Last edited 02 Jul 2018

All-Party Parliamentary Group for Housing and Planning

All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs or APGs) are informal cross-party parliamentary groups run by and for Members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. They many involve individuals and organisations from outside Parliament.

A new All-Party Parliamentary Group for Housing and Planning was established in July 2015 to identify innovative solutions for reshaping the housing market.

The APPG was originally formed during the previous Parliament, chaired by Conservative MP Tim Yeo and Labour MP Clive Betts. It was replaced in 2015 by the new Group chaired by James Cartlidge, Conservative MP for South Suffolk. The Group will be supported by four vice-chairs:

Mark Prisk MP (Conservative MP for Hertford and Stortford and former Housing Minister).
Helen Hayes MP (Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood and former Town Planner).
Lord Richard Best (Cross Bench MP and President of the Local Government Association).
Stephen Pound MP (Labour MP for Ealing North).

Secretariat for the Group will be provided by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

Cartlidge said, “Housing is increasingly becoming one of the most critical policy challenges facing local and national Government, and with a Housing Bill pending, it is likely to become more political and controversial. In this context, a cross-party Parliamentary group focused objectively on the national policy challenge of housing offers a vehicle for taking the debate forward in a way that is both positive and constructive. Having spent my working life in the shared ownership housing sector, I am acutely aware of the challenges facing first time buyers, particularly in London. Equally, as a rural MP, I recognise the need for development to be sustainable. Ultimately, there are a whole raft of complex issues in housing and planning today but I hope that our APPG can make a real contribution to the debate.”

The RICS suggest that the Group will consider methods for increasing the supply of sustainable housing in the UK which faces an annual shortfall of 130,000 homes. They highlight the need to build around 245,000 homes a year to address the housing crisis and suggest that solutions must be innovative, wide-ranging and ‘…grounded within a political framework which allows them to be implemented’. Ref RICS 27 July 2015.

In July 2015, the Group established the National Housing Taskforce to develop proposals for the Government and the construction industry to address the housing shortage. See National Housing Taskforce for more information.