Chris Curtis MP: speeches

Speeches

• 30 Jun 2026 · Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  I thank the shadow Minister for making that point because it was the last point I was going to briefly make before wrapping up. This is the key point: it adds not only uncertainty, but delays. If uncertainty has costs in the housing system, the developers might go to the Planning Inspectorate, but that adds extra delay and costs. Most of the developments in schedule 1 are very small—often up to just 10 properties. The margins that a developer would make on that project are much smaller than the costs of that delay and of having to go to the Planning Inspectorate in the first place. That means that most developments across the country have effectively stopped construction altogether. The big consequence of that is that SME builders, particularly those in local communities who have generally been building smaller sized developments, are going under. One of the only ways to fix that is by bringing certainty back into the system, given that uncertainty is one of the reasons why they have been facing challenges.

• 30 Jun 2026 · Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  I have taken up too much time; people really want to get off. We all accept that we should be focusing on smaller sites because, as the Minister set out, the bigger sites should be decided and focused on by the planning committees. This measure will free up more of their time to focus on those bigger sites and issues. However, schedule 1 sets the size of small sites at nine properties or fewer, which I think is at the lower end of people’s expectations. I appreciate that the Minister has done lots of consultation work on the draft regulations, but given that just 69% of the properties built each year would fall into that category, can he please give us some information on how he has settled on that number? Will he consider raising that number in future, if he is convinced that it would lead to more benefit and more good-quality homes being constructed?

• 30 Jun 2026 · Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  I do not believe that democracy is changing it. It is fundamentally the incentives of certain local politicians to do this when they can have a veto power over a development that has a wider gain, often outside their local constituencies. That is a wider consequence. I am democratically elected, as is the shadow Minister, so in this sovereign Parliament we have the ability and right to set the rules under which that democracy operates.

• 30 Jun 2026 · Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  To prove that point, the hon. Gentleman would need to prove that the types of applications currently going to either officers or planning committees are effectively random, but they are not. We know that different types of applications go to each one, so we cannot make that comparison between the two numbers.

• 30 Jun 2026 · Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I would like to make a couple of additional points, adding to the really important comments made by the Minister about why these changes are important. It is worth dwelling on the fact that housing in this country is prohibitively expensive for too many people. That is the reason why people are increasingly having to wait so long to get on the housing ladder. Fundamentally, housing is too expensive because, first, there is not enough of it and, secondly, increasingly it is too expensive to build new housing units. If we want to bring the cost of housing down, we have to address those two problems. We have to increase the number of new homes that are built, but also decrease the cost of building them. On the latter, increasing global pressures, from supply chain disruptions to the impact of geopolitical events, are pushing up construction and labour costs. Most of those headwinds are outside our control, but when we have difficult headwinds it is even more important that we do everything we can with the levers that are within our control to bring down the cost of construction. I mention that because one of the most damaging, self-inflicted and unnecessary costs in our current house building system is uncertainty. Right now, there could be companies out there—including developers, housing associations or, as the shadow Minister said, local councils—that are looking to build new homes. They could be doing everything right; they could be putting the land together and coming up with a plan that builds the right amount of affordable housing, gives local planning gains and supports local infrastructure. After putting all that investment and support in, coming up with a plan and designing a project, they could still face the daunting prospect of having that development blocked at the eleventh hour by the whims of a small number of local councillors, who are often responding completely rationally to local political incentives. Obviously, those trade-offs exists. That uncertainty comes at a cost: we either add to the price of a house that constituents are paying for, or we decrease the amount of planning gain that we can make from the developers. By definition, it either means higher housing costs or it means fewer GP surgeries, less road infrastructure or fewer affordable homes being built. That is the cost of having more uncertainty in the system. It is right that we reduce that uncertainty; one way to do that is by having decisions made by officers who are following planning laws, rather than by people who are responding to political incentives.

