Social Housing Bill (Third sitting)

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 29th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The usual housekeeping rules apply: electronic devices should be switched off and there should be no food and drink in our sittings, except the water provided. If colleagues are kind enough to make any speaking notes available to Hansard, that will facilitate its work.

New Clause 1

Strategy for the provision of 150,000 new social housing dwellings a year in England

“The Secretary of State must, within twelve months of the passing of this Act, publish and lay before both Houses of Parliament a report which sets out a strategy for the provision of at least 150,000 new social housing dwellings in England in each financial year for the following twenty years.”—(Gideon Amos.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 34—Brownfield sites social housing development strategy—

“(1) Within 12 months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must publish and lay before Parliament a strategy for prioritising the development of brownfield sites for social housing.

(2) The strategy published under this section must include—

(a) measures to accelerate planning approvals on brownfield sites for social housing, and

(b) incentives for regeneration of derelict urban land for the purpose of social housing.”

This new clause seeks to require the Government to publish a strategy for prioritising brownfield land for social housing development.

New clause 4—Local authorities: borrowing restrictions—

“(1) The Secretary of State must by regulations remove relevant restrictions on local authorities to enable borrowing for the purpose of building or acquiring social housing.

(2) When determining the definition of ‘relevant restrictions’ under this section, the Secretary of State must pay due regard to the need to—

(a) retain restrictions essential to the management of the economy and local authority finances; and

(b) remove restrictions that place undue limitations on the ability of local authorities to provide sufficient social housing to meet local need.”

[Gideon Amos]

It is a pleasure to serve on the Committee under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. New clause 1 would require a strategy for the provision of 150,000 new social homes a year in England, which is the Liberal Democrat target. We welcome the Government’s commitments so far to funding and supporting the delivery of social homes, which are of key importance—in fact, we welcome those proposals a lot more than some of the planning system proposals for private housing development, but the focus of the new clause is on social homes. However, we need a significant target. So far, the Government have not set a statutory target, or indeed any clear target at all. The National Housing Federation and Shelter estimate that 90,000 more social homes are needed per year. Why did we go to 150,000? Because social homes should not be for just the most excluded, desperate and challenged in our society; they should be for working people in low-paid jobs.

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

I hesitate to ask the hon. Gentleman a slightly difficult question so early in the proceedings; he is a very nice man and does a very good job. He has previously said that national housing targets should not be dictated by Whitehall, that the Government’s housing targets are over the top and that a targeted approach to housing is unreasonable. Does he not agree that what the Government are doing is in line with his previous comments, and that it will achieve more social and affordable housing by overhauling the funding mechanisms for housing and by breaking down the planning barriers? That is a better approach, as he would previously have agreed himself.

[Gideon Amos]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s question about the details of Liberal Democrat policy, upon which I shall be delighted to expound. The challenge I was making is that the Government’s overall target for homes is mainly for private homes, so we have situations in Taunton where thousands of homes will be imposed on a community that will not be able to afford them or have any access to them. They will not be for local people.

Those targets come alongside the planning reforms, which seem to celebrate a confrontational approach—I think the Labour party called it a “blockers versus builders” approach. The notion that that will somehow lead to more community acceptance of housing development is wrong-headed. That is why we believe that the overall housing target needs to be based on household projections, as it once was, rather than on the current standard method. However, we would stick rigidly to our target of 150,000 social homes.

[Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s point about housing targets. I remind the Committee that we are interrogating the Bill. One of my criticisms of the Bill is that the forecast for new, additional houses, certainly in the impact statement, is to some extent inaccurate. Can he speak to his disappointment that the Bill does not create the new houses that he and his party clearly want to see?

[Gideon Amos]

To be fair to Conservative Members, which is something I do not often say, they raised the point in earlier sittings that there is too little in the Bill to secure the delivery of social homes—the really affordable homes that we need to see. That is why our new clause 1, the very first amendment that we tabled, would insert such a target into the Bill.

Let me return to the objective of the delivery of social homes. The Budget gave an extra £1.5 billion to the programme, which is incredibly welcome.

[Deirdre Costigan]

Hear, hear.

[Gideon Amos]

I almost echo the “Hear, hears”. However, that money would struggle to add about 1,000 social homes per year to the current 18,000, which is the closest thing to a target that we can divine from the Government’s policy announcements—about 18,000, 19,000 or maybe 20,000 a year. We need a whole lot more than that. The National Housing Federation and Shelter believe that we need at least 90,000 a year. The current level of ambition really is not high enough. I encourage the Government to focus their attention less on issuing thousands more planning permissions. We need planning permissions to keep coming through, but since we already have a million plots with planning permission not built for private housing, they should focus their attention instead on the delivery of social housing and on setting a target—if not this one, a target of some sort.

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was going to come on to this point, but what practical steps would he suggest for his Liberal Democrat local government colleagues? I think it is fair to say that they do not have the greatest reputation for approving housing developments in their areas. He has, admittedly, said that he is more in favour of social home building than private dwellings, but what practical steps would he take to encourage his local government colleagues on his target?

[Gideon Amos]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s question, which anticipates the Liberal Democrats being in government and in a position to ensure delivery of housing. I point him to Eastleigh council, which has taken over a development of 2,000 homes not being delivered by its developer. It has made it a local authority development and is now driving it through. I recently went down to visit Liberal Democrat-run Cornwall council. The previous Liberal Democrat administration set up a housing company that is building 180,000 homes a year—sorry, I mean 180; I wish it were 180,000—and is using the profits from that to build social rent homes.

I invite the hon. Gentleman to join me in my constituency, where we are building 400 council homes on the North Taunton estate and have retained our council housing stock. Sadly, because of right to buy, it is not the 30,000 units it used to be—it is now only 6,000 homes—but we are doing what we can. My colleagues in Somerset council are bringing new council houses to parts of Somerset for the first time in a generation. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to look at the activity of Liberal Democrat authorities on the ground.

New clause 1 would set a target of 150,000 social homes a year, which would something for the Government to aspire to. If not that target, what target will the Government set and when? The new clause does not require that many to be built; it is not a money resolution. It would simply require the Government to publish a strategy for what would be required to reach the target. If the Government are serious about the housing crisis, they should have no objection to setting a target of this kind. In our manifesto, we set an allocation of £6 billion a year towards that achievement. I appreciate that it would take a number of years to reach 150,000.

In the interests of time, I will move on to new clause 4, concerning borrowing restrictions on local authorities. I will give some “Hear, hears” to the Government for the Prime Minister’s words about reviving council housing and delivering a lot more of it, though I fear there are more words than pounds in his pronouncement. Shelter has commissioned research from Savills examining the impact of the housing revenue account debt on councils’ ability to build new social homes. The research found that writing off HRA debt could unlock between 190,000 and 284,000 dwellings.

Shelter also recently published research with Pragmatix Advisory that assesses the economic and financial case for cancelling HRA debt and investing in social housing. The central conclusion is that the policy would be compliant with the Government’s fiscal rules, while generating a substantial long-term economic benefit of £140 billion over a 60-year timeframe. My colleagues in Somerset council told me that if were not for the Government’s self-financing debt rules, they could build out another 630 council houses on top of the ones that I outlined to the hon. Member for Rugby.

I appreciate that the costs of writing off that debt would be significant—I am sure that the Minister has made that point—but if the Government will not write off all that debt, will they write off some of it? In our manifesto, the Liberal Democrats put an extra £2 billion a year into this area. Will the Government put in £2 million to write off some HRA debt? It is important to get councils building again. Those that have their housing revenue account maxed out have the political will, and in many cases the experience, to do so, but they lack the necessary financial headroom. If we want to get councils building, we need to look seriously at the HRA debt.

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I rise to speak to my new clause 34. I regret that my pointing out that the Bill will not create a single new social home appeared to get under the Minister’s skin on Tuesday, but the fact is that the Bill does not create any extra housing. That is not a surprise, as it comes from a Government who have built just 26% of their target in nearly 50% of their time in office. None the less, it is simply not good enough.

Moreover, in the places—few and far between—where the Government have tried to get Britain building, that has nearly always come at the cost of green belt protections, despite the fact that research from the Campaign to Protect Rural England shows that a large proportion of the Government’s lofty housing target could swiftly be met using brownfield land that already has planning permission. The CPRE estimates that up to 1.41 million homes could be built on existing brownfield land in England, based on data from local planning authorities’ brownfield land registers up to 2024.

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[Lewis Cocking]

I think we have to explore all options. I want to protect as much of the green belt as possible. We all have brownfield sites in our constituency that we want used to meet the social housing targets and bring down waiting lists.

Unfortunately, the Bill talks about stopping the right to buy. I just want to put it on the record that if we do that, the people who bought those houses will still be in them. Those people, and the waiting lists, will not magically disappear if we get rid of the right to buy.

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time, as always. I welcome the Conservatives’ move towards “use it or lose it” permissions. I assume that they agree that “lose it” should mean the compulsory acquisition of sites that have not been built out within a reasonable period, as the Liberal Democrats argued during the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025. Otherwise, what does “lose it” mean? How does it have effect?

[Lewis Cocking]

As I say, we need to explore all options, and I want brownfield sites to be built out first. I want to protect as much of the green belt as possible. That means looking at how to use areas that have planning permission and have already gone through the planning process—areas in our town centres that residents drive past all the time. The Government need to look at those sites, because there are loads of unbuilt planning applications; we have all had consultations and spoken to our residents about them. All options must be on the table.

We see this in our constituencies all the time. People come to see me at my local surgery to ask why a site has not been built out. We desperately want a care home built on a brownfield site in the middle of Cheshunt town centre. It would be good if the Government gave local councils tools to enable those sites to get built out quicker.

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[Matthew Pennycook]

It is a pleasure to continue our proceedings and to see you in the Chair, Sir Roger. After the Opposition’s—to put it candidly—languid approach in our previous sittings, I welcome the fact that they have clearly woken up and are now fully participating in the debate. Partly for that reason, we had a remarkably productive first day in Committee on Tuesday. Our debates on many of the clauses and amendments were predictably spirited; nevertheless, they remained civil and, in the main, constructive. I hope we can proceed in that vein today.

Before I respond to the new clauses, I will make a general point—a point that the shadow Minister is clearly struggling to grasp. Our ambitions to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation will benefit from the Bill, but they are not entirely dependent on this one piece of legislation. The supply statistics speak for themselves. Let me give the statistics from 2024-25. Overall social and affordable house building: 64,921, the highest level since 2014-15. Social housing on its own: 12,267, the highest level since 2012-13. Council-delivered homes: 10,600, the highest level since 1991-92. That is this Government’s record on social and affordable housing—and, by the way, this was all prior to the initial allocations from our social and affordable housing programme, which have now been made. We have increased supply, we will increase it further, and the Bill will make a material impact on doing so.

I turn to new clause 1. As the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington is fully aware, we are committed, in line with our manifesto, to delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation, to prioritising the building of new social rented homes and to supporting councils and housing associations to make a greater contribution to affordable supply. In the 27 months for which we have been in office, we have faithfully sought to honour those commitments. We have made the biggest long-term investment in social and affordable housing in recent memory, an investment that was topped up in yesterday’s Budget by a further £1.5 billion pounds, as the hon. Member rightly recognised. We are vigorously prioritising social rented housing, we are rebuilding the capacity of councils and housing associations to borrow and invest in new and existing homes, and we are reinvigorating council house building.

In his more generous moments, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson acknowledged the transformative impact of what this Government have done on social housing supply. I understand—indeed, I welcome and embrace—his encouragement and support for raising our ambition further. However, given the nature of our inheritance from the Conservative party, with social housing supply averaging a historical low of fewer than 8,000 units per year from 2013 to 2024, following the purposeful and deliberate pivot to affordable rented tenures, a target of 150,000 new social homes per year is not currently realistic. A statutory requirement to produce a strategy for delivering such volumes within 12 months of Royal Assent is not a proposition that we can support.

I say gently to the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington that his party continues wildly to underestimate the costs of supplying social housing on the scale that he proposes. The Government’s estimate of the grant funding required to support the delivery of 150,000 social homes is in excess of £20 billion per year. For obvious reasons, the hon. Member’s party has escaped the kind of scrutiny to which the Government and the official Opposition are subject, but if his party wants that 150,000 figure to be taken seriously it will have to set out a credible funding strategy. To date, it has not done so.

[Gideon Amos]

We shall certainly be setting that out prior to going into government. The Minister makes an extensive argument that 150,000 is not the right target. Shelter and the National Housing Federation say that a minimum of 90,000 are needed per year. What is the Government’s target?

[Matthew Pennycook]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, because we have had this debate many times, to date we have not set a national social and affordable housing target. That is because, as I have explained on numerous occasions, social and affordable homes come through grant funding and through the section 106 process; it is for local authorities to set out the needs for their particular areas as part of local plans. As he knows, through the NPPF we have strengthened some of the expectations in that area.

I turn to the hon. Gentleman’s new clause 4. The Government have already taken several steps to rebuild the capacity of councils to borrow and invest in new and existing homes, including the fundamental reform of the right-to-buy scheme at the heart of the Bill, as well as a 10-year social housing rent settlement, and social rent convergence.

In the Budget yesterday, it was confirmed that preferential borrowing rates for council house building will remain in place until at least March 2028 to support councils to borrow more cheaply for house building. There are no current restrictions exercised by central Government on the amount that councils can borrow via their housing revenue accounts for house building purposes. Councils are now free to borrow in line with the prudential code, which requires them to demonstrate that any borrowing is affordable, prudent, sustainable and proportionate. Those are precisely the types of test that the hon. Member’s new clause envisages. They are essential to ensure that local authority finances are managed sensibly and sustainably while ensuring sufficient flexibility to meet local housing targets. As such, in our view it is not necessary to accept the new clause as there are no restrictions to remove.

I turn to new clause 34, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Orpington. The Government are strongly committed—as was the previous Government, as several hon. Members have fairly pointed out—to a brownfield-first approach, including for the development of social housing. Let me be clear. I say this on every occasion I can: once permissions are granted, we expect to see them built out as quickly as possible. Opposition Members will not have to wait long for the build-out transparency package, on which we consulted some time ago, to be brought forward.

On 17 August, the Government published a new national planning policy framework that makes it clear that authorities should plan to meet as many of their development needs as possible on brownfield land. To strengthen support for the development of brownfield land, the new NPPF encourages higher densities in sustainable locations and greater intensification of urban and suburban sites. It also introduces a presumption that development inside settlements should be approved unless any adverse effects would substantially outweigh the benefits of doing so.

Furthermore, through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, the Government have committed to make regulations requiring strategic planning authorities to have regard to the desirability of prioritising development on previously developed land. That arose from a challenge we received from the Opposition during the passage of the Act. Taken together, those measures demonstrate the Government’s strong and continued support for brownfield development in national policy.

On social housing in particular, national planning policy reflects our commitment to the delivery of social rent homes. It requires local planners to set out minimum proportions of social rent required on new development. As everyone knows, the NPPF is a material consideration of critical importance in planning decisions and local plans are required to be prepared with regard to it. It is therefore the right place to set clear expectations for how and where development should come forward. A requirement to produce a separate brownfield land social housing development strategy would be unnecessary and duplicative, as existing policy and relevant plans already sufficiently achieve its aim.

