Matthew Pennycook

I note your stricture on the two minutes at the end, Ms Jardine. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair. I begin by congratulating the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing this important debate. I also thank him for so clearly articulating his concerns about the implications of housing targets for his constituency. As he might expect, I take issue with a number of the arguments he made, for reasons that I will come to, but no one can be in any doubt as to his commitment to forcefully representing the views of those he represents. I also thank the shadow Minister and other hon. Members for their contributions in what has been a thoughtful and well-informed debate. I must make it clear at the outset that I am unable to comment on individual local plans or local planning applications, or, for that matter, on how individual local planning authorities may interpret national planning policy. That is due to the quasi-judicial nature of the planning process and the potential decision-making role of the Deputy Prime Minister. I can and will, however, make general comments as they relate to the various matters raised, and I will touch on each of the three specific points raised by the right hon. Member for East Hampshire in his opening speech. I do not think any Members present would dispute that England is in the grip of an acute and entrenched housing crisis, and we have heard several arguments to that effect. The crisis is blighting the lives of not just those at the sharp end in temporary accommodation, but the many families out there desperate to buy a first home of their own. It is also hampering economic growth and productivity, and consuming ever-larger amounts of public money in the form of the rapidly rising housing benefit bill. The crisis has many causes, but among the most important is a failure, over many decades, to build enough homes of all tenures to meet housing demand in both rural and urban areas. The Government are absolutely determined to tackle it head on, which is why our plan for change commits us to an ambitious and stretching—I have never been anything other than candid about the fact that it is incredibly stretching—milestone of building 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament. I gently say to the shadow Minister that it is not enough to will the ends; we have to will the means as well. That is why we have instituted various reforms to date, and we are planning more. Planning reform is integral to meeting that manifesto commitment, which is why we have already overhauled the national planning policy framework to reverse the anti-supply changes made by the previous Government in December 2023, and to introduce a range of measures that will enable us to build the homes and infrastructure that the country needs. We believe in a plan-led system. It is through local development plans that communities shape decisions about how to deliver the housing and wider development that their area needs, and those plans must remain the cornerstone of our planning system. However, we are clear that local decisions must be about how to meet housing need, not whether to do so at all. That is why we have restored mandatory housing targets, as the manifesto on which we stood and won a decisive victory last July committed us to doing. That means that local authorities must use the standard method as the basis for determining housing requirements in their local plans. However, we made it clear that a mandatory method is insufficient if the method itself is not adequate to meet housing need. That is why our revised NPPF implements a new standard method for assessing housing needs, which aligns with our ambitions for 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament. We think that the new standard method strikes the right balance. Indeed, we adjusted it from the proposals we consulted on last July in response to significant feedback from experts, developers and local authorities across the country, much of which pressed us on the fact that the formula we consulted on was not sufficiently responsive to affordability demands. The revised NPPF that we published on 12 December contains the adjusted method. The new method better responds to affordability pressures by using a higher affordability adjustment in its calculation. That recognises the importance of housing affordability in assessing housing needs, and helps direct more homes to where they are most needed and least affordable. It also provides greater certainty to the sector through more stable and predictable housing numbers compared with the previous approach, which, as the shadow Minister will know, relied on out-of-date demographic projections and unevidenced and arbitrary adjustments. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire raised a specific concern about how the standard method translates into local plan making. Although local authorities are expected to use the standard method to assess housing needs, they are able to justify a lower housing requirement than the figure set by the method on the basis of local constraints on land availability, development and other relevant matters such as national landscapes, protected habitats and flood risk areas. Local authorities will need to consider these matters as they prepare their plans, but we expect them to explore all options to deliver the homes that their communities need. That means maximising brownfield land, densifying available brownfield sites, working with neighbouring authorities on cross-boundary housing growth, and, where necessary, reviewing the green belt.