• 11 Feb 2026 · Woodland Creation · Hansard source

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  I thank everyone who has contributed, including my hon. Friends the Members for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer), for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), for Thurrock (Jen Craft), for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff), for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) and for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Alison Taylor), as well as the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson). People like me often talk about the importance of building new homes and infrastructure in this country, and no one in Government should apologise for housing targets in places anywhere across the country—but I do not think, nor will I ever believe, that that is in conflict with improving nature. My city is proof of that. Derek Walker, the chief architect of Milton Keynes, said that for the city to be a success, it needed to be “a forest city that would be greener than the surrounding countryside”. He achieved that. The reason I am so supportive of the Government’s nature strategy is that it would allow that sort of thing to happen again as it supports outcome over process. I would like to see the Department go further in ensuring that, when we enhance nature in this country, we focus on outcome and not on process, so that, for example, when we are building a railway line across this country and there is a £120 million to spend, it is spent on ensuring that we can enhance and protect forests, and not on a pointless bat tunnel that does absolutely nothing to enhance nature. When we think about an energy strategy for the future, as was recommended by the nuclear regulatory taskforce, we acknowledge that building nuclear power stations is one of the best ways of enhancing nature in this country because it means that, within a very small geography, we can produce a great deal of energy. Anybody who cares about protecting nature should support the Department in implementing those measures in full. I conclude by returning to the topic of trees and woodlands. They say that planting a tree is the greatest act of altruism. The time spent digging and planting is a small act, but it will shape the Earth for future generations. Consider the people who planted the 22 million trees in Milton Keynes; Fred Roach, the guy who led the development corporation, died a few years before I was born, but the city he built, the trees he planted and the green spaces he created were enjoyed by my family, especially me and my brother as we were growing up. This Government need to show that same altruistic attitude, planting trees and forests so that this country can remain a green and pleasant land for centuries to come. Question put and agreed to. Resolved , That this House has considered the matter of woodland creation.

• 16 Dec 2025 · Planning Reform · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for the statement, and for the support for getting our housing market going again, particularly when it comes to brownfield sites; proposals for many of them are still being held up right across the country. He says that he will not at this stage make NDMPs statutory. Many people across the sector would like him to do so, because of the extra certainty it would provide. When he talks about the risk and uncertainty of taking that approach, what does he mean? If he will revisit this question, when might he do so? What will he be looking at when he potentially makes the decision to revisit that question?

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the importance of creating abundance in the housing market. Does he therefore think it was wrong for his party and the Prime Minister at the time to come to my constituency during the general election and campaign against the new homes being built there, which this country so desperately needs?

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  With respect, I think that I have already taken the debate a little bit away from stamp duty, and I do not want to go into the wider tax system—although, as I have said, it is important to broaden the debate and engage in a wider conversation about property taxes, as I have tried to do. If the Opposition genuinely want to remove stamp duty, I invite them to engage in that wider conversation in good faith. If we want to remove costs at the point of transaction for those buying high-value homes, it is only fair to ask them to contribute more through day-to-day charges. Such a system would be fairer, would support mobility, and would meet the objectives that I think are shared by Members on both sides of the House: a housing market that works, more building, and a tax system that is both pro-growth and fiscally responsible.

