Civil Service Impartiality

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

It is for the Civil Service of the day to prepare for Governments, as I remember doing in 1997, with three lots of policies. It is very important that ACOBA looks at this appointment. The business appointment rules govern the process by which civil servants take up new employment—it is part of their contract. As my right honourable friend the Paymaster-General said in the other place, there are various sets of rules and guidance designed to make sure that impartiality is observed in the Civil Service, particularly with the movement of senior Ministers or civil servants into other jobs.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, it important to see impartiality in our Civil Service, which is judged throughout the world as the finest—arguably until Thursday—but precedents are just as important. The noble Baroness opposite said that one precedent was my noble friend Lord Frost. He was a special adviser—a political post—for five years and was also in the House of Lords before he took up a post as a Minister, so that is not a precedent. Last Thursday, a Second Permanent Secretary who was at the heart of this Government and of policy, and who advised government officials, turned over and took a political post without any break in contract. For me, that is completely different. Does my noble friend, who has Civil Service experience, agree that this move is simply without precedent?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I agree that it is both unusual and without precedent, and I agree that Ministers must be able to speak to their officials from a position of trust. As the Cabinet Office Minister, I have worked closely with Ms Gray two or three times a week. My noble friend is right and asks a legitimate question.

Housebuilding: Target

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we seem to be going around every type of housing that we could possibly build, but it is very important to recognise that we have a future homes standard, that we have set that to be in place by 2025 and that we continue to build homes that are reducing our carbon footprint—and, actually, modern methods of construction are precisely the way to do it.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, our Built Environment Committee report made it clear that, if the number of new homes is to be increased, improvements are needed in several areas of public policy, especially planning. More than half of all authorities have no local plans, with Slough the latest to drop its plan because of uncertainty. Will the Government do everything possible—there are examples in the report—to ensure that the defect is remedied and that we have homes of all tenures for everybody to live in?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for all the sterling work she does on the Built Environment Committee. I recognise that there is a problem around local plans. Indeed, it is the planning lawyers who point out that we need more robust timetabling again, to ensure that local authorities undertake their duties to have a plan to shape their areas.

Building Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for her amendment. It has been a fascinating debate, with lovely Latin phrases which I am sure have been worked on all afternoon using Google Translate.

As the Government have made clear, it is important that we restore a sense of balance and proportionality to fire safety. We must ensure that fire risk assessments of external walls do not require unnecessary work and reduce the risk aversion we have seen in the sector. The department has already taken steps to ensure that industry takes a proportionate approach to the assessment of the external walls of buildings and I can reassure my noble friend that we will continue to work with industry, including lenders and surveyors, to keep under review the process used to assess external wall systems.

The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, mentioned that we have been tracking the data from mortgage lenders and it is available on the GOV.UK website. I have been looking at my Apple iPhone—I have given the brand away, but I do not know how I could have coded that without using the brand name—and the vast majority of mortgage valuations for flatted developments do not require an EWS1 form. The trend is also going down. I think the most recent data in January was that around 8% of mortgage valuations require an EWS1, so 92% do not. That is down from 9%. My department estimates that 492,000 leaseholders in residential buildings of 11 metres and above do not need to undergo an EWS1 assessment for their building for them to sell their property or remortgage. It is important that we continue to work with mortgage lenders to track how that is evolving over time. These things take time, but the trend is in the right direction.

The Government are also making preparations to launch a professional indemnity—or PII—scheme, targeted at qualified professionals to enable them to undertake EWS1 assessments where otherwise they would not be getting PII cover. A condition of PII coverage under the scheme will be that EWS1 assessments are carried out in line with PAS 9980. An audit process will be in place to monitor compliance to the standard.

I thank my noble friend for raising this important matter. She has absolutely championed that the Government get to grips with some of these points. I think we are making progress on a number of fronts now. I assure her that this work is of critical importance for the Government. We will continue to work closely with industry in the coming months to ensure that. I therefore ask that she withdraws her amendment.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend, particularly for giving the figures. Before Report, it would be good to have the figures for the non-high-risk buildings as well, because one of the concerns I had was that the industry was requiring people who were not caught by measures following Grenfell to have these EWS1 assessments. It was a probing amendment and I will reflect further in light of what has been said. It was a very good debate.

