26
Examination of witnesses
Matthew Pennycook and Lise-Anne Boissiere.
Q58 The Chair: Welcome to the House of Lords Built Environment Committee. It is the first day back after the Summer Recess, but, as everyone knows, we have been talking about new towns. We are bringing that work to a conclusion, and there is no better way to do that than by having our special guest before us. I am delighted to welcome the Minister to talk to us—the man who is going to drive this through. He is a bit like Gandalf, if I may say so. He is back but he is even more powerful, because now he also attends Cabinet and is able to bash heads together, as we have asked for. I am delighted that the Prime Minister has acted on one of our recommendations from a previous report. In all seriousness, Minister, we are delighted to have you here. Congratulations on being reappointed—power to your elbow, as they say. We are also delighted to welcome back Lise-Anne from the department. Thank you; I know how busy you are.
With that in mind, I suggest that we go straight into it. I think that you know we will focus mainly on new towns. First, while I appreciate that the new Prime Minister is only 40 days in, can you make any comparison, or comment, having served under Prime Minister Starmer, versus what it is like now under Prime Minister Burnham? How are things going to change? For you, personally, now that you attend Cabinet—and I appreciate that it is 40 days in—how do you see that position as being able to strengthen your hand in driving this and the 1.5 million homes through?
Matthew Pennycook: Thanks for that opening question. I would say a couple of things. One is that having the Housing and Planning Minister attending Cabinet alongside the Secretary of State is an indication of the importance that the new Prime Minister places on housing. It is of real importance to him. He has strong views on the subject. He has delivered in Greater Manchester. He has learned some lessons about what works and what does not in Greater Manchester, which he is keen to bring in and ensure that they are hard-wired into the Government’s approach. The Cabinet position gives the department as a whole some extra tools, and the ability to have more of those direct conversations, in particular with individual Secretaries of State, where we need to co-ordinate across government to deliver.
On the 40 days of evidence, I think you have seen the change of priority. We have slightly altered some of the announcements that we have made in recent weeks, as a result of the new Prime Minister’s refreshed priorities. A good example is the social and affordable homes programme. We announced just last week the first wave of funding out of that programme. We have left back more of the funding, to be allocated to councils to do direct delivery of council housebuilding. I think that that is an example of how we have pragmatically adapted the programmes to ensure that we keep pace and keep delivery going, but have slightly tweaked them, to reflect the new Prime Minister’s priorities.
The Chair: Thank you. I am very grateful that you wrote to me over the summer about the NPPF, which is another thing you announced. More broadly, it is welcomed by the sector as pro-growth and as trying to move development on. When I looked at the NPPF—I checked again last night—there is no reference to new towns. There is talk about well-connected stations. There are two questions I want to ask about that. First, will the list of those well-connected stations be announced? I know that the criteria are in there, but is there a list so that we can see exactly what those locations are? Related to that, is there any correlation at all between the well-connected stations in those areas and the new towns programme? Forgive me for not knowing, but DfT will have a big interest in making sure that the capacity on those stations works. Is it plugged into that? Is there any conflict or competition between the well-connected stations and new towns?
Matthew Pennycook: I do not believe so. Let me say a couple of things on that point, and specifically on the travel to work areas. We certainly published the 60 travel to work areas alongside the draft NPPF that we consulted on. I can ensure that the committee gets the full 80 travel to work areas, so that it can see where we are talking about. On well-connected stations, we obviously tied minimum density requirements to different service frequencies at different well-connected stations to reflect the capacity on the line. The DfT—you are absolutely right—will be looking for projections and where it needs to put capacity.
On the new towns programme specifically, what I come back to relates to the consultation that we have undertaken since I was last in front of you. We published a draft new towns planning policy statement to go out to consultation. We will publish a final new towns planning policy statement alongside the final programme. That will relate to the NPPF. The NPPF remains a material consideration in planning decisions, but we will have a bespoke planning policy setting out all the parameters that need to apply to how new towns are delivered—placemaking principles. I am sure we will speak about some of these issues in more detail, but the two will be in alignment.
The Chair: When do you think that that document will be published?
Matthew Pennycook: If you give me a chance to set out where we have got to, in the round, when I last spoke to you in July 2025, we had not even published the initial government response. We did that in September. The former Secretary of State was before you after that response, prior to our going out to consultation. In March we went out to consult on the programme as a whole—not on individual sites or the detailed delivery of those—and the SEA. That is the statutory requirement of the strategic environmental assessment regulations, as you know. We sought views on that and on the assessed cumulative impacts of the programme on the environment, and practical methods of mitigation and monitoring how we deliver. We received nearly 3,000 responses—some of them incredibly detailed. The consultation closed on 19 May. We are working through all that feedback with a view to publishing a government response in due course, and publishing the environmental assessments at least before the end of the year. At that point, we will have final locations to announce.
The Chair: This year.
Matthew Pennycook: This year, yes.
The Chair: Okay. Thank you.
Q59 Baroness Andrews: It is very good to see you again, and terrific to know that you are in Cabinet and really showing the flag for housing. There is a lot to follow up there, because in a way our starting point as a committee was taking a lot of evidence, as you know, and there has been a sort of unanimous chorus from people who are responsible for delivering, who say, “We have the delivery capacity”—these are people involved in skills, or materials or design and development, and so on. “We want to do this—we believe in the new towns programme. We have had to mothball a lot, because it has been a protracted business and we are not entirely certain where we are”. You, Minister, said that several things are now happening: there will be a planning statement specifically on the new towns, which will be the planning guidance with all the requirements of design, so there will be a blueprint for the new towns when it is published. Is that due to be published at the end of the year, as well?
Matthew Pennycook: We have published the draft planning policy statement.
Baroness Andrews: That is out for consultation now.
Matthew Pennycook: That was out for consultation up to 19 May. We will publish the final one.
Baroness Andrews: Then there are the SEA consultations that you are working through, which will be published separately; so there will be a suite of documents that developers and investors will have to hand.
Matthew Pennycook: Absolutely. In short, yes.
Baroness Andrews: One problem has been that we have had a raft of announcements. We have had good news on social housing. We have had the NPPF. We have had the interesting stuff on where we are developing—growth areas and so on and so forth. You used the term “pragmatic”. Do you think that there has been a problem because you have not made a statement about the continuing importance of new towns as a programme in itself? Do you think there has been a sense of loss of momentum because the narrative has been lost a little in recent months, because all these other things have happened?
Matthew Pennycook: No. With all due respect, I do not think that would be fair. The Government are going through a transition with a new Prime Minister. We have had a variety of announcements that were slightly set back, where we have had to recalibrate. I gave the example of the social and affordable homes programme. We remain committed to the manifesto commitments in respect of the new towns programme. At the point when we publish that suite of documents, with the final response, you will see exactly what we intend to do. I would not say there has been any loss of momentum as we work through the consultation response.
There is a general point worth making: we are talking, here, in some cases, about sites that will deliver tens of thousands of homes over multiple decades. If we had published a consultation response two weeks after the consultation closed, you would all be asking me why it was all so quick and we had not given due consideration to all the feedback we received. We will take the time to go through things—belt and braces. This is too important to get wrong.
