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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the Planning for the Future white paper, what assessment he has made of the effect of reducing the requirement of housing developers to provide affordable housing from sites of 10 units/ per 0.5 hectares to sites of 50 units/ per 2.5 hectares on affordable housing numbers.

To aid small and medium-sized (SME) builders through economic recovery, we are consulting on a proposal to increase the current threshold at which affordable housing contributions can be collected on new developments. Our assessment indicates that if overall housing delivery remained constant, for a threshold of up to 40 units we would expect to see a reduction of between 7 per cent and 14 per cent of section 106 affordable housing delivery over a single year. For a threshold of up to 50 units, this would be between 10 per cent and 20 per cent. However, we anticipate that raising the threshold would make more sites viable for SME builders and would increase the pace of their delivery. We are proposing this as a short-term measure before introducing radical reform through the Planning for the future white paper, in which we are proposing a new nationally-set ‘Infrastructure Levy’ that delivers at least as much on-site affordable housing as at present.