Homes and Planning Bill

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Friday 13th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andrew George]

First of all—

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

Read the Bill!

[Andrew George]

As my hon. Friend shouts correctly, it is obvious that the hon. Member has not read the Bill. When a property changes hands, any permission would need to be renewed, so it is not in perpetuity at all. He has completely misunderstood that.

The hon. Member says that there is a cap. Well, that is a step forward, but it was very interesting that the Conservatives brought forward a proposal to introduce a planning use class, as well as a registration scheme. A registration scheme would be useful. I know that he has been encouraged by the Whips to come and make a brave defence of the Government’s opposition to this Bill, and I give him some credit for that, but frankly, a registration scheme does not cut the mustard. It is a useful and interesting sideshow, but it has no relevance and will not address this issue. I would have thought that there are a lot of second homes and holiday lets in the hon. Member’s area, so he should understand that this is a serious issue. Having a licensing scheme is not the answer.

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[Samantha Dixon (Chester North and Neston) (Lab)]

Protecting our affordable housing stock is vital as we continue to pass through the cost of living crisis, and consider the scale of the housing crisis that confronts us. I hear this repeatedly on the doorsteps of Chester North and Neston, and I know that many Members hear the same. From larger urban centres to smaller villages and rural areas, my constituency contains the whole spectrum of housing provision. Residents have continuously voiced concerns about access to affordable housing across the constituency as a whole.

In small rural towns, like Neston, younger people and those on lower incomes are being pushed out by the lack of affordability, leaving historic settlements less diverse and worse off. Neston has the potential to be a wonderful home for our younger people. It has great links with Chester, Liverpool and the Wirral, access to beautiful green spaces that are well suited to family outings and sports, and good schools and restaurants—in short, the basic building blocks needed for a fulfilling, well-rounded life. To hear stories of families who can no longer afford to live there, pushed out by a lack of affordable homes, is disheartening, and strengthens my commitment to improving the situation—a commitment that I know is shared by this Labour Government.

With that in mind, I recognise the ambitions set out in the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George). The delegation of greater power to local communities who know their areas, with a depth and cultural understanding that cannot be replicated by a top-down, heavy-handed approach, is admirable. I believe that the Government understand that and, since entering office, they have begun to give the issue the attention and focus it deserves. For that reason, when I read the Bill I found that many of its proposals began to feel somewhat similar.

To take one example, let us consider the Bill’s clauses that would require any housing associations seeking to dispose of homes to give preference to local community bodies. If that sounds familiar, it is because the Social Housing Bill, which has been extensively debated and will soon return to the Chamber, contains requirements for housing associations to notify registered providers in their local area when selling homes out of the regulated sector. This replication of work already undertaken or in progress continues throughout the Bill before us, touching on business rates, right to buy and measuring housing need, to mention but a few examples.

I have seen the passionate and dedicated campaigning of the hon. Member for St Ives in this area, and I truly believe in his commitment to delivering for his constituents. It is clear to me that he shares my own commitment to improving access to affordable housing. However, I remain concerned that by passing the Bill into law risks duplicating work already undertaken by the Government and muddying the waters. Building more social and affordable housing is central to continuing the robust economic growth that we have seen in this country over the past two years. I believe that passing the Bill before us may create the potential for confusion and unnecessary red tape, which threatens the overall effectiveness of this Government’s house building programme.

[Caroline Voaden]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way—I have to be careful not to stand on the dog that is lying at my feet. She says that passing the Bill would be confusing because the Government are attempting to build more social and affordable homes. I do not think any Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches are against building more social and affordable homes, but the problem is that so many of those homes that exist and that are built in areas like that of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) and mine in South Devon become second homes and holiday lets. The Bill is trying to prevent those much-needed residential dwellings leaking out of the housing system. It does not matter how many homes are built, because if there is no cap on the number of second homes and holiday lets, local people still cannot get a home.

[Samantha Dixon]

I acknowledge the hon. Member’s points and I am sure that the Minister will respond to them in due course.

