Housing secretary Robert Jenrick has defended the government’s record on housing delivery, insisting that permitted-development schemes – such as office-to-residential conversions – had delivered homes that otherwise would not have existed.

Jenrick was answering questions in parliament after councils’ lobby group the Local Government Association released figures suggesting the light-touch planning regime had cost the nation 13,500 affordable homes over the past four years. That is because the developers of such schemes do not need to comply with the same planning obligations that the normal application route demands.

Shadow housing minister John Healey asked Jenrick whether delivery of new affordable homes was rising as a result of permitted development and accused the Conservative Party of failing to fix the nation’s housing crisis – as well as staying quiet on the topic of new homes in the general election campaign.

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