There is confusion and concern about the logjam, and we need to make sure that we have the support of the industry professionals who are needed to do this. Things can take a long time in the building industry, as I think we will hear when we debate retentions. I certainly did not want to lock horns with the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, who is such an excellent member of the Built Environment Committee, but to make sure that we had this debate and that we really do sort this issue, as I know the Government have said that they wish to. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Building Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Committee stage
Monday 28th February 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I was caught mid-sentence so I will go back to the beginning of that particular sentence. The noble Baroness suggests that we require detailed requirements on contravention notices to ensure the proper use of these powers, but that is better suited to regulations. Indeed, the balance between what is reasonable to expect of an accountable person, the urgency of building safety risks and protecting residents from potential misuse of powers is crucial. That is why we believe that this detail should be set out in regulations, developed in consultation with residents and accountable persons and subject to public consultation.

Amendment 52B would allow residents a reasonable time to remedy any alleged contravention before an application to the court; indeed, the Bill provides that the accountable person must specify the steps that the resident should take and a reasonable time for taking them. The court is very unlikely to issue an order before that time has expired.

Amendment 55C would require the building safety regulator to consult on and issue a statutory code of practice regarding powers of entry. Subsequently, Amendments 53B, 53C, 53D, 54B, 55A and 55B would require the accountable person to comply with a statutory code of practice and ensure that the right of entry into homes applies only in urgent cases or emergencies. In respect of Amendments 52A and 54A, the Government are closely listening to these points; however, the noble Baroness’s intention is already being achieved, as the resident would be notified of the application from the accountable person as part of the court process.

I would like to reassure the noble Baroness that there are already safeguards against misuse in this Bill. Under Clause 86, we will prescribe principles under which the accountable person must operate. These have been published in draft and include the requirement to consider the impacts on residents within the building.

In addition, the clause provides that accountable persons have a right of entry to a resident’s home with an order awarded by the court. The courts will apply established principles when considering any such application for entry and will grant access only when they consider it just to do so. This provides an effective safeguard against misuse. As noted in response to the points raised by my noble friend Lord Blencathra, we would expect the accountable person to seek to resolve issues directly with residents in the first instance to gain entry where it is needed.

The building safety regulator will issue guidance to accountable persons, which will set out the expectations for their system for handling residents’ duties and enforcing them. It is important to note that these powers are necessary for the accountable person to be able to discharge the legal duties we are placing on them. Although their use covers emergency cases, access may be needed where a resident refuses to allow the accountable person to discharge their duties. Indeed, the provision is designed for the discharge of day-to-day duties and not for emergency situations, which would require calling the emergency services.

As such, we must again strike a balance between protecting residents and affording the accountable person the tools needed to keep their building and residents safe. We believe that this balance is correctly achieved in the Bill. I understand the noble Baroness’s intentions with these amendments but, for the reasons I have given, I ask her not to press them.

I now turn to Amendment 107A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, which seeks to probe whether the retrospective liability provisions in Amendment 107 apply only to higher-risk buildings. I reiterate the points I made earlier when outlining the intent of the Government’s amendments. This course of action will apply to all dwellings and all buildings containing dwellings. The Government’s position is that the ability to recover cost contributions from product manufacturers should not be restricted to those who live in multi-occupied high-rise buildings. While it is true to say that the amount of cladding on lower-rise buildings is likely to be lower, we do not think it appropriate to exclude these just because the building is not as tall. The crucial factor must be the safety risk.

We are not restricting this course of action to buildings over 18 metres because we intend to enable all individuals who have suffered a loss as a result of a dwelling being made unfit for habitation due to the mis-selling of a product, a product being inherently defective or a breach of existing building regulations to seek cost contributions for the losses they have incurred. This course of action protects leaseholders and home owners by ensuring that all construction product manufacturers are held liable for their part in the creation of building safety defects. The broad application of this course of action to include all dwellings reinforces this principle and delivers a proportionate approach. The scope of this course of action to apply to all dwellings will mirror the Defective Premises Act.