The hon. Member for St Ives is right to highlight the rapid growth in short-term lets in our communities. Chester has a strong heritage and leisure industry that attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year, and the growth of our visitor economy has risen in step with the number of short-term lets. In Chester, and many other communities across the country, the proliferation of short-term lets has the potential to erode the supply of housing in the private rented sector. In turn, that may drive up rents for hard-pressed families. It is right that this issue is given the attention we are giving it today. Short-term lets certainly have their place in a vibrant tourism economy across the UK. Indeed, I am proud that Sykes Holiday Cottages, a company that takes its responsibilities in this area seriously, is headquartered in my constituency.

None the less, the growth in this sector must not come at the expense of our local communities. In the light of that, I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport reconfirm the Government’s commitment to the regulation of short-term lets, providing local leaders the power to balance local need for affordable housing while still benefiting from tourism in their areas. The short-term lets register will take decisive steps in an area that the Bill seeks to regulate. I am sure we will hear from the Minister for Housing and Planning about this in due course. I know that he has spent a substantial amount of time with the hon. Member for St Ives discussing this particular issue.

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[Emily Darlington]

I will not take the bait on how old I am, because one never asks a lady how old she is, but I am not 60. But my hon. Friend is absolutely right that Milton Keynes is the epitome of a Labour Government’s dream, not just in the fact that it is a city built on opportunity, bringing people together and building communities as well as housing, but in that it also houses another amazing Labour Government initiative—the Open University—which shows that every single person has an opportunity to succeed.

[Caroline Voaden]

It is great to hear about Milton Keynes building infrastructure and having dedicated cycle lanes. That is so much easier in a new town, where that can be done through urban planning, and we are absolutely in favour of that.

The hon. Lady talks about how important it is for local areas to build. South Hams, which I represent, has built its required number of houses year after year after year under Liberal Democrat leadership, but, because of inward migration, we have more than 4,000 second homes there—the fourth-highest concentration in the entire country. The Devon Housing Commission says that inward migration from outside Devon is a massive problem. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) has put forward a Bill that would help us to curb the second homes issue. It may not be a problem in Milton Keynes, but it is a particular issue that we are dealing with in certain parts of the country. That is why building and building and building is not the solution when we have massive inward migration from people wanting to retire to a beautiful part of the country.

[Emily Darlington]

I was just coming on to explain how second homes are an issue in Milton Keynes.

Milton Keynes is not immune to the second homes issue, but, in fact, our issue is a little bit different—everything in Milton Keynes is a little bit different. Our new homes are marketed in the middle east because of our prized location in being able to access London, Oxford, Cambridge and Birmingham, as well as fast trains to Manchester and Liverpool. Those homes are occupied only in the summer and remain empty for the rest of the year. Despite doubling the council tax for those homes, that remains an issue. I want to continue to have a conversation with the Minister about what more we can do to tackle that issue so that those new homes go to families.

There are other, even more pressing issues in Milton Keynes that the Government could help with, which would help to fix the housing crisis. The Minister will not be surprised by my raising some of these issues, but I would appreciate it if he could address some of them in his response.

First and foremost, rough sleeping in Milton Keynes used to be the highest that it had ever been. As the deputy leader of the council, I was able to bring it down to some of the lowest levels, and I am really pleased that the approach we have taken in Milton Keynes is now the national approach. We have done No Second Night Out in Milton Keynes for more than three years, and it has led to a significant decrease in the number of people sleeping rough, but, unfortunately, issues still need to be resolved to make our dream of ending rough sleeping. Some of those issues have been taken up by the Prime Minister, who has committed further funding beyond this Christmas and will allow some proper infrastructure around supported housing to be built right across the country.

We have to talk about how the local housing allowance does not respond to local rents. That is important in a city such as Milton Keynes, where private rents are about the same as those in many areas of London. We also need to talk about local councils building council housing again. The Government have rightly done quite a bit to support registered providers, but that does not deal with housing revenue account debt or the fact that many local councils have not been able to access the £39 billion in Homes England funding. How are we ensuring that council homes are being built by councils? We need to look at the impact of right to buy and the wall put up by the Thatcher Government between a council’s general fund and the HRA budgets, which makes no sense when temporary accommodation comes out of the general fund and council homes come out of the HRA.