• 23 Oct 2025 · Building Safety Regulator · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the performance of the Building Safety Regulator. It is an unrivalled pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate and colleagues from four different parties for adding their names to the application. Since being elected last year, I have been searching for something that the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) and I can agree on, and I am thankful that we finally managed to find it. The breadth of support demonstrates the shared determination across the House to make the system work better. I also thank those from across the industry for their tireless campaigning on the issue, as well as for the constructive way they have worked to ensure that we can get safer buildings across the housing system and provide the supply that is so desperately needed. Across the construction and development sectors, there is rightly a growing frustration about how the new building safety regime operates in practice. Everybody supports the principle of safer buildings, but there is increasing concern that the system as it stands is holding back progress on building the new homes that are so desperately needed. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mike Reader) and I sought this debate because of the growing concern across industry that the Building Safety Regulator, while well intentioned, is becoming a real barrier to hitting the 1.5 million homes target that we promised at the general election and that it is so important we achieve. We should be absolutely clear that this debate is not an attack on the principle of building safety—very far from it. Seventy-two people lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017—72 lives needlessly and tragically lost. It remains a stain on our national conscience that it took such a disaster to ensure that we have proper accountability and testing in the building industry. The Building Safety Regulator is a vital part of ensuring that nothing like Grenfell ever happens again, but it has to work. Time and again, developers and councils tell me exactly the same story: that schemes are stuck in the system and that, although the regulator is supposed to process applications within 12 weeks, tens of thousands of homes are still stuck to this day. The latest figures suggest that 22,000 homes are waiting for a remediation decision and that 33,000 new homes are waiting for approval. The cost of that is severe: according to the Centre for Policy Studies, there has been a 73% drop in housing starts in London over the past year, with the regulator one of the biggest causes. It is good to see today’s Government announcement on the ways we are going further to get the London housing market moving again, but the industry will still say the Building Safety Regulator is one of the biggest obstacles. Perhaps the biggest travesty is that if we do not build new safer homes, more people in this city and across the rest of the country are stuck in more dangerous and older properties. That is before we even start to consider the thousands who are stuck in temporary accommodation —one child in every classroom—or those who are paying extortionate rents because this country has failed for decades to build the homes that are needed. We now see a growing backlog in the BSR because telecoms infrastructure is being caught up in the new regulations for high-risk buildings—I say this in a building where I still cannot seem to get good phone signal, because we are not building the mobile phone infrastructure that is required across the city. That is causing real practical problems. It threatens to seriously impact the delivery of new buildings, particularly when rooftop installations are involved. If that is not addressed quickly, it could slow down construction and digital roll-out at exactly the point when this country needs to be improving both. The delays affect not just developers but people: the families living in buildings that are still awaiting remediation and the people who know that their homes are not yet deemed fully safe. The stress that causes day after day is unimaginable. When we talk today about process, paper- work and delays, we must remember the human beings at the heart of this issue. The economic impact is also huge: rising insurance costs, development finance drying up and higher up-front fees—all before a single brick gets laid. It has a real effect on the viability of building, particularly in our bigger cities. Peter John, the former head of Southwark council put it bluntly: “The greatest single burden developers have faced over the last five years has been the introduction of the Building Safety Regulator. The unintended consequence of improving building safety cannot be to cut off the supply of new homes.” He is right. Melanie Leech of the British Property Federation told the Select Committee that BSR delays are holding back two thirds of the build-to-rent pipeline. As we are rightly reforming the Renters’ Rights Bill, which was considered in the Commons again yesterday, we need to ensure that new build-to-rent properties are built, in order to keep the system unclogged. Fewer new rental properties obviously means higher rental prices for everyone else. The Home Builders Federation says exactly the same: the delivery of high-rise developments has “ground to a halt”. Earlier this week, the Government held their regional investment summit, and the message could not have been clearer: the UK is open for business, full of opportunity and led by a Government determined to drive growth. But investors also reminded us about the hard truth that investment is global, and if it takes too long or if it is too difficult to see a return here, capital will simply go elsewhere. We must pull down the barriers to investment and make it easier for growth to happen right here in the UK. If we are serious about growth, we need to back the builders, not the blockers. The good news is that fixing this does not require a huge amount of money from the Treasury—given how difficult it is to get money out of the Treasury—and it is not primarily about huge amounts of new spending. But it does mean investing in the right people: the experts who can process complex applications quickly and accurately. Will the Minister confirm whether the BSR will have the flexibility to offer market rates to attract those people, rather than being constrained by standard civil service pay bands? Secondly, it is about culture. Too many developers tell me they face a “computer says no” approach—an invalid application is simply rejected, forcing the whole process to restart. That would be frustrating enough over 12 weeks, but over nine months or more it is a killer for confidence. One of the most frustrating stories I have heard in all this is from a developer who was asked by someone at the Building Safety Regulator to slow down the speed at which they were making applications, to stop the BSR from becoming overwhelmed. At a time when this Government are rightly determined to speed up house building, it is frustrating to see an arm of government trying to slow the process down.

