§ The Minister of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Lord Rooker)My right honourable friend the Minister for Housing and Planning has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I am pleased to announce the publication of a consultation paper concerning the merger of the regional housing boards and the regional planning bodies.
The paper responds to one of the recommendations in Kate Barker's Review of Housing Supply (ISBN 1–84532–010–7) published in March. We have already accepted her recommendation that responsibility for housing and planning regional strategies should be merged. The paper proposes that responsibility should rest with regional assemblies. This is in line with our general policy on devolving decision making and the broadening of the role of assemblies on integrating regional strategies.
112WSThe paper also covers proposals for taking forward Kate Barker's recommendation for the provision of independent advice to the regions to strengthen the evidence base that supports regional housing and planning strategies and increase the transparency of the processes for producing these strategies.
Consultation will run until 30 November 2004. Copies of the consultation paper have been made available in the Libraries of the House and it is available on the ODPM website.