On the point made by the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, policy in this area is already aligned; we do not need a separate brownfield land strategy. Such strategies are, as I have previously dubbed them, the last refuge of an Opposition scrabbling around for meaningful policy amendments to a Bill. For those reasons, and having given those assurances, we cannot accept the new clauses.

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[Gideon Amos]

Simply put, a target of 150,000 homes per year would not be a meaningless review; it would set the target that, so far, the Government have not put in place. The Minister welcomes our encouragement to challenge them to go further on social housing, so we will do so by pressing this matter to a vote. I encourage the Government to come up with a target for the number of social homes that they intend to produce.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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Brought up, and read the First time.

[Gideon Amos]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 53—Regulatory inspection at tenants’ request—

“(1) The Secretary of State must, by regulations made by statutory instrument, make provision enabling tenants of a registered provider of social housing to request an inspection of their dwelling by the Regulator of Social Housing.

(2) Regulations under subsection (1) must specify—

(a) the proportion of tenants required to support a request,

(b) the grounds on which a request may be made, and

(c) the circumstances in which an inspection may be refused.

(3) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section is subject to annulment pursuant to a resolution of either House of Parliament.”

This probing new clause would enable tenants of a registered provider to request an inspection by the Regulator of Social Housing.

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[Gideon Amos]

I am grateful for the opportunity to move the new clause, which stands in my name and in the name of my Liberal Democrat colleagues. Regulatory inspection of housing associations is particular to where there has been bad practice or responses to tenants have been poor. I acknowledge that most housing associations do an excellent job and fulfil a vital role in delivering the social homes that we need. However, where they are particularly bad or fail to deliver an adequate level of service and repairs to tenants, the Regulator of Social Housing may eventually carry out an inspection, but only years after tenants have been disadvantaged and not served.

[Deirdre Costigan]

The hon. Gentleman’s new clause 3 is very similar to the official Opposition’s new clause 53, which I believe they describe as a probing amendment. I have a probing question for him. How does he see things moving beyond the changes that the Government have already brought in, on a cross-party basis? Awaab’s law will allow tenants to report problems with repairs and have them dealt with by their housing provider within a very short timescale, and it will enable them to sue for breaches or go to the ombudsman. On top of that, there is the new right in the Bill to manage provision, which will allow tenants to get rid of the repair provider completely and bring in their own. How does he see his new clause moving things beyond that? What gap would it fill?

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Lady makes some excellent points about measures that we have supported; Awaab’s law is one of them, as is the Renters’ Rights Act 2025. We certainly welcome the new standards to which tenants will have access. The import of this new clause is that it would cover a much wider range of poor practice: across a whole estate, for example, rather than individual dwellings, or indeed across all of a registered provider’s homes.

The regulator already inspects registered providers, but, as I say, its inspections tend to come after the scandal is all over—after things have been running for years and after tenants have complained, had recourse to complaints mechanisms and so on. Our new clause would allow tenants, where a reasonable percentage of them have signed up, to trigger an inspection by the regulator at an earlier stage. That would make it a proactive power of inspection, rather than making tenants wait until the end of the process for the regulator to look into it. Of course, there are details to be worked out, such as what we mean by an estate, which is why we made provision in the new clause for regulations, to be approved in this place, to set out those more detailed arrangements.

Fundamentally, this is about giving social housing tenants an extra lever: a power to bring in the regulator, where that is justified, to carry out an inspection in a proactive way. It is a constructive new clause and is tabled for that purpose. I am delighted that the Conservatives have followed suit with something similar; we could even be persuaded to vote for their new clause in the unlikely event that the Committee does not agree to ours today. Our new clause stands on its own merits. It would give an extra lever to social housing tenants, some of whom are really badly served by their housing associations. I commend it to the Committee.

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[Matthew Pennycook]

I am always open to evidence that it does not have sufficient powers. My judgment is that it does, and that the consumer ratings it hands out—we are getting a steady stream of them now—really do have an impact in driving improvements in landlord behaviour.

Central to the regime is the regulator’s independent and risk-based approach. That allows the regulator to target its engagement and interventions to areas where there is the greatest risk of harm to tenants. It is worth clarifying that tenants and other members of the public can refer matters to the regulator where they believe that a registered provider may not be meeting the outcomes of the standards, and the regulator may take those concerns into account as part of its wider regulatory activity, including inspections. However, in our view, introducing tenant-triggered inspections risks cutting across that approach by potentially diverting regulatory resource away from higher-risk providers or issues, while undermining the regulator’s ability to act independently. Our view is that the existing framework already ensures that tenants’ concerns can inform regulatory action, by allowing the regulator to determine where intervention is most needed.

On new clause 53, which the shadow Minister made clear is a probing amendment, I would have particular concerns about introducing a mechanism whereby the regulator would inspect individual tenant’s dwellings. Although individual tenants can escalate issues to the regulator, as I have made clear, it considers performance against the regulatory standards at a landlord level and seeks assurance that the landlord is delivering the outcomes set out in the regulatory standards.

The regulator directly inspecting individual homes would move away from its co-regulatory approach and would require significant additional resource. In addition, tenant views already play an important role in the existing regime, and the regulator draws on a range of sources as part of its inspections, including through the landlords complaints process, the Housing Ombudsman and direct referrals. The existing framework ensures that tenants already play an important role in the system, without the need for a statutory mechanism to trigger inspections.

For those reasons, I respectfully ask hon. Members not to press their new clauses.

[Gideon Amos]

I wish to press new clause 3 to a vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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Brought up, and read the First time.

[Gideon Amos]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 12—Review of access to social housing for rehabilitated offenders—

“(1) The Secretary of State must undertake a review of the level of access to social housing for rehabilitated offenders.

(2) The review must assess—

(a) whether current allocation schemes give sufficient priority to rehabilitated offenders seeking to resettle in the community,

(b) the adequacy of provision for rehabilitated offenders with vulnerabilities or other needs arising from their offending history or period of custody, and

(c) the effectiveness of existing support in assisting rehabilitated offenders to access and sustain social housing tenancies.

(3) The Secretary of State must lay a report of the review before Parliament within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed.”

This new clause requires the Secretary of State to review and report to Parliament on the extent to which rehabilitated offenders are able to access social housing.

[Gideon Amos]

The new clause stands in my name and in the name of my Liberal Democrat colleagues. The run-up to Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day is the appropriate time to consider and take account of the needs of service personnel and veterans under the Bill. About 3% of rough sleepers are veterans, according to the No Homeless Veterans campaign. Government research found that 2,180 veteran households were assessed as at risk of experiencing homelessness. One of the most significant reasons for that is post-traumatic stress disorder, which obviously affects many veterans, and one in three veterans are also disabled.

The new clause would require the Secretary of State to review and report to Parliament on the provision of social housing for former members of the armed services. To anticipate the point that this is simply a review, surely no group can be more important to review the performance of social housing for than our veterans and those who have put their lives at risk for our country.

I shall speak now to new clause 12, which also stands in my name and those of my Liberal Democrat colleagues, rather than having to sit down and stand up again—a great tradition in this House. New clause 12 is on reviewing access to social housing for rehabilitated offenders. There has been a staggering 26% year-on-year increase in the number of households requiring homelessness support due to leaving care, custody or hospital.

When it comes to rehabilitated offenders, the last thing we want are offenders whose rehabilitation is not sustained or supported due to their having nowhere to live. One in 10 of those sleeping rough were recently discharged from an institution. That is a massive number. We need to do better by those who need that support. One in six prison leavers had no fixed abode on their first night in 2025-26. About 1,000 a month were released to rough sleeping in 2024-25, up about 40% in a year. I therefore respectfully submit both new clauses to the Committee for consideration.

[Matthew Pennycook]

As the hon. Member set out, new clauses 5 and 12 would require the Secretary of State to publish reports on access to social housing for former members of the armed forces and for former offenders, respectively.

We want to ensure that the social housing allocation system works fairly and effectively. Current and former members of the armed forces community benefit from strong protections within the allocations framework, including receiving the highest preference where they have a housing need. Where local connection or residency tests apply to determine who qualifies for an allocation of social housing, legislation exempts the armed forces community, regardless of when they last served. That ensures that they are not disadvantaged when applying for social housing due to the mobility required by service life. New clause 23, which we debated on Tuesday, will also ensure that veterans do not face local-connection barriers when seeking homelessness assistance.

Statutory guidance is in place on improving access to social housing for members of the armed forces. There are not specific protections in the system for former offenders, who will have their housing need considered in the same way as other groups. They may fall within other existing statutory reasonable preference categories—for example, where they are homeless, need to move on welfare grounds or need to move because of medical or other relevant needs. Work is already under way to update statutory guidance on social housing allocation to ensure that allocations reflect local need and effectively support vulnerable households. Our call for evidence on this issue recently closed, and we are now working with partners to prepare updated guidance. We plan to consult on that updated guidance next year.

With that comprehensive review already under way, we do not consider that there is a need to conduct separate reviews for specific groups such as former members of the armed forces or former offenders. On that basis, I hope that the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington is sufficiently reassured to consider withdrawing the new clause.

[Gideon Amos]

New clause 5 is not a burdensome amendment; it is a review of access to social housing for former service personnel. I hear what the Minister says about the Government keeping these matters under review, but surely a Social Housing Bill should commit to supporting our veterans and armed service community in this way. I will press the new clause to a vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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Brought up, and read the First time.

[Gideon Amos]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause relates to the requirement for wheelchair-accessible social housing. Social tenants are worse served now than they were in terms of access to wheelchair- accessible housing. In 2022-23, a third of wheelchair users in the social sector were placed in homes that were neither accessible nor adapted, according to Age UK.

The planning system is also something of a postcode lottery. Only 170 out of 311 local plans set targets for wheelchair user homes. Nationally, one wheelchair-accessible home is planned per 538 people; the south-west plans one per 810 people; London plans one per 210 people; and the north-west plans one per 2,006 people. The NPPF does not require any M4(3), which relates to homes that are wheelchair-accessible under the building regulations. It leaves it to local plans to assess need, and we have already seen how this is something of a lottery.

London already has a 10% requirement in its local plan, which proves that 10% is achievable. The Minister may say that this is a matter for devolution, so that local communities rather than central Government can decide, and that councils are free to follow that example. However, we say that a minimum floor of 10% is reasonable, and it has been considered by a previous Government. We respectfully submit that 10% of new social housing should be wheelchair-accessible.

[Matthew Pennycook]

New clause 6, tabled by the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington, seeks to ensure that at least 10% of new social housing dwellings meet the M4(3) wheelchair-accessible standard in the building regulations. I very much commend where he is coming from with the new clause.

The Government recognise the importance of increasing the supply of housing for older people and those with disabilities. The hon. Gentleman is right that for many years it has been something of a postcode lottery. That is why the new national planning policy framework recognised the need to drive up, through planning policy, rates of M4(2) requirements, and we have set a minimum floor of 40%. It is also why, when it comes to M4(3), the NPPF requires plans to set out the proportion that should be delivered to that standard to meet or exceed identified need. In our view, that is a significant step forward in ensuring that more wheelchair-accessible housing is delivered. However, we recognise that M4(3) is a specialised product for wheelchair users, with levels of need differing considerably between local areas.

Our approach acknowledges that local authorities are best placed to assess accessible housing needs in their areas and to set out appropriate exemptions. A blanket 10% M4(3) requirement would risk undermining policies set at a local level. To support the locally led approach, we have committed to producing guidance to assist local authorities in assessing the housing needs of disabled people, to ensure that assessments of need are robust and consistent. Social and affordable homes programme funding can also be used to support the delivery of much-needed new supported housing, including new accessible homes.

In our view, national policy remains the most effective route through which planning reform should be pursued. Imposing such a requirement in legislation rather than in policy, as this new clause seeks to do, would be unduly rigid, could limit an authority’s ability to respond to local circumstances and could constrain growth. We therefore think it is right to continue addressing these matters through planning policy and guidance.

For those reasons, I kindly ask the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington to withdraw the new clause.

[Gideon Amos]

I hear what the Minister says, but we have had these expressions in guidance and policy before, and we are still a long way from having suitable provision for wheelchair-accessible homes. With the leave of the Committee, I will therefore press new clause 6 to a vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Gideon Amos]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 9—Zero-carbon standards for new social housing—

“(1) The Secretary of State must by regulations require that all new social housing dwellings constructed in England are constructed to a zero-carbon standard.

(2) The Secretary of State must make regulations under subsection (1) within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed.

(3) Regulations under this section must be made by statutory instrument.

(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Gideon Amos]

I appreciate that we are in the meat of the main new clauses that I and the Liberal Democrats have tabled, but this one is particularly important, given the experience we had in the summer. It is about the mitigation of overheating and cooling standards—the cool rule, as we would term it.

The new clause would require that where passive measures are not sufficient to achieve a reasonable level of cooling in new social homes, there is active cooling to supplement that passive cooling, sufficient to achieve a temperature of around 21°C during periods of high external temperatures.

We have had an extraordinary summer, have we not, Sir Roger? We witnessed five heatwaves. Cobra was convened. People died in overheated homes. We approved the Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 just last week, adding excess heat to the prescribed hazards that social landlords must address. The Bill is an opportunity to ensure that new homes do not end up in the same state as the homes that I have described.

The initial responses to the requirement for active cooling are the energy considerations, and perhaps considerations relating to the urban heat island effect. When one examines both of those, it becomes absolutely apparent that we need active cooling in our homes, given the change in climate that we have had.

On the energy consumption, let us remember that we paid, I think, £260 million to generators of solar and wind energy this year to turn off that generation of electricity and to stop using it. We have surplus electricity being generated, particularly in the hotter months in the summer, which we are not using and cannot use. In fact, there is an argument for electrification in a whole range of other fields as well, so that that electricity can be used and the renewables industry can be recompensed for generating it, and we are not using taxpayers’ money to turn off that ability to generate electricity. There is therefore no shortage of electricity for active cooling, which we desperately need in our homes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington for tabling new clause 7, which I will start with. He is absolutely right to draw attention to overheating, and I assure him that the Government recognise the scale of the challenge it presents.

Overheating in homes is already a severe public health issue, and one that will grow only more acute in the years ahead, for the reasons that the hon. Gentleman has rightly stated. We know there are health risks and implications for excess deaths for particularly vulnerable populations. We take it extremely seriously, and we agree that new homes should protect everyone from the risks of overheating. That is why part O of schedule 1 to the Building Regulations 2010 requires that new residential buildings in England are built to mitigate the risk of overheating. The Government continue to keep these requirements under review, and a full technical review of part O is currently under way to ensure that the framework remains effective and proportionate. These requirements already apply to newly built social housing, ensuring that residents benefit from the same standards of overheating mitigation regardless of their tenure type. The accompanying statutory guidance, approved document O, sets out how these requirements can be met.