The other big issues that we need to solve in the housing crisis include service charges for leaseholders. I really welcome the Minister’s efforts to deal with this issue, because it is not only pricing people out of purchasing, but trapping people in homes, as they can no longer sell them because of high service charges, and they are therefore building up debt. There are also the service charges for freeholders. That is an issue, because when we build new houses and estates, we see fleecehold being used more and more to continue to game cash from residents, instead of handing over roads and parks to the local council. The Minister will be aware of how much that impacts Milton Keynes, and how important it is for my residents, and I hope he will talk about some of his work and thinking on this.

Although the hon. Member for St Ives—he is now back in his place; he just did a tour—is identifying some real issues, we cannot look at these things in isolation, and this is really a sticking plaster for a housing crisis for which we need an overarching plan. We need councils to use the powers they currently have, and to stay up to date with their five-year land supplies and local plans, so that planning inspectors are not coming in and forcing them on councils. The power stays local when the local behaves properly, and that is what we need to get across to councils that have still not put such measures in place. Those councils—Milton Keynes is surrounded by many of them—that refuse to build, or build only on the borders of Milton Keynes, are not taking this issue seriously.

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[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

I am very pleased to be in the Chamber to speak in support of this Bill, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on bringing it forward. He has deep expertise in this area, having spent many years dealing with the tragedy that is homelessness in Cornwall.

My constituency of South Devon, just up the road from Cornwall, is one of the most beautiful parts of the country—possibly more beautiful than Cornwall, I would argue, but we will not get into that. It has a stunning coastline, rolling farmland and villages that look like they belong on a postcard, but a postcard is exactly what some of those villages are in danger of becoming, because behind the beautiful views lies a housing crisis that is literally hollowing out our communities. In 1997, the average home in Devon cost about £60,000; today, it costs around £300,000, and wages have nowhere near kept up. In the South Hams, the gap between house prices and local earnings has widened by 159% since 1997. A home now costs more than 13 times what a local person can earn in a year, yet affordable homes make up just 9% of Devon’s housing stock, half the national average.

Devon also faces pressures that many other parts of the country do not: second homes, holiday lets and serious levels of inward migration, particularly of people who have sold up elsewhere and retired to the coast. I make that last point with no resentment—who could blame anyone for wanting to retire to Devon? However, the effect is that local people end up bidding against buyers who have decades of equity behind them. Devon already has an average age of 50, and it is local young people and key workers who are left with nowhere to go. It is becoming impossible to recruit for lower-paid jobs, including seriously needed community jobs such as teachers, nurses and healthcare workers, because there is literally nowhere that they can afford to live. None of this is driven by the politics of envy; it is about basic social justice, and whether the people who keep our communities running can afford to live in them.

The Bill that we are debating does two things, both of which are absolutely vital to South Devon. First, it extends the community right to buy, so that parish and town councils, community land trusts and other community-led organisations can designate redundant buildings and land on the edge of a community. They would have first refusal for an option period of up to five years to use that land for genuinely affordable homes, held in perpetuity for local people.

The Bill builds on the provisions already set out in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 and gives communities the tools to overcome ransom strips and access problems and to use compulsory purchase powers where necessary.

The answer to the housing crisis—I have said this many times in the House and will keep doing so—is small sites on the edge of every village and rural exception sites. Every village needs a few new homes to survive: not 50, 100 or 200-plus identikit houses plonked on a field by the side of a town 30, 40 or 50 miles away, but 10, 12 or 20 houses in the right place for the people who need them.

I recently met Paula, who has lived in a local village for 20-plus years. She is the kind of person every village needs. She walks the dogs. When someone comes out of hospital, she brings food to their home. She looks after homes that are second homes. She does a bit of cleaning. She does all those things for people in the village—everybody could do with a pair of helping hands at some point. Paula’s landlord is trying to evict her. There is nowhere else she can live that is in or near the village, so not only will she lose her home, but she will lose her livelihood and her income. She will be forced to move 10 or 20 miles away to find a social or affordable home elsewhere in Devon, which will be like finding hen’s teeth. She will lose her entire network—her social network and her livelihood—because there are no social or affordable homes in her village.