• 23 Oct 2025 · Building Safety Regulator · Hansard source

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  I will be as quick as I can. I welcome the Minister to her place and thank her for her response. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mike Reader) and the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) for bringing their experience from industry and talking about some of the things they believe we need to do to address these problems. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales), who has had experience of homelessness and therefore knows personally the importance of getting this right. Finally, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell), who reminds us of the backstory and the tragedy that made it so important for us to set up the Building Safety Regulator and get this right. My first debate in this House was about building safety, and I talked about my brother, who is one of the brave local firefighters in Milton Keynes. If there were an incident in a high-rise flat, he would be one of the people risking his life to fix it, so it is important that we get building safety right. He will be one of those going into unremediated buildings unless we have a Building Safety Regulator that can act quickly enough to enable remediations, and he will be one of those going into older and unsafe buildings if we cannot move residents into safer buildings because we cannot build them in the first place. We cannot forget the human cost of getting this wrong. I hope we are not back here in a year’s time still talking about a regulator that is not moving quickly enough and a country that is not building enough homes. Question put and agreed to. Resolved , That this House has considered the performance of the Building Safety Regulator.

• 23 Oct 2025 · Building Safety Regulator · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for those comments, which show exactly the kind of consequences we are facing because of what has been happening to the Building Safety Regulator. If we are not building new social homes, we have to ask where they are going to be instead. Quite often, children aged one or two are stuck in temporary accommodation, not learning to walk or crawl properly and having their life chances curtailed because this city and this country have failed to build the homes to give them a proper life chance. It is important that we stand up to the blockers who stand in the way of that. Could we move to a more collaborative approach, in which BSR staff can work iteratively with applications to resolve issues as they arise, rather than starting from scratch each time? I have heard worrying reports of inconsistency, with different teams taking different decisions on similar cases. What is being done to ensure greater transparency and consistency? Has the Department assessed whether further guidance is needed for both applications and the regulator itself? The BSR has said that it hopes to clear the gateway 2 backlog before Christmas. I welcome that level of ambition, but will the Minister confirm what support the Government are providing to make it happen and whether new applications submitted after that point will be turned around within 12 weeks? Once gateway 2 approvals start to come through, we will start hitting the gateway 3 process, which is the sign-off after construction and before occupation. What preparation is being made to ensure that that process does not simply become the new bottleneck? I will finish with a slightly wider point. Grenfell was a national tragedy caused by unforgiveable negligence, and it was right that the state responded, but when we design new regulations or regulators, we must remember the cost of getting it wrong. In this case, the cost is stalled projects, families waiting longer in unsafe homes, tens of thousands of children waking up this morning in temporary accommodation, and families paying unaffordable rents. The intent was sound; the implementation has been a catastrophic failure. The lesson is clear: future systems must be built with feedback loops from day one, clear service standards, real-time data on performance, and consistent guidance. If the first version falls short, as it will from time to time, we need rapid reform, not months of drift while the consequences stack up. That is not about weakening safety; it is how we deliver better and faster. It is how we honour the lives of the 72 people we lost at Grenfell—not only by saying, “Never again,” but by building more of the safe, modern homes that this country needs, with a regulator worthy of the trust we place in it.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Government Performance against Fiscal Rules · Hansard source

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  The only way out of the economic doom loop that the previous Government got us into is by growing the British economy again. If the British economy had grown over the past 10 years as quickly as the OECD national average, there would be £40 billion more sitting in the Exchequer without having to touch spending or taxes at all. [ Interruption. ] The Conservatives talk about the fastest growth in the G7—that is like walking the first 26 miles of a marathon and then bragging about jogging over the finish line. Growth was unacceptably slow under the previous Government, so can the Chief Secretary let us know what he is doing to get the British economy growing again, particularly changing the broken planning system so that we can build more homes and energy infrastructure here in the UK?