My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Best, Lord Cameron, Lord Kennedy, and Lord Stoneham, and thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. They give me the opportunity to set out how we think starter homes can contribute to the important rural housing agenda.
Noble Lords have articulated very well how rural areas have a series of challenges, including being dominated by perhaps a certain age group or second-home owners, and seasonally dominated—I can think of one place in Cornwall, Mousehole, which I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, knows well, which is almost deserted in the winter and packed so full in the summer that you can hardly move. Further challenges are how the few people that live there sustain themselves during other times of the year and how key workers can be brought in to fulfil certain essential jobs, and so on.
Amendments 50A and 50C are both concerned with rural exception sites. Young first-time buyers face significant affordability pressures in many rural areas, so we want the development of starter homes to make a significant contribution to housebuilding in these areas. The use of rural exception sites is an established means for supporting sensitive housing growth where it is locally supported and meeting local needs. It is very important to underline that. We do not want to undermine the operation of rural exception sites.
Our rural productivity plan, which was published last August, set out priorities for growing the rural economy and the need to increase the availability of housing in rural towns and villages to help them thrive. In our consultation on changes to the NPPF we have consulted on amending the policy on rural exception sites to allow starter homes to be included. The current policy allows for some market housing on rural exception sites to enable some cross-subsidy of affordable housing, and we have tested at consultation whether this mix should include starter homes.
We also consulted on allowing local planning authorities to have the flexibility to require a local connection test on rural exception sites. This reflects the particular needs of rural areas, where local connections can be important and access to the housing market for working people can be difficult, as a number of noble Lords have pointed out. It would also reflect the current local connection tests on rural exception sites.
My noble friends Lord Deben and Lord Young talked about philanthropic landowners; the question of whether they will continue to bring forward their land for the best-intentioned purposes needs to be addressed. We have absolutely no wish to switch off the operation of these sites. They can provide a really good mix of tenures, including private housing for cross-subsidy, and starter homes might be another tenure type.
I would like to make several points here. First, many of the sites that come forward in rural areas are small. When we start to deliberate about the site size for starter homes, it may well be that many sites will not be relevant.
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