The CIOB has been asked by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) to contribute to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Housing and Planning on its newly formed National Housing Taskforce.
The RICS has acted as secretariat to the APPG for housing and planning since last summer. APPGs are informal, cross-party groups of MPs that have no official status within Parliament, but have joined together to pursue a particular topic or interest.
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The new APPG Taskforce aims to look at all areas of housing, tackling the UK’s housing crisis in 12 parallel work streams.
Among the property sector organisations involved are the Royal Town Planning Institute, Empty Homes, the G15 grouping of London’s largest housing associations, the National Community Land Trust Network and the RIBA.
By drawing together organisations from right across the built environment sector, all of which will play to their respective strengths, it is hoped workable and resilient solutions to the housing challenges will be produced.
“We have been asked to provide the secretariat to the construction skills, materials and new technology stream. This will involve us commissioning a number of MPs and Peers across all parties, as well as industry representatives, to look at the problem.”
David Barnes, CIOB
The plan is to deliver a final authoritative report for publication early next year.
David Barnes, research, communications & policy officer at the CIOB, told CM that the new Taskforce would aim to take advantage of each organisation’s particular skills and match them with problems to find solutions in the housing sector.
He explained: “The plan is for there to be 12 different property work streams, they will each be assigned certain issues in the housing area to tackle and will be matched to their skills. For example, we have been asked to provide the secretariat to the construction skills, materials and new technology stream. This will involve us commissioning a number of MPs and Peers across all parties, as well as industry representatives, to look at the problem.”
The Housing & Planning APPG is headed by James Cartlidge, Conservative MP for South Suffolk and founder of Share To Buy, which helps people buy shared equity housing. Its other members are Mark Prisk MP (Conservative), Helen Hayes MP (Labour) Lord Richard Best (cross bench peer and president of the Local Government Association) and Stephen Pound MP (Labour).
The precise work programmes across the 12 streams will be announced within weeks. Most of the work is expected to be conducted over the summer.