Baroness Andrews: I think that is a perfectly respectable position to hold. You are saying that the final sites will be announced at the end of the year. Do you expect changes to the final sites?
Matthew Pennycook: That is one thing that we are working through from the consultation responses. We proposed seven sites, and three priority sites. The consultation seeks feedback on the programme as a whole and, in particular, the environmental assessment of those sites. I have had no chance to say this, and it is worth saying: the SEA is important because development at the scale that we propose needs to be mitigated. At the point where we confirm final sites, take the programme forward and publish the final planning policy statement, we need to show how, through good planning, upfront investment and high-quality design and placemaking, we are achieving that mitigation. The process is important, but it is one of various things we are working through in the consultation responses.
Baroness Andrews: It is also important to be clear about how policies integrate, is it not? Following on from the Chair’s question about this very good idea in the NPPF that railway station location brings connectivity, and therefore it is a quick win if you can get development around it, how do you see that being integrated as a modus operandi, in a way, with your thinking on new towns? That will be integrated into it. Might it alter some of the locations?
Matthew Pennycook: I think it is quite difficult to compare the two. There is a slight apples and pears situation, in the sense that the National Planning Policy Framework is obviously a document to guide plan making and decision-making across the country. The Government have been clear about the fact that we want more development around train stations and well-connected train stations outside urban settlements. These are some of the most sustainable locations on which to bring forward development. That is slightly separate in my mind from the new towns programme, in the sense that the task force has identified a series of sites that meet all our objectives and criteria, one of which is to be sustainable and well connected.
I will give you an example of one of the three priority sites—Tempsford on the east coast main line and intersection with East West Rail. By its very nature, if we take that new town forward, it will build out on the intersection of two railway lines in a highly sustainable location. The NPPF would be a material consideration in those decisions in terms of the minimum densities that the new NPPF is asking for; but we will overlay and ensure that aligned with that is a bespoke new towns planning policy statement that will really get into some of the detail about how we deliver on the placemaking principles that the task force recommended. So it is bespoke to the programme itself, but, as I said, the two will be complementary.
Baroness Andrews: One last question: the Prime Minister is very clear about placemaking and what it can bring and optimise. Do you think that will make a difference to the approach to the new towns, in the sense that there is a new and slightly more powerful narrative around the notion of those places?
Matthew Pennycook: I think, from memory, that I was questioned on this at my last appearance, but it is worth taking the opportunity to re-emphasise the importance of the placemaking principles that the task force recommended and the Government absolutely agree with. The new towns programme, in a sense, is a chance for us to boost innovation, quality and competition in housebuilding, but also to show, in terms of design and placemaking, what can be exemplary and how other large sites across the country outside the programme can adopt the approach that we are taking in it, and deliver really high outcomes. We want these, at the end of the day, to be great places for people to live, as well as making a contribution to housing need, economic growth and the other objectives we set out.
Baroness Andrews: Thank you.
Q60 Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Good afternoon, Minister. So far, you have answered many questions that I needed to ask you. You talked about the consultation that started in March, the feedback in May, and that you are looking to have a report on the draft this year. Overall, a lot of work seems to have progressed step by step, rather than waiting for things to happen; you are moving forward with those. Part of my concern is about spades in the ground and how far we are with that. How far have we moved forward with Manchester Victoria North and Thamesmead as part of linkage to the new towns?
Matthew Pennycook: There are two things I would say, although Lise-Anne might want to come in. One is to emphasise again that, despite the change of Prime Minister, the Government remain absolutely committed to the programme and to delivering our manifesto commitments in respect of it, and the commitments that we have already given, one of which is that we will have spades in the ground on at least three—I emphasise “at least” because there is a good chance it will be more—in this Parliament. When looking at the programme, it is really important—we have a bit more clarity now than when I last came before you, in the sense that we have seven sites we can talk specifically about—that some of the sites already have development under way. They are sites that we are adding to and that we will furnish with the new towns approach on top of what is already taking place. There is development at the site in Thamesmead, which is in my borough, although not in my constituency. It can do far more, particularly with the DLR transport intervention that was confirmed at the last Budget.
There is work under way on some of the sites. When we confirm final locations—and this is an important point because the Commons Select Committee put it to me that we have only this one point of consultation, but there will be other chances for input—those final locations have to go out and become much more granular about what they will deliver. We have done that in Greater Cambridge, where we have now established a centrally led urban development corporation. What is the red line? What is the proposed delivery vehicle? What is the approach to plan making? There will be other chances to input, including, obviously, by the local communities, and a series of events and direct engagement that we will undertake as part of it.
So there are at least three, and we are progressing as many as we can and going as fast as we can after we have confirmed final locations. It is worth saying that some already have development activity on them. That speaks, I think, to a question that I am sure you will ask me: what are the delivery vehicles? The delivery vehicles and the approach to each site will be very site specific. They are all at different states of maturity. They are all different propositions. They will inevitably need to be taken forward with different delivery vehicles. Again, once we have confirmed locations for each of the final sites, we will be much clearer about our proposed approach to how we want to take them forward.
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: One thing that has been said is that you are hoping to complete at least three in this Parliament. On the news this morning, there was talk about the new Prime Minister and the manifesto that was set not being his. It may seem, if people think he is doing a really good job, that he might call an early election. How would that sit?
Matthew Pennycook: I have already said, “Nice try”. It is entirely a decision for the Prime Minister, and I cannot tell you what his thinking is on the subject, I am afraid.
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Yes, but what would be the impact on what you are trying to do now?
Matthew Pennycook: Again, respectfully, that impact is entirely hypothetical. The Prime Minister has said that, much as he wants to put a different emphasis on what the Government are doing, he remains committed to the manifesto that we stood on, and were elected on, and that includes with respect to a new generation of new towns.
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: There is a question, but I will come back to it, if I may, Chair.
The Chair: Okay. Thank you very much.
Q61 Baroness Barran: Thank you, Minister, for coming in. I want to ask you a few questions about skills in the sector, and start, in a way, with a very open question about how you judge the skills situation. We heard quite conflicting evidence. Some suggested that huge numbers of jobs need to be filled, both because of an ageing workforce and new projects between now and 2035. There was also a sense that in reality there have always been worries about skills but we kind of get through. Then there are big dropout rates from colleges and early in a career. It feels curious, in an employment market that is not as buoyant as we would all wish it to be, that people are not flocking to these jobs that are decently paid and skilful, and that we are seeing this unsatisfactory situation. I wondered what your take on it was—both the severity of the problem, and what is behind the two types of dropout rate: college and professional.
Matthew Pennycook: There is a lot in there, so let me unpack it. Your inquiry is obviously about the new towns programme, so let me link it to that directly. There is no specific skills and workforce challenge in respect of the new towns programme. There is a general challenge across the country. Opportunities come with the new towns programme, in terms of employment and innovative methods of housebuilding. We might come on to MMC, but I think one reason why category 1 MMC, at least, has failed to take off is that there has not been the certainty of pipeline. A new towns programme can give that certainty. There is no doubt that there are quite serious pressures on the construction workforce. We said, from the moment we were elected, that we have to do more to expand and upskill that workforce, and diversify it. I think that MMC, again, gives a chance to do that.
