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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will undertake a review of his Department's policy on the five year supply of deliverable housing sites to ensure that it takes account of economic factors affecting housebuilding; and if he will provide local planning authorities with more flexibility in the National Planning Policy Framework to protect sites from development where there is an absence of a five year supply of deliverable housing sites.

Despite the pandemic, housebuilders were able to deliver over 216,000 homes in England in 2020/21. Nonetheless, the Government made changes to two housing delivery tests, to mitigate disruption caused to housing delivery.

The Government recognises rising materials prices have created a challenging environment for many construction businesses, including in housebuilding, and especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. We continue to work closely with firms in the sector through the Construction Leadership Council Product Availability Group, to monitor product, material availability and mitigate the impact of price increases.

We have committed to publishing our vision for the new National Planning Policy Framework which includes our position on planning for housing.

We have set out our intention to remove the requirement for authorities to maintain a five-year housing land supply, where their plan is up to date. This will curb perceived 'speculative development', so long as plans are kept up to date.