PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Housing: Construction (4 December 2014)

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how many (a) homes and (b) affordable homes have been completed under the Get Britain Building scheme to date; and what estimate he has made of the number of jobs created by that scheme.

Asked by:
Emma Reynolds (Labour)

Get Britain Building is a three-year scheme to provide development finance and support to unlock stalled sites. The scheme is on track to deliver, whilst managing the often challenging issues which hindered or stalled the sites in the first place (such as lack of finance, delays in planning conditions and other legal obligations, protracted sub-contractor negotiations, asbestos findings, site re-plans due to easements and utility diversions).

From 2012-13 to September 2014, there have been 12,293 dwellings started, against the target of 12,000. The scheme is primarily aimed at unlocking stalled market housing, and is not an affordable housing programme as such; however, there have been 1,397 affordable starts which have been unlocked as part of wider schemes.

Completions lag behind starts due to the time it takes to build out a site (especially given the challenging nature of some of the sites, as outlined above), but 4,890 dwellings had been completed to September 2014, and this figure will continue rising.

More detailed figures are at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/housing-statistics

The hon. Member will no doubt wish to criticise and knock the scheme, but I would simply observe that we are cleaning up the mess left by the Labour Government’s housing crash.

We estimate that the Get Britain Building programme is supporting between 1 to 2 jobs per unit, which suggests that up to 24,586 jobs have been supported so far.

As I noted in my answers of 30 October 2014, Question 207630 and 23 January 2015, Question 219688, this is part of a package of measures to get stalled sites building. At a time when the number of planning permissions has risen to 240,000 a year, the total number of planning permissions which were "on hold/shelved" in England has fallen from 90,331 in September 2011 to 45,000 in December 2014, according to Glenigan estimates.

This shows that the Government’s long-term economic plan is working and turning around the mess and recession left by the last Labour Government. Moth-balled sites are springing into action; more homes are being planned; and more homes are being built out. By contrast, the policy positions being advocated by HM Opposition would hinder complex land assembly projects, discourage builders from applying for planning permission and reduce the level of house building.

Answered by:
Sir Brandon Lewis (Conservative)
25 February 2015