Ok, so here is what we appear to actually be talking about.
It's an expansion of the office-to-resi, planning free housing conversions to more commercial buildings, especially empty shops.
It's an expansion of the office-to-resi, planning free housing conversions to more commercial buildings, especially empty shops.
Permitted development rights for office to resi (introduced in 2013) has resulted in a new generation of housing like this, which is often used for housing homeless families https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-47720887
So you can see why he went for "lol, newts" rather than "sleep in a former warehouse or abandoned department store if you get made homeless"
I'd also raise substantial concern about this passage. Lots of brownfield sites would count as 'demolish and rebuilding' a redundant site. You would lose an enormous amount of affordable housing from urban developments with this.