The new clause would require active cooling, such as air conditioning, to be installed wherever an indoor temperature of 21°C cannot be maintained. Conversely, part O assesses the risk to health posed by overheating through an evidence-based methodology and does not rely on a single prescribed temperature threshold. Part O also prioritises passive measures, such as shading and natural ventilation, which help to prevent homes from becoming too hot in the first place. In many cases, overheating can be effectively mitigated through passive measures alone, so part O helps to create homes that are resilient to hot weather while limiting energy use, carbon emissions and energy bills for residents.

[Gideon Amos]

I apologise for interrupting the Minister’s flow. To clarify, the new clause proposes active cooling only where that temperature cannot be achieved otherwise. The priority of passive measures would continue with this new clause.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I welcome that clarification. I was going to say that part O does not prohibit any form of active cooling where designers can demonstrate that it is appropriate.

As I say, part O encourages passive design measures before relying on mechanical systems. In many cases, as I have said, overheating can be effectively mitigated through passive measures. Mechanical cooling, such as air conditioning, can be used to mitigate overheating where all reasonably practicable steps have been taken to minimise it through passive means. For those reasons, we think that the new clause would likely increase the unnecessary use of mechanical cooling, with associated costs for both developers and residents. I therefore ask the hon. Member kindly to withdraw the new clause.

New clause 9 concerns zero-carbon standards for new social housing. The Government fully recognise the importance of ensuring that new homes, including social housing, support our legally binding net zero target. We share the hon. Gentleman’s ambition to deliver homes that are energy efficient, low carbon and fit for the future. That is exactly what the future homes standard will achieve. The reassurance that I was going to give him in my intervention was that that is not affected by the Chancellor’s announcement yesterday of an effective moratorium on major new regulations, setting aside the qualifications that he set out at Dispatch Box with regard to building safety issues.

The Government legislated for the future homes standard in March, and it will come into force for non-higher-risk buildings from 24 March 2027, and for higher-risk buildings from 24 September 2027. It will apply to all new homes, including social housing. Homes built to this standard will have high levels of energy efficiency, use low-carbon heating and, in most cases, generate renewable electricity on site. These homes will also be zero-carbon ready, meaning that they will produce very little carbon and will become zero carbon once the national grid is fully decarbonised, without requiring further retrofit.

That is the really important point: we are retrofitting homes that have been built over recent years—at great cost—because of a previous Government’s decision to remove the required standards that were in place. We could go into that and the costs that that entails, but they are outside the scope of the Bill. We are ensuring that the new homes that come forward, once the standard is in place, are zero-carbon ready, so they will not require further retrofit.

The Government have also worked carefully to set a standard that delivers substantial carbon savings while remaining proportionate, technically feasible and deliverable at scale. In our view, introducing further new standards would risk creating a separate and potentially inconsistent regulatory regime for social housing, as well as additional cost and delivery pressures for the sector. Although I agree with the objective behind the new clause, I consider that the future homes standard already provides the appropriate means of achieving its aims. For those reasons, I respectfully ask the hon. Gentleman not to press new clause 9 to a vote.

[Gideon Amos]

On new clause 7, the cool rule, I appreciate that, as the Minister points out, there is no prohibition on active cooling being used in new homes, but the fact is that we need to secure cooling. We cannot just leave it so that only the most luxury accommodation has cooling in the extremely hot summers that we are having. Just as we have habitable standards for space, daylight and heating, we need a statutory standard for cooling. If it does not come today, I believe it will come, so I wish to press new clause 7 to a vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gideon Amos]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

I am incredibly heartened by your experience of Parliament, Sir Roger, and your statement that you find it arcane. If you find it arcane, I can only imagine how those of us who came into the House only recently find it, so I appreciate your clarification.

I will speak briefly on the new clause, really to highlight the frustration that many people feel when they see social housing quotas reduced. That frustration comes from seeing quotas promising a certain level of genuinely affordable housing for local people go through the planning system and be negotiated, only for the applicant to re-negotiate that consent, argue viability and, as frequently happens, remove all affordable housing.

My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) brought to my attention the example of an exception site that included around 40% social housing. The permission was in place, but as the Government’s new standard method renders nearly all authorities unable to meet their five-year housing supply, the Government’s inspector had no alternative but to remove all the social housing from that permission on appeal and revert it all to private housing.

The Government’s new standard method has created a free-for-all. An exception site that was granted permission only because it would deliver social housing is now entirely private market housing, which local people in Cornwall will not be able to access or benefit from. I think communities are very frustrated at seeing such consents undermined at later stages. The new clause seeks to rectify that by preventing social housing numbers from being argued down, and I respectfully commend it to the Committee on that basis.

[Matthew Pennycook]

New clause 10 seeks to prevent local planning authorities from agreeing to any reduction in the number or proportion of social homes required through a planning obligation or condition. The Government are committed to strengthening the system of developer contributions to ensure that new developments provide necessary affordable homes and infrastructure, and we have already taken a number of steps to that end.

The new NPPF, published on 17 August, seeks to promote greater clarity on expected contributions at the plan-making stage, and to reduce cases of unnecessary site-specific viability assessment by clarifying when it may be appropriate at the decision-making stage. That certainty will help to minimise lengthy negotiations over developer contributions, including affordable housing, on specific sites. At the same time, the framework will retain flexibility for cases where negotiation is genuinely needed to enable sites to come forward.

We are also acting to minimise friction and reduce the complexity involved in the negotiation of section 106 agreements, which are, and will remain, an essential mechanism for delivering social and affordable housing, but which in recent years have become synonymous with inefficiency and delay. The new NPPF formally introduces the category of “medium development”—sites of up to 2.5 hectares with between 10 and 49 units. It also provides the basis for the use of model obligations, as policy DM6(4) states:

“Where national model planning obligations are relevant to the development, they should be used unless there are strong reasons for using a different planning obligation.”

Following that, we launched a consultation on four standardised planning agreements for medium-sized sites, which will be expected to become the default for relevant applications in future. The consultation closed on 20 October 2026, and we are considering the responses received.

The proper process for modifying or discharging planning obligations is set out in section 106A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. I know that the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington knows this; he has great experience in this area from before he came to the House. As set out in my letter to the Planning Inspectorate earlier this year, attempts to revisit fundamental issues of viability or planning obligations through section 73 applications should be carefully scrutinised and supported by robust justification, with due weight given to the impact of any reduction in affordable housing delivery and to the wider merits of the scheme.

[Gideon Amos]

I am grateful to the Minister for engaging on all these amendments, including this one. My question is whether he and the Government recognise that, as in the example I cited, most authorities in southern England cannot meet the five-year housing supply because of the standard method, and that, as a result, social and affordable housing is being removed from planning permissions. Are the Government concerned about that? Are they doing any assessment of how much this is happening?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I am going to be careful, because—as the hon. Gentleman will be fully aware—given the role of Ministers in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in the planning system, I obviously cannot comment on particular local plans or applications, and I do not know the specific circumstances of the case he cites.

I make the general point—picking up on something that I think the hon. Member for Orpington mentioned earlier—that when we arrived in office, house builders across the country were telling us that the planning system was, in the main, probably the biggest barrier to house building they faced. Following the reforms we have made to national planning policy, they no longer say that; as the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington rightly highlights, viability is the chief concern at the moment. Viability pressures are acute across the country, and in certain parts they are particularly severe—London is a good example—so they are bearing on schemes and what they can bring forward.

If I am honest, I struggle to see the direct link between the standard method, the five-year housing land supply and the housing delivery test concerns that I know the hon. Gentleman has raised in the past, but he and I could have a wider discussion on that outside the Committee. I am trying to remain focused on the intent behind the new clause, which concerns planning obligations and conditions.

Let me just set out the Government’s position on section 73. Alongside ongoing work relating to the implementation of section 73B of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, the Government intend to undertake a wider review of the statutory framework for modifying or discharging existing planning obligations, and we will provide further details about this in due course. I hope that will reassure the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington on section 73B, but I am clear that our intention in reviewing this matter is not to allow developers to more easily reduce planning obligations already entered into, including for affordable housing.

The Government have also acted to deal with the detrimental consequences of a declining market for section 106 affordable homes. We have already taken a number of steps to support demand for section 106 units, not least spending review measures designed to rebuild the capacity of registered providers. As a result, we are seeing tentative signs of improvement in appetite for acquiring section 106 homes.

However, despite that positive shift in sentiment post spending review, we know there are still housing schemes where developers remain unable to secure an RP buyer for the affordable homes set out in an original section 106 agreement, and where local planning authorities and developers have not discussed or reached agreement on variations to planning obligations, with the result that many of these sites are stalling.

It is for that reason that we made it clear in a written ministerial statement on 28 January that we expect all local planning authorities to take advantage of existing planning flexibilities to renegotiate section 106 agreements, and to allow the tenure of homes to be varied to secure a buyer where affordable homes secured in section 106 agreements remain uncontracted or unsolved. As the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington will know, this can be effected by a deed of variation that makes amendments or revisions to existing section 106 agreements, either by agreement of the parties to the section 106 agreement, or by formal application under section 106A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

To pick up directly on new clause 10, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington, our concern is that it could create unintended consequences that may be contrary to our shared objective to boost the supply of social and affordable housing. Notwithstanding his concerns, which I recognise, it is important that the system retains sufficient flexibility for local planning authorities to respond to significant changes in site or economic circumstances after planning permission has been granted, such as a recession or a similarly significant economic change. We are concerned that new clause 10 could unduly restrict that flexibility, which could—this is the ultimate point—cause sites to stall and subsequently reduce overall housing delivery, including overall social and affordable housing delivery.

I suspect that I will not have convinced the hon. Gentleman entirely, but I hope he agrees that, as it stands, the system carefully balances the need for that flexibility with trying to ensure that we maximise the amount of social and affordable housing supply that can be secured. We should avoid legislation that imposes, in our view, an unreasonable degree of rigidity, while obviously continuing our efforts to increase affordable housing delivery overall. On that basis, I hope he might be persuaded to withdraw the new clause on this occasion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gideon Amos]

I appreciate the Minister’s correct analysis that there is a balance to be struck with individual sites, and I accept that. There is a direct link between the standard method and the loss of social housing. The standard method, having been introduced, means that most local plans now cannot meet their five-year housing supply, which means that most of them are no longer effective.

Therefore, if a developer presents an inspector with a site that has both social housing and private housing, the inspector will be forced to conclude, on the section 73 application to amend the plan, that there is no longer an exception that justifies social housing, because all the sites have to come forward, and they all have to be market housing. That is the effect of imposing the standard method and rendering so many local plans no longer effective.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I am not responding to the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I want to make an offer to him, because he will know that I am genuinely interested. He will know that we have tried to strengthen national policy on rural exception sites through the NPPF, so I am very interested in whether he thinks there are particular reasons why that strengthening will not have the desired effect, or whether there are other barriers to bringingforward those sites. We want more of those sites to be brought forward, precisely for the reasons that he has set out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gideon Amos]

That is very generous of the Minister, and I will take up the offer by writing to him with the appeal decision. That is now a completed decision, so it would not involve Ministers interfering in any way. He will be able to see the effect, and I think we need to understand how much that is happening across the country, if we are losing social homes all over. On that note, I will press new clause 10 to a vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

Draft Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2026 General Committees

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve the Committee with you in the Chair, Mr Wishart. I declare an interest as a registered social landlord.

The Liberal Democrats come at this from a somewhat different starting point than the official Opposition, in that we supported the Renters’ Rights Act and we strongly supported the introduction of a database of landlords as a source of really important basic information that tenants should be able to have. We have been consistent in supporting the concept of what is in front of us.

The system that has been devised, however, is nothing short of a fiasco and will undermine the whole purpose of the database. As well as being harmful—or challenging, to say the very least—to landlords and damaging to their business operations, it will frustrate tenants if landlords need to spend that amount of time updating the register one property at a time. Let us imagine that someone is an institutional landlord with 4,000 dwellings. If only one can be entered at a time, it will take weeks and months, by which time the database will be completely out of date for tenants looking at it. The problems of the database will affect not only landlords, but tenants.

We desperately need more build-to-rent landlords to build more rented accommodation. There is a debate going on about the Renters’ Rights Act and whether landlords have withdrawn from the market. I do not intend to get into that debate in detail—the Joseph Rowntree Foundation takes a different view and says that there is a certain amount of churn—but one thing is absolutely clear: the Act is challenging the sector to a huge degree and causing a great deal of change and churn. The last thing that it needs right now is a database that, for our biggest landlords, is completely impossible to complete in any economic or efficient way.

I am grateful to Real Estate:UK for its briefing, and I make no apologies for reading out parts of what it has told me. For example, it says that

“a single employee working through a 5,000-home portfolio would need 2,500 hours or around 312.5 working days”

to upload. That has to be done every year. It continues:

“Without any fee discount or integrative information provision process, a BTR landlord with a 5,000-unit portfolio can expect to spend c.£378,000 a year on registering their properties.”

Furthermore, it says:

“To comply both with selective licensing and the Service, a BTR landlord can expect to pay over £4,000,000 across a 5,000-home portfolio.”

As the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Orpington, pointed out, the costs are above what was expected at the time of Act’s passage.

It is surely not beyond the wit of Government to produce a database where someone can make multiple uploads and does not need to upload one at a time, and a database that is more efficient than the one we have at the moment where someone cannot even copy data across from one property to the next—even if they have 250 properties that are exactly the same, they have to enter each one individually without copying across any of the data. If the official Opposition press the measure to a Division, which they clearly will, we Liberal Democrats will also vote against it. It is bad for the Renters’ Rights Act, bad for tenants, bad for landlords and bad for the build-to-rent sector that we need to support our housing market.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

No, I will make some progress.

Fees will support activity to identify and act on non-compliance with the reforms in the Renters’ Rights Act. The funding will support councils, ensuring that they have the staff and skills required to identify and tackle non-compliance and to drive landlords who persist in breaking the law out of the sector. Fees will be pro-rated during the initial roll-out, ensuring that landlords in regions required to register early are treated fairly. To go back to my opening remarks, we will roll-out the measure on a regional basis from December. I think I have answered all the points put to me.

[Gideon Amos]

As always, the Minister is being very generous with his time. He has answered a number of the points raised—I will give him that—but if institutional landlords are paying millions of pounds in fees, the least they should expect is to have a database that works. I welcome the Minister saying that he is continuing to look at the issue, but could he go a smidgen further and commit, on the record, that the Government will ensure that bulk uploads can be achieved? That is the huge failure of the system.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I cannot give the hon. Gentleman that commitment. The Government have looked into the practicality of bulk uploads, and we do not think it is, in the terms he has put it to me, a workable solution. As I have tried to make clear at several points, we are looking at how we can integrate the management systems of larger landlords into the database in a way that does not require them to manually input each of their properties, as has been put to me in this debate. We are looking for those efficiencies—why would we not look for those efficiencies?

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about fees, to be clear, it is not the Government’s intention to use the fees to fund wider costs that are not connected to the private rented sector, but some of the fees will go towards local authority enforcement. As we have debated previously, it is incredibly important that local authorities have the resources to properly enforce the Act.