As to the reasons why the industry does not attract more young people, I think that is a good question, because some of these jobs are extremely well paid now. We could, I am sure, deliberate at length on what the reasons might be. To a certain extent, I think there is an image problem about what working on a development site entails, and all the rest of it. The important thing is that we have acted to try to address those workforce constraints, with £625 million investment in a construction skills package. That includes £100 million for skills bootcamps; £98 million for industry placements; £100 million to establish 10 construction technical excellence colleges; a £90 million uplift for 16-to-19 courses and £75 million for adult retraining. The private sector is doing a huge amount, as well, through the Construction Leadership Council, which the Construction Minister sits on and co-chairs. The private sector is alive to the issue as well. We recognise it, and we have acted.
In terms of the new towns programme, as I said, some sites will take many decades to build out. We can use the programme to align with our general push on getting skills and capacity into the industry in a way that is really beneficial; but, on the central point, yes, there are pressures. Those pressures are partly how we recruit young people. There are other issues. I have seen this in my constituency, where there is a lot of previously developed land that is ripe there for building. We relied heavily, until we exited the European Union, on EU labour. That does not come over in the same volume it did. Despite visa adjustments and all the rest of it, we have not, in some senses, filled that drop-off. We have to do more, and it is right that we do more, to get young people in our own workforce—particularly NEETs—into this industry. As you have said, it can be a lucrative job and a rewarding career. The last point that I make is that it is not just in construction but in the whole built environment and everything that comes with it—the planning side of the new towns—where people can get highly skilled, well-paid jobs.
Baroness Barran: Obviously, the investment that the Government have made is incredibly helpful, but when we met with Skills England it did not seem—perhaps, speaking for myself, I asked the wrong questions—that there was depth of understanding about the dropout rates. As you know better than I, lots of young people go to college to do construction-related courses, but drop out very quickly. Some go on, and then drop out. If we just take the college bit, it felt like there could be something to learn either from looking at it regionally, or by individual colleges. Is there a dispersion, so that some colleges have great retention and others do not? We did not get much insight into that. Maybe there are better ways of thinking about it, but we did not hear a depth of understanding as to what might change it. You are putting a lot of money in, but you need to make sure we get the results that everybody wants.
Lise-Anne Boissiere: Skills in local areas and engagement in a lot of priority projects, schemes and sites is obviously an agenda in which the mayors are also incredibly interested. They know that they have young people who want to get involved, and I think they will want to engage with this issue, with all of us. It is an area that people are alive to and will want to collaborate on—how best to try to address the attrition rate. It is important for everyone that we grow that workforce.
Baroness Barran: Yes, and beyond the money are there other tangible things that you can talk about that you are approaching differently, to try to address those issues?
Matthew Pennycook: There is the investment in skills. There is the work being undertaken by DfE. There is this broader push to deepen devolution much further, and there is a live conversation about what skills and education mean. We are going to publish a construction jobs plan later this year. That will set out a far more comprehensive package of support from the Government and what the industry is doing, as well, to address shortages. The investment has been the main and most important intervention.
From the feedback that I have had on things like technical excellence colleges and some of the stuff that has been undertaken by the private sector—homebuilding hubs that have been on large-scale sites that we have visited, and for which the Government provide support—they are making a difference. There is a rewarding career there, but I do not have any more information to hand on the DfE side and the attrition rates that you speak about.
Q62 Lord Porter of Spalding: You already know I am an ex-bricklayer. I have not laid a brick in anger for ages, thankfully, but a good brickie earns £100,000 a year. It is weird how, as parents and grandparents, we force our kids to put a suit on to earn £40,000 a year and think they come home better citizens. I am guilty as sin of doing that. I pushed my kids and grandkids to uni, when secretly I am saying, “Learn a skill as well”, because AI is going to put anybody in a suit, almost certainly, at job risk. It is never going to threaten anybody with a bucket of tools. Somehow we need to get more social acceptance of the good skilled people and that kind of responsibleness. Has anyone thought from a government perspective about government information films, with a bit of light-heartedness, getting decent people with a bit of attitude to show how good it is to do construction for a living, and how entertaining it is? Admittedly, the winters are a bit rubbish, but in the summers you cannot get a better job than being out on a building site earning quite a few quid with the sun on your back. It is a good place for young people to be.
On Poland, and eastern Europeans, forget it: we will be sending bricklayers to Poland, and we will certainly be sending them to Ukraine, because the money they will earn in Europe will be far better than we get over here now. We will end up with a reversal of roles. Poland is a tiger. It is racing away at the moment. You will never get a Polish bricklayer coming to England. They are always going to be over there, and of course the Polish people are quite happy to have the Polish people, where the English were not always so happy to have them, in some places, with some people, unfortunately.
Matthew Pennycook: I will take that as a sort of prompt to my comms department to get us out there and do more. I would say—again, coming back to the Chair’s initial question—that the Prime Minister has put a lot of focus in these early weeks on things that matter to him and interventions that can make a difference. One of those is improving the status and attractiveness of technical education vis-à-vis other routes. It is something that is important to the Government. I think we need to be cognisant of the fact that for a lot of people for whom construction might not be an obvious career, if the thought of a building site puts them off, things like modern methods of construction can make a real difference. Factory-based construction methods are a different prospect and perhaps to some people a more attractive prospect, so it is about getting innovation going in the sector as well.
Q63 Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe: I have a quick question. I am delighted that you are in the Cabinet. It is great news. We had Steph Peacock here, and she talked very convincingly about good ways of engaging with children and young people. I was delighted to hear you talk about placemaking, homes, sense of community and it not just being about building houses. As you know, we examined how you consult with children and young people. Lise-Anne, we have not met before, but looking at your biog and your background in health and social impacts, I wonder how we knit all this together to get the best outcomes that we can for new towns and the people who live in them.
Matthew Pennycook: What is there that I can helpfully say on that? Let us bring it back to a hypothetical new town. At the point we confirm a location, confirm the red line and the delivery vehicle, and we have a tangible sense about what a development proposition means in a given area, if you are a young person in that area, you could reasonably look at one of these larger sites and say, “Do you know what? There is a job for life on that new town if I want it. Also, I can have pride in what is being built because we are going to ensure that it is infrastructure-led and that it has great amenities and infrastructure”. Then you can do all those things around it with that certainty of the delivery pipeline on placemaking and on other social objectives that you are trying to take forward.
I can see this really being knit together, in some cases led by mayors if it is a mayoral development corporation, and in some cases local authorities. It might be a joint venture. There will be a range of delivery vehicles. But there is a way you can knit an awful lot together through the approach that we are taking. We are essentially doing much more efficient land assembly, master planning, and design and placemaking, and showing what can be done on other large sites. You can tick any number of boxes through that approach in the way that you cannot with conventional private housebuilding.