Finally, I turn to my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe’s Amendment 147. I assure her that the Government have considered the impact on business of the measures I tabled on 14 February. We are clear that the principle of protecting leaseholders is paramount. It is fundamentally unfair that innocent leaseholders should be landed with bills that they cannot afford to fix problems that they did not cause. These amendments will right this wrong, and the Government consider it critical that the provisions take effect as soon as possible. I must therefore ask my noble friend to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Are the Government planning to produce an impact assessment on the new measures? My amendment was drafted the way it was on the advice of the Bill clerks, but obviously my main concern is to understand the detail of this promising package.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I am sorry; with the sheer length of the debate, we are now approaching the two-hour mark, so I hope that my noble friend will forgive me if I did not address that specific point. However, I did address the point that the Valentine’s Day amendments, tabled on 14 February, were made in haste. The work around impact assessment was therefore not carried out at that time, but obviously we intend to update our impact assessment to reflect all the amendments that the Government have brought forward; that is the good practice my noble friend seeks, I think.

I thank noble Lords for this debate, which has been an important and necessary part of the scrutiny of this legislation. I hope that, with the reassurances given, noble Lords will be happy to withdraw or not press their amendments. This has been a feast of a debate so let us conclude it with the two words that we used to say in our formal hall: benedicto benedicatur.

Building Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Committee stage
Monday 21st February 2022 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

My Lords, I was not expecting to be in what the Romans called a frigidarium for this stage of the Bill. It is positively bracing. I am sure that as the week wears on we will get a slightly more normal temperature. It is already slightly better, so it clearly just takes a bit of time.

I will try to capture each group of amendments in three words or fewer. I am going to call this group the “widening the scope” group of amendments—that is three words. I will go through each amendment in turn. In practice, I have sympathy with every idea that has been put forward. However, I would like noble Lords to consider that the more we widen the scope, the greater the risk that we will actually fail in the first duty of any Government, which is to keep people safe. Our focus has to be based on what it is reasonable to expect from a new regulator in the Health and Safety Executive. So, although I have sympathy, I will resist this group of amendments, because, when we talk about high risk, the scope has to be necessarily tight in order to give the HSE the chance to grow as a regulator and to implement this regime properly.

However, I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this first group of amendments. I believe that this is a landmark piece of legislation and a necessary one. I can feel the broad support that it has from all sides of the House, and I look forward to further debates in Committee. There has already been good discussion in this grouping, and I am grateful for the commitment from all noble Lords to improve the Bill and to reform building safety more generally. I have listened to the concerns raised by noble Lords and I thank them for their helpful contributions. As I said, I will respond to them all in turn.

I start by talking about the fire which the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, mentioned. It is true that it was a staggeringly awful fire, even though there was no loss of life, and the noble Lord captured that very well in his speech. I have spent quite a bit of time trying to learn the lessons of the near misses, if you like, so I have met Geeta Nanda, chair of the G15, who I have known for some time. She is also the chief executive of the Metropolitan Thames Valley housing association, which manages Richmond House within Worcester Park, which consists of 23 households of shared owners. I have also met Dean Summers—on Zoom; I have not met him in person—who took over from Sean Ellis, and I had a meeting with him as the new managing director of St James.

It is fair to say that Richmond House, which was built in 2011 by the Berkeley Group—St James is part of the Berkeley Group—was built in a shockingly bad way. It was built without internal compartmentalisation and certainly would never have passed the building regulations at the time. There was also inadequate fire-stopping, which is one of the reasons why the fire spread so quickly. Candidly, it is absolutely right that the Berkeley Group pays for its replacement and addresses all the losses suffered by the shared owners. I am very interested in that, and I have asked for a report from the housing association and Berkeley on progress on doing precisely that. The building was not built in line with building regulations, so it should not have happened. It is a four-storey building and is under 11 metres, which, according to the building regulations, should not have been able to happen, so we have an example of someone having signed off a building that should never have been signed off. That is the lesson of Richmond House.

Sometimes regulation does not work. That, for me, is the lesson. The other lesson is that fire is a tragedy, not just when you lose lives but in the opportunities lost. This Bill does a lot to make housing overall safer, and we will have much better housing stock over the next 30 years than we have had in the previous 30 years.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Another problem at Worcester Park might have been the failure to implement the building regulations. I have found building regulation enforcement very patchy. There has been a lot of very aggressive enforcement of building regulations in my lovely county, yet here there has obviously been a disaster with building regulations. Is enforcement of the regulations not also important, and will that be improved by our work here?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I think we need to ensure the competence of enforcement and that it works, and the competence of the people who assess buildings and sign them off as fit for human habitation. In the same way with crime where we want an absence of crime, we want an absence of these problems. Yes, we need to improve enforcement and there needs to be the strong arm of the law. That is why we want to have a strong regulator in this new regulator under the HSE. We have Housing Act powers for local authorities to intervene. The fire service has powers under the fire safety order. There are lots of powers and lots of regulators that can step in and do something about it. In this case, they all failed. Yes, we need to strengthen them. We understand a lot more about the inadequacies of some of the built environment, but my noble friend is right that we also need to strengthen enforcement.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, for his amendments. On Amendment 1, I hope noble Lords will agree that the regulator should exercise its functions in line with its first objective: to secure the safety of people in and around buildings. I am concerned that adding additional objectives for the new building safety regulator could distract from this mission. The Bill provides the regulator with a broader objective to improve the standard of buildings. Achieving this could involve the regulator improving regulatory standards relevant to property protection, such as security, resilience and fire safety, so the regulator’s remit already extends to considering these issues.

