Debate contribution: Housebuilding on Public Land

Debate contribution by Mr Gordon Lyons on 31 March 2025.

MLA

Mr Gordon Lyons

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

31 March 2025

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Housebuilding on Public Land

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4871630

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the mover of the motion and all those who have contributed to the debate, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to it. Through the housing supply strategy and the inclusion of housing as a priority in the Programme for Government, I have provided a renewed focus on housing during the mandate. That must be matched by a commitment right across the Executive to do things differently. As the House will be aware, the strategy takes a 15-year, whole-system approach to addressing the many interconnected issues that impact on housing supply. One such issue is, of course, the need to identify and release suitable land that could be used for building homes. Plenty of such land is owned by Departments and other public bodies, but much of it is not being put to any economic use or is being underutilised. I want to change that and to use that land to support the provision of social and affordable housing. In the past, the release of land was challenging for landowning Departments and agencies, many of which had poor information about their land assets. We knew in general terms that there were land assets, but the accurate information needed to properly address the issue was not available. For that reason, some years ago, my Department initiated the public land for housing project to identify unused and underused land that could be used for housing. That project led directly to the development of the government land and property register by LPS in the Department of Finance, which can be viewed by the public. Taking that work a step further, I am pleased to support the work of Land and Property Services in establishing a new division called the "strategic asset management unit". That goes live on 1 April 2025. I support the intent of the motion, but we now have something in place that will help us to achieve some of the things that were mentioned during the debate. I believe that the creation of a public land agency, which, as Mr Gaston pointed out, would be more appropriate for the Department of Finance than the Department for Communities, would take more time and energy and would duplicate what we already have. For those reasons, I am supportive of the broader motion and its intent, but I cannot support the idea that we should create another agency when we already have bodies in place that can do the work that needs to be done. The new division will provide support to Departments and their arm's-length bodies to enable them to use land and property more effectively, including for housing. That work will be a key action in my housing supply strategy. I have also recently launched a five-year pilot with the Housing Executive and council planning officials. The aim of the pilot, which is called "Housing Executive land acquisition" (HELA), is to identify sufficient land to deliver 100 social housing units in areas of acute housing need. I have also worked closely with Belfast City Council to bring forward housing development on DFC- and council-owned sites in the city. I have said many times before that budgets are tight. I have also said that we must act differently. Therefore, I am pleased to announce today that it is my intention to bring a paper to the Executive to set out new options for the disposal of public land. I want to maximise delivery with the budget that we have. Using land in a way that supports increasing housing supply is a big part of that. As I said, although I am supportive of the broad intent set out in the motion — I have set out how I and other Departments have already taken steps to do what the motion asks — we cannot support the idea of establishing the public land agency. It would be a complex undertaking, and there are ways to release public land much more quickly and with far less costly administration. Furthermore, it would be a complex, cross-departmental undertaking, and thus any decision to establish a public land agency would not be mine to take.

Essentially, my concern is that, in an era of limited budgets, when we are not able to allocate as much funding to social housing as we might like, we need to do something new and innovative and look at different ways to solve the issue. The whole point of the debate has been for the Member to highlight the issue that I am already working on, which is the need to look at how we can cut costs elsewhere. If the Executive are not able to provide financial resource to me, what can the Executive do on the land resource that might be made available? Therefore, I will bring a paper to the Executive on new proposals. The Member will understand that I will bring that to the Executive before telling him, much as I would like to do that. It is important that we look at all of the ways in which we can tackle the issue. My point is simple: I do not want to support a motion that, although it will not bind anybody, will put down a marker that says what the view of the Assembly is when I do not believe that it is or should be the view of the Assembly that we duplicate what is already in place and put in an additional layer of administration. I can confirm to the Member that I am content with the intent of his motion but, because of the additional issue of the public land agency, am not content to support it. I want to address some of the comments that have been made. Mention has been made again and again of the need for the waste water infrastructure to be in place: I absolutely support that, and I raised it with the previous Infrastructure Minister. I have asked for a meeting with the current Infrastructure Minister, following on from commitments that have been made in the housing supply strategy, to make sure that we get this right and that we can talk about it and make progress.

That is a surprise, and it is also disappointing, given that the strategic direction has been set by the housing supply strategy. Commitments have been made, and there is also a Programme for Government commitment to deal with the housing issue. I was not aware that those comments had been made, but l look forward to raising them with the Minister in my discussion with her. That is useful information. I want to respond to a couple of comments made by Carál Ní Chuilín. There had been the idea of getting our best and brightest together at a housing summit to address some of the issues. We had a successful round table towards the end of last year, and we are taking forward actions from that. I do not agree with the analysis that, in some way, we are just bumbling along on the issue. I believe that we have made incredible progress over the past year. We have a plan in place. We have the housing supply strategy that has been agreed by all Executive colleagues. That has never happened before. We have a Programme for Government commitment in place that puts an additional focus on that, and, as has been mentioned around the Chamber today, we are doing innovative things on affordable rent, including the 600 homes that were announced last week, whereby we can tackle some of the huge costs around temporary accommodation, including non-standard accommodation in hotels and bed and breakfasts. The loan-to-acquire move-on accommodation fund is another use of financial transactions capital in a way that we can make a difference and help people to get out of the homelessness system. I have bid for and received allocations to increase the number of social homes. We had intended, at the beginning of this year, to build 400 social homes: that has gone up to 1,400 completions. Therefore, progress is being made. We are moving forward, albeit not as quickly as I would like, but I genuinely believe that, through the housing supply strategy, we have a plan in place for the first time. That is to be welcomed. Members have mentioned the revitalisation of the Housing Executive. I am glad that there is cross-party and cross-community support in the House for that; it could be a game changer. I have pressed and pressed on that at every level, because I genuinely believe that it is one of the most transformational things that we will be able to do during the mandate and that it could make a real difference and set us up well for the future. Those are —

I will give way to Mr Allen.

Ultimately, it will be for His Majesty's Treasury to confirm what, we all believe, should happen, which is that there should be a change in how the Housing Executive is treated with regard to its borrowing. We have made the case, provided information and made arguments at a political level. I believe that we are moving forward on this. The information that has been requested from us and the answers that we have been able to provide indicate to me that we are moving forward, but I want to make it clear to the UK Government that, if they want to do something that is genuinely transformational and can help make a difference, a very simple confirmation of change in the borrowing rules would achieve that. I look forward to them doing that very soon. I thank everyone for their comments and their contributions to the debate. I thank the mover of the motion, in particular. He highlighted the issue of the bunker in Ballymena: perhaps he can bring proposals to the Executive Office on how that could be used. In response to his query, I do not think that we are actively preparing for a nuclear event. If we are, I have not been informed about it; I do not know whether I will have a seat in the bunker. If I do, he is more than welcome to have it. If I had to make a choice between being in the bunker with my Executive colleagues and taking my chances in the event of a nuclear apocalypse, I know which one I would choose

However, it is an important point: a lot of money is being used in the maintenance of such buildings. Clearly, there are statutory duties on us, but there is an important point, which is that we need to make best use of public land. That is certainly something that I want to make sure that we can do. I am doing that work, and I will continue to do that work so that we can deliver the homes that we so desperately need.

1,830 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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