Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the 2017 White Paper entitled Fixing our broken housing market, when he plans to launch a consultation on increasing the transparency of private contractual option agreements held over land.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
MHCLG is working with HM Land Registry to meet the Housing White Paper commitments on land registration, including registering all publicly-owned land by 2025 with the aim of achieving comprehensive registration in England and Wales by 2030. To assist this process, it has published a list of unregistered land believed to be owned by central and local government.
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether he has plans to extend the role of Community Land Trusts in rural areas.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Government recognises that the community-led housing sector – of which Community Land Trusts are an important part – offers significant potential for helping to meet housing need across England, especially in rural areas. In addition to helping increase the rate of delivery of new housing, the sector will help deliver a range of benefits including diversifying the housebuilding sector, improving design and construction quality, developing modern methods of construction, and sustaining local communities and local economies. The support and close involvement of the local community enables the community-led approach to secure planning permission and deliver housing that could not be brought forward through speculative development.
The principal means by which my Department supports Community Land Trusts is through the annual £60 million Community Housing Fund. This fund makes revenue and capital grant available to support community-led housebuilding schemes, and supports a programme of training and development for organisations providing technical advice and guidance to community-led housebuilding groups. The Fund is currently scheduled to close in March 2020 and decisions on funding for 2020-21 onwards are a matter for the Spending Review, which will take place this year.
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to reassess the threshold for affordable housing on rural exception sites.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Rural exception sites are used for affordable housing provided in perpetuity, on land that would not normally be released for development. While some market housing may be allowed on such sites, this is at the local planning authority’s discretion, and no threshold applies. On sites that are not exception sites, national policy is that affordable housing should be sought only on sites that involve major development, except in designated rural areas where a lower threshold may be set.
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many local authorities have sold off (a) all and (b) more than 50 per cent of council smallholdings since 1997.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Records held by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) show that in 1997 a total area of 119,977 hectares was held for smallholdings purposes by local authorities in England. Data on land held for smallholdings purposes by individual local authorities in 1997 is unavailable. A recent report published by Defra records that, at 31 March 2018, the total area of land held by 43 reporting smallholdings authorities in England was 89,020 hectares (for the whole estate), of which 83,600 hectares were let as smallholdings (for 40 reporting authorities).
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to strengthen regulations to prevent developers and landowners putting netting on hedgerows.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Wild birds are protected by law and therefore any development project must consider the impact on local wildlife and take precautionary action to protect their habitats. The revised National Planning Policy Framework is clear that planning policies and decisions should contribute to and enhance the natural and local environment by minimising the impacts on and providing net gains for biodiversity. The Government has announced plans to require developers to deliver biodiversity net gain through the forthcoming Environment Bill. This will mean habitats for wildlife must be left in a measurably better state than they were before any development.