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Matthew Pennycook has been appointed as a minister in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) under Sir Keir Starmer’s new Labour government.
Matthew Pennycook, DLUHC minister of state
He is widely expected to take on the housing and planning portfolio. Pennycook, Labour’s MP for Greenwich and Woolwich since May 2015, had served as shadow housing minister since 2021. Confirmation of portfolios is set to be announced “in due course”, according to a government source.
Pennycook joins DLUHC alongside Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner, who was appointed as the secretary of state on Friday. Jim McMahon has also been joined the department as a minister and is expected to take on the local government portfolio.
The former housing minister, the Conservative Party’s Lee Rowley, lost his seat in North East Derbyshire in the general election.
Speaking on X, formerly Twitter, Pennycook said it was a “real honour” to be appointed minister of state. “Tackling the housing crisis and boosting economic growth is integral to national renewal. Time to get to work.”
A promise to reform the planning system “immediately” formed a large part of Labour’s election campaign , with Starmer in a speech last month declaring Labour “will get Britain building again” and claiming the Conservative government had ignored the planning system for 14 years.
In June, speaking as shadow housing minister, Pennycook said modular housebuilding would play a key part in Labour’s plan to meet its target of building 1.5 million new homes in the next five years.
Nathan Emerson, chief executive of property agents’ professional body Propertymark, welcomed the appointment, but warned there “can be no room for error” in light of the enormous demand for housing.
“Housing must play a pivotal role for the government and in real terms, delivering over 1,100 new homes every single working day for the next five years will take immense planning and enormous stakeholder engagement to achieve,” he said.
“There needs to be a long-term, cross-party approach with continuity built in as standard – we should never be looking at a housing plan as an insular five-year government term, in case of any change down the line.”
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