We need homes that let young people who grew up in communities stay there if they want. We do not want all young people to have to leave Devon because there is nowhere for them to live. We need homes that let older residents downsize and free up family houses. We need homes that keep the schools open and the bus running, but it is not happening.

I recently met a local housing developer. He told me that with a small site it takes just as much preparation, red tape and admin to get spades into the ground as with a large site. The cost of getting there is the same, but for a fraction of the return, so for many developers it is simply not worth building a few homes on the edge of a village. That is why it does not happen: instead, developers choose to build huge sites on the edge of towns, miles away from where homes are needed.

This is where I take issue with the policy of “Let’s build loads of homes” or “Let’s build a million and a half homes”. They are being built at scale in the wrong place. For someone who lives in a large rural community, it does not work. Not everybody can go to Plymouth or Exeter and buy a house in a huge development like Sherford. People want to stay in their local community. That is where community-led delivery comes in, which is why this element of the Bill is needed.

In Salcombe, a community land trust was ready to deliver homes that would have met virtually the entire social housing need of the people in that community on the list; I think there were 18 households on the list. After years and years of effort and commitment from some incredibly committed local volunteers, the community land trust has been stopped in its tracks because the landlord decided at the eleventh hour that he did not want to sell the field. This Bill could have changed that. It could have led to homes for local families who have no other possibility of staying in their local community.

Then there is Clay Park in Dartington, with 39 energy-efficient homes, all for social rent for people with local connections. It is exactly what rural areas need, but it took 16 years to get from the first community meeting to the building work, which started last year. That is the reality of trying to build differently. Community groups give up. They get worn down by the red tape. In the time it takes to put a spade in the ground, children become adults. The people who need the homes have to move away or buy elsewhere because they cannot wait any longer. Villages cave in and let a developer put 50 homes on a field. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Ben Maguire) says, affordable homes end up as market-value homes because the permissions are changed. People cannot get more imaginative proposals through the hoops.

That has to change. We have to make it easier to build differently. This Bill would do exactly that, so I cannot understand why Labour Members are so adamant about opposing it. No, it will not fix the housing problem in the UK, and no, it is not radical enough—we all know that we need radical solutions—but it would address part of the problem. In communities like ours, that is vital.

Secondly, the Bill would give communities the power to limit the number of second homes and holiday lets in their area if they want to. A new C5 use class would require planning permission for the conversion of a permanently occupied home into a second home or holiday let. Local plans and neighbourhood plans could set limits on the proportion of such homes, and the power would be available only to those places that chose to use it. It would not necessarily need to be used in places without a second home issue. It would be used in places where there is a tipping point at which the loss of more permanent residents threatens the very viability of a community. Any C5 permission would revert to C3 when the property changed hands, to avoid perverse incentives. It would not last into perpetuity.

[Markus Campbell-Savours]

I note that there is a mechanism in the Bill by which, at the point of disposal, the C5 use comes to an end, but C6 does not. Why is C6 excluded?

[Caroline Voaden]

I believe the hon. Gentleman is correct.

Let us look at what the Bill would mean for South Devon. Well over half the homes in Hope Cove are second homes. A constituent I spoke to grew up there and moved away as a young adult. She came back to raise her own family, but ended up leaving again because there were literally no children left in the village for her kids to play with. She was broken-hearted that her children would not have the same experience as she had growing up by the sea. Not far away, the primary school in Kingswear has closed. There are not enough families left to make it viable.

We have over 4,000 second homes in South Hams, which is more than the number of social homes in the whole district and makes for one of the highest concentrations in England. We have 1,600 people on a housing waiting list. Imagine if some of those second homes could go back into the residential market. All across South Devon, homes that once housed local families, nurses, teachers and fishing families have been converted into tourist accommodation, and the private rented sector has shrunk as a result.

