Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that there is a sufficient local provision of graveyards and cemeteries in place and that those sites are kept maintained and secure.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - Leader of HM Official Opposition
The Department does not hold data on the local provision of graveyards and cemeteries. Local authorities play a vital role in providing essential services to their communities, and they are best placed to determine local provision.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department has taken to (a) increase the number of conservation areas and (b) protect those areas from excessive development.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The designation of conservation areas is a matter for local planning authorities. They are required by law to determine from time to time whether any part of their area should be designated as a conservation area. The planning system protects conservation areas in a number of ways – as designated heritage assets, the National Planning Policy Framework gives them strong policy protections; the demolition of unlisted buildings within them requires planning permission; permitted development rights (which allow certain development without a planning application) are more restricted and there are protections for trees within them.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what initiatives have been put in place to support urban areas to develop allotments and community gardening initiatives.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Government recognises through our National Planning Policy Framework the important role that allotments can provide in enabling and supporting healthy lifestyles within our communities. The Framework is clear that local planning policies should be based on robust and up-to-date assessments of the need for open space and opportunities for new provision, which can include allotments, and their plans should then seek to accommodate this.
Our National Model Design Code states that as part of open space design for large developments there should be the consideration of allotments and community growing projects for food production, learning and community engagement.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps he is taking to promote house ownership.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
We are committed to helping make the dream of home ownership a reality and offer several schemes to support this. For example, our recently launched First Homes programme offers discounts of at least 30% to first time buyers, and our Help to Buy scheme and Shared Ownership also offer routes into home ownership.
More detail on all of these schemes and others are available on the Government’s home ownership website: www.ownyourhome.gov.uk.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department is taking to support the (a) public and (b) private sector to renovate derelict buildings into community hubs.
Answered by Eddie Hughes
In July, my department launched a 4-year UK-wide £150 million Community Ownership Fund to support voluntary and community organisations to bring buildings such as community hubs at risk of loss into community ownership. The fund enables groups to bid for up to £250,000 of match funding. These buildings can be publicly or privately owned, and funding can be used to support renovation as part of an asset purchase. The second round of the Community Ownership Fund will be launched in December and third round in May 2021.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
What steps his Department is taking to increase the supply of affordable new homes.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
This Government cares deeply about building more homes. Since 2010, we have delivered over 1.8 million new homes, including 542,400 new affordable homes, so homes are there where people need them.
We are investing in supply, with over £12 billion in affordable housing over five years, the largest investment in a decade, and £7.1 billion in the National Home Building Fund, to unlock up to 860,000 homes over the lifetime of the projects, including much-needed new homes on brownfield land.
As set out in the Planning for the Future White Paper, the Government will speed up the planning system, enabling us to build homes more quickly.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of repurposing empty high street units as community advice centres.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
We have reformed the Use Classes Order to provide greater flexibility to enable a wide range of uses which attract visiting members of the public, such as offices and shops for example, to change to other uses without the need for a planning application.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what incentives are in place to encourage landlords to adopt the Government's new model tenancy agreement.
Answered by Eddie Hughes
The Model Tenancy Agreement is the Government's suggested contract for assured shorthold tenancies in the private rented sector and is publicly available on the gov.uk website. It is free to download, and is also referenced in the 'How to Rent' guide and the 'How to Let' guide.
Whilst landlords are not obligated to use the Model Tenancy Agreement in order to agree a tenancy, the Government will continue to consider how best to encourage usage of the Model Tenancy Agreement.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to increase access to green spaces for people who live in built-up areas.
Answered by Luke Hall
The pandemic has highlighted the importance of green space for our communities, particularly for our physical and mental health. Between 2017 – 2019, Government has made £16.3 million available to support parks and green spaces including those in urban environments. This includes the Future Parks Accelerator, a joint National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Trust programme to support a cohort of 8 local authority areas to transform their parks estates, testing and learning from new and innovative models of parks management and funding to create more sustainable parks estates for the future. The learning from the programme will be shared widely across the parks sector to help local authorities to develop sustainable plans for their parks estates.
As we look to recover from the pandemic, my Department is working across Government, particularly with the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, on a cross Government approach to increase access to green space.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to support a brownfield first policy in planning.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The National Planning Policy Framework expects local authorities to make the most of brownfield land for development. Local authorities are best placed to assess potential sites, and each authority now publishes a register of brownfield suitable for new homes. We have introduced Permission in Principle, an extra route to planning permission for land on these registers, giving certainty from the outset that the principles of a redevelopment scheme are acceptable.
This Government is putting significant investment into brownfield redevelopment through the £4.1 billion Housing Infrastructure Fund, the £4.95 billion Home Building Fund, and the £400 million Brownfield Housing Fund. Local authorities not eligible for support from the latter have been able to bid for assistance from the Brownfield Land Release Fund. This is designed to unlock brownfield sites and release serviced plots on local authority owned land. There is tax relief on work to decontaminate land, and we have reformed permitted development and Use Class rules so yet more homes can be created on previously developed land.
I am delighted that the University of Wolverhampton is the location of the National Brownfield Institute, which I was pleased to visit and which received support from our Getting Building Fund. This new policy institute will inform and guide brownfield regeneration, carry out research and testing, and give specialist advice on contaminated land, re-purposing sites, and innovative construction such as modular homes.