Asked by: Peter Bottomley (Conservative - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an assessment of which elements of the visa and housing schemes for Ukrainians can be made available to Afghans; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Eddie Hughes
I refer my Rt Hon Friend to my answer to Question UIN 141238 21 March 2022.
Asked by: Peter Bottomley (Conservative - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will include buy-to-let landlords who are leaseholders within the scope of the package announced on 10 January 2022 to ensure no leaseholders in medium rise blocks of flats have to pay for remedial action to tackle unsafe cladding and fire defects.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
As set out in the Secretary of State's statement to Parliament on Building Safety on 10 January 2022, building owners and industry should make buildings safe without passing on costs to leaseholders, and leaseholders living in their own medium rise buildings should not pay a penny to remediate historic cladding defects that are no fault of their own. We have clarified that we have no intention of excluding leaseholders who have moved out and sublet from the protections that will be in place (including those in shared ownership) for buildings below 18 metres in England. We will explore whether this support should extend to other leaseholders, such as buy-to-let landlords.
Asked by: Peter Bottomley (Conservative - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will (a) enable and (b) encourage local and parish councils to hold remote and hybrid meetings; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
We launched a call for evidence on 25 March to gather views and inform a longer-term decision about whether to make express provision for councils to meet remotely on a permanent basis. The call for evidence closed on 17 June.
The Department has considered the responses to the consultation and the Government will respond shortly.
Asked by: Peter Bottomley (Conservative - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, when he plans to publish revised guidance for planning authorities on requiring onsite carbon neutral energy generation in new building permissions.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The National Planning Policy Framework is clear that the planning system should support the transition to a low carbon future in a changing climate and we will make sure that the reformed planning system further supports our efforts to combat climate change and help bring greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
Alongside this, the Government sets minimum energy efficiency standards for buildings through the Building Regulations. From 2025, the Future Homes Standard will ensure that new homes produce at least 75% fewer CO2 emissions than those built to the 2013 standards and highly efficient new non-domestic buildings. Homes and buildings constructed to these Standards will be future-proofed with low carbon heating and high levels of energy efficiency. No further energy efficiency retrofit work will be necessary to enable them to become zero-carbon over time as the electricity grid continues to decarbonise.
To work towards this, in December 2021 we introduced an uplift in energy efficiency standards, which will come into force in June 2022. The uplift delivers a meaningful reduction in carbon emissions; once the uplift comes into force new homes will be expected to deliver around 30% fewer CO2 emissions compared to the previous standards and new non-domestic buildings will be expected to produce 27% fewer CO2 emissions.