Adding a specific objective for property protection would have two main downsides. First, it would put property protection on a par with resident safety as a priority for the regulator. The Government believe that the regulator should prioritise residents’ safety and do not want the regulator to be distracted from that. There is a risk that a specific requirement always to consider property protection would result in the regulator favouring solutions that go beyond what is required for residents’ safety. The second downside is that this amendment risks skewing the building safety regulator’s oversight function. The Government intend the regulator to use evidence to identify emerging issues with the safety and performance of buildings and to make recommendations to Ministers on regulatory changes where needed. A property protection objective would distract the regulator from using evidence to identify and rectify the most pressing issues, which might, for example, relate to net zero and sustainability rather than property protection.

The pre-legislative scrutiny committee considered property protection but found that the existing objectives are a sensible starting point—I emphasise “starting point”. The committee suggested that the Government keep this under review. We are committed to doing this through the provision in Clause 135 for a regular independent review of the effectiveness of the regulator and the wider regulatory system.

Turning to Amendment 12, there are already powers for building regulations to cover specific aspects of building resilience. We believe that it is better that building regulations are targeted on specific issues rather than open-ended requirements. However, we recognise that, for residential buildings, further research into property protection is warranted. The impact of the loss of a home is significant, so we are taking this forward as part of the technical review of approved document B on fire safety. I thank the noble Lord for suggesting these amendments and respectfully ask him to withdraw Amendment 1.

Building Safety

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My eyesight is not the best, but I now know that those were the lovely dulcet tones of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake. I remember that, when I was leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, the noble Lord visited me to discuss housing policy. He has had a long-standing interest in this area and has been a distinguished chief executive and an extremely senior civil servant in Whitehall, so he has worked at all levels of government and I know he comes from a good place. Peabody is a provider of extremely good social housing and there are great examples of that where I live. I commend the work it does. It provides housing for some of the most vulnerable people, but also people of all income streams who cannot afford market housing.

We have to work with Kate Henderson at the National Housing Federation and with the G15 associations, all of which have development arms and have built housing. We have to accept that some of the G15 associations may have built houses with unsafe material. I take the view that, if you are social developer, particularly as you have had a subsidy to do the development, and have made the same mistakes as a private developer, then the consequences should be the same. We should do that in a way that is fair and proportionate to ensure that the polluter, whoever it is, contributes to fixing the mess that they have played some part in creating. It should be collaborative; I have spent a lot of time reaching out to the National Housing Federation and different chief executives, and will continue to do so.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I have an interest as chair of the Built Environment Committee. I very much welcome the package of measures, although I regret the time that it has taken to get to this stage. My experience on the ground is that we need flexibility at the edges to apply common sense, so I welcome the notion of proportionality. Risk assessments by external advisers can jeopardise good businesses, as we know from the overzealous enforcement of a number of EU regulations and the disastrous EWS1s, which, if I understand it correctly, my noble friend is rightly withdrawing. Will the Government ensure that the new British Standards Institution guidance prevents the needless recrafting and remediation of buildings—especially old buildings with an old balcony or a wooden beam, which pose a low risk of fire?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I first praise the efforts of my noble friend in raising issues throughout my time as Building Safety Minister, and particularly for her passion about how we improve the built environment. The honest answer is that the introduction of the British Standards Institution’s Publicly Available Specification 9980 will go some way, and it will take time to ensure that we have a more proportionate approach. As I have already said in responding to questions, there is no silver bullet, but it is good to have the right direction of travel. That requires the lenders, insurers and valuers who follow valuation guidance from RICS to all take a sensible approach, and that takes time. The more we focus on proportionality and risk, as opposed to having a binary view that everything needs to be fixed in the most expensive manner possible, the closer we get to a far better place.