To conclude, the regulations set out the practical steps required to deliver the PRS database, and set the registration framework that landlords, local authorities and the database operator will follow. In commencing the roll-out of the database, the regulations will support landlord compliance, strengthen local authority enforcement and give tenants better information about the homes that they rent. I therefore commend the regulations to the Committee.

Question put.

Social Housing Bill (First sitting)

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)]

I draw Members’ attention to my category 8—miscellaneous—interest.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I wish to draw the Committee’s attention to my registered interest as a social landlord.

[The Chair]

We will now begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room and on the parliamentary website; it shows how the clauses, schedules and selected amendments have been grouped for debate. A Member who has put their name to the lead amendment in a group is called first. For debates on clause stand part, the Minister will be called first, and then other Members will be free to indicate, by bobbing, that they wish to speak in the debate. Please bob on each occasion on which you wish to speak during the proceedings.

At the end of the debate on a group of amendments and new clauses, I shall call the Member who moved the lead amendment or new clause again. Before they sit down, they will need to indicate if they wish to withdraw the amendment or new clause, or if they seek a decision. If any Member wishes to press any other amendment—this includes grouped clauses—that will be at my discretion.

Clause 1

Qualifying period for right to buy

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. Before I speak to clause 1, I would like to put on the record once again my sincere thanks to my ministerial colleague Baroness Taylor of Stevenage for ably shepherding the Bill through its House of Lords stages. I also thank all noble Lords who took part in the debates on the Bill in the other place. It goes without saying that we did not agree with all the arguments made—we cannot accept the incorporation into the Bill of clause 13, for reasons that I will detail in due course—but overall the expert scrutiny and challenge provided by peers have helped to improve the Bill. A number of Government amendments that we have tabled arise directly from the issues raised and the points made during the debates in the Lords.

The Bill has three core objectives. The first is to protect much-needed social housing stock and thereby to incentivise the building of more social rented homes. The second is to create a fairer tenancy system with greater protection for tenants who are victims of domestic abuse. The third is to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and give providers greater regulatory certainty so that they can invest in new social and affordable homes with confidence.

At the heart of the Bill are comprehensive reforms to the right-to-buy scheme that are designed to put it on a fair and sustainable footing for the future. They are informed by the feedback that we received in the public consultation, which ran from November 2024 to 2025, and are set out in clauses 1 to 10.

More than 2 million tenants have exercised the right to buy since it was introduced in 1980. However, as we all know, many of the homes sold under the scheme have not been replaced, which has depleted social housing stock. There is now an insufficient supply of good-quality social housing to meet demand. More than 1.3 million households are on the social housing waiting list, and almost 180,000 children are living homeless in temporary accommodation. The right-to-buy scheme has also reduced the motivation and confidence of councils to build, since new homes can be sold before the council can recover its investment.

Although we respect those who believe that right to buy should be abolished outright, the Government’s position remains that social housing tenants who have lived in and paid rent on their homes for many years should retain the opportunity to purchase them at a reasonable discount. However, as I argued on Second Reading, there is a pressing need to radically reform the right to buy to reduce the significant outflow of stock that has taken place since discounts were drastically increased by the coalition Government in 2012, to incentivise councils to once again build at scale, and to attract broader investment in council housing.

As things stand, to qualify for the right to buy an individual must be a secure tenant and must have spent at least three years as a public sector tenant—in other words, their landlord must be a public body, usually a council or a housing association. The three years do not have to have been continuous, and an individual can add together any time they spent as a public sector tenant. They are also able to count any period when their husband, wife or civil partner was a public sector tenant.

Until 2014, the minimum eligibility requirement was five, not three, years. The main rationale given at the time for reducing the qualifying period by two years was explicitly to drive an increase in the take-up of right to buy. The decision was taken in the full knowledge that a tenant occupying a property for three years is extremely unlikely to have paid rent that equates to the available discount.

The Government believe that a more sustainable balance must be struck to support councils to rebuild their stock of homes. Clause 1 therefore amends section 119 of the Housing Act 1985 to increase the minimum eligibility requirement from three to 10 years. As under the existing law, a combination of present and previous tenancies will continue to count towards the qualifying period.

Increasing the minimum eligibility period in that way has received strong support from stakeholders. In our consultation on reforming the right to buy, 81% of respondents, including 62% of tenants who responded, supported increasing the minimum period of tenancy required to at least 10 years. In fact, the majority of respondents supported someone having to be a public sector tenant for longer than 10 years before becoming eligible for the right to buy.

The Government believe that 10 years strikes the right balance between allowing long-standing tenants the opportunity to own their own home and protecting much-needed social housing stock. Incidentally, 10 years is also the average length of tenancy for someone buying under the scheme currently. This targeted change will maintain access to the right to buy for long-standing tenants, but in a way that provides for a fairer and more sustainable scheme and better supports the long-term supply of social housing.

[Gideon Amos]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers.

I rise to support the clause. For Liberal Democrats, this is the most important and significant clause in the Bill, as it constrains the selling off of council houses. It is concerning that the Conservatives have tabled an amendment that would essentially reverse it. With 1.32 million people on the housing waiting list and 177,000 children in temporary accommodation, the last thing that we need is to continue the gradual loss of social housing. There has been a net loss of 2 million social homes since the introduction of right to buy. If that does not show that we cannot fill the bath with the plug taken out, nothing does. We stand squarely in support of the clause, although we would go further and give local authorities the ability and power to suspend right to buy completely if that is right for their area so that they can rebuild their stock of council housing and social rent homes.

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

I echo the Minister’s welcome: it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers.

This Bill fails the British people. It effectively destroys right to buy for millions of families. It does nothing to free up stock for British nationals. It fails to introduce efficient stock management regulations. Most egregiously, it fails to build a single social home—a point completely missed by the Government and the Liberal Democrats. In scrutinising the Bill line by line, it is critically important that we defend aspiration and refocus the debate on the delivery of new homes.

I will speak to new clauses 55 and 57 and amendments 84 and 85, in my name. On new clause 55, in the past, Conservative Government-backed schemes such as Help to Buy and stamp duty discounts made a real difference to people buying their first home, and helped about 1 million first-time buyers to get on to the housing ladder. That contributed to 800,000 people buying their first home under the previous Government. However, since 2024 the Government have not shown that they have the aspiration to match that. Instead, they have cut a lot of the products that turbocharged first-time buyers getting on to the housing ladder.

Even when the Government try to support young people into property ownership, it emerges that all that glisters is not gold. I am primarily referring to the Your First Home scheme—a policy limited to new homes and expected to be constrained by income caps. Young people, especially young people in social housing, deserve better than that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I rise to speak to my own amendment 104, as well as amendment 9, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George). I agree with the Opposition that amendment 104 is about seeking clarity from the Government around how a rural area would be designated.

I welcome the Government amendments tabled since the publication of the Bill that hand more power to local authorities to determine the designation. Amendment 104 would provide some certainty regarding what classification could be used in that determination. What decision-making process would the Minister use to arrive at a designation whereby he has the power to make regulations for a rural area?

On amendment 9, as a party we believe that social housing is a crucial element of a settled society and protecting that stock is a must. That is why we support the overall objectives of the Bill, but we seek to go further than what the Government have currently legislated for by ensuring that community-led housing is included in the prohibition on losing stock to the private market. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives, who represents west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, has tabled amendment 9.

[Gideon Amos]

I rise to speak to our Liberal Democrat amendments. New clause 2 would provide local authorities with the power to suspend right to buy in an area completely and bring it to an end. Perhaps for the first and last time, I agree 100% with the hon. Member for Orpington, completely and wholeheartedly; he said that local areas are best placed to decide what is right for them on council housing provision and council housing stock. That is why we would give local authorities the ability to say that they have lost enough council housing. Some 2 million council homes were lost to right to buy and 4 million social homes have been lost altogether. Enough is enough. Local communities should have the right to decide whether they want to continue to see the loss of council homes in their area.

[Patrick Spencer]

The hon. Gentleman talks about council houses being lost to right to buy; it would be remiss not to say they are being gained by tenants who own a property—part of a property-owning democracy that we hold dear in this country.

[Gideon Amos]

If we have a system where 4 million homes have been lost and 1.3 million people are on the council waiting list, something has gone radically wrong. We need a different approach.

[Patrick Spencer]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gideon Amos]

From a sedentary position, the hon. Gentleman is asking me to give way, but I have not yet answered his initial question. Yes, we need to find ways to help people into home ownership. That is vital and fundamental to a thriving society. We need to build more homes. We need to provide more and better shared ownership arrangements, as the current arrangements are not working. We need to help people on to the housing ladder. That does not mean we need to erode and diminish our social housing stock.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Gideon Amos]

Let me give way to a Government Member this time.

[Deirdre Costigan]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the research that shows that up to 40% of homes bought under right to buy have actually ended up in the hands of private landlords? In fact, if we are looking to help people into long-term housing, right to buy is not the solution.

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Member is quite right. Not only that, but local authorities end up paying over the odds for placing families in temporary accommodation, sometimes in homes that were built as council houses to provide for those families in the first place. Now they are being sublet, sometimes multiple times, to provide that housing.

[Gareth Bacon]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. He has made a point that has been made by Members today and on Second Reading: right to buy diminishes the social housing stock. I would agree on paper that it does, but that has to be read in the context, as shown by the House of Lords Library, that right to buy applies only to people in long-term tenancies who have been social tenants for a long time. Some 78% of people living in social housing are on lifetime tenancies. Those properties are not available. They could not be given to anybody else because they are lifetime tenancies. Right to buy is actually providing the receipts to build more social homes for people to live in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Bacon]

Stopping people from getting on the housing ladder does not help one bit, because it does not increase the supply, and that point seems to have been missed completely by the Liberal Democrats and by the Government.

[Gideon Amos]

I am somewhat surprised that the Opposition spokesperson has entered into the realm of social housing supply, given the record of the previous Conservative Government. Of course, we need to increase supply as well as saving the stock that has been built with public funds—taxpayer’s money—for the community, rather than giving over discounts, sometimes to the extent of a £70,000 or £80,000 transfer of cash, from the taxpayer into the hands of individual property owners for no good reason.

We need to increase supply. That is why the Liberal Democrats have a target to build 150,000 social rent homes per year. I do not know the hon. Gentleman’s party’s target for the delivery of social housing—they did not build many when they were in government. We need to give local authorities the power and flexibility to decide for themselves whether it is right to continue with right to buy in their areas. If we believe in local communities and local democracy, we should give them the ability to say that right to buy and the loss of more council housing stock is no longer right for their area. I commend new clause 2 to the Committee and urge all Committee members to vote for it.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will speak to clause 8 and amendments 13 to 18, tabled in my name, and then I will turn to various amendments that have been tabled and spoken to.

Clause 8 amends schedule 5 to the Housing Act 1985 to introduce new and updated exceptions to the right to buy. Under the scheme, exceptions already include homes suitable for occupation by the elderly, sheltered housing and homes due to be demolished. Of respondents to our consultation, 76% agree that the existing exceptions should be retained, and we are doing so. The clause does, however, make a small change to amend outdated terminology in the current exemption for dwellings for persons of pensionable age, to update the reference to resident or non-resident wardens to resident or non-resident managers.

The clause introduces three new exceptions. First, it exempts newly built social homes from the scheme for 35 years, giving councils the confidence to invest in new supply. At present, councils are disincentivised from building because homes can be sold before costs are recovered through rent, undermining housing revenue accounts. A 35-year exemption period reflects the typical pay-back period and ensures that councils are not losing new homes prematurely. Despite what the shadow Minister continues to assert, that is a significant supply-side reform that helps to deliver the Government’s commitment to back councils to build at a scale not seen in decades.

Councils have been clear to the Government that the risk of early sale deters investment. Removing that risk provides greater certainty over stock and income and supports new development. We recognise the frustration of seeing newly built homes sold so quickly before they can meet local need. The Government’s manifesto committed to better protecting newly built social housing from the right to buy, and the introducing the exemption was supported by the vast majority of respondents to our consultation on the basis that it will give councils, as I have said, greater confidence to build new homes and provide greater protection than the existing cost floor rules.

Secondly, the clause exempts homes in national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and designated rural areas from the right to buy. That recognises the particular pressures on rural housing where land and planning constraints mean that homes are significantly harder to replace once lost from the social sector. In many cases, replacement is not feasible at all, exacerbating already acute shortages in those areas. There was clear recognition of these challenges in the other place, where the difficulty of replacing rural homes and the importance of protecting stock in these areas was highlighted. This measure responds directly to those concerns and will help safeguard rural social housing.

Existing rural designations will continue to have effect for the purpose of this exemption until we implement the new framework for local authorities to self-designate as rural, as set out in Government amendments 13 to 18, which I will come to shortly, as well as clause 8. The covenants attached to homes that have been sold under the right to buy in rural areas, which restricts sale to a local person or a social landlord, will also continue to apply.

Thirdly and finally, council-owned market rent homes will also be excluded, supporting councils to use mixed tenure and cross-subsidy models to deliver more housing. That recognises the important role that market rent homes can play in enabling councils to generate additional income to reinvest in social and affordable homes. These changes are part of the wider package of reforms to ensure that more homes are built than lost.

Government amendments 13 to 18 deliver on commitments made during the Bill’s passage in the other place to put the criteria for rural designation into regulations. That was a call that came from noble peers on the Opposition Benches. The regulations will use the long-established criteria of a population density of no more than two persons per hectare and a population of 3,000 or fewer. That criteria will be applied using census-derived population data, and local authorities will be expected to ensure that the criteria will continue to be met in relevant areas every 10 years, as new census data becomes available.

It was also agreed in the other place that the Government would explore whether the existing process under which local authorities need to apply to the Government for designation could be replaced with a new system under which local authorities will be able to self-designate rural areas where they meet the criteria. I can confirm that we do intend to implement that change, and these amendments will enable that. These changes will provide transparency on the criteria for rural designation. They will also empower local areas and reduce bureaucracy for both local authorities and the Government compared with the current process, which, as I have said, requires local authorities seeking designation to apply to the Secretary of State, and secondary legislation to be made for each individual designation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dillon]

Before I begin my remarks on amendment 102, I declare an interest: my wife works for a social housing provider. I apologise to the Committee for not declaring that before my earlier contribution.

Amendment 102 is a simple amendment that would protect larger homes within social housing stock. It refers to designated rural areas, which the Committee covered during earlier consideration, but also to homes with four or more bedrooms. The reason for that is simple: of all our social housing stock, larger homes are the most precious commodity.

We know that the social housing market makes up 48% of properties that are considered overcrowded in the UK. If we look at Merton or Westminster council, for example, there is a 90 to 99-year wait for a three or more bed property; if we go north to Rochdale, about 550 families there were registered for a four-bed home, but only 14 became available in a year; if we go to Bath in the west of the country, an officer there said that, in principle, a family could be on the register for a four-bed for over 200 years, and added that four-beds are popular under right to buy but are also expensive to build. When you add those comments to our ambition to ensure that overcrowding impacts as few people as possible, making four-bed or larger homes exempt means that we protect the homes we really need.