Lise-Anne Boissiere: Different locations will want to engage in different ways. As we have already referenced, these are multi-decade initiatives. The types of engagement that you do in terms of very young people, older people, the facilities and the amenities that they want will happen, I would imagine, over time as you phase different elements of buildout. Depending on where you are in the first instance, some of the work is going to be all underground and not necessarily the most inspiring stuff for people to be interacting with. But, as you go forward, you start thinking about the different amenities, hubs and other things that will bring people together, how people will move around and the impact of AI in how this will be shaped. You already see how active travel is changing how people live in spaces. The important thing—and we have reflected on this a lot in learning the history of previous new towns—is that you cannot plan now for what the future will look like. You have to give yourself that flexibility because none of us has perfect foresight. The people who are interacting in the space will keep interacting with it, and they will want to shape it. They will see the things that need to evolve with it, and we need to ensure that in how we get these things up and running we are not restricting that, so that people can engage in different ways and give their feedback.
Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe: Who holds the ring in terms of working across governmental departments in this and then working with stakeholders and mayors and local authorities?
Matthew Pennycook: I am the lead Minister.
Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe: Marvellous.
Matthew Pennycook: We have a new towns delivery unit, which is a partnership between ourselves and Homes England, which essentially is to operate as a front door for the programme for anyone participating. Then we have a commitment from every department in government to prioritise the work that is required—transport interventions, whatever it might be—to ensure that these places are delivered.
Q64 Lord Ravensdale: I would like to bring us on to supply chains, particularly around construction materials and products. We have the new towns and the 1.5 million homes. There is all the steel, cement, bricks and timber that are needed to produce all those homes. As well as thinking about sourcing those materials, there is a more strategic question about where we get those materials from. We heard quite a bit from witnesses on this, and part of what we heard was around confidence in that we have seen a reduction in demand in recent years across the built environment sector. Some facilities have been mothballed or closed down, and there is not that confidence within supply chains at the moment on the path to ramping up and delivering for these new towns. What steps can the Government take to inspire confidence within supply chains to ensure that they are really ready to deliver for new towns, but more broadly as well?
Matthew Pennycook: All that government can do is give certainty over policy and the direction of travel, and we will do that on new towns when we come to issue the government response, the final planning policy statement and the final locations. We have provided certainty in a range of other areas. All the feedback that I get from the sector is that it very much welcomes that. A finalised National Planning Policy Framework, a 10-year rent settlement and a 10-year social and affordable homes grant programme—all these things—give the sector lots of certainty going forward. That then interacts with the fact that—there are no two ways about it—housebuilders are going through a really tough time at the moment, partly due to things completely outside the Government’s control. A good example is construction build costs. They have gone up by about 40% since 2020 across the market. The current conflict in the Middle East is adding pressure to those costs. These are the sorts of things that housebuilders are struggling with in terms of where they can get their supplies.
What can the Government do to help with those supply chains? The first really important thing to say—I have referenced it already—is that we have a Construction Leadership Council co-chaired by industry and the DBT Construction Minister. That supports the construction industry to work collaboratively with their supply chains, and to look at the potential for market volatility, forecasting and communicating their requirements early to suppliers, distributors and builders’ merchants, so that they are looking as the sector, with the government voice there, at pricing, production planning and delivery. There is no silver bullet when it comes to those cost pressures that I talked about. The Government have done lots on the circular economy. We are streamlining product regulations. We are looking at what more we can do in terms of domestic manufacturing. You have seen the intervention that we have made on steel. MMC is another asset to that. There are various ways that we are looking to try to alleviate the pressures, but those pressures are there and they are somewhat outside the Government’s control to the extent that they are global pressures.
Lord Ravensdale: It is really good to hear about that work that you are doing with the sector. You mentioned the points outside the Government’s control, such as the conflicts and so on, that are driving up energy costs. As you know, industrial energy costs in the UK are much higher than our peer competitors. There is a risk that we are driving a lot of this business abroad. Cement manufacture comes to mind. There are various initiatives going on, of course, but is there any work going on within government to join that up across departments to ask what we can do to look at this more strategically and what we can do for our UK businesses to help them deliver for these programmes, notwithstanding the constraints that they are facing with energy?
Matthew Pennycook: There is cross-government work on all these issues. When we look at the new towns programme when it comes to energy capacity and water capacity, we are working with other government departments. On the specific issue of industrial electricity prices, I am afraid you will have to have the DESNZ Minister in front of you to set out what that department is doing specifically on this issue. As I said in reference to a previous question, one really important commitment that we have from those other government departments is to do what is necessary to prioritise within their spending reviews the investment necessary to ensure that the programme can be delivered as a whole-of-government endeavour.
Q65 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: Hello, Minister. I am very pleased to be able to have this conversation. I would like to turn to the matter of innovation. You have mentioned it a couple of times this afternoon already with reference to MMC. As you said, this programme is going to be decades long. What might seem innovative now will not seem very innovative in 40 years’ time, probably. We had quite a lot of evidence on innovation and what is holding it back. First, do you see the new towns as a real platform for innovation?
Matthew Pennycook: Yes, very simply. This helpfully relates to my previous question. We have asked departments to look at new towns through the lens of what innovative policies they want to deliver in their department. A good example might be that, if the Department of Health and Social Care is looking to pilot innovative approaches to public health, is a new town a good place to trial those policies? How do we factor in the cutting-edge thinking from each department in how we design infrastructure and amenities? So, yes.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: That is very encouraging. The evidence we heard is that there is possibly a lot of consumer resistance in terms of the new materials. People think of homes traditionally as bricks and mortar and so on. How do you see getting over that issue when it comes to people being happy with the home that they are getting or buying because of the construction materials? How can we make innovation more exciting?
Matthew Pennycook: You have put me on the spot in a sense. I am not sure that we need to make it exciting. We absolutely need to make it beneficial in terms of people’s wallets: more energy-efficient homes and homes that are cheaper to deliver. That is where modern methods of construction have the potential to accelerate delivery and improve productivity with those workforce benefits. They can have benefits for the home buyer. Bills are a great example. We are seeing real innovation across the country with, in some cases, zero-bill homes. People will be led in some ways by their wallet, but people are interested in innovation.
As to what the Government are doing, we have already taken a number of steps to support the rollout of MMC, which it is worth saying has not completely faltered. In some cases, particularly cat 1, we saw lots of big sites being mothballed. Category 2 MMC is doing quite well. Timber frame is doing quite well. In terms of what support Government can give, we have published PAS 8700. It brings clarity to the insurance and warranties market. We have a joint venture with Vistry Group to deliver more homes with MMC. We are working with over 20 local authorities to develop a patent book of standard house designs that we think could be rolled out. Lots of the local authorities that are participating are really enthusiastic about the value that can add. There are lots that we are doing in that space to encourage innovation and lots of benefits for the consumer, certainly with the examples that I have seen across the country.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: Thank you. I think you have just answered my question on the issue that we heard evidence on about insurance. The Government intend to make sure that that is not an inhibitor of innovation.
