One they present to the planning authority, and one they keep in their back pocket. One of the valuations comes with violins, and a sob story about how they will lose out because of the development, and how they are doing it only for the community. The other valuation is the reality. We know that they are making a killing out of other people’s poverty.