Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps he has taken to increase housebuilding.

The Government is providing support to housebuilders through the £3 billion Home Building Fund. This will provide £1 billion of loans for small and medium builders, custom builders and offsite construction, with an aim to deliver 25,000 homes by 2020, as well as a further £2 billion loan funding for infrastructure and large sites throughout England, unlocking a pipe line of up to 200,000 homes over the longer term. Furthermore, the £2.3 billion Housing Infrastructure Fund, which is now open for bids, will unlock up to 100,000 new homes.

The Government is also taking direct action to increase housebuilding. Since 2015 departments have released land with capacity for 21,217 homes and identified land to be released by 2020 for a further 120,394 homes. We are investing £7.1 billion in more affordable housing and have helped over 400,000 households into home ownership through Government schemes including Help to Buy and Right to Buy.

The Housing White Paper, Fixing Our Broken Housing Market, published in February 2017, set out a long term, comprehensive strategy to build more homes, through encouraging better, more realistic plan making which recognises housing need; consulting on a new standardised way of assessing housing need; boosting the capacity and capability of planning authorities and giving them stronger tools to ensure sites with permission are built on; and supporting custom build homes and the use of modern methods of construction.