Around two dozen Labour MPs have called for ministers to force developers to build over a million homes which have already received planning permission before legislation is changed around environmental protections. Part three of the new bill will allow developers to achieve their environmental obligations by paying into a central nature restoration fund which would be used to make environmental improvements elsewhere at a later date.

But vocal opponent to this section of the bill, the Labour MP for North East Hertfordshire, Chris Hinchliff, said that the current proposal would allow developers to sidestep environmental protections and has submitted several amendments aimed at strengthening protections for nature. He has also accused the housebuilding sector of landbanking and of drip-feeding developments to inflate prices so he has also proposed financial penalties for developers who don’t build as promised.

However Dr Maya Singer Hobbs, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) commented that developers “are not deliberately building slowly to stymie housebuilding, but they are not going to build at a rate that will reduce house prices – it’s not in their interest to do this, and indeed they have legal obligations to shareholders that would prevent this. There might be a case to explore whether giving local authorities the power to apply a ‘use it or lose it’ approach to planning permission would speed up delivery.”