Amendment 101 is similar to a previous amendment, which went into more detail. It would make sure that each community land trust that provided social housing was also given notice of a sale. It would expand the remit of who is notified, so that if providers were willing to take up those social homes when they were being disposed of, we would retain them in some sort of community ownership.

[Gideon Amos]

I will speak to amendments 5, 6, 1 and 8. Amendment 5 would extend the notification of proposed sale to cover the Regulator of Social Housing.

Amendment 6 would extend the timescales of notice from four to eight weeks. I note that, since we tabled the amendment, the Government have come up with their own amendment to extend the timescales; they have obviously been reading everything we table closely. I am glad that we are already having an impact on the Bill and I will be happy to press the amendment to a vote if necessary, to ensure that the Government succeed in getting the change in timescale that they clearly want. Otherwise, depending on the order of voting—I still sometimes have a problem following that—I am sure that one or the other will fulfil the same purpose.

Amendment 1 would require the Regulator of Social Housing to receive a copy of the notice. Amendment 8 is effectively a stop-the-clock amendment, whereby, if negotiations are ongoing for the acquisition of a social home by a local authority, the time period would be extended by a further four weeks. I recognise that the amendment refers to the four-week period in the Bill, which may be extended to eight weeks through other amendments. However, the principle of allowing an extension of time when negotiations are ongoing is significant, and something that the Local Government Association would support. Although I will not push amendment 8 to a vote, it would be helpful if the Minister considered whether an extension could be provided where negotiations are ongoing, so that there is a real chance for the purchase of that property to be completed and for the local authority to succeed in that endeavour.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will speak to Government amendment 19 and respond to each of the eight amendments in this rather large group. I have listened to concerns raised by parliamentarians and stakeholders over recent weeks and months that a four-week period between a private provider notifying a council or other provider in their area of the sale of a social home and the disposing of that home is not sufficient for local authorities to consider purchasing the property.

I appreciate that local authorities were concerned that a four-week window would not align with their internal timing constraints, such as monthly cabinet or committee meetings. On that basis, the Government have tabled amendment 19 to extend the window of time that must pass between notification and the sale of a property from four to eight weeks. We think the amendment strikes the right balance between maximising opportunities to retain social homes and not causing undue delays to sales. I will come to the specific point that the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington made about negotiations that are in train.

Amendments 6 and 8, tabled by the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington, seek to extend the disposal notification period. Amendment 8, as he just argued, would require an extension of the window to eight weeks where a provider could demonstrate they were taking steps towards purchasing the property. The Government’s amendment 19 goes further than that proposal by requiring eight weeks in all cases, so I hope he will support it.

Amendment 6 would require a further extension to 12 weeks in areas designated as rural. We are not persuaded by the case for a longer notification window specifically for rural areas. A statutory minimum of 12 weeks could unnecessarily delay sales and require providers to deal with the additional burden and costs associated with having homes left unoccupied for extended periods. I should also stress that the notification period is just a minimum. I would expect private registered providers to engage and be flexible beyond that period where there is a serious interest from another landlord in the social housing sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

That is a fair point. The particular reasons that individual providers dispose of stock vary wildly across the country. In the case of disposals that are driven by increases in standards, we are seeing some of that, but it is also the case that there are occasions when local authority or other providers are, for their own reasons, based on their own assessment of the stock, able and willing to take those homes on. I do not think that we can specify a general rule. What we are trying to do here is to give local authorities and other providers the maximum possible opportunity to pick up those stocks and to retain them in the social housing sector, if that is possible. To be very clear and honest with the hon. Member, that may not always be possible, and those homes may be disposed of on the open market, but we want to increase the chances of them being able to be retained in the sector, for all the reasons that we have gone into.

Amendments 1 and 5 would add the Regulator of Social Housing to those bodies that must be notified prior to a disposal. The regulator plays a vital role in ensuring that our social landlords deliver the quality homes and services that their tenants deserve. As part of the regulatory framework, private registered providers must be able to demonstrate a strategic rationale for disposals and understand the implications for their total social housing stock. I am not persuaded that requiring private registered providers to notify the regulator of a future disposal would enable it to better regulate against the standards that it sets. The regulator plays no role in approving such disposals; that decision properly rests with the landlord. The regulator is already notified once a disposal has occurred, so it has an overview of the numbers and types of disposals that are occurring.

Amendment 101 would, similarly, require community land trusts with social housing in the area to be notified. Of course, community land trusts that are registered with the Regulator of Social Housing would already be notified under the requirements of the clause. I am aware that not all community land trusts are registered with the regulator, and that is their choice, but the focus of the clause is to keep homes in the regulated sector where it is possible to do so. The notification process is therefore focused on notifying providers that are registered with the regulator.

Amendment 99 would require a sales notice provided to the local authority and other registered providers in the local area to be published on the website of the private registered provider intending to dispose of the property. One of the main aims of the clause is to increase transparency around disposals. However, there is a balance to be struck between the benefits of transparency and the burdens and costs to private registered providers. We believe that the amendment would introduce an unhelpful level of bureaucracy around the disposal notification process. While some providers may choose to publish notifications of sale on their websites, requiring publication via legislation is disproportionate.

[Gideon Amos]

If we are after transparency, I have difficulty with the Minister’s basing his argument on the massive cost of putting something on a website. I understand that it is a tradition of this place that the Government resist all amendments that come from all quarters other than their own, but this seems to be taking things to an illogical conclusion.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I certainly do not make it a point of principle to resist all amendments despite how sensible some will be. The hon. Member will see in the list of Government amendments that we will be debating many points that were raised by noble peers and that we have taken on. I will go away and reflect on how much of a burden this would be, but let me make a general point. This is my third Bill Committee as a Minister, and I sat on probably 13 while in opposition. The natural tendency of Oppositions is to call for further requirements, further regulations, further reviews and further assessments, because often they have nothing more to say on the point of principle of the particular clause. There is a cumulative impact of layering all of that on top. We want to ensure that the balance is struck properly, and that the disposals process is proportionate and is streamlined to an extent, but I will go away and reflect on the particular point and review whether requiring private registered providers to do what he suggests would be as burdensome as we think.

--- Later in debate ---

Division 13

Question accordingly negatived.

Ayes: 2

Noes: 8

[Gideon Amos]

I beg to move amendment 2, in clause 12, page 12, line 5, at end insert—

“171AA Right of first refusal: local housing authorities

(1) This section applies where—

(a) a sale notice has been given under section 171A in relation to a dwelling, and

(b) the dwelling—

(i) is let at social rent, or

(ii) was previously transferred from a local housing authority.

(2) During the period specified in section 171A(3), the local housing authority for the area in which the dwelling is situated may make an offer to acquire the dwelling.

(3) Where an offer is made under subsection (2), the private registered provider must dispose of the dwelling to the local housing authority at existing use value for social housing.

(4) A dwelling acquired under this section must be retained as social housing within the meaning of Part 2 of this Act.

(5) Any dispute as to the existing use value for social housing shall be determined by an independent valuer appointed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the operation of this section.”

This amendment gives local housing authorities a right of first refusal to acquire social rent dwellings and dwellings previously transferred from local authorities at existing use value for social housing.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 3, in clause 12, page 12, line 5, at end insert—

“171AA Right of first refusal: registered providers

(1) This section applies where—

(a) a sale notice has been given under section 171A in relation to a dwelling, and

(b) the dwelling—

(i) is let at social rent, or

(ii) was previously transferred from a local housing authority.

(2) During the period specified in section 171A(3), any registered provider which received a sale notice under section 171A(2) may make an offer to acquire the dwelling.

(3) Where an offer is made under subsection (2), the private registered provider must dispose of the dwelling to the registered provider at existing use value for social housing.

(4) A dwelling acquired under this section must be retained as social housing within the meaning of Part 2 of this Act.

(5) Any dispute as to the existing use value for social housing shall be determined by an independent valuer appointed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the operation of this section.”

This amendment gives registered providers a right of first refusal to acquire social rent dwellings and dwellings previously transferred from local authorities at existing use value for social housing.

Amendment 10, in clause 12, page 12, line 5, at end insert—

“171AA Right of first refusal: local affordable housing providers

(1) This section applies where—

(a) a sale notice has been given under section 171A in relation to a dwelling, and

(b) the dwelling—

(i) is let at social rent, or

(ii) was previously transferred from a local housing authority.

(2) During the period specified in section 171A(3), where a qualifying local affordable housing provider makes an offer to acquire the dwelling, a private registered provider must dispose of the dwelling to the qualifying local affordable housing provider at existing use value for social housing.

(3) A dwelling acquired under this section must be retained as social housing.

(4) In this section, a ‘qualifying local affordable housing provider’ means—

(a) a community land trust;

(b) a housing co-operative;

(c) a community benefit society;

(d) a charity whose purposes include the provision of affordable housing; or

(e) such other locally based not-for-profit housing body as may be prescribed by regulations,

which operates, or intends to operate, affordable housing within the local housing authority area in which the dwelling is situated.

(5) Any dispute as to existing use value for social housing shall be determined by an independent valuer appointed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the operation of this section.”

This amendment seeks to extend the right of first refusal to not-for-profit community-led housing organisations and other non-registered providers capable of retaining homes as affordable housing within the local area, and provides that the disposal must be at existing use value.

[Gideon Amos]

I will be brief. Amendment 2 would give local housing authorities right of first refusal to acquire social rent dwellings and dwellings previously transferred from local authorities at existing use value for social housing. The acquisition of those properties at existing use value for social housing, rather than at market value or existing use value, is significant, because obviously the existing use value for social housing is lower. It is important that local authorities have the ability to acquire homes that are being disposed of, so that the net reduction in social housing is not increased. I commend the amendment to the Committee.

[Matthew Pennycook]

As the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington set out, amendments 2 and 3 would introduce a right of first refusal for the local authority and other registered providers notified via a sale notice during the notice period. That right would be on the condition that the home would remain as social housing and would require the private registered provider to sell the home at the existing use value for social housing. The corresponding amendment 10, tabled by the hon. Member for St Ives, would extend the right of first refusal to specific types of bodies that provide affordable housing. Some of those bodies would be registered with the Regulator of Social Housing, and therefore would already be included within amendment 3, but amendment 10 would also extend the right of first refusal to unregistered housing providers.

I have heard clearly, both on Second Reading and today, the desire of hon. Members to protect social homes. I very much share that desire, but that must be balanced with the ability of private providers to operate efficiently and manage their housing assets, including by investing in more new homes or their existing stock. Sometimes that can mean selling a social home out of the sector. I can assure the Committee that I have fought long and hard, and challenged officials—they can verify that with nods—to ensure that we look in a lot of detail at what requirements can be put in place, and what levers we can try to pull, to keep as many social homes in the regulated sector as possible.

A key consideration when thinking through possible interventions is the reality that interfering with private registered providers’ freedom to use and sell their assets as they wish would present a significant risk of reclassifying the sector. Not only would that bring £110 billion of debt on to the public books, but it would bring with it risk and uncertainty that could impact on the investment in the sector that is so needed.

As I have said, I hope the disposals measure in the Bill will ensure greater transparency around disposals and support better dialogue between private registered providers and local authorities. I hope it will also focus minds to ensure that we minimise any negative impact resulting from disposals. Of course, there is nothing to prevent a private registered provider from choosing to sell to another provider at a lower price on the understanding that it remains social housing. I hope that the notification requirement introduced by the Bill will support such discussions. I am very open to ideas about what more can be done to support that dialogue, and I have tasked my officials to work with the sector to identify and promote good practice, as well as to explore what more the Government might do to reinforce it.

Given the issues that I have highlighted, I believe we will get the best results by working together with private registered providers and local authorities to explore what more they can do and where we can support them to keep homes in the regulated sector. For the reasons that I have set out, primarily around reclassification risk, we cannot accept the amendments, and I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment 2.

[Gideon Amos]

I appreciate the Minister’s response. The amendments are genuinely intended to provide councils with the ability to acquire stock rather than see it lost from the social housing sector. This is a particularly important area and, I believe, an important amendment. I understand the risks of reclassification on to the public sector balance sheet. I wonder whether the Minister would be willing to publish the advice he has received on that, because the sector will want to understand why first refusal cannot be given to local authorities.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I appreciate the attempt, let us say, to have confidential advice to Ministers published in the round. That is not the usual practice—

Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill

Gideon Amos Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 27th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

As we remember the 72 victims of Grenfell and the many who are still waiting for justice, I know the Secretary of State and Members from across the whole House share the same commitment to do right by them, to ensure such a calamity never happens again, and to do better for all the leaseholders and residents living with unsafe cladding through no fault of their own.

We need a Bill that will, once and for all, make people’s homes not just safer but as safe as their residents have a right to expect them to be. The Liberal Democrats remain committed to getting the removal of unsafe cladding urgently and by a statutory deadline, to getting remediation to the right safety standard—the one that building regulations were uprated to post-Grenfell—and to residents not having to pay a penny towards fixing a crisis not of their own making. We will look at the amendments that have just been outlined, and we look forward studying them when they come forward. Sadly, as the Bill stands it does none of those things and, because of that, it is substandard and needs radical improvement.

On the plus side, let me be clear about the positive aspects of the Bill that we support. We support the legal duty for responsible entities to remediate, including the important extension of the duty in relation to buildings of 11 to 18 metres in height. We support the stronger intervention powers for housing authorities and the regulator against the blockers, such as through remediation management orders. We support making it easier to bring claims against cladding manufacturers, and we support requirements to have fire risk assessments of external walls and associated registers.

For those reasons, we have not gone as far as tabling a fatal amendment, despite the very serious flaws, as we see them. It would be wrong to deny support to any leaseholders or residents who without this Bill would get less help, but I call on the Government to consider seriously the degree to which the Bill is lacking. While I do not doubt the sincerity of the Secretary of State or the Bill, the Government need to think harder and bring forward amendments that are urgently needed to strengthen the Bill. In the stages that follow Second Reading, we will be suggesting and proposing changes, and working with the Government as constructively as we can to get the improvements that we believe are necessary.

Where does the Bill fall short? First and foremost, it enshrines into law the discredited publicly available specification 9980—PAS 9980—approach. As shown in clause 44, that will allow cladding of “tolerable” risk of combustion to remain on homes after they have been remediated. One may expect “tolerable” risk to be no more than the level of risk allowed in new buildings under the building regulations, as tightened up after Grenfell, but as the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) has already alluded to, it is not that standard. In this Bill, remediation will be only to a standard that a fire risk assessor decides is “tolerable”. We are talking about fire risk assessors paid by building owners, who are more likely than not to have commercial interests in doing as few works as possible to their building. While I am sure that most assessors are reliable professionals, given that the Grenfell inquiry report chaired by judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick cited “commercial interests” in this area of work as one of the contributory factors to the fire, is retaining commercial interests in the system of fire risk assessment, assessors and building inspectors a risk worth taking?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

The hon. Gentleman and I have common cause in this respect, and I rely on the expertise of my constituents in this matter. The PAS 9980 approach was not reassuring for insurers. There was a big problem with insurance anyway, but PAS 9980 does not solve it, because it does not give insurers the certainty they need to do the risk assessment. I am not here as an apologist for the insurance industry—in fact, there are many issues that we will be taking up with that industry—but this approach is not the answer. Given his level of deep expertise in this matter before he came to the place, what would the hon. Gentleman propose instead? Is there an amendment to the Bill that he and the Government could coalesce around and reach agreement on?