Matthew Pennycook: No, not when it comes to MMC. PAS 8700 should have the required impact in that space. People will let us know, I am sure, if there are ongoing issues with it.
Lord Porter of Spalding: On new products coming to market, have you noticed any issues caused by the suspension of BBA from UKAS? If a new product does not have an agrément board certificate on it, it cannot be used on a building site, because nobody will touch it. UKAS suspended BBA’s accreditation at the beginning of the year. My understanding is that as of last week it was still suspended. It might be worth having a look to find out what has gone on there and to see how much of a bottleneck of clever new products are out there but just cannot get over that last accreditation line.
Matthew Pennycook: As ever with these things, I am sure the department is aware even if I am not.
Lord Porter of Spalding: Yes, I am definitely sure somewhere down in the detail. It is one of those things where there could be a bottleneck of good stuff sitting out there waiting to be released.
Q66 Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe: Thank you very much for being here. I am finding this very encouraging. Sorry, Lise-Anne and Minister, but some of our questions will now converge slightly, which I think is healthy. I am delighted to hear you talk about energy efficiency, because the cheapest fuel is obviously the fuel that you do not use at all, and the opportunities within this to combat energy poverty, pricing and to combine energy efficiency with fire safety not just in installation of materials used but inspection, which is crucial. You will know, Minister, from your background that in European legislation we married energy efficiency legislation with fire safety after Grenfell, and that quite a lot of work is being done on this issue, but that is slightly an aside.
To come back to what Daniel said, would it not be great if we decoupled gas and electricity prices? As we say, that is not really the remit of this committee, but there we go. Obviously, demands for energy and water in this country are rising, not only in terms of new towns but in what is happening with data centres and so on. How does all this work towards net zero and national resilience? As you say, Lise-Anne, this is a long-term project. How do we learn what it is that we are not doing well and how to mitigate that on an ongoing basis? We have seen quite a lot of examples of that, sadly, this summer. How are utilities involved right from the beginning as part of infrastructure as opposed to being an add-on? As a local councillor in the north-west, it used to drive me to distraction when you saw the same street over a period of three years dug up separately because the utilities did not have a way of working together. It is energy and water. How can we preserve net zero and be resilient? It is the whole picture, really. Thank you.
Matthew Pennycook: Just a general comment on all of that?
Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe: Yes; some hows would be great.
Matthew Pennycook: It takes me well outside the remit of the new towns programme, but I will try to comment.
Lise-Anne Boissiere: It does very much, though, get to the heart of the strategic environmental assessment process. That is why we have to do all these important assessments at the outset in terms of understanding the implications to inform the decisions that get taken on the shape of the programme. All the departments have been involved and we have published a consultation so that people can respond to that draft strategic environmental assessment. On the water side, the Environment Agency and Natural England are fully engaged. The benefits, in a sense, of doing this very planned approach are that you should be surfacing where you have tensions and issues arising as we move forward. Therefore, you do not have that issue of people constantly digging things back up, because we all know exactly what we are doing. That is the intent.
Matthew Pennycook: I do not think there is much that I would add to that. Lise-Anne is right that that is the heart of the SEA process, to understand what the pressures are and how they would be mitigated. The Government are doing lots of other things in other areas. Speaking about water constraints, we have not built a reservoir since the early 1990s. We now have nine in development. We have two being actively taken forward, in East Anglia and Lincolnshire. Some of the infrastructure is coming through. Through the changes that we made to the planning system, we are ensuring that reservoirs can be taken forward as nationally significant infrastructure projects. Importantly—it goes back to the innovation point—where we are trialling innovative approaches to water efficiency in Cambridge, these are lessons that we are taking forward and we will ensure they are hard-wired into the new towns programme so that what we are building is as future-proofed as we can get it in terms of what we can foresee.
Q67 The Chair: Minister and Lise-Anne, you mentioned the SEA. One of the things that we heard about, particularly from a new town perspective, if it is a new town or an expanded settlement, is getting the utility companies in early as part of the discussion so that they can at least appreciate and understand the potential demand, be it 10,000 at the beginning up to 50,000, or whatever it may be. Is that happening there? I heard you mention the SEA. Is that part of the same conversation, or is that more the resilience side?
Lise-Anne Boissiere: On the SEA aspect of it, we have gone out to public consultation. The point at which you start getting utility companies in and all the rest of it—because all the different sites are at different levels of maturity—is when you have confirmed which locations you are taking forward as part of the programme.
The Chair: They will be brought in quite early. From memory, the concern that we heard was that they were not being brought in.
Matthew Pennycook: They will definitely be brought in earlier. That goes to the point of what the SEA is. It is an assessment of the whole programme and broad locations for growth. To get hypothetical, because we have not confirmed locations, at the point you say location X is confirmed and is in the programme, we will get much more granular about the exact red line, the exact proposed delivery and how everything is going to work. That is where I am tempted in my mind to bring it back to the real-world examples that we have. Greater Cambridge is a great example where we went out to consult on a defined red line and a definitive delivery vehicle. We have now established that. That is not exactly the same but a very good illustration of how each of the finally confirmed sites will be taken forward, with much more specific assessments relating to those sites. At the moment, we are assessing the programme as a whole. We have in those broad locations for growth identified the tasks, and we have taken forward the pressures and the potential mitigations that need to be brought forward.
There is a separate thing that it is worth saying for the committee’s clarity. Alongside the SEA, we have also been progressing a habitats regulations assessment for the programme. That is a requirement of the habitats directive, similarly, to examine the effects of the programme on national network sites and to identify mitigation measures to avoid or lessen the effects on those sites. We intend to publish that alongside that final suite of documents that we have been taking forward.
Q68 Baroness Andrews: Forgive me if I feel my way through this question. How do you start thinking about future situations that we cannot always comprehend because there are too many unknowns when you have a set of national priorities such as data? How do we think about the capacity for data in the future and try to marry that up with the local decisions that will have to be made by these sites, which are governed by development corporations of whatever nature? Who, in the end, will adjudicate if there is a conflict of interest between what is needed or what is possible locally in terms of the character of the local site, given that they will have followed the NPPF and so on and so forth? It ought to marry up with the NPPF and so on. There are very likely to be some conflicts of interest, are there not, between what we see in the national interest and what may be in the specific regional and local interests on that side between the utilities? Water is a particularly difficult example because of the specific challenges now. Who will make that decision? Who holds the ring on that?
Matthew Pennycook: Again, I bring it back to a real-world example. Let us say that hypothetical site X that is confirmed is taken forward through a development corporation, whether it be mayoral or centrally led. There is a clear accountability for a centrally led development corporation such as with the Secretary of State and with the board in the case of Greater Cambridge, where we have been at pains—and the same principle would apply to the new towns programme and any sites that are taken forward—to have local representation on those boards. Ultimately, those boards are accountable to the Secretary of State in that instance, who is responsible for plan making eventually. We want to get the local plan in place, but eventually there are plan-making and decision-making powers over certain thresholds, bringing a spatial plan forward. It would be looking to be making decisions about what goes where in accordance with the NPPF and the final planning policy statement that we will publish.
