Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether he has plans to help protect high quality agricultural land from housing development.
The Government already places great importance upon our agricultural land and food production. Within the National Planning Policy Framework, we set out that the benefits of the best and most versatile agricultural land should be reflected in planning policies and decisions. The Framework is also clear that where significant development of agricultural land is demonstrated to be necessary, areas of poorer quality land should be preferred to those of a higher quality.