Communities and Local Government Questions

I asked the Housing Minister a question at Communities and Local Government Questions on Monday 29 June 2015:

I asked: What assessment has the Minister made of land throughout the country that already has Planning Permission for housing that could help the affordable housing programme?

Brandon Lewis MP: I would say to the honourable lady that some 261,00 properties were given Planning Permission in the last year. That is a good sign, a pretty much record figure. What we need to do is to make sure those homes are developed in good time. Obviously local authorities when they grant planning permission do so for a limited time and therefore they should rightly expect developers to build them out.

I wanted to draw the Ministers attention to land that has planning permission for housing but remains empty. The Minister did not say how he would encourage building on this land- banking when so many young people need homes.