Sir Nicholas Soames: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to grant powers to councils to be able to use unused planning permissions.

Dominic Raab, Minister of State for Housing: The Government’s Housing White Paper set out a wide ranging approach to driving up build out of planning permissions.

In addition, at Autumn Budget 2017, the Government announced that an independent review of build out will be conducted. This will be chaired by the Rt Hon Sir Oliver Letwin MP, with the support of a cross-party panel of experts. The review will consider the significant gap between housing completions, and the amount of planning permissions and land allocated for housing. The review panel will make recommendations for closing this gap, and will report on its findings in 2018.

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