HC Deb 16 July 2003 vol 409 cc270-1
6. Mr. Andrew Love (Edmonton)

What progress his Department is making in meeting its decent homes target. [125864]

The Minister for Housing and Planning (Keith Hill)

I am pleased to inform the House that the 2001 English house conditions survey report, published yesterday, shows that we have reduced the number of non-decent homes in the social sector by more than 700,000. When we came to power in 1997, we inherited a situation where there were about 2,300,000 non-decent social sector homes. Forward plans from local authorities show that we expect to meet our target of a one-third reduction by next year, and we are on track for all dwellings owned by local authorities and registered social landlords to meet the decent homes standard by 2010.

Mr. Love

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Does he agree that the decent housing standard depends very much on the large-scale voluntary transfer programme, which has now slipped well below the target of 200,000 houses a year? What action are the Government taking to ensure that the programme continues, so that we can be assured in this Parliament that we will complete the improvement within the 10-year time scale?

Keith Hill

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right that, in order to meet the decent homes target, a good measure of property transfer will be required. It is worth bearing it in mind that we have a spending programme for housing of £22 billion over the next few years. A number of local authorities believe that they will be able to deliver the decent homes target by using existing funding streams. Elsewhere, the programme of private finance initiative stock transfers and arm's length management organisations will be required. We are working very closely with local authorities and registered social landlords to, secure that objective, which we believe we will attain.

Mr. Henry Bellingham (North-West Norfolk)

Is the Minister aware that a number of developments in my constituency that originally received a lot of local support have now become highly controversial on account of the relevant planning policy guidelines? In one case, density has been increased from roughly 60 to 150 houses. Surely, he should be trusting local planners and local people and not relying on blunt PPGs as an instrument.

Keith Hill

We expect to co-operate with local planners, but the fact is that, under the previous Government, substantial bites were made into the green belt. This Government are committed to preserving the green belt. Indeed, no fewer than 30,000 hectares of green belt have been restored over the past six years. We believe that the future is to build as extensively as possible on brownfield sites, which will require high-density building. However, what we say above all is that we have to get away from the very poor quality of design that was so often implemented in the past under the previous Administration. We place the central requirement on decent design in high-density building.