Affordable Rural Housing

I call Olivia Bailey to move the motion. I will then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention in a 30-minute debate. I call Olivia Bailey.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the provision of affordable rural housing.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I am delighted to have secured this important debate, and I look forward to hearing from my colleagues and my hon. Friend the Minister over the next 30 minutes.

My Reading West and Mid Berkshire constituency boasts the very best of the English countryside. We have many beautiful rural villages and hamlets, many nestled in the north Wessex downs national landscape, formerly known as an area of outstanding natural beauty. They are villages full of families who have lived there for generations, but unfortunately villages now under threat due to a lack of affordable housing. There are many barriers to affordable housing in those villages: some are a consequence of the national landscape designation, but others are a consequence of a lack of political will. In west Berkshire people have been let down by Conservative and then Liberal Democrat administrations that offer warm words about the future of our villages, but are unwilling to take the action necessary and do the hard work to secure not massive developments in our villages, but small developments, with the support of the community, of houses at an affordable price.

I commend the hon. Lady. This is a massive subject for my constituents, as it is for hers. For those who have lived in the countryside, who were born in the countryside and whose grannies, granddads and great grannies all live in the countryside, when it comes to affordable houses they have a real problem. Does she agree that perhaps we need legislation to ensure that those who are born in the countryside can stay in the countryside, in housing that is affordable for them?

I thank the hon. Member; I agree that this is about keeping generations of families together and I will talk more about that later in my speech.

As I said, people have been let down by Conservative and then Liberal Democrat administrations, which have been bodging the local plan process, trying to pass the buck and avoid the hard work needed to secure the vibrant villages that we were promised.

In response to what the hon. Lady has just said, I would like to congratulate the Liberal Democrat-led South Hams district council, which has just contributed £623,000 to support a community housing project that will offer 39 new energy-efficient, 100% social rented homes for people with a local connection, including a community garden and orchard and a community building that will be delivered once the homes are complete. Does she agree that that is the kind of development that we need to see?

I am delighted that the hon. Member has had an opportunity to congratulate her council, and I thank her for her intervention.

With a lack of supply come skyrocketing house prices. In the five years to 2022, house prices in the countryside increased at close to twice the rate of those in urban areas. We need only look at the nine houses currently for sale in Upper Basildon in my constituency: four are on the market for more than £1.25 million and only one at under half a million pounds. Across the villages in my constituency, there are very few properties available for private rent, and the small number that are available are simply unaffordable for many.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Twigg. In North Warwickshire, private rents grew to an average of £898 in January this year—an increase of 11% from the previous year. Young people are prevented from starting their careers in North Warwickshire because those rent increases are unaffordable, and many of my young constituents are having to move away because of the lack of affordable housing. Does my hon. Friend agree that increased rental costs and a lack of social housing in rural areas prevent local economic growth and pose insurmountable challenges for young families in our rural areas?

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. Simply put, these costs price people out of the community. One constituent in Bradfield shared her story with me. Her daughter would love to be able to stay in the village that she grew up in, but there are no affordable houses that are the right size for her young family. Eventually, she is likely to have to move away—a story repeated across my constituency.

Without affordable housing, schools close because there are not enough children to fill a class; pubs shut their doors because there are not enough punters to buy pints; and services for the elderly stop operating because there is nobody to volunteer. We simply cannot have a community without people, and those people need affordable homes.

I am delighted that the Government are committed to building the housing we need and to boosting home ownership, providing over £5 billion total housing investment in 2025-26 and a £500 million top-up to the affordable homes programme, and building an ambitious 1.5 million homes with the infrastructure that they need. I am also pleased that the Government are paying particular attention to housing in rural communities, giving local authorities flexible but ambitious targets for affordable housing development, recognising the value of rural exception sites and community-led development, and committing to look at how national policy can promote affordable rural housing.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Mr Twigg. In my constituency we have some villages, such as Dent, where 40% of the homes are second homes or Airbnb-type short-term lets. I also have concerns for Morecambe, with the Eden Project coming there. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should look at the licensing and regulation of short-term lets as part of the solution to the rural housing crisis?

I am pleased that the Government are acting to level the playing field for first-time buyers, and I am sure that the Minister will elaborate further on that in his statement today.

It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr Twigg. Similarly, in my constituency, the county council has built just 15,000 homes since 2013 and only 3,700 affordable homes, yet 2,000 people are in urgent need of housing. I am also delighted by this Government’s commitment to building 1.5 million homes, and I am sure my hon. Friend agrees that it would be fantastic to see an allocation within that for rural areas in the country.

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend that we need more affordable housing in our rural areas; that is what I am seeking to address with this debate.

I will focus first on rural exception sites, which allow the delivery of small developments of affordable housing on the edges of rural communities, solely for local people. The role of rural housing enablers to deliver those are crucial, and I consider Connecting Communities in Berkshire to be the gold standard there. The team works in partnership with developers, landowners, local authorities, parish councils and local people to try to build truly affordable housing in rural exception sites. It is currently working to deliver affordable housing in Beenham, identifying housing need and suitable land in partnership with the parish council and the local community.

The Government are committed to funding the rural housing enabler programme until the end of March, and I know my constituents would welcome an update on its future from the Minister today. More widely, I also ask the Minister to provide an update on how he plans to promote exception sites as he prepares to consult on national development management policies in the coming months.

We also need to consider the impact of affordable and social housing stock being sold off by developers and moving out of the hands of the local community. I welcome the Government’s focus on the needs of social renters in the revised national planning policy framework and the commitment to explore how national policy can support social housing.

Sadly, constituents have shared with me that Sovereign, which owns a significant proportion of social housing in West Berkshire, has been selling off older properties in West Berkshire’s villages, which means that swathes of perfectly usable social housing stock is going into the private sector to be sold or rented at unaffordable prices. Housing that could be offered for social rent to local people who cannot afford to buy in their village is now being bought up and taken out of the community. I share the frustration of parish councils, who are working to increase the amount of affordable housing available through developing rural exception sites, when they see a social landlord putting existing affordable properties in the village up for sale. Will the Minister consider this particular problem as he consults on national policy to support the delivery of social housing?

May I just check that the Member has sought permission to speak?