[Markus Campbell-Savours]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Caroline Voaden]

I will make some progress.

When a social rented home becomes available, the competition is extraordinary. There were 119 bids for one home in Marlborough, 113 for one in Salcombe, and 190 bids for one house in Brixham.

The measures in the Bill are not fringe ideas. The Devon Housing Commission recommended both more social and affordable homes through rural exception sites and tighter controls on second homes and holiday lets. The Devon and Torbay combined county authority has built those recommendations into its local housing plan, and they are the considered view of the people who know Devon best.

I urge the Government to take the Bill seriously. I am deeply disappointed that they have chosen not to back it today. Perhaps it is the politics of it being a private Member’s Bill from someone on the Opposition Benches, or maybe it is because they really do not understand what is going on in large, dispersed rural communities. Whatever the reason, it is really poor that the Government cannot get behind a Bill introduced by someone with the years of experience that my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives has in dealing with the tragedy of homelessness in Cornwall. If anyone is really interested in understanding what it looks like down there, I cannot recommend highly enough reading “Homesick” by Catrina Davis, a heart-wrenching book about what the housing crisis in Cornwall really means.

I want to see the Government back a stronger community right to buy, so that a community land trust like the one in Salcombe has a realistic chance of finding the space it needs to transform people’s lives. Everybody needs a home, and this Bill is one way to make that happen. I hope the Government will give communities in places such as Hope Cove, Salcombe and Kingswear the power to protect homes for permanent residents, and I hope they will look hard at the economics of small sites, so that building 10 homes in a village is not 10 times less attractive than building 100 far away.

Without homes for local people, my local schools will keep closing, the shops and pubs will shut their doors, and the buses will stop running—if we had them; we do not have enough buses, but that is another matter. It is already happening across South Devon. My hon. Friend has introduced a Bill that would give communities the power to stop this. I implore the Government to listen and to give our towns and villages the chance they need to stay alive.

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[Matthew Pennycook]

I am more than happy to have a conversation with the hon. Member about public land and what more can be done in that area. As I said, we strengthened rural exception site policy in the NPPF. I am interested—I have made this offer to him previously, and I make it to other hon. Members—to know why rural exception sites in particular parts of the country are not coming forward at the scale required. On the safeguard, in our view a national hectare-to-population formula risks imposing an arbitrary constraint that may bear little relationship to local need or the characteristics of a particular site. The requirement for population figures, land management, aggregation, record keeping and avoidance also demonstrates the administrative complexity of the model.

[Caroline Voaden]

Will the Minister give way?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will make a bit of progress. The established planning system is the appropriate framework for assessing housing need, land supply, site suitability and the scale of development in the light of local circumstances. The Government therefore do not believe that the additional statutory ceiling is justified.

I will now turn to clauses 5 and 6 individually, starting with clause 5. I recognise the concern that has given rise to this provision. Excessive concentrations of short-term lets and second homes can impact the availability and affordability of homes for local residents to buy and to rent, as well as local services, and we agree that local authorities need effective tools to manage those impacts.

However, we believe the clause is problematic for the following reasons. First—I say this gently to the hon. Member for St Ives—the proposal appears to misunderstand the effect of the use classes order. The order is permissive: it provides that a change of use within the same use class is not development, and therefore does not require planning permission. However, it does not provide that a change between different use classes will necessarily require planning permission. The introduction of new use classes C5 and C6 would not therefore automatically mean that a change to or from those uses is a material change of use requiring planning permission, and whether a particular change of use is material would still need to be considered on the facts of the case.

It would also provide for a C5 second home use to cease automatically when a property is sold or otherwise subject to a relevant . A future owner wishing to use it as a second home would need planning permission for that use. Again, this requirement would be subject to specific carve-outs, such as a transfer between spouses or civil partners.

The important point here is that planning use classes run with the land or building and are not based on ownership. Automatic reversion on sale would cut across that established principle and create complexity for property owners, conveyancers and local planning authorities. Furthermore, the proposed exemptions would be at odds with the current functioning of the order and wider legislative scheme.