Homes and Planning Bill

Markus Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Friday 13th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andrew George]

I agree. I hope that my hon. Friend is able to assist Chantelle to pursue all the potential routes by which her housing need can be met. I often hold a casework surgery in my constituency on a Friday morning—I seem to be holding one now in the Chamber. Perhaps I should invite others to bring forward their cases, although I do not wish to make light of the seriousness of the issue.

As I said, the Labour party in my constituency supports the Bill. Indeed, my constituent Cornelius Olivier, whom I mentioned earlier, has travelled all the way to London, and we delivered his petition, with nearly 2,000 signatures, to Downing Street, and indeed to Parliament, last night.

I also note that the Conservatives support the proposals in the Bill. Only a few years ago, in February 2024, the now Lord Gove announced that the Conservatives intended to bring in a change of the use-class order to require those wishing to convert a permanently occupied home to a holiday let to apply for planning permission.

[Markus Campbell-Savours (Penrith and Solway) (Lab)]

I am just trying to imagine a situation where two identical properties are next door to each other and one is currently being used as a second home. In those circumstances, under this Bill, would that property automatically have rights to be a second home with planning permission? What impact would that have on the value of the two homes in comparison with each other?

[Andrew George]

Markets find their own equilibrium. If the hon. Member is indicating his objection, his question should presumably be directed to his colleagues in Wales, who have already implemented this policy. There would certainly be a presumption that properties currently used as second or holiday lets, which would then need to be registered, would form part of that register. But the purpose here is to assist in communities where there is a risk of a proliferation of the properties that are desperately needed for permanent occupancy ebbing away from the local community and going into non-permanent use.

[Markus Campbell-Savours]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I wonder whether he recognises that some people are advocating instead for a licensing-based scheme, which moves away from a planning system that is arguably insufficiently funded and does not give planning authorities the means to carry out enforcement at later dates. A licensing scheme, in contrast, would give them income; importantly, it would also not be permanent, and would give the people issuing the licences the ability to remove them if they have been given to inappropriate landlords.

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[Andrew George]

Yes, absolutely. The registration scheme is welcome—it will be a helpful side issue as far as actually addressing and getting to the nub of the problem.

[Markus Campbell-Savours]

rose—

[Andrew George]

If the hon. Gentleman wishes to intervene again, could he explain whether he supports what the Labour party has done in Wales?

[Markus Campbell-Savours]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way. I am ambiguous about what Labour has done in Wales on planning. I was genuinely asking what the impact has been on the prices of properties. What is important to me, though, is that we have not yet proposed a licensing scheme in this country. The hon. Member made the point about giving communities the power to put a cap on numbers, and such a scheme could be used with a cap. Does he agree that if a licensing scheme came with the power for communities to cap numbers, it could be a more powerful tool than planning, which gives planning permission in perpetuity?

[Andrew George]

First of all—

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[Markus Campbell-Savours]

My hon. Friend made the point that the registration scheme moves us forward some way, but for an area such as mine in the Lake district, it achieves very little other than the ability to count short-term lets. If I want to count them, I will look at the small business rates relief system, which already counts about 90% of them. Does she recognise that until we have a system that allows us to cap them, as a licensing scheme would, a registration scheme will do very little?

[Samantha Dixon]

Again, I acknowledge the hon. Member’s point. I am sure that the Minister of State is keen to respond later in the debate to those particular issues.

Let me be clear. The hon. Member for St Ives and other Members supporting this Bill are not wrong to demand a stronger and more affordable housing market that provides local authorities with greater power over their community planning, but, in putting this Bill forward, the excellent cause that it champions risks being lost in an already very busy and active policy landscape and leading to an unnecessary doubling of work. Our focus and the Government’s focus is on working hard to ensure that Government policy in this area is robust and delivered at pace to bring about real progress for residents in our constituencies and across the whole country.

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[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Markus Campbell-Savours]

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

[Caroline Voaden]

I believe the hon. Gentleman is correct.

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

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

[Markus Campbell-Savours]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Caroline Voaden]

I will make some progress.

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

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

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

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

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

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[Matthew Pennycook]

What can I say to the hon. Gentleman? He has expertise in this area, but I think it is slightly rich of him to say that the expertise available to Government, including legal expertise, is wrong on this point. The Welsh Government do have a particular approach, as I have heard mentioned several times today; that does not need to contend with the 90-night short-term let limit in London, which creates additional legislative complexity in England. We are engaging with the Welsh Government, who are due to publish their final impact evaluation on a series of measures, including on planning use classes. As I have said many times in this House, we continue to give serious consideration to what further powers local authorities need in order to bear down on excessive concentrations of second homes and short-term lets.

As I was saying, the clause does not propose that C6 short-term uses would revert to C3 at the point of sale, nor does it propose an alternative method to facilitate the return of existing short-term lets for use as primary dwelling houses. There is therefore an asymmetry in the proposed clause. This could most negatively impact the place most in need of properties reverting from a short-term use to a sole or main residence use.

It is also not clear how the proposed new C3 dwellinghouses definition would interact with existing C3(b) and (c) use classes, which include up to six residents living together as a single household where care may or may not be provided to residents.

[Markus Campbell-Savours]

Will the Minister give way?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I am not going to give way. I can feel your glare, Madam Deputy Speaker. I feel it in every debate, but I can feel it more intensely now. I can see that you wish me to make progress.

[Markus Campbell-Savours]

Will the Minister consider whether that really was a glare? [Laughter.]

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will give way.

[Markus Campbell-Savours]

The Minister is spelling out quite clearly how the use of planning to control the number of short-term holiday lets is complicated and difficult. I view using the planning system on these sorts of issues as a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Will the Minister confirm whether, as the Government consider ways of controlling the number of holiday lets, they will consider a licensing system, and whether a cap could be applied to such a system?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. Look at what is being done across the rest of the world under different regimes: some use licensing alone, some use planning alone, and some use both planning and licensing. We are reviewing what further powers local authorities might need and considering all options. As I have said, I am more than happy to continue to engage with hon. Members across the House on this point.

We share the ambition of improving access to housing for local people, but changes to the use class system must be judged by whether they would achieve that objective in practice. We are not persuaded that the approach proposed in clause 5 would work.

Recognising the underlying pressures, the Government have taken action, including abolishing the furnished holiday lettings tax regime, legislating for a national registration scheme for short-term lets, and preventing landlords from evicting tenants simply to convert a home into a holiday let. Any further planning changes will require careful consideration alongside those measures.

I will turn briefly to clause 6. It is right that communities should be able to respond to the effects of second homes and short-term lets through the plan-making system. However, the clause largely restates powers that are already available to local planning authorities and qualifying bodies. Neighbourhood plans can already include policies relating to second homes and short-term holiday lets, and local plans can also introduce principal residence or principal occupancy policies. Indeed, clause 6(4) explicitly recognises those existing powers.

The clause therefore largely sets out an approach that the existing planning system already enables. For that reason, we do not believe that the case for further statutory provision has been made, and nor are we persuaded that prescribing matters that plan-making bodies must take into account when preparing such policies via a separate statutory provision would improve the operation of existing plan-making powers.

I thank the hon. Member for St Ives once again for bringing forward the Bill, and I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. There have been some great speeches from my hon. Friend the Members for Erewash (Adam Thompson), for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) and for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington). A number of issues have been raised that are well beyond the scope of this particular Bill, including the housing revenue account, rough sleeping, and fleecehold leasehold. I am more than happy to sit down with hon. Members from across the House to discuss those matters.