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Keir Starmer has appointed Matthew Pennycook as Labour’s new Housing Minister at the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government.
With the party having already announced a number of ambitious housing plans, it already has a lot on its to-do list.
But who is Pennycook, what will be her top priorities, and how does she plan to solve the country’s long-standing housing crisis?
New Housing Minister: Keir Starmer has appointed Matthew Pennycook as Minister for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC)
What is the job of the Minister of Housing?
Matthew Pennycook will work alongside Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy first minister and secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, and Jim McMahon, who is expected to take charge of local government.
Pennycook is in a position that has had 16 different ministers in 14 years of Conservative rule. There were nine other ministers during the previous 13 years under Labour.
Pennycook posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, after his appointment saying: ‘It is a real honour to have been appointed Minister.
“Addressing the housing crisis and boosting economic growth is critical to national renewal. It’s time to get to work.”
What are Labour’s housing plans?
Pennycook is tasked with implementing Labour’s plan to solve the country’s housing crisis by tackling housing shortages and improving the rights of tenants and renters.
His top priority will be to deliver on Labour’s pledge to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years.
Labour hopes to achieve this by overhauling the planning system, allowing more housing to be built in less attractive areas of the green belt, known as the “grey belt”, and helping public bodies such as local councils to buy land for housing at a cheaper price.
Also awaiting approval in parliament is a bill to reform the Tenancy Act, which was due to include a ban on Section 21 no-fault eviction notices, although some Conservative MPs were seeking to water down the plans ahead of the election.
There is also the Leasehold Reform and Freehold Act, which despite having been given Royal Assent in May, has not yet come into force and many details still need to be worked out, meaning Labour must enact it in the next few years.
Who is Matthew Pennycook?
Matthew Pennycook, 41, was a shadow minister at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (which was renamed under Labour) for three years before the election.
He is the MP for Greenwich and Woolwich in London and was elected in 2015.
In last week’s election he won a huge majority, beating his nearest rival by 18,366 votes.
Prior to her political career, she worked for a number of charities and voluntary sector organisations, including the Child Poverty Action Group and the Fair Pay Network.
He also worked as a researcher at the Resolution Foundation, an independent think tank focused on improving the living standards of people on low and middle incomes.
What are your priorities as Minister of Housing?
It’s clear that the tenant reform bill and eliminating no-fault evictions are a top priority for Pennycook.
On June 20th this year he posted on X: ‘The Conservatives have broken their 2019 manifesto promise to scrap Section 21 no-fault evictions.
“Labour will deliver where the Conservatives have failed and act to give tenants the long-term security and better rights and conditions they deserve. Tenants will be better off with Labour.”
In an interview with Kay Burley on Sky News, he said: “We are going to bring in legislation that properly protects tenants, that really decisively levels the playing field between landlords and tenants and improves the situation for tenants. We are going to do that as a priority and as soon as possible.”
A better deal for tenants: Pennycook needs to get the yet-to-be-finalised Tenant Reform Bill through Parliament. This will include a ban on Section 21 no-fault eviction notices
However, it is perhaps the target of building 1.5 million homes that will weigh most heavily on the new housing minister.
To achieve this goal, he has been tasked with reforming the planning system.
Planning departments have been hit by local government budget cuts in recent years, creating a backlog of planning applications that some say is hampering investment in new housing.
Pennycook aims to address this problem by ensuring councils have up-to-date local plans and giving them money to hire more planning officers, funded by an additional stamp duty surcharge on overseas buyers.
In a recent interview with i newspaper, Pennycook said: “We have a huge planning reform package. There is money for planning. We have already announced a £25m injection to get the system up and running and to process more applications.”
He also confirmed that Labour will be willing to build on parts of the green belt, and that the plan is to target lower quality and “ugly” green belt land, known as the “grey belt”, for development.
Pennycook also made clear that compulsory purchase rules will need to be reformed if Labour is to meet its housebuilding targets.
This could help public bodies, such as local councils, to buy land for housing at a cheaper price.
Expropriation is when a public body can force a property owner to sell to allow for the construction of new housing.
Currently, some landowners can charge huge sums of money based on what the land will ultimately be worth when it obtains planning permission and is converted into housing.
Grey Belt: Labour to target ‘ugly’ green belt land in quest to get more homes built
Agricultural land is worth an average of £25,000 per hectare in the UK, while development land with planning approval is worth an average of £1.95m – around 80 times more, according to analysis by Capital Economics.
Pennycook said: ‘A big part of the pressure on development is the cost of land, so we need to make further changes to the CPO to ensure that the market price of land when we are assembling and moving forward with development is based on a fair price.
‘At the moment there is a discretionary power that certain public bodies can use if they go to the Secretary of State and ask for special permission, but that means an extra layer of planning permission which slows down the system.
“We want a number of public bodies to be certain that they can use this specific power so that we can achieve greater development throughout the country.”
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