Government’s ‘unacceptable delay’ in housing crisis response
15th November 2016

The Government has come under fire for an ‘unacceptable delay’ in waiting nine months to reply to the Lords’ committee on the housing crisis when it was expected to respond in just a few weeks.

Baroness O’Cathain, who chaired the Lords Built Environment Select Committee, welcomed the report but said the delay meant that much of the debate had been overtaken by more recent developments.

When the report was published in February, she had said: "It is increasingly clear that we need to build more houses in England and we wholeheartedly support that objective. However if we build those houses in the wrong place, to a poor standard, without the consent of local communities we are only storing up future misery for the people in those houses and others nearby.

"That is why we are recommending local authorities are once again empowered both to build new homes of their own, and to ensure all developments are of a suitably high quality. Spending a little bit extra on good quality design at the outset can avert massive costs to people, society and Government in the long-run.”

A video of Baroness O’Cathain talking about her Committees repot can be found here.

This week, she reacted to the Government’s response saying: "I am glad that we have now received a response to our report, and it is good to see that the Government are looking to improve things in some areas, including promoting good practice and monitoring health outcomes in the planning process.

"The unacceptable delay in publishing a response, however, means that much of the debate on these matters has moved on, particularly since the passage of the Housing and Planning Act earlier this year.

"The report contained a number of important recommendations concerning the quality of our built environment and the places in which we live, and was welcomed by many of the professional bodies working in the sector. The quality of our built environment affects each and every one of us in this country, and it is disappointing that the Government took so long to respond to these important findings."

Now that the Government has responded, the Committee report will be debated in the House of Lords in due course. The Committee’s report and the Government’s response can be found online on the Committee’s webpage.

The Chairman’s response came just as Housing Minister Gavin Barwell announced a new £18million fund to ‘turbocharge’ housebuilding with a ‘capacity fund’ aimed at tackling planning issues that can cause delay and prevent builders from getting on site and starting work quickly.

He said: “We want to turbo-charge house building on large sites to get the homes built in the places people want to live, so that this country works for everyone, not just the privileged few.

“These sites offer enormous potential to transform brownfield land into new homes and our £18 million funding will help get them built much sooner.

“Capacity funding offers crucial investment to prevent large-scale, long-term developments from stalling. It provides local authorities with the capacity to take projects forward and obtain additional resources and expertise.”