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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if she will hold discussions with the National House Building Council on protecting homeowners from registered property developers who repeatedly set up new businesses and fail to complete property builds.

My Department engages regularly with the National House Building Council and is committed to improving upon existing means of redress for new build homebuyers for when things go wrong. This includes bringing into force a statutory New Homes Ombudsman scheme with accompanying Code of Practice.

We are also changing incentives in the housing market and giving local authorities the tools they need to speed up delivery.

On 25 May, we published the Speeding Up Build Out working paper, which sets out proposals to increase build out rates. This includes incentivising and supporting models of development that build out faster, giving local authorities tools to agree and monitor build out rates and potentially giving local authorities the ability to charge developers a ‘Delayed Homes Penalty’.