There is a bigger question outside the new towns programme. The Government after the coalition, in my view, took us to a hyper-localist position where all decisions are very local, to put in a real hierarchy of plan making. We have reintroduced spatial development strategies and subregional plans aligned with devolution geographies, and they really should be, in due course, the high-level frameworks for housing growth and infrastructure provision. In my mind, a good SDS would be looking at how much data centre capacity we require in this region and the appropriate locations where it might be sited, and it is much more plan led. I suppose I come back to a fundamental point that we have not had. At the point we came into government, we inherited a planning system predicated on local plans being in place but less than a third up-to-date coverage. We cannot have a plan-led system unless we have far higher coverage, and we are boosting that coverage. In SDSs and local plans, new towns with the red line that they draw will be assembling land and master planning for the specific locations.
Baroness Andrews: I entirely agree with you about spatial planning. We lost years when that was diluted and lost. If you take that a step further in terms of a national spatial plan or a national resilience strategy, do you think that is where we are heading? Is that the way to try to flatten out and make these fairer and ultimately more efficient decisions, where you minimise conflicts of interest between local and national resources?
Matthew Pennycook: That is a really good question. On that point, again, I have a memory of answering it before either to this committee or to the committee in the other place. In opposition, we did quite a lot of thinking about this, or I did at least and others did. Is it in our interest to go into a process where we look to bring forward a national spatial plan? Doing so would have been quite a slow and cumbersome process. Various ideas were put to us in opposition: a royal commission, or whatever it might be. We have taken a slightly more pragmatic approach, which is that across government a number of strategies or plans are spatial in nature that are being taken forward: the industrial strategy, the land use framework, and the new towns programme. What the Government have tried to do and need to continue to do to ensure that everything works and is in alignment is to knit all those strategies together to ensure that they are complementary. Rather than pause everything and say that we are going to take three, four or five years to do a big national spatial plan, we are getting to the same point. When a new town is created, it needs economic purpose. Is the industrial strategy factored in? Our explicit remit and the terms of reference of the task force were to look at all these strategies and to factor them into their thinking when recommending locations for the sites.
Q69 Lord Ravensdale: I would like a few clarifications. In your previous answer, Minister, you talked about the habitats regulations assessments that you said you were doing for a number of the sites. Will that have the benefit of the updated guidance that has been produced by Defra and was out for consultation in May this year? The reason I ask that is because that was aimed at a more straightforward path through the habitats regulations and a more proportionate approach. Secondly, you talked about the NSIP process and some of the supporting infrastructure to new towns, but has there been any discussion of new towns themselves going into the NSIP process?
Matthew Pennycook: On the habitats regulations assessment, that is not for individual sites; it is for sites within the programme as a whole. That is important to say. I am not quite clear in my mind whether you are talking about that or environmental assessment more generally.
Lord Ravensdale: No, the habitats specifically. Some new guidance is being produced for the habitats regulations.
Lise-Anne Boissiere: We have been working hand in glove with Defra colleagues on it all. I am assuming that they have given us the best possible advice.
Matthew Pennycook: To give to the HRA. Then there is a related point in terms of the SEA, but also the EIA is more generally on site-specific projects. The Government are committed to replacing those. These are EU legacy assessments. We are committed to taking forward environmental outcomes reports. We think they are a better way to approach things. That is a fairly complex process to take forward. We have made clear we want them in place, though, by the end of 2027 as a replacement environmental assessment regime. There is much more focus on outcomes and a streamlined process through to take those forward.
On NSIP, we considered it early on. We have not taken the decision to take the new towns sites through the NSIP process. I have had no real feedback from anyone in industry who thinks that there is a benefit to doing that. They will be taken forward through the normal planning process. Again, Greater Cambridge is a really good example of where we have to interact with the local leaders and local authorities that are in place there. In many areas, some of the same principles will apply. There is a plan-making process under way there. It is in everyone’s interest to ensure that that local plan is put in place. Only at the point that it is put in place would the development corporation pick up. It has a remit to intervene in development management terms, but only in strategic sites. Most of the decisions on non-strategic sites, the bread and butter of what is coming through the planning process, will stay with the joint local planning service in Cambridge. All these prospects are very site specific, working with what is there to ensure that we get the outcomes that we want at the end of the day, which is great homes and great places built as fast as we can build them.
Q70 Lord Bailey of Paddington: Good afternoon, Minister. It is great to see you again. It is good that you have been reappointed and you are in the Cabinet. If this is ever going to happen, that is the place that you needed to be.
I want to focus on the finance here because all the evidence that we have received has said that this simply is not going to happen unless there is some strong government finance behind it. If you look at the success of new towns in the past, they have had two major things: government finance and patient capital. One thing this Government have been very firm on is that there will be no dedicated finance to new towns. All the funding will come through the National Housing Bank, some £16 billion. That money is to deliver 500,000 homes, which means per dwelling that is not much subsidy. As an investor, why would I invest in a new town? As a planning authority, why would I pursue a new town if it is not going to give me any finance that I probably could not get some other way?
Matthew Pennycook: This applies almost uniformly. The reason the local leaders in those areas, nearly all of them bar perhaps one or two notable exceptions, are extremely interested in the new towns programme looking at a site in their authority area is the additional government support and funding that will follow from that. You are absolutely right. We have not set a specific budget from the programme, in simple terms, because to do so would in a sense be replicating what is already there. The new towns will have access to funding from our £5 billion national housing delivery fund. That is land and infrastructure grant funding. It will have access to £39 billion of grant funding for the social and affordable homes programme. It will be able to draw on the National Housing Bank. In terms of the existing funding delivery mechanisms, it will have access to all of them. In a sense, there is no need to recreate a specific new towns pot that does all those things in the same way, but they will have access to funding.
Importantly again for where we are in the process, we are consulting on the programme as a whole. When we confirm the final sites and we are having these conversations with local leaders—as things stand, we are not waiting for those final sites to be confirmed—we are having a discussion about what funding is needed and by when. That relates to all the other decisions that need to be made. In a particular location, what is the delivery vehicle? How much is it and what does private finance coming in look like in a specific case? It is very site specific, but there is funding behind it.
Lord Bailey of Paddington: Okay. As a local authority, though, if I have a dwelling that is half way there, lay out for me the benefit of going to a new town. You are saying there is extra funding. Is there extra planning power? Will it happen more quickly? Why would I take that step if I already have access to most of this funding, if not all of it?
Matthew Pennycook: No, because a local authority would be able to bid into those funds, but the priority that the Government have put on the programme and the priority that all government departments have agreed to put into the programme to see it delivered will mean, in terms of the pace of delivery and the outcomes, that you get central government support, one point of contact into government through the new towns delivery unit, and grant funding that would not have been there otherwise will flow into the projects that are finally confirmed. You are right, Mr Bailey to say that, if, say, a particular location eventually does not end up in the new towns programme or did not want to be in the new towns programme, they could take that site forward in that particular area through the traditional route. They might be successful in bidding into one of those funds. They would not get anything like the concerted priority that they will get through the programme. That is why a lot of people have a lot of enthusiasm for the programme to come into certain sites. Sites that local authorities or mayors have wanted to get moving for a long time through the programme will get the support that they are looking for.