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Member is very kind—I am sure my experience is as great as many other Members of the House. I am coming to what we believe would be a preferable standard. Our approach is that these issues of “commercial interests” should be expunged from the Bill, and that the tolerability approach should be removed. We believe that existing homes and buildings should be remediated to meet the standard of fire safety required in the building regulations that were uprated in 2018, after Grenfell.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Although this Bill is specifically about the remediation of cladding, this issue goes further. Building control is typically undertaken or at least instructed by the local planning authority, and is now instructed and employed by the developers. When my constituents Trisha and Ray moved into their new build in Wimborne, they found that the structural issues in their property had not been independently signed off. They have now found that no one has access to the structural drawings of their building other than the inspector, so when they had problems with their roof, the council had no details, they could not access details and they could not check compliance. Does my hon. Friend agree that, for the protection of residents, an ethical wall needs to be created between developers and inspectors, with proper enforcement and mandatory Housing Ombudsman Service membership for developers?

[Gideon Amos]

I certainly support my hon. Friend’s plea. I will come to the issue of the independence of building inspectors, which is very important.

Let me return to standards. The building regulations are the standard that the Government have set; they are needed for newly built homes to be safe, so the same standard therefore has to apply to the homes that people already live in. I have visited high-rise apartments in London and elsewhere, and seen them covered in scaffolding and being remediated under the developer scheme, but many of them are being left with so much cladding breaching building regulations and fire safety standards that residents cannot get insurance.

It is the insurance that really gives the game away. If the building really was safe, why would the insurance premiums be so high? We have increases in insurance costs of 56% and higher. For that reason, many owners cannot sell or get a new mortgage, so they sink into negative equity and become mortgage prisoners in their own home.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. Member is making a very important point. Does he agree that the high insurance costs are in no way caused by any action taken by the residents who are forced to pay them? In all honesty, they deserve compensation.

[Gideon Amos]

Absolutely. The right hon. Gentleman almost read the next line of my speech—I do not know how he did that from his seat over there.

Leaseholders and residents should not have to pay a penny for defects that were not their fault. Thousands of pounds extra in insurance are being paid by completely innocent homeowners to compensate for a safety standard that, while of course is better than nothing, is quite frankly not the standard that it should be—and that is after remediation to the standard has been carried out through this Bill. Meeting the established building regulations standard would perhaps cost more, but why should residents be condemned to live in buildings remediated to a lesser standard than the one that we consider safe for new homes?

The profit motive needs to be expunged from building inspector services generally, and the Bill fails to do that. We need to remove commercial interests from building inspectors and fire risk assessors by placing them all under a publicly controlled, non-profit making authority. There is still no statutory certification requirement for a competent person to become a fire risk assessor. When will those measures be brought forward, as has been promised in previous legislation?

The second big omission is that this Bill provides no more funding for those in buildings under 11 metres in height now that the funding window has closed. While medium-rise buildings come more firmly into scope, which is welcome, why should any residents be forced to pay to put right bad practice that was not their fault? Leaseholders in Taunton and Wellington and across the country are already paying ground rents that are too high to absentee landlords for nothing in return, as abolishing residential leasehold seems to recede further and further into the future.

The Bill fails to give residents the right to see their building’s fire risk assessment and to give local authorities the resources to deliver the new enforcement duties. It also fails to commit the Government to making manufacturers—those that make unsafe products that cause fire—pay. That leaves the onus on others to pursue them through slow and costly court action. It is our position that, in those ways, the Bill fails to fully implement the Grenfell Tower inquiry recommendations. Finally, there is no deadline in the Bill by which all the defects revealed by Grenfell across the tall buildings estate will be put right.

The fire safety of all homes needs to meet the standard that we require for new homes. Existing residents are no less worthy of that than the residents of future homes, who will benefit from the building regulations standard. The commercial interests that ran rife in building safety inspections in the lead-up to Grenfell need to be rooted out once and for all, and residents and leaseholders must not be expected to pay a penny towards repairing a crisis they are completely innocent of causing. We must make homes fully safe under building regulations revised for that purpose; make oversight and inspection independent, not profit-dependent; hold developers and manufacturers to account by pursuing them for the costs; protect leaseholders, including those in buildings under 11 metres; and put residents at the heart of remediation, so that they can see the assessments of their homes and have a real, statutory deadline. That is the Bill that the House needed to see today, and it is the Bill we will work hard to shape through its remaining stages.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn (Leeds South) (Lab)]

I unreservedly welcome the Bill. The story of the cladding crisis arose out of the appalling tragedy at Grenfell on that night over nine years ago, when all those people died in the place they should have felt most safe—their home. They died because of a series of catastrophic failures.

The first and most obvious failure was that cladding was allowed to be put in combinations on the sides of buildings when no one had actually tested what would happen if those combinations caught fire. It is astonishing, when one looks back at it, that architects were able to specify combinations. We now know that when some of those combinations had been put on rigs and set fire to—boom!—they had gone up very quickly.

The second thing—my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) spoke so well—is that we are here, over nine years after the event, and we still have not sorted it out. I am much struck by the example that he quoted from Australia; he is right. Many of my constituents have been affected by the cladding scandal. For most of them, it is fair to say, their homes have now been dealt with, but there are still far too many people whose homes have not been. The reaction of the Government at the time was, “Well, it’s not really our responsibility.” They had to be forced by stages, over the years, to do more and more.

There was also a failure to build the blocks in line with the building regulations at the time. It is one thing to look at the cladding—people said, “Oh, I didn’t know that was a problem”—but as it was pulled off buildings, one after another, what did we find? We found that the fire-stopping measures, the firebreaks, were missing—even though that was a requirement of the building regulations at the time. This is a story of a load of jerry-built buildings that people lived in for many years, as one Member said, with no idea that they were living in a fire trap. I make that point because, on occasion, I have heard Members in this Chamber lambast Britain as an over-regulated society. I mean, give us a break! This story is a monumental failure of regulation. People died as a result, and many other people’s lives have been put on hold, as we have heard.

I join others in paying tribute to the End Our Cladding Scandal group, Leeds Cladding Scandal, and the many constituents who have raised cases with me and who have worked so hard to try to change the circumstances in which they find themselves. Time and again, people have said to me, as they have to all other hon. Members, “I thought I’d bought the home of my dreams, and I find I’m living in a nightmare that I don’t seem able to get out of.” Many Members have referred to people’s lives being put on hold. That is absolutely true: they cannot get on with things, whether having a family or moving to another part of the country where they have been offered a good job, because they cannot sell their flat. There appears to be no escape. The bills go up, the waking watches are costly, insurance is expensive and service charges go up. I remember the first constituent who told me, “I’ve had to move out of my flat.” I said, “You’ve moved out of your flat?” He said, “Yes, I couldn’t afford the bills, so I moved out of my flat; I’m now renting it, so I can pay the bills that I can’t afford in the flat that I thought was the home of my dreams.”

Each block, particularly the ones that have not yet been remediated, is a very complex story—changing ownership, developers disappearing or going bust, the legal pass the parcel, which was mentioned in a previous speech, and mortgage lenders refusing to lend. The hard truth is that no legislation is going to require a mortgage lender to lend on a property it does not want to lend on. The mortgage lenders therefore have to have confidence.

[Gideon Amos]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a typically cogent, sensible speech. Is not the logical conclusion of what he is driving at that buildings should be remediated to a standard such that they can be insured at reasonable levels and will get mortgages, and that that is the building regulation standard we require for new buildings?

[Hilary Benn]

I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but is he arguing that a mortgage lender should be required by law—

[Gideon Amos]

indicated dissent.

[Hilary Benn]

No, the hon. Gentleman is not; I did not think that he was. That is a fundamental problem. It is about confidence in the system and in the property. Too many of my constituents still worry that they could be landed with bills they simply cannot afford. Someone said to me, “Thirty thousand quid? It might as well be 30 million quid, because I can’t afford thirty thousand.”

I want to raise three specific issues. First, I very much welcome what the Secretary of State said in her opening speech about those who have bought non-qualifying flats. As I was reflecting on the question I put to her about making the measure retrospective, I realised that that probably is not an issue here. The sole owner of a flat that was deemed to be non-qualifying will be relieved of the requirement to meet the costs themselves and will be eligible for the support that other leaseholders have.

The second issue relates to blocks below 11 metres. I echo the point made by the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer). There is a development in Leeds called the Chandlers; some of the blocks are over 11 metres and some are below 11 metres. Applications have been made to the new fund that was opened—from memory, the closing day was 17 August. There will be lots of applications, and we do not know who will be successful and who will not. I seek clarity from the Minister. As I understand it, under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, a “responsible person” is required to carry out fire risk assessments on all buildings and put in place measures to address fire risks they identify. A House of Commons Library briefing note states:

“Since 2022, this risk assessment duty has included assessing the structure and external walls of the building, including cladding”.

Although the Government generally argue that most buildings under 11 metres do not present a risk, what is the situation in cases where there is a risk in those buildings? For example, a PAS 9980 assessment was done for the Chandlers. The residents were first told that the blocks under 11 metres were a high risk; they were then told that those blocks were a medium risk. But hey—a medium risk is still a risk. Would you want to live in a block that has a medium risk of catching fire, putting your life at risk? I have read the Bill and the explanatory memorandum on this point quite hurriedly, and it appears that these particular powers apply to buildings of over 11 metres. However, since the Government have said, “We are prepared to provide funding for buildings under 11 metres,” can the Minister tell me whether any of the powers in the legislation as it is currently drafted apply to blocks of under 11 metres and the people responsible for them? If not, if such a block has got a PAS 9980 assessment that says, “This is a risk”, then why, logically, would we not extend these powers to ensure the remediation of blocks under 11 metres?

Finally, I join my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) in making a plea about people who really, really, really need to move. Could the Government think creatively about developers buying back flats or, as was said a moment ago, the local authority purchasing them? We want more social housing, and each one would be one more unit. I wonder whether we could see what might be done to help people who really needed to move—for example, if their mother were extremely ill and they needed to move in order to look after her.

Having said that, our constituents who still live in unsafe flats have waited far too long to have them made safe, and I look forward to the Bill making very speedy passage through both Houses.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Homelessness, Democracy, Communities and Faith (Florence Eshalomi)]

I thank Members from across the House for their contributions. As the Secretary of State, the shadow Minister and many hon. and right hon. Members outlined, next June will mark a decade since the Grenfell fire disaster took the lives of 72 people, including 18 children. None of us can imagine the horror that survivors, families and friends suffered that day, and the community will continue to carry that trauma, anguish and suffering throughout their lives.

It is a tragedy that should never have happened, and one that must never happen again, but we must be honest and say that it is unacceptable that far too many people in this country still do not have the safety and security of a safe roof over their heads, nine years after Grenfell. This is not just about building safety; it is about giving everyone the peace of mind that a safe, decent and affordable home brings. We must ask ourselves how we can expect anyone to sleep soundly, and get on in life, if the building they sleep in every night is covered in dangerous and flammable cladding. The building safety crisis must be resolved, homes must be made safe, and residents must be allowed to live their lives.

This Government were elected on a manifesto that made commitments to accelerate remediation, better protect leaseholders and make those responsible for the building safety crisis pay to put it right. Our remediation acceleration plan and this Bill deliver on that pledge. By introducing a register of 11 to 18 metre buildings and a national standard for assessing buildings, the Bill will finally bring certainty on the scale of the problem and the work required to fix it. By creating a new legal duty to remediate, backed up by substantial new penalties for inaction, we will compel those responsible to fix their buildings without delay.

[Gideon Amos]

I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way during a very serious and measured speech. She referred to the standard of remediation. A number of Members, including myself, raised use of the standard of tolerability instead of building regulations. Are the Government willing to review the standard of remediation so that after remediation, buildings are not left, as they are now, with flammable cladding on the outside?

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. A number of Members have raised the matter of remediation standards. I know that the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton), who is sitting next to him, also raised it in a recent Westminster Hall debate that I responded to.

Many right hon. and hon. Members will be aware that the Bill will make independent auditing of fire risk appraisals of external walls mandatory. We are confident that PAS 9980 has a robust and appropriate methodology for assessing the risk of fire spreading throughout the building. The Bill will also look at the independent auditing and the statutory requirement, ensuring that additional checks on those assessments have been carried out properly. To reassure Members, Homes England will also audit all assessments that recommend mitigation and remediation and will have the power to audit other assessments.

By delivering the remediation backstop, we will ensure that no building and no resident is left behind, even if the person responsible for the building is determined to ignore the risks it presents to residents. By creating stronger avenues for redress against construction product manufacturers, we will ensure that those responsible for the cladding safety crisis pay towards the cost of fixing it.

I thank the Secretary of State and the Building Safety Minister, Baroness Blake, for bringing the Bill forward. I also thank all the Ministers who came before me for the work they did to make this Bill a reality, including the Lord Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham and Croydon North (Steve Reed) and my hon. Friends the Members for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon) and for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali).

Draft Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector and Social Rented Sector (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 Draft Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2026 General Committees

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve on the Committee with you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. I draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Member’s Financial Interests—I am a social landlord.

The Liberal Democrats support and recognise the work that has been done on Awaab’s law and its passing in the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, which we supported as a major step forward. We therefore welcome the draft regulations to extend the hazards in the definition. I agree entirely with the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire, who made a good speech on the efficacy of Awaab’s law. My constituents have also found it useful in securing action on matters such as damp and mould and so forth.

The electrical regulations appear to be a tidying-up exercise. I do not have any further comments, and we are happy to support them. In regard to the social housing regulations, has consideration been given to extending the hazards to encompass overcrowding? I was pleased to campaign over a number of years in different roles to restore minimum space standards in housing; when I trained as an architect many decades ago, those were a requirement, until the Thatcher Government swept them away and we ended up with the second smallest homes in Europe. I was delighted that we campaigned for that cross party and that Liberal Democrat Minister Don Foster brought in nationally prescribed space standards. However, there is not much point in having space standards if the homes themselves are completely overcrowded. We are therefore interested to hear from the Minister whether consideration has been given to including overcrowding in the hazards in these or future regulations. Other than that, we stand in support of the regulations.

Grey Belt Land: Definition and Application

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for bringing to the House an important debate on an issue that affects a lot of our constituencies. I also thank all the Members who contributed today, including my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster)—indeed, I thank him for contributing in this Chamber for the second time today.

The Liberal Democrats want to see more homes built, principally the 150,000 council and social rent homes that the country needs, but the right way to deliver those homes is by working with communities and trusting them, and prioritising brownfield sites, the 700,000 empty homes in the country, and the 500,000 homes that could be provided in empty commercial buildings, according to the London School of Economics.

