Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent steps his Department has taken to increase the building of homes in rural areas.

The Government is committed to building more homes, more quickly, more beautifully and more sustainably, and we must build homes in the places where people want to live and work.

National planning policy expects local authorities to deliver, where practicable, the amount, type and tenure of new homes our communities need. Each authority is expected to assess and plan how to meet its local housing need over the plan period, and this includes meeting the housing needs of rural communities. Our Rural Exception Sites policy helps local authorities to address the needs of rural communities by accommodating residents and those with family or employment connections to the locality. Rural exception sites tend to be just outside village boundaries, where housing is not normally granted permission.