Lord Bailey of Paddington: Those two reasons now are compelling. If you have a site that has been stuck, swapping it to new towns might move it forward. You talked about certainty around modern methods of construction and so on. If I had a factory that was mothballed or I wanted to do something new and there was a dedicated sum of money coming this way, would that not make me a little more likely to bring that factory back online, because I could see that these new towns were going to deliver a certain amount of housing? There was dedicated funding here. There is a lot of fear in that arena around the patchy nature of delivery of housing in this country and, obviously, if you are going to dedicate a lot of your own capital to that, you want some certainty. If there is no figure, what will you do to give more certainty, particularly around modern methods of construction, to that sector?
Matthew Pennycook: I will bring you in, Lise-Anne. This is again slightly getting ahead of where we are. At the point we confirm those locations, delivery vehicles and every question that needs to be answered of how we take those forward, we will confirm the funding for individual sites and exactly what that means. We are a little bit away from the site-by-site clarity that people are rightly looking for, consulting as we are on the programme as a whole, but that will come.
Lord Bailey of Paddington: One of the great features of old new towns—original new towns; let us call them that—was the patient nature of the capital. How is that going to be replicated?
Matthew Pennycook: Again, I may have answered this in your committee or another. It is really important to recognise that we are in a very different world from the post-war period in terms of what has happened to land and all the other factors. The important thing, though, that the approach gets us, particularly through development corporations, which the task force was very clear in recommending should be the delivery vehicle in most cases, is a body that is able to land assemble, to master plan, and to capture more of the development uplift. You will have seen in the initial response to the task force what the Government said about land, what is in the draft new towns planning policy statement and what we hope to take forward: an approach to land that safeguards it, that ensures that over time we can capture more of the land value uplift in a way that you would not on a conventional site. That is where we can show again what can be done in terms of large-scale settlements across the board.
What will be delivered through this programme will act as a guide to taking that forward on large sites that are happening all over the country, it must be said. What is a good example? Mayor Steve Rotheram in Liverpool is out to consult on a mayoral development corporation for Liverpool North Docks. I want to make this point because it is not as if you cannot take forward a large-scale new settlement outside the programme. The programme will drive innovation, supply chain enhancements and all the rest of it that will help large-scale development across the country more generally.
Lord Bailey of Paddington: I have one very last tiny question—get your crystal ball out. What will the Government do if the money is found not to be enough? You will have big developments that are half way through. You will have private investors who are now looking at taking a very serious bath. We in this country are pretty poor at delivering infrastructure, which will be a big part of making this work. What will the Government be able to do, first, to avoid that situation and, secondly, if that situation arises?
Matthew Pennycook: I suppose there is a series of questions for government to resolve in terms of the next spending review. We are very clear about what we can do in this spending review. When we confirm final funding for the sites going forward, we will set out exactly what they are to get in the years to come. I would draw you back to the sites that we consulted on. The task force recommended 12, and we found a reasonable alternative site in Barking. We did not take forward each one of those 12 sites, partly because government does have to cut its cloth and prioritise and fund the sites that are most closely aligned with our objectives. That is why ultimately we took forward seven. People can be reassured that the final locations will have a funding plan behind them in this SR with negotiations to follow about future SRs.
Q71 Baroness Andrews: I have a very quick question. It is the opposite of a crystal ball. Yes, everything is different from 1947. One problem with Homes England, we would all recognise, is that there are so many diverse pots of funding and so many different ways of accessing them. It was slow and protracted, and it was very confusing for people trying to get remediation money or whatever. Are you content that the undergrowth has been cleared away and that those funding streams are much clearer, can be accessed and can get out of the door faster? That is my first question. Secondly, did you consider having a dedicated fund within Homes England just for the new towns?
Matthew Pennycook: Very early on we may have considered it. For the reasons I have given, it is not necessary. You are absolutely right about the number of funds that were in place, each with their own conditions. What we have tried to do with the national housing delivery fund is have a single, circa £5 billion fund that does not have that siloed approach hard-wired and actually lets you get at, which is what we need to get at and what developers and local authorities say, a single pot that can be spent on whatever the place needs to develop in the right way.
Baroness Andrews: Exactly.
Matthew Pennycook: We have got around some of those things. There is a wider conversation going on about how we deepen devolution. From the NHDF, we devolved indicative proportions of that to the EMSAs, the established mayoral strategic authorities. They have control of that. We are looking over the course of the social and affordable homes programme to give more control of that funding to mayors. All of this is coming together in a place-based way, particularly in EMSA areas, where mayors will have all the tools they need to drive housing growth and regeneration. We have tried, in direct answer to your question, to break down some of these funds.
Baroness Andrews: Is there any evidence to suggest it is working and it is better and faster?
Matthew Pennycook: It is faster. As a more general point, we have tried with Homes England to make it much more can-do, responsive and accountable to local leaders, with the regional operating model we have put in place, and leadership teams in every region that mayors and other local leaders can access. Everything is working and it is helping to break through barriers and get things moving faster.
Baroness Andrews: And reducing risk, because there is a known risk of developers walking away, is there not? We see it time and again with small and medium-sized sites. They just cannot wait. They have put themselves on the line.
Matthew Pennycook: We are expanding our new homes accelerator, which is a multidisciplinary team, because it is so popular in terms of getting into those projects and really resolving some of the constraints, whether I cannot get someone at the Environment Agency to respond to this or whatever it might be.
Baroness Andrews: It is all about knocking heads together. Can you do that? Often, it is getting agencies into the same room.
Matthew Pennycook: The NHA has been very good at knocking heads together in a way that I suppose the old Homes England place-based model would have been doing at one point, which again was removed.
Baroness Andrews: We were told way back in this inquiry about the specific issues of getting health funding, because that seems to depend on local rates or something. It is very complicated to get your hands on the money to put it into the scheme. We had someone on the committee who was very good at this and who is not with us any more. That is one of the things that needs to be cracked.
Lise-Anne Boissiere: These are some of the thematic issues that the new homes accelerator also looks at, where there are these challenges for whatever reason, whether it is with health or schools. You hear that GP surgeries are a problem on sites, and getting primary schools in is also a problem. Then it is about convening the relevant people across government to ask what is going on and what is driving this. Is it the case that we need to simplify guidance? To reference your undergrowth thing, we try to get to the bottom of the root cause.
The Chair: The final area, very quickly, is with Lord Bailey on public opposition.
Q72 Lord Bailey of Paddington: Many of the sites have been named. Some are half in progress and the local authorities have already dealt with angry locals. You have certain sites that are on your top list of wants that the local authority is also not in favour of doing. What will the Government do to get those authorities on side or, in the rare cases, take them on? The other feature of original new towns is that the Government grasped the nettle, provided the money and the leadership, and they told local councillors, “No”, in many cases. Are you prepared to do that as a Minister?
