Theresa Villiers used a parliamentary question last week to ask the prime minister to abolish centrally-set targets for new local housing.

She raised the issue with Rishi Sunak at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday saying: “Excessive housing targets are placing greater and greater pressure on councils to approve development which damages our environment.”

Before adding: “When the prime minister came to Finchley over the summer, he said he wanted to abolish those targets. Will he use the levelling up bill report stage to bring forward government amendments to do that?”

In his response, the prime minister did not specifically pledge to ditch the targets however he expressed sympathy with the question saying that he wanted decisions on housing to be “taken locally with greater say for local communities rather than distant bureaucrats.”

Earlier last week, in an article for Conservative Home, the Chipping Barnet MP had outlined her concerns in more detail. She wrote: “I have never known a time when there were so many applications for blocks of flats which are entirely inappropriate in a low-rise suburban neighbourhood like my constituency in Barnet.”

And concluded: “Home building should be something that is done in partnership with local communities, not inflicted on them as if they were some force-fed foie gras goose.”

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