When it comes to the green belt, few of us, and certainly not the Liberal Democrats, would object to a community deciding, through its democratic local plan, to release formerly green-belt land for its own reasons, and particularly for social homes. But the Government’s grey-belt policy is not that. It is being abused, giving carte blanche to development pretty much anywhere and, as it is currently set out in the national planning policy framework, it has to go. We were told that “grey belt” meant disused car parks and old petrol stations, but the CPRE has found that, in the first year, 88% of homes approved on the grey belt at appeal were on land that had never been built on, as the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam also pointed out.

In this Chamber in July, the Minister told us:

“The definition of grey belt is set out in the glossary of the NPPF.”—[Official Report, 16 July 2026; Vol. 789, c. 466WH.]

There is a definition there, but for me it has more holes than a Swiss cheese. It omits to protect two of the green belt’s five purposes—safeguarding the countryside from encroachment and recycling derelict land. Because the purposes that are left do not apply to villages, it has also removed villages from the green-belt protections that they have had for more than a century, so a field on the edge of a green-belt village is very likely to be grey belt. Developers know it and are trying their luck.

On 7 September, the Secretary of State told the House that she is

“strengthening and clarifying the rules around the release of grey belt”.—[Official Report, 7 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 643.]

If there is no confusion, what is being clarified? The answer so far has been to take the test for protected landscapes out of the definition altogether. That widens the grey belt rather than tightening it. On the same day, the Minister confirmed that the Government do not collect data on how much land councils have identified as grey belt. Will the Minister commit to collecting that? My hon. Friend the Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) asked for that last October.

The new national planning policy framework requires every green-belt council to plan for grey-belt releases, allocated in its local plan. But since the Government’s grey-belt rules allow any developer to apply for grey-belt development on any site, whether or not it has been allocated as grey belt in the local plan, there can be little point in pretending that the local plan approach is the only one, or that grey-belt development is, in any sense, being plan led.

Developers do not need a grey-belt policy to redevelop an old petrol station in any event. Redeveloping previously developed land in the green belt has been allowed since 2012, if not longer, as long as it does not harm openness more than the development previously there. What grey belt adds is the field next to it, and it is decided at appeal, rather than through the local plan—that is, rather than by the local community. That is another instance where community powers have been stripped away in what the Town and Country Planning Association has called an “unprecedently permissive” planning regime.

This policy comes into play where there is unmet need—in practice, where a council cannot show a five-year land supply. In Somerset, the Government are mandating that another 75,000 homes—a 41% increase—should be found in the next local plan. I have not met anyone who believes that is realistic or achievable. The targets are derived from the Government’s new standard method, which has in one fell swoop thrown much of England under the threat of development, as the majority of councils cannot meet such impossible targets under the new standard method. It would take them the two-year local plan process to escape that threat, and millions of pounds to boot. This could be called a developer’s charter but, unfortunately, many of these sites are not being developed, so it is more of a land speculator’s charter.

Developers, not the community, end up selecting which part of the green belt is up for grabs. Villages are hit hardest, not just because they have lost their green-belt protection but because for many, if not all, the new targets have undermined the one thing that has reliably delivered affordable homes for local people in rural areas: rural exception sites. Last week, I brought to the House an example from an inspector’s decision in Gweek, Cornwall.

The Minister told us in July that the framework makes exception sites easier. In reality, exception sites work where agricultural land that is worth, say, £12,000 an acre cannot be sold for a higher price for commercial housing due to strict planning rules, so it might as well be allowed to be sold for agricultural value, or a little more, for social housing that helps the village. The Government, however, have now told every landowner around villages and elsewhere that their acre could be worth not just £12,000 but anything from £150,000 to £3 million—the price of land with residential permission—because those strict planning policy preventions no longer apply, and because anyone can apply for it to be developed as grey belt anywhere in the green belt.

If a landowner is told that their field might be grey belt, why would they sell it for £12,000 for social housing, when they could get £150,000 or more? It would definitely be more in the home counties and near London. Hope value has always been the enemy of exception sites, and the way that the grey belt has been implemented has created hope value around every village and green belt—so goodbye to social housing on such exception sites. Building the kind of homes that villages lack just got harder.

We do agree on the golden rules, which rightly require more affordable and social housing where green-belt land is released. That is absolutely right, but it does not mean that valuable green spaces should be up for grabs. Ironically, an area with no green belt can be better protected from some of these policies, but that does not mean that our green spaces in Taunton and Wellington are safe.

In Taunton, we have green wedges—countryside running right into the town and doing the job that the green belt does elsewhere—but those spaces have only local policy protection. Earlier this year, consultants recommended releasing Trull green wedge from its green wedge status, ironically because it was the last bit of green remaining in a built-up area. That is something that, in my opinion, made it more valuable not less. An application for 125 homes quickly followed, because the council, like most in England, cannot meet its new five-year land supply. Our councillors rightly refused the application. Fortunately, it was under the 150 homes limit, above which councillors must now ask Whitehall’s permission to refuse a development.

The appeals public inquiry has just begun showing how thin green wedge protection is. The green belt, green wedges and local green spaces can all be weakened by the next rewriting of the framework, without this House having a vote. In the Liberal Democrats’ view, all communities—not just those in the green belt—should have a stronger and longer-lasting way to protect their most precious green spaces.

What should we do instead? First, we should scrap the grey belt and instead release green-belt land through community-led local plans, with the golden rules applying in full and with social homes at their heart. Secondly, we should keep the long-standing exception for previously developed land, and make brownfield-first a legal requirement. Thirdly, we should give communities who review their green belt 20 years’ statutory protection for the green wedges and green belt that they prioritise. That would give them confidence that, instead of a free-for-all, their most precious green spaces will be protected in law for the long term.

If people are to accept the homes that we need—and we do need them—they must have confidence in the protection for the bits of green space that are most precious to them and most dear to those communities, as our amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 set out. We were promised that the grey belt would turn old petrol stations into homes, but what it is actually delivering is the loss of green field after green field, as decided by the Government’s policy issued in Whitehall. It is time to scrap it and put communities back in charge of their green belt and their green spaces.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) on securing this debate. He is an assiduous and highly effective parliamentarian, whom I have the upmost respect for, and he opened the debate with a characteristically incisive and challenging contribution. I thank him for the opportunity he has given the Chamber to debate this issue, and I will seek in the course of my remarks to respond to each of his specific points.

I also thank the hon. Members who have spoken in the debate. I appreciate fully that this topic provokes strong views, to put it mildly, but in the time I have available, I hope to provide some further clarity on the Government’s green belt policy, specifically the nuances of national policy relating to grey belt. Hon. Members and the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam will appreciate that, due to the quasi-judicial nature of the planning process, I will be unable to comment in detail on individual local plans, planning applications or how individual local planning authorities may interpret national planning policy.

As the right hon. and learned Member made clear in his opening remarks, the definition of grey belt is set out in the glossary of the “National Planning Policy Framework”. It is defined, for the purposes of plan making and decision making, as

“land in the Green Belt comprising previously developed land and/or any other land that, in either case, does not…contribute to any of purposes (a), (b), or (d)”,

as set out in NPPF policy GB2. As I make that point, it is also worth making it clear that we have not altered the five purposes of the green belt that we inherited. They remain as they were, and we do not propose to alter the general extent of the green belt either.

I will come on to expand on the role of local planning authorities in the process. It is for individual local planning authorities to undertake the necessary assessments to identify if land is grey belt, either through plan making or through considering specific applications that come forward. Let me take each of those in turn, starting with plan making, and in doing so gently push back on the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster).

This is, and is intended to be, a plan-led approach. The NPPF allows for local planning authorities to alter green belt boundaries using the local development plan process in “exceptional circumstances”. That includes situations where a local authority is unable to meet its identified need for development, having examined all other reasonable options for doing so, including making as much use as possible of suitable previously developed land, optimising the density of development and assessing whether sufficient sites can be identified outside the green belt. As set out in NPPF policy GB2, any decision to alter green belt boundaries should be informed by a green belt assessment, which identifies grey-belt land within the green belt.

Following the publication of the revised NPPF in December 2024, the Government awarded over £9.3 million to 133 local planning authorities to support them with the costs of undertaking such green belt reviews. An assessment of the strategic role of the green belt should also inform the preparation of spatial development strategies, as legislated through the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, where these will be setting the strategic context for land release.

[Gideon Amos]

The Minister is always generous with his time and in responding to interventions, which is appreciated by all of us. If the intention is that this should be a plan-led approach, will he remove the provisions in the NPPF that allow developers to claim that their land is grey belt through an application by reference to the policies that have been put in the NPPF for such grey belt decisions to be made outside of the local plan process through individual planning applications?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will say two things in respect to that, and I will come on to detail how the approach works in relation to decision making very shortly. In general terms, developers can make whatever claims they like about any particular site across the country; it is for the local authority to assess whether, in its view, that site constitutes grey belt, if that is part of the application that is submitted. Where there is disagreement and it goes to appeal, I have set out exactly how planning inspectors need to determine such applications.

It is crucial to note that where grey belt is identified, it does not automatically follow that it should be allocated for development or released from the green belt, or that development proposals be approved in all circumstances. Other considerations in decision making are relevant, as I will expand upon shortly. I also want to stress that any alterations to green belt boundaries must promote sustainable patterns of development by ensuring that any alterations, taken together, do not fundamentally undermine the five green belt purposes of the remaining green belt when considered across the plan area. Considerations also include giving priority to the release of previously developed land in the green belt, then considering low-quality grey-belt land, which will include disused petrol stations and other previously developed land of that kind, although not necessarily be limited to it, and only then exploring other green belt locations.

To respond to the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam on whether allocating grey-belt land for development will necessarily lead to the cumulative erosion of the green belt over time, I would point out two things. First, as I have already mentioned, development proposals on grey-belt land must respond to a demonstrable unmet need—I will come to his points about the standard method shortly. Secondly, it is precisely to avoid the situation that we inherited—which was a haphazard and piecemeal approach to green belt land designation and release—that this Government have implemented the approach that we have. Its effective working is predicated on ensuring that designation and release take place in a strategic manner over time through local plans with a 10-year horizon, and in due course—because they are just as important—through spatial development strategies with a 20-year horizon. We want the approach to be plan-led.

Residential Buildings: Safety Remediation

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) on securing today’s important debate and setting out the issue so clearly. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) on all the hard work he is doing to deal with the Halloween horror of panels falling in the town centre.

I pay tribute to the 72 victims of the Grenfell disaster. No debate should pass without recognising how grotesquely they were failed by the systems that were meant to protect them. Let us not forget what the public inquiry panel, chaired by the judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, said in its epic report on the disaster. On building inspectors, it said:

“We have concluded that the conflict between the regulatory function of building control and the pressures of commercial interests prevents a system of that kind from effectively serving the public interest.”

Similarly, it said that the Building Research Establishment

“sacrificed rigorous application of principle to its commercial interests.”

I will return to commercial interests shortly.

The remediation Bill announced in the King’s Speech is expected to make it a legal requirement that every fire risk appraisal of external walls be carried out according to the publicly available specification, or PAS 9980, standard produced by the British Standards Institution. That document decides whether, by law, a leaseholder’s building requires remediation or is considered safe.

The final version of that document has only just been published, but the draft that went out to consultation should worry us and every leaseholder in the country, and we need to know whether its deficiencies have been fixed. First, it says:

“Failure of a building to meet the benchmarks given in building regulations...at the time when the building was built, should not be used as the sole basis for determining the outcome of the FRAEW.”

That means that a building can still pass the PAS 9980 test even if it is proven not to have complied with the building regulations in force when it was built. The fire safety order manages fire safety in occupied buildings on the assumption that they met the building regulations when they were built. The remediation regime should require the same standard that developers should have met when constructing the building, and that others were, and continue to be, required to meet when constructing buildings.

What is remediation for if not to make buildings meet the standards they should always have met? Frankly, what is the point of having building regulations for leaseholders in this position if they are not enforced in such clear circumstances? Can the Minister reassure leaseholders that the newly published standard requires the remediation of failures to comply with the building regulations that were in force at the time of construction? Such questions also point to worrying failures to enforce building regulations more generally, far beyond fire safety, which could lead to an unfolding tide of undiscovered construction failings.

After what we have heard from Sir Martin Moore-Bick and the panel in the Grenfell public inquiry report, any notion that the profit motive has a continuing role in building inspection following those tragic events is unacceptable and cannot be sustained. I am disappointed that the building control independent panel has recommended the continuation of private sector, and therefore profit-seeking, roles in building inspection. That is what got us into this mess; it will not get us out of it. The Liberal Democrats are calling for building control services to be in-house in local or regional authorities, or otherwise not for profit.

As we have heard, the second deficiency in PAS 9980 is the gap between “tolerable” and “low”. Where an appraisal finds a tolerable risk, the draft allows for the work that is needed to bring that risk down to low to be delayed. The commentary on clause 7 suggests

“recommending upgrading the performance of external wall components if/when there is any refurbishment of the external walls in future.”

If and when is not good enough for families who have to live in unsafe homes and with the knowledge that their external walls contain flammable material, sometimes including materials that are more flammable than that used on Grenfell Tower. The leaseholder pays for that wait in insurance premiums, mortgage difficulties and living in a building that is only partially safe. For too many, it also renders useless the leaseholder protections in the Building Safety Act, as they apply to unsafe cladding, and this cladding is not considered unsafe.

If components are found to pose a tolerable risk, are they unsafe? Why should they not be removed to reduce the risk to low? We have heard about the challenge of getting insurance; if buildings were remediated to the standard to which they should have been built in the first place and all flammable materials were removed, residents would not have any problem in getting insurance. Developers cannot be asked to come back to finish the job under those circumstances, because the developer remediation contract only requires a building to be brought up to the “tolerable” standard. Can the Minister confirm whether the newly published standard requires all the work needed to reach a low-risk outcome to be undertaken at the same time?

These are not technical quibbles. The Department’s own figures, published in August, show that of the 4,600 buildings being monitored, only 1,800 have completed remediation, and over 2,000 of the 4,600 required remediations have not even been started, meaning. That means that in 46% of buildings with unsafe cladding no work has begun—nine years on from Grenfell, as other Members have pointed out—and the Department estimates that somewhere between 1,100 and 2,600 more buildings are in scope but have not yet been identified.

Meanwhile, leaseholders continue to struggle under the cladding crisis, buying properties that they believed met safety standards but that they now realise do not, and are suffering huge increases in premiums and so on. Many developers and building owners have passed on the cost of remediation work to tenants and leaseholders, putting many of them, quite unfairly, in serious financial peril. The Liberal Democrats, following the policy passed by our conference last year on the great property rip-off, are therefore calling for the removal of all such flammable cladding, whether above or below 11 metres, as soon as possible and without tenants or leaseholders, including non-qualifying leaseholders, having to pay.