UK Community Renewal Fund

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

Well, given the state of the national finances, increasing the core spending power to the degree that we have shows a real commitment to local government. I point out that this particular fund is all around the skills and what it takes to increase the economic output of an area. The levelling-up fund is another fund that is focused on the more capital-intensive digital and road and rail infrastructure.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that the best way to achieve levelling up is by economic growth and higher productivity, helped by good local authorities? I agree with my noble friend that the rising tide raises all boats. We should be seeking to make that a reality in these difficult times.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

The reality is that we need local leadership. We need the vision in local places. We need to understand why a place should be competitive and then, with that local leadership, backed up by taxpayer pump-priming, turn places around. We have too few local leaders who have clear vision at the moment. There are some examples: we are seeing the success of our mayors, and we have to back them to ensure that the whole country rises. But the rhetoric about lifting all boats is precisely right.

Housebuilding

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

The definition of “affordable” that we use is taxpayer-subsidised housing. Of course, that is council housing as well as housing association and social housing but, importantly, it is housing that takes you on a pathway to home ownership—so it is immediate housing that is also discounted by the taxpayer.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con) (V)]

My Lords, home ownership is a huge contributor to a prosperous and contented society, and I am glad to see the Minister’s focus on this. What is the gross number of new homes that were built last year? I am not sure about the basis for the figure of 244,000 that he mentioned. How many were in existing buildings such as pubs, offices or shops?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, the gross figure for additional dwellings was 252,790. That figure was obtained by adding 243,770 net additional dwellings to 9,000 demolitions. Some 26,930 gains were made through change of use.

Leaseholders: Properties with Cladding

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Thursday 7th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made towards supporting leaseholders who cannot (1) sell, or (2) mortgage, their properties as a result of issues with cladding.

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

The Government have published supplementary guidance and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors will be working with lenders, valuers and the safety bodies to develop new advice for surveyors. This will enable surveyors to take a more proportionate approach where there are concerns about cladding. Furthermore, the Government have announced nearly £700,000 to train more assessors, speeding up the valuation process for home owners where an EWS1 form is required.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con) [V]]

I know the Minister is trying very hard, but this is a lamentable and serious situation, with numerous facets impinging on millions of people who have done nothing wrong. It has dragged on for too long. Does the Minister agree that we need energetically to find a way forward that prioritises the most important matters, does not let the best become the enemy of good, limits the scale of the problem by excluding dwellings that do not pose a serious risk from the new cladding rules, and delivers a fair financial outcome? Will he set up a task force, possibly under a leading public figure, to recommend an early package of measures to get us out of this impasse, as a whole?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for raising this topic, which we both feel strongly about. I do not think the solution is a task force; it is about taking a position to implement something that makes good policy. The approach that the Government have taken so far is to restrict demand. In the guidance being published tomorrow, we will see all buildings below 11 metres, unless there is a rare example of one coated in Grenfell-style cladding, taken out of scope at one fell swoop. The focus will then be between 11 metres and 18 metres, where the threshold is deemed to be above 25% coated in flammable materials. That takes a vast majority of the 100,000 remaining buildings out of scope. Then you are left with 11,700 high-rises, which comes to 2,000 or so buildings. We have made huge strides by managing demand in this way, sending out the clarification to the advice note and addressing the supply issue to deal with the remediation required.

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, for raising the issue of homelessness. I know from having visited the London Borough of Tower Hamlets on many occasions and the London Borough of Newham on a number of occasions that homelessness is a real issue. I would point out that this settlement is pretty good news: it is reasonable to put forward £100 million to start planning for move-on accommodation from temporary accommodation, which is not a place where you want families to be. That was provided in the summer. There is a commitment in the financial settlement of £750 million towards supporting people whom we have a statutory duty to house—the homeless—and £430 million of that is for move-on accommodation. I hope that assures the noble Baroness that we take issues of how to tackle homelessness very seriously.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con) [V]]

My Lords, largely because of the needs of Covid, the national finances are now in a dire state. Many retailers are experiencing serious financial problems for the same reason. The temporary suspension of business rates, a national policy, is relevant. Is the Minister satisfied that the Government’s policy on business rates is optimal and value for money and that it best deals with the serious problems both within the retail sector and, more generally, the problems of the high street?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for raising the issue of the high street. There is support through the high streets fund to ensure that our high streets thrive, but they are places where we need to see significant change. As my noble friend points out, a lot of businesses on the high street are struggling to pay their business rates. I think that, in the longer term, the tax base needs to shift. This is not policy, but self-evidently we are seeing online business take a greater share, and those housed in bricks and mortar are struggling to make a go of their businesses.