Matthew Pennycook: We are prepared to do that. I have said ad nauseam that ultimately we will make decisions in the national interest. We want local leaders to be on side wherever possible. It obviously makes things far easier, particularly where the local authority is the owner of certain parcels of land. We will ultimately make decisions in the national interest.
Directly to the point, individual sites or authorities did not volunteer to join the plan. The sites are selected by the New Towns Taskforce as those that best meet our criteria. We want to work with local areas. Ultimately, if local authorities really grasp what is on offer here in terms of the exemplary development that we want to come forward, that is surely a way of meeting your housing need. One of the big changes that we have made since I last spoke to you, Chair, is to make clear that new towns can contribute in full to LHN, which is a really important incentive to come in. Why would you not want to meet your housing need through an exemplary, infrastructure-led, amenity-rich development, well designed with great placemaking, as opposed to having to meet that need through conventional means? I struggle to understand why places—and there are some—are dug in in opposition. There is a prize to be grasped here.
What we have seen—and this is really important; we will do more of this with the final confirmed sites to get out and engage to speak to communities directly—is that lots of the conversation in some of the areas where sites are listed has changed as we would want from, “Do we want this here or not?”, to, “What do we want it to look like? How do we imprint the identity of this place? What is the design code that we want to see?” That is a much more fruitful conversation. As a way of meeting housing need, as I put in response to your previous question, there are lots of advantages to doing it through this programme rather than conventional delivery. Those places will still have to meet their housing targets that are in place. There is a lot to commend to being constructive about wanting one of these sites to be taken forward in your area.
Lord Bailey of Paddington: I like and understand your approach to being constructive and saying, “Look, this is a great thing as far as we are concerned as the Government. Here are the extras you get from doing it this way”, but you have been in politics long enough to know that local politics is challenging—let us use those polite words—and you could receive very stiff opposition. What tools do you have at your disposal to deal with that? I am arguing a scenario. You have gone beyond making friends. Now you have to put your foot down. What tools do you have to make that happen, and what tools do councils have to stop you?
Matthew Pennycook: Again, I do not want to speculate on the programme given the sensitivities around it and, as with everything, a degree of legal risk. Let me use Greater Cambridge as another example. There is a huge amount to commend to the centrally led urban development corporation that we have now established. People of Cambridge will get exemplary development through that. Voices are opposed to that. It is within the Government’s gift by passing the necessary secondary regulations to establish a centrally led urban development corporation. Local people will have their say through the planning process in the usual way on individual sites and so on. It is within the Government’s gift to drive forward these sites, or mayors in the case of mayoral development corporations. I come back to the point that we want to see local buy-in. Ultimately, if we judge that a site is in the national interest to take forward, we are going to take it forward.
Lord Bailey of Paddington: Let me end on something much more positive. Working with local mayors and your central team, you have convinced me that there is a reason for turning something into a new town. Will that speed delivery? In this country, for the last 50-odd years—maybe 30 years—we have been very poor at delivering houses. The whole hope for this thing is that new towns can deliver at scale for umpteen different reasons. Can you assure the public and this committee that it will actually make a difference and something will happen because you now have this new town? You are in the Cabinet. Is this Prime Minister on board? Do you have the financing and do you have the rules set up and the partnerships to actually make this happen?
Matthew Pennycook: Yes, is the very simple answer. We will get spades in the ground. We will get homes delivered. One criterion in the terms of reference for the task force and a big factor in its recommendations is which sites were deliverable and what can move fast. As I said, in some cases, some of these sites are already building out, and we can add to and augment the offer that will come forward. We will get that going, and the whole weight of government is behind it.
If we are heading towards the end, there are two points that I would like to leave you with. As important as it is to get spades in the ground and get homes delivered to meet housing need now and in this Parliament, I am as focused on the long-term legacy of this and all that it does for supply chains, the general pipeline, MMC, and everything it can add to the general housing system in terms of benefits rather than just the short-term impact on housing targets—as important as they are.
Related to that is a plea to the committee. I have no doubt you will be critical of various aspects of the programme. Be aware of where we are in the programme. We do not have specified delivery vehicles, funding packages and everything at this stage, but all of that will come. We are consulting on the programme. We have to get that consultation and environmental assessment on the programme right so that we know that we can robustly take it forward. All of that will come. At the point we have very clear offers and propositions, we will have a conversation with local people in those areas about each of those individual sites.
Lord Bailey of Paddington: My last thing is local power generation. One of the ways of overcoming our horrendous electricity costs is to let people generate their own power.
The Chair: We are not necessarily critical per se. It is more we see ourselves as critical friends, and it is through that belief we want the Government to take it to the next step and succeed in it. Baroness Lawrence, I think you had one very quick question.
Q73 Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Yes. When we talked about the consultation that has gone out, there were times when we talked about young people in the consultation. As we know, their information comes from various different sources. For me, it is always how we inform the public as well as young people what it is we are doing. We are talking a lot about it in this room. You talk about it in the other place. How do you get the messages out to those who actually want to hear, moving forward? One other question I wanted to ask, but Lord Bailey has already asked, is about the nimbyism of people, “Not in my backyard”, and how you push that forward to make sure that the Government are doing what they need to do. Everybody says we need more homes, but when it comes to looking at their area they say, “Oh, no, you can’t do it here”. How do we push forward and also how do we inform our young people as to the stages that we are at now and how you are moving forward?
Matthew Pennycook: Let me take those in turn, starting with the second one. I have said this more times than I can count, but it is a point worth saying. I have always found the yimby/nimby debate quite reductive. There is a core of people who want no development of any kind anywhere near them. They will come up with all manner of reasons why. There is a bigger group of people who say quite justifiably in lots of cases, “The development down the road from me is really poor quality or the placemaking is terrible. Look at the public realm. This isn’t great”. Again, we will have failed if we do not deliver exemplary development through these sites, to show what can be done. You can break down a degree of nimbyism by making clear that we can do very good development and we can plan positively for it. This is a real test case to show that that can work.
On the general challenge of accessing young people, you are right, and that goes beyond the new towns programme. That is a general challenge. When we are tailoring our engagement with the final locations that are taken forward, we will be thinking as creatively as we possibly can in government about how we access the widest range of people from all age groups to get them involved. They could be quite excited about what is being taken forward in their area through the job opportunities and other chances to feel meaning.
I will just finish on this. I will not embarrass him by naming him, but off the back of the social and affordable homes programme I had a great five-minute interview with an influencer—a young guy who is an architect. Young people are interested in these things for careers and other reasons. We can really make this an exciting programme that the public in general can engage with and can take pride in because of what we deliver over the course of it.
The Chair: Thank you. That is a good way to end, Minister. I repeat again, honestly, we are a critical friend of the Government’s programme on this. We want you to do it. We want you to succeed. We are right behind you. Power to your elbow, to both of you and your team. Thank you very much for your time.
Matthew Pennycook: Thank you. My pleasure.
