Local Authority Finances
Lord Swire Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, of course I acknowledge that, in 2010, difficult decisions had to be made about public finances both centrally and in local government. However, in recent years, we have seen real-terms increases in the finances going towards local authorities. I also recognise the pressure that they face on issues such as adult and children’s social care and special educational needs provision. We have seen real increases in demand. Alongside additional funding, we need to look carefully at the right reforms to put in place to help manage that demand, without just putting in more and more funding.
Lord Swire (Con)
Is there any appetite within the Government to look at the existing structures of local government? It seems increasingly difficult to justify having parish councils, town councils, district councils, county councils and unitary authorities. Is it not time to review the value for money we get from these different tiers and possibly to rationalise them?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, the levelling-up White Paper set out our ambition for every part of the country that wanted a devolution deal in place to have one. As I referred to earlier, we are seeing trail-blazers of greater devolution in mayoral combined authorities, where we can put power back into the hands of local communities.
Building Repairs: VAT
Lord Swire Excerpts(5 months, 1 week ago)
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Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the National Churches Trust and of the Lincolnshire Churches Trust, and one who has been a churchwarden for 36 years. It really is crucial that the Government recognise that the most important group of historic buildings in our country are our parish churches and give them some assistance. The Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme is coming to an end, as my friend the right reverend Prelate said, and we do not wish to see the parish churches of England crumbling into decay.
Baroness Penn (Con)
I absolutely recognise the points that my noble friend is making, but the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme is making a real difference to churches, as recognised by the right reverend Prelate. It gives grants covering the VAT on repairs of over £1,000 to listed buildings used as places of worship. It is not coming to an end; it runs until the end of March 2025. Of course, any decisions for the spending review period after that will come in due course.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, have the Government undertaken a cost assessment of the number of schools that have asbestos in them and that are also affected by RAAC? They need replacing, because the children in these schools are currently at risk of exposure to asbestos fibres, and the same applies to many hospital buildings. Has there been a comparison of the costs of renovation versus replacement for these public buildings?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I acknowledge the point that the noble Baroness has made. We are doing two things in this area. We have updated the National Planning Policy Framework so that, in determining planning applications, local planning authorities should give significant weight to the need to support energy efficiency and low-carbon heating improvements to existing buildings. Specifically on the practical planning barriers that households can face when they are in conservation areas or listed buildings, in our energy security strategy, published last year, we committed to reviewing the barriers that people in such buildings face. That review is under way and I believe that the outcome will be published shortly.
Baroness Penn (Con)
I do not have a figure for the overall cost, but the noble Baroness is absolutely right that it will be important for social housing to help make the transition. A lot of our early support has focused on this housing stock—for example, through the social housing decarbonisation fund—because local authorities will need support to take these measures and because the benefits of greater energy efficiency and lower bills need to be targeted at lower income households first.
Noble Lords
Lord Swire (Con)
They tried to silence me.
The right reverend Prelate is absolutely right to raise this issue again, and we should continue to raise it. The Government hid for years behind the fig leaf of the EU, saying they were unable to vary the rate of VAT. We are now out of the EU and this is the time to look at that. If the Government are serious about reusing and refurbishing our stock of older properties, they should look again. We are not asking for any kind of VAT reduction; we are looking for parity. I do not understand the intellectual argument for two rates of VAT—one which clearly discriminates against the built heritage sector. On that subject, I just say to my noble friend that, if she talks to anybody in the heritage sector, as I am sure she does, she will find that the backlog of repairs because of this pernicious rate of VAT is now extremely concerning.
Baroness Penn (Con)
I say to my noble friend that we are taking advantage of the flexibilities we have since leaving the EU in reducing rates of VAT. We have announced that the installation of qualifying energy-saving materials in residential accommodation has a zero rate of VAT until March 2027. This support is worth over £1 billion and will help households and charities improve their energy efficiency in buildings and reduce carbon emissions. As I said earlier, we get requests to reduce the rate of VAT across a number of different areas, and we consider them very carefully, but they have to be considered in the context of how much revenue VAT raises. As I said, the total cost of requests across different areas has totalled some £50 billion since we have left the EU.
General Elections: Party-political Spending
Lord Swire Excerpts(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, this is not an unusual exercise. In fact, uprating has been done under successive Administrations of all political colours and is done regularly for other matters too. It is provided for in the original legislation passed by this Parliament. By using those powers, we are simply restoring the levels of spending limits that were provided for by Parliament.
Lord Swire (Con)
What is the view of the Government about the allegations that some political parties or political operatives are seeking to lure away existing elected Members of the other place with promises of money? Is that something that the Government will be looking at?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I am not sure of exactly what my noble friend refers to. None the less, it sounds like a serious matter that I would want to speak to him about after this Question.
Small and Medium-sized Housebuilders
Lord Swire Excerpts(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I have explained how we are supporting them financially, but we are aware that the planning system, for example, is not as user-friendly as it should be to SME builders. That is why we are making changes in the LUR Bill, but we are also trying to ensure that the planning system is now better funded, so any time now we will see an increase in planning fees, for example, by 35% for major applications and 25% for other applications. All this investment should make sure that SMEs find the system simpler and easier to use, and that therefore they can access it and build more houses for us.
Lord Swire (Con)
My Lords, the letter to the Prime Minister refers not to an anti-development policy but to an anti-development environment. I submit that the anti-development environment is in part caused by the fact that people are fed up with the large-volume housebuilders building identikit housing estates up and down the country, and that the people more likely to reflect the desires and wishes of local communities are the smaller, SME housebuilders.
The problem is also in design. We have had the Royal Fine Art Commission, which gave way to the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, which in turn has given way to the Design Council, but none of these bodies has really had teeth. What more can we do to ensure that there is greater control over the sort of properties we are building in the country, to give more training to local planning officers and to increase not only their quantity but their quality?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I think we need both types. We need the large developers building large numbers of houses; we also need to support our SMEs across this country. My noble friend is absolutely right. That is why we see quite a lot in the LUR Bill about beautiful homes for people in this country. Therefore, local authorities will in future have to produce design codes for their areas.