We need to see a policy shift over time. The Government cannot do that by waving a magic wand, so we need to make sure that there are policy tweaks to support the high street in the interim. There are a lot of measures to do that in those that my right honourable friend Robert Jenrick has announced. More will be coming to support our high streets, which are the very bedrock of local economies.

Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 29th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I do not disagree that the amendment should be withdrawn. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, my noble friend Lady Eaton and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, have drawn attention to the problem that I raised earlier about leaseholders caught by the Government’s Grenfell-related changes being unable to afford repairs or waking watches and/or unable to sell their properties. In some cases, the leaseholders are joint owners, as my noble friend Minister has just said.

Will my noble friend agree to a meeting to map the way forward before Report? This could look at the options to see whether primary legislation—which I think he is reluctant to pursue—secondary legislation, fire brigade or health and safety guidance or changes to the regulatory codes would work. There has to be a risk assessment and we need to make sure that this is possible.

I have some experience of dealing with these fire difficulties. As noble Lords will recall, this used to be the responsibility of the fire brigade and then it was all changed. I oversaw that transition. I also know from experience in China how wrong you can get things, particularly if you do not consult. I remember that China did not consult on changes to fire safety laws. They were not aware that most modern premises had sprinklers. As someone has already said, sprinklers limit what you have to do with fire safety measures. It is a modern approach.

I should find a meeting helpful, perhaps to limit the number of amendments that it might otherwise be necessary for us to put forward on Report.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for making those points and representing the deep issues faced by consumers. Essentially, there are three. Thousands of leaseholders are facing the terrible situation that their property is valued at nothing. They have put in their life’s savings to buy a property, and they cannot remortgage or move. The pace of remediation has now slowed because of an inability to get assessments carried out by the relevant person or because they do not feel that they have insurance cover to do it. That is another issue. At the same time, because the pace of remediation has been affected, they face interim costs. I pointed out that they could be dramatically reduced, in most instances, by putting in an alarm system.

My noble friend is quite right—I have had these discussions with the insurance industry—that there are great measures, such as sprinklers, that reduce risk and ensure that a building is safer. That is why the Government legislated to put in sprinklers in all new builds above 11 metres. I am happy to meet my noble friend and any other noble Lords on these important issues, because we all share the objective of finding the right approach to deal with these great issues that face many hundreds of thousands of leaseholders in high-rise residential buildings up and down the country.

Housing Delivery Test

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, the housing delivery target is based primarily on the housing needs assessment in the local plan. Where the plan is over five years old, we look at the housing needs formula. Only eight councils are below the 45% delivery rate, where a presumption of sustainable development is enforced.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, on a more positive note, how can we better incentivise and help small builders and those building their own homes, as my sister did in Vermont with the help of her local school? Many small schemes could go ahead during the Covid period, providing new homes and giving a welcome boost to struggling local economies.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for raising the importance of getting small builders to build us out of this problem. Our reforms in Planning for the Future will make it much easier for people and communities to build and design their own homes, with a streamlined, clear and accessible planning system without delays and the associated costs, permission in principle to expedite the route to development, and local authorities identifying suitable sites for self and custom-built housing.

Housing: New Homes

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Tuesday 8th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of (1) how many new homes will be needed by 2025, and (2) how quickly they will reach their target of building 300,000 new homes per year.

