Martin Wrigley

My apologies to the right hon. Member. Since 2018, when the Conservative Government introduced the so-called standard method, which was supposed to calculate housing need, the country has suffered from a top-down, dysfunctional system that fails to prioritise the importance of affordability or the infrastructure necessary to support new development. The constant tinkering, with the introduction and subsequent withdrawal of various failed algorithms, has led to the near paralysis of our planning system. That came on top of the central Government’s starving local planning authorities of the resources they need to function, and the lack of direction as a result of no fewer than 13 changes of Conservative Housing Minister in the nine years from 2015. It is illiberal, and contrary to the interests of a community-led planning system, to remove options for how to assess housing need from local communities. Although the standard method of assessing housing need is likely to be followed by most authorities, councils with the resources and ability to assess housing need in ways more suited to their areas should be permitted to do so. All housing need assessments are, in any event, subject to the same scrutiny by the Government’s inspectors. In the district of Teignbridge, in which my Newton Abbot constituency sits, the average house price in 2019 was just under 11 times the average income. After a substantial increase in housing targets due to the standard method calculations, that ratio is going up, and the average house price is now over 11 times the average income. Housing developers build homes only as fast as they can sell them and at the price they need to protect their profit and viability, given the often extortionate prices they have paid for the land. Asking them, via the flawed standard method, to build more to reduce the price is much like asking the owner of a gold mine to increase extraction to a level that reduces the price of gold. It will not happen. A big part of the solution is to build more council homes, and I am proud to have overseen the resumption of council house building at Teignbridge for the first time in 30 years. I urge the Government to help more councils build more council homes to help more people.