After all, those who bought leases placed their trust in the private companies and regulatory bodies that let them down. The fault was not theirs. Solicitors’ searches would have shown that buildings had not met building regulations. Homeowners were misled, and it was not their fault. They should not have to pay a penny towards that work. That is why my noble Friend Baroness Pinnock’s Leaseholder Remediation (Building Safety) Bill, which had its Second Reading in the other place on Friday, would protect leaseholders in buildings of any height and would put developers, contractors and manufacturers on the hook for the cost.

In conclusion, I ask the Minister six things. Will she set out the changes between the consultation draft and the recent version of PAS 9980, which was published the other day? Will she make it clear that a building that has been found to fail the building regulations that were in force when it was built must be remediated back to the building regulations standard, and that the work needed to reach a low-risk outcome should be done once, not deferred to some future refurbishment? Will leaseholder protections be extended to every leaseholder in every defective building, including the hundreds of thousands excluded from the building safety regime? Will the Government commit to driving profit-making commercial interest out of every part of building control inspections and official product testing certifications, and to making physical inspections the norm once again in every development? What more will the Government do to end delays at the Building Safety Regulator? Finally, will the Government confirm that the remediation Bill will provide for cladding manufacturers to be pursued for their share of the costs of remediation, which they have at least partly caused?

We welcomed the legally enforceable duty to remediate on pain of criminal sanction, and we still do, but a duty to remediate is only as good as the standard against which it is measured. Commercial interest should have no place in policing commercial projects for safety and building regulations. Residents in Taunton and Wellington, in London and across the country deserve nothing less. Above all, the victims of the terrible and avoidable disaster at Grenfell deserve justice.

Social Housing Bill [Lords]

Gideon Amos Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 10th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my experience as a social landlord.

The Liberal Democrats have long called for a major programme of social housing—150,000 homes per year—so there are elements of the Bill that we welcome and we will support it today. Extending the qualifying period to 10 years and cutting discounts will slow the loss of social homes, as we have been hearing. Protecting a newly built social home from sale for 35 years should give councils more confidence to build again, as will the improved right of first refusal. The protections for tenants fleeing domestic abuse are welcome and overdue, and we support them. So there are important steps in the right direction, but the Bill as a whole is nowhere near the scale of what is needed.

As other hon. Members have pointed out, right to buy was not on its own the biggest issue; it was the complete failure to replace properties, home for home. Thanks to the Conservatives, in Taunton and Wellington, as in the rest of the country, there are thousands fewer council homes than there used to be, all while the need for social housing has grown and grown. There are 4 million fewer council houses in this country than there were in 1980. Even taking into account replacements, social housing and registered social landlords, the number of social homes in this country has dropped by 1.5 million homes.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I agree with the majority of what the hon. Gentleman has said so far; he may come on to things that I do not agree with later in his speech, but we will have to wait and see. Will he reflect on the fact that the impact of councils losing their council housing stock has been that they have had to spend more and more money on temporary accommodation? It is a zero-sum game for local councils and the impact on families and young people has been particularly difficult, including in my constituency of Harlow.

[Gideon Amos]

I thank the hon. Member for I forget where—he does not mention it very often, but maybe it is Harlow. He is right and I will come to exactly that point about temporary accommodation.

The Resolution Foundation found that only one home was replaced for every five sold. That is a direct failure of Governments of all persuasions to build enough social housing. The Conservatives reversed their policy of allowing councils to spend 100% of receipts soon after they introduced it. In comparison, in 2004, a Labour Government required three quarters of receipts to be sent straight to the Treasury. Homes were sold at around half their value, and what money there was from receipts went elsewhere, not into building new social homes, and building rates plummeted.

I am glad that the new Prime Minister talks a good game on devolution, but even under the measures in this Bill, councils will remain unable to stop the loss of council homes from right to buy. The Liberal Democrats would give councils that power to end right to buy in their areas, if that is right for them and their communities. The Government should trust councils to understand their communities and their own housing markets.

When it comes to the Conservatives, who seem to be chasing their ideological bedfellows in the Reform party, apparently the priority is not building housing; it is finding a minority to blame for the problem—a group to alienate as “the other” when we should be focusing on building for the whole of the UK and everyone who lives here. Their amendment banning people who are not full British citizens from social housing overlooks the fact that people subject to immigration control are already ineligible for social housing—that is the law—but they want to go further.

The nurse on the ward at Musgrove Park hospital, in my constituency, would not be welcome under this Conservative amendment and would not be allowed to have a social home or a council house. The care worker who looked after people during the pandemic would not be welcome under this Conservative amendment. Under a Conservative Government, they would have nowhere to live when it comes to council and social housing. That is ironic for a party that has produced two Prime Ministers born outside Britain. As the Member of Parliament for Taunton and Wellington, I do not know whether I should inform his grace the Duke of Wellington that the first Duke of Wellington would not fully be a British citizen under the Conservative amendment tabled today because he was born outside Britain.

[Gareth Bacon]

That is total rubbish!

[Gideon Amos]

I suggest the hon. Gentleman reads the Conservative amendment that refers to reserving social housing for British citizens.

[Gareth Bacon]

The Duke of Wellington was British.

[Gideon Amos]

No, the Duke of Wellington was not born in Britain—the hon. Gentleman needs to have a look at his history books—[Interruption.] Regardless of the history of the Duke of Wellington, attempts to use the Bill to pump up divisive culture-war claptrap does not deserve our attention. Rather than pointing the finger of blame at minorities, we should be talking about how to build more social homes, and that is exactly what I will go on to do.

The failure to replace social homes, among other factors, means that more and more people are in temporary accommodation. There are 132,000 households in temporary accommodation, and councils spent £2.8 billion on it last year. The scourge of poor-quality temporary accommodation exists for far too many children, and that is why we need a big public housing programme to match the scale of the challenge. If for no other reason, we must do that because it is incumbent on all of us in this House, across parties, to end the tragic loss of children’s lives. The Shared Health Foundation has highlighted that temporary accommodation was found by a coroner to be a contributing factor in the deaths of 104 children in the last five years.

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

I have almost 180 families in Woking in temporary accommodation, and it is tragic for them. Some 20 of them are located outside the borough. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to ensure councils can locate people in temporary accommodation locally so that it does not devastate their lives as much as it does at the moment?

[Gideon Amos]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. People should be able to stay in their communities, and we need local, affordable housing and social housing at scale to deal with that issue.

[Richard Quigley (Isle of Wight West) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Tory idea of capping the local housing allowance would mean that families who cannot afford to stay in their area will have to move out of the area, tear their children out of school and turn their lives upside down?

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the local housing allowance and the huge effect that it has on local families and housing markets. It needs to be uprated. I must return to my speech, or you will start giving me looks, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Among other things, we must free up councils to build. My Lib Dem colleagues on Somerset council would build 600 council houses; they are already building council housing in parts of the county for the first time in a generation. The council has sites for another 600 houses and wants to build them, but it does not have the headroom in its housing revenue account. The Government promised to confirm their approach to a discounted borrowing rate for housing revenue accounts in the autumn, so we and councils eagerly await that news. If Ministers will not raise the £3.9 billion per year to the £6 billion per year that we have put in our manifesto for social housing, will they use some additional funds to write off some or all of that housing revenue account debt so that councils such as Somerset can get building again, as Shelter and others have called for?

On the scale of the need, the Government have reannounced that 60% of their programme for 300,000 homes will be social housing, which is 18,000 a year. That is welcome, but when that was first announced in July 2025, we said that it was not enough, and reannouncing it this summer does not make it enough. Will the Government raise the target for social homes—if not to our target of 150,000, then to a number higher than 18,000 a year?

In addition, the Bill does very little to address the unique issues of affordable housing in rural areas. In Taunton and Wellington, all that people are seeing is unprecedented plans for private housing, which many cannot afford. The council has been instructed to consent homes for 180,000 people in the next 15 years. The population of Somerset has never grown by 25% in any 15-year period in its history, and it will not do so in the next 15 years, but acres of beautiful countryside will be gobbled up for private housing permissions that many people in my constituency cannot afford.

Proposals to eat up the green belt have a consequence for social housing. My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) has brought to my attention an inspector’s decision in Gweek in Cornwall, following the Minister’s own policies, in which all social housing was removed from a previous consent on appeal, because, under new, mandatory Government housing targets, the new five-year supply could not be met. All private housing must now be allowed, and all social housing must be removed from the scheme. That needs to be addressed.

However, this is not just an issue in Cornwall. Most of England—at least, most of southern England—is covered by councils that, thanks to the new standard method, can no longer achieve the new five-year land supply. With the majority of those councils, we have a planning free-for-all in which social homes are not being safeguarded. The standard method has to go. We should replace it with a return to properly researched household projections that take into account movements between regions and safeguard exception sites for social housing, which are being lost. Fortunately, my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives has thought about this issue, and he has a Bill that would do exactly that. Permission in principle capped at nine dwellings sits below the affordable housing threshold, so that, too, means that sites are being lost.

The Government’s Bill does protect rural social homes from being sold, which I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues welcome. However, as long as the planning system that runs alongside it closes down the supply of new ones, it will simply not be enough. Overall, this Bill does not go far enough. In contrast, our Liberal Democrat Housing Bill—I had the privilege of presenting it to Madam Deputy Speaker not so long ago—would establish a target of 150,000 new social homes a year, including a new wave of rent to own, allowing young people to get on the housing ladder. It would require the Secretary of State to report on progress on meeting that target and would give local authorities the proper powers over social housing they will need to achieve it, including the right to end the right to buy in their area if it is right for them and their community. That is the Liberal Democrat vision for a revolution in the delivery of social homes, and I commend it to the House.

Draft Building Safety Levy (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2026

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2026 General Committees

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the Minister on her appointment and welcome her to her place.

I rise to restate the Liberal Democrat commitment that no leaseholder who has found themselves subject to cladding remediation costs for which they were not responsible should shoulder those costs without access to remediation. We support these amendments to improve the 2025 regulations, but there is a bigger question about other buildings.

High-risk buildings need to be addressed first, as the shadow Minister said, but there are none the less residents in buildings under 11 metres tall and in buildings whose standard does not meet PAS 9980:2022, which means that they continue to live in buildings with flammable cladding. Although that cladding would last an hour, so it is safer for them to escape, it is not a standard recognised by insurers, who expect buildings to be built to building regulations. Thousands of leaseholders are potentially in that position, and many of them cannot get insurance—except at very high cost—and cannot sell their properties.

I invite the Minister to comment on how the funding towards the building safety regime can be widened beyond the levy, and to confirm that the Government will bring forward proposals in their remediation Bill to tackle the cladding manufacturers, which have been largely responsible for the crisis since it began.

--- Later in debate ---

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank the shadow Minister for highlighting that. I should have said that the levy has been designed to minimise potential housing supply impact.

The shadow Minister asked whether the levy could have an impact on our ambitious target—rightly so—of reaching 1.5 million new homes. We continue to work closely with the housing market to look at supply. We are committed to working with the industry to ensure that homes continue to be built at pace. This issue comes up in my inbox, as it does for many hon. Members—it is not isolated to London. It is important that we build good-quality homes.

The shadow Minister also highlighted the impact that the measures could have on innocent homeowners, who should not be burdened with the cost. I thank him for agreeing that the cost should not be placed on them. It is right that developers and house builders be responsible for it, in order to protect innocent homeowners.

The Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington, highlighted an issue on which many of us have campaigned for many years: ensuring that innocent leaseholders and homeowners are not responsible for paying the levy. Many of them struggle with housing costs and the cost of living crisis on a day-to-day basis. It is important that developers have a way to fund the levy with no additional cost to the taxpayer.

The Lib Dem spokesperson asked about properties that fall out of scope. We will continue to identify those properties and work with the sector to highlight other ways of supporting them, in order to ensure, again, that costs are fairly shared across the market.

[Gideon Amos]

On a point of further clarification, I hope that the Minister agrees that one reason for broadening the scope of funding for the safety regime so that it includes cladding manufacturers is that in constituencies such as mine in Somerset, there are no high-rise buildings at all—indeed, most of Somerset has no high-rise buildings—but all the developers in Somerset will none the less pay for remediation in the big cities. None of us begrudges the importance of paying for that remediation, but I hope that that example illustrates the importance of widening the funding of the regime so that cladding manufacturers are required to contribute.

[Florence Eshalomi]

As I mentioned, we will keep under review the process and, importantly, the rates, and we will report back to the House every three years on those key areas.

The building safety levy is essential to fund the remediation of historic building safety issues without further burdening residents and leaseholders. The draft amending regulations before the Committee are designed to support this work and make the levy work more efficiently, in accordance with our initial intention to support redevelopment of brownfield sites. They are intended to correct drafting and improve clarity and consistency of process for developers and local authorities, rather than alter the underlying policy design of the levy.

The Government are committed to delivering 1.5 million homes in this Parliament to meet the country’s long-term housing needs and unlock growth. That mission must work in parallel with our commitment to remedy the building safety failures of the past. We expect the development industry to contribute to our work making buildings safe for those who live in them. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Building Homes and Renewing Communities

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on her appointment. I look forward to our exchanges, and to working with her and her team.

There are millions fewer council houses than there used to be, yet the need for social housing has only increased, not least given the scourge of poor-quality temporary accommodation for too many children. The Shared Health Foundation has found that in the last six years, temporary accommodation has been noted by the coroner as a contributory factor in the deaths of 104 children.

In Taunton and Wellington and elsewhere, all that people see are unprecedented plans for private housing that many will not be able to afford. Councils have been instructed by Whitehall to consent to homes for 180,000 people in Somerset over the next 15 years—a 25% increase in the pace of growth, never seen in the county’s history. What we need instead is a truly ambitious programme of council and social housing—not the Government’s reannouncement that 60% of its 300,000 programme will be social housing and not the 18,000 per year, but the Lib Dem policy of 150,000 social homes a year.

I recognise that the statement confirms around 46,000 social homes over 10 years, with further tranches to come, but will the Housing Secretary and the new Prime Minister, who has said a lot about social housing, raise the target from 18,000 a year or not? Will the Government raise their £3.9 billion funding to our proposed £6 billion? If they will not do that, will they write off some of the councils’ housing revenue account debt so that councils such as Somerset can build the 600 council houses that they would build if they could?

[Angela Rayner]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise this issue, which is one that the Prime Minister feels incredibly passionate about. He has committed to delivering the biggest council house building programme since the post-war boom ended in the early 1980s, and although I recognise the challenges, I also want to celebrate the fact that last year, councils built the most council houses since records began in 1991. However, we want to see that ramp up with the money we are investing to help councils, as I outlined earlier.

We have already taken measures, as Members can see from the legislation that is going through at the moment—it has been through the other place—to tighten up the right to buy and make sure that councils keep full receipts. We are supporting that programme, and we should recognise the significance of the £10 billion of investment that was announced last month. This is about making sure that we get that money out the door so that we can build those homes, and the planning reforms we have introduced are about making sure that people have a say about those homes, but also about having clarity, so that the homes and the infrastructure around them are built.

The hon. Gentleman is right to mention the number of children in temporary accommodation. I still think it is absolutely awful that those children are in those circumstances, and that is why we want to tackle social housing in particular.