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to meeting the country’s housing need, delivering 240,000 new homes last year—the highest number in over 30 years. The Covid-19 pandemic presents a real economic challenge to the housing market, and our top priority will remain a safe, sustainable recovery. That is why we will continue to take appropriate measures to support housing supply, such as the recent Planning for the Future consultation.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, there is a dire shortage of housing in this country, especially in areas which have shown a lot of growth, such as the south-east. While I very much welcome the consultation on Planning for the Future, it does not stress the early action that we need. The proposed zoning system, about which I have some concerns, will, in practice, take an age to establish. Why do we not instead put a Macmillan-type in charge to focus on nothing else—it might even be my noble friend the Minister himself? He could make use of the planning guidance; release plots of land to help small builders, including on government-owned land; encourage builders to use planning permissions; and give rapid approval for building in local materials and styles, applying the spirit of the late Roger Scruton.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for putting me forward for a new role. There is an unprecedented amount of initiatives to boost housing delivery, including grant funding, a substantial amount of which is through the affordable homes programme; guaranteed funding to enable access to finance at lower cost; loans to enable short-term funding; and ensuring that we can accelerate the release of land and invest in the infrastructure required for housing delivery.

Social Housing

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Tuesday 16th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh]

It is fair to say that the record of this Government is quite impressive when compared with the previous decade under Labour. Some 450,000 affordable homes is considerably more than the 399,000 built during the years 2000 to 2010. Of course, the Chancellor has already set out a considerable sum of money—an unprecedented sum of £12 billion—for the affordable homes programme and, by lifting the housing revenue account borrowing cap, many local authorities are now building council homes again. Although we are waiting on the social housing White Paper, a lot has been done to ensure the continued supply of affordable housing and social rented housing.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con) [V]]

With more and more demand for accessible homes for the elderly and the disabled—a need that has been highlighted by Covid—has the Minister seen Habinteg’s analysis of local plans? It shows that, of the 2.4 million homes already planned for by 2030, only 20% are expected to meet the Part M4(2) accessible and adaptable standards and that a mere 2% will meet the needs of wheelchair users in Part M4(3). What steps will my noble friend the Minister be taking to remedy this, either in the White Paper or perhaps more broadly?

[Lord Greenhalgh]

My noble friend makes an important point about the accessibility of social housing, and I will write to her about the specific measures we will be taking. I can say that, as well as accessibility, it is of course important that we continue to build supported housing for the elderly, and the supply of that should feature as a very important part of local plans.

Covid-19: Housing

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Monday 18th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh]

The noble Lord is right that the local plan process is extremely important. As the Building Safety Minister, ensuring that we build homes of high quality is paramount to me. We will shortly be introducing into legislation the biggest shake up of the regulatory system to ensure that we have buildings of the highest possible quality.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

As the Secretary of State said so eloquently in his Statement:

“A home is more than four walls and a roof. It is a sanctuary, a form of protection and the link to your community.”—[Official Report, Commons, 13/5/20; col. 258.]


Does my noble friend agree that the overwhelming need now is to move as quickly as possible to normality in the housing market and that, in ensuring the safety of everyone, as we must, we should apply the common sense that the Prime Minister has sensibly advocated?

[Lord Greenhalgh]

The noble Baroness is right. It is time to return to normality as quickly as we can but we need to ensure that it is safe to do so. We need to recognise, as the Secretary of State said in his Written Ministerial Statement, that over 450 sales have been stuck in the system, unable to be addressed, and a substantial number of rentals have not gone ahead. Every month some 300,000 tenancies come up for renewal. At the same time, we know the contribution that the construction sector makes to our economy and the need to get new homes built. That needs to happen safely but it needs to happen as soon as possible.

Housing and Construction Sector

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Greenhalgh

Thursday 14th May 2020 Lords Chamber

The Question was considered in a Virtual Proceeding via video call.

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

My Lords, reopening the housing market and starting construction are mission-critical for our economy. Yesterday, the Government announced a plan to enable people to move home safely and to restart the housing market. This included new guidance to allow extended working hours on construction sites and help for the planning system to operate remotely, alongside the launch of a joint safe-working charter with the Home Builders Federation, supporting homebuilders to return to work safely; 100 separate organisations have signed up to this charter.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, this is a lucky day for me and for my noble friend the new Minister on the occasion of his first Oral Question. My Question, tabled a month ago, has been magically answered by some very welcome easing of Covid-related restrictions on homes and construction. I congratulate the Government on both. With so many people staying at home, and light traffic nationwide, does the Minister agree that now is the time to accelerate work on major construction projects and digital networks, and to push for the completion of 300,000 new homes a year?

[Lord Greenhalgh]

I thank my noble friend for my first Oral Question. I agree with her sentiments. Obviously, this has to be done safely. We know that building 100,000 new homes contributes 1% of GDP. We also know that the construction sector employs 3.2 million people. We want to push ahead as safely as possible within Public Health England guidance.