Speeches by Pennycook.

“It is a good question. You tempt me to expand on precisely what we are looking at when it comes to strengthening the existing developer contribution system, which I am not in a position to do. I am more than happy to come back at the point that we set out proposals to talk through them.”

“We are considering a range of options when it comes to strengthening the existing developer contribution system. Of course we will engage with external organisations, including RICS, on all these issues.”

“This is purely from memory, but there is a dispute resolution scheme provision in the 2016 Act. I am dredging up my memory, having been on that Bill Committee many years ago. Successive Governments have not implemented that provision and there is a live debate, to the extent that we keep all these things under review, …”

“Do you mean specifically on 106?”

“That is a difficult question to answer, in the sense that it will depend on what the local authority in question and its neighbouring authorities see as their challenges or the gaps they need to overcome. Local authorities talk to each other all the time. If there is a need in a particular sub-region for them to be poo…”

“I will take those in two parts, and Jo and Will may want to come in as well. On whether new strategic planning authorities could take an advisory role, it is important to mention that planning guidance already makes clear that local planning authorities can pool resources and skills, and can contract third parties to s…”

“That is a really good question. This is a complex area of policy, but, essentially, we think that the existing system of developer contributions has a number of strengths, certainly when compared with the alternatives. It is one of the reasons we decided not to take forward the previous Government’s infrastructure levy…”

“It is a whole-of-Parliament commitment we are confident of delivering.”

“We have a 1.5 million whole-of-Parliament target.”

“I am Matthew Pennycook. I am the Minister for Housing and Planning.”

“I would emphasise once again to the Committee that, because of the nature of the development cycle, in terms of starts you are seeing the outcome of planning applications that would have been submitted in the previous Parliament. I could not have been clearer that a series of anti-supply changes were made to national p…”

“We use the OBR forecasts. They are the main public estimate of net additions. They inform the Department’s work. You will have qualitative data of what is actually feeding through as we progress through the Parliament in terms of the statistics that are released. As I say, there are some green shoots emerging from that…”

“I absolutely understand that, but, I suppose, point your attention to other long-term targets that the Government have set. Clean power by 2030 is a good example. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is not setting interim annual targets for clean power 2030. It is not saying, “We are at 80% clean power by t…”

“I am not going to give you rough interim annual targets or precise interim annual targets. We are not setting interim annual targets. It is a whole-of-Parliament standard. On the statistics, the point that is worth emphasising is that the Government inherited a housing market downturn, exacerbated by the conscious and …”

“That is data.”

“No, Chair. Sorry if I am raking over old ground. We have not set an interim annual target of 300,000 homes per year. I do not think that this is complex to understand. The 1.5 million new homes target is a whole-of-Parliament target. We know that, because of the dire inheritance that we picked up, planning applications…”

“Thank you, Chair, for the invitation to give evidence this morning and for that opening question. It is the case that the path to meeting our hugely ambitious target of building 1.5 million new homes in England in this Parliament is clearer than it was the last time I gave evidence to you in late November last year. As…”

“There are probably two things to say here, and I will bring Will in on this point. We made significant changes to the NPPF last year. We are not going to revisit any of the key changes that we made then. There is an exercise in terms of bringing forward this new suite of national policies for decision making about thei…”

“I appreciate fully why you are trying, Chair, but I will not be drawn other than to say we expect the taskforce to submit its final report this summer. We expect it to submit its final report to the Department this summer.”

“It is a reasonable question. Again, there are nuances and complexities in these things. When it comes to grant funding affordable homes, it is important to be clear on two things. I am not sure it is always apparent to honourable Members how these things work, but there is an intuitive sense that these affordable homes…”