Housing secretary to be grilled this week on ‘levelling up’ department’s performance
Michael Gove is to face the music in parliament on several key issues affecting the housing market including the cladding and building safety scandals and controversial planning reforms.
The new housing secretary Michael Gove (pictured) is to be grilled by fellow MPs on Monday about his newly-named department’s performance and in particular its handling of the cladding crisis.
Other topics to be discussed will include building safety, planning reforms and the effect of its new ‘levelling up’ responsibilities since Gove over from Robert Jenrick following last month’s cabinet reshuffle.
Gove took over at the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) on 15th September after the former Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government was dropped.
He will be quizzed at 4pm on Monday by the 11 MPs that sit on parliament’s Select Committee overseeing DHLUC’s activities lead by chair Clive Betts.
There will be plenty to discuss – among many pressing issues, MPs may want to know why the much-heralded White Paper on private rental sector reform was recently delayed until next year, what’s happened to the RoPA proposals to overhaul the estate agency sector and why his department refuses to consider reform of tenancies to enable landlords to accept pets more easily.
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The government’s watered-down planning reforms, which was a personal project of the Prime Minister’s, will also prompt a lively debate – a survey of property professionals recently found that planning remains the single greatest obstacle to residential development.
A more controversial subject for Gove to discuss will be the sacking of Gove’s Parliamentary private secretary Angela Richardson MP last week.
She was removed from her role after abstaining during a parliamentary vote to initiate a review of the standards system for MPs in the wake of the Owen Paterson lobbying scandal, only to be reinstated the next day.
