HBA response to Commons Select Committee report on public land disposal
In 2011, the Department for Communities and Local Government announced plans to release public land in order to build 100,000 new homes and create 25,000 jobs in the house building sector by 2015.
The House of Commons’ Public Accounts Select Committee has released a report scrutinising the DCLG’s performance towards these targets. The committee concluded that the DCLG:
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could not assess “whether the programme delivered value for money”;
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could not confirm how many new jobs were created;
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did not provide appropriate oversight of the programme;
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showed flaws in its data collection practices;
Although the committee judged the programme a success for having managed to dispose enough land to build 109,950 homes, the committee argued that such figures were based on the estimated number of homes that could be built on released public land.
The HBA agrees with the committee’s recommendation that the DCLG should deliver figures based on the number of actual home completions, rather that the potential number of deliverable houses. The HBA also agrees that clearer methods to measure job creation should also be adopted.
These two recommendations are fundamental in increasing the supply of homes and tackling the ever growing skills shortage.
