"The Government have a manifesto commitment to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation, and to strengthen planning obligations to ensure new developments provide more affordable homes.
Section 106 agreements are, and will remain, an essential mechanism for delivering social and affordable housing. They …..." Matthew Pennycook - View Speech
"On 2 July 2025 we published a five-step plan to kickstart a decade of social and affordable housing renewal and set out this plan to the House in a written ministerial statement—HCWS771.
Today I am providing a progress update on the implementation of the plan, as well as confirming next …..." Matthew Pennycook - View Speech
"I note the initial positive tone from the shadow Minister in welcoming the draft Bill. I am slightly reluctant, on what is usually a matter of cross-party consensus, to be too critical of him, but it is a bit rich to criticise this Government, given that the previous Government cherry-picked …..." Matthew Pennycook - View Speech
"I thank my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, for those fair and pertinent questions. I will answer each of them in turn. We published a whole series of documents at 7 am, including a copy of the draft Bill. That also included a …..." Matthew Pennycook - View Speech
"I always thank the hon. Member for his constructive contributions. As he knows, England and Wales can learn lots from Northern Ireland, but, as ever—particularly in relation to our reforms to housing and planning, as well as to leasehold—there are many things that Northern Ireland can learn from our reforms. …..." Matthew Pennycook - View Speech
"As I have made clear, there are measures in this draft Bill that will provide enhanced protections for residential freeholders on freehold estates, but we are taking other action, and I refer him—as I have other hon. Members—to the two comprehensive consultations we launched before Christmas, one of which deals …..." Matthew Pennycook - View Speech
"Absolutely. Commonhold is a purpose-built tenure designed specifically for people to own and manage a shared building without a third-party landlord and without a ground rent. We want to see its uptake grow significantly over this Parliament, and that is what the measures in this draft Bill are designed to …..." Matthew Pennycook - View Speech
"My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are calling time on the abusive practices of unscrupulous property agents and on the leasehold system as a whole. That is down to a Labour Government finishing the job that the previous Government were unable to complete...." Matthew Pennycook - View Speech
"My hon. Friend is right: there will always be vested interests that resist reform of the nature that we are trying to take forward, just as there will always be naysayers out there for whom nothing we do is ever good enough. This package as a whole, as I have …..." Matthew Pennycook - View Speech