Planning Committees: Reform

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I am not a lawyer, so I do not want to get involved in discussions about the merits of judicial review. People need to have some recourse to law at some stage. I will take her question back, because she makes a very good point. If she wants to put in a submission as a response to the working paper, I would be very pleased to consider it.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, the Deputy Prime Minister has flagged up the role of elected mayors of combined authorities. As someone who lamented the coalition scrapping regional spatial strategies, I see this as a possible way of replacing those. Can the Minister perhaps flesh out a little how she sees that layer working?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. There certainly needs to be a strategic planning level above the level of local plans. She can expect to see more news about that in the English devolution White Paper that will be coming out shortly.

New Homes

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving me the opportunity to say that I went to visit British Offsite with Weston Homes in Braintree earlier this week. What a fantastic example of British innovation, using recycled steel to build MMC products. MMC is an important opportunity to improve productivity in the construction sector, to deliver quickly the very high-quality energy-efficient homes we need, and to create new and diverse jobs. We are working to address the strategic barriers to the further uptake of MMC, including improved supply chain confidence, clarity for warranty and insurance markets, and planning reform. We will say more about that in the long-term housing strategy next year.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, there are currently tens of thousands of Section 106 affordable homes with detailed planning permission waiting to be built out on active sites, but stuck because the registered providers will not take them on due to the current financial capacity in that sector. Will the Government as a short-term emergency measure consider the use of Homes England grant funding specifically, so that registered providers can afford to take up these much-needed affordable homes on these stuck sites?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is quite right about the stuck sites but, in spite of the very difficult Budget round this year, the Government have put £500 million more into affordable housing. That takes the total for affordable housing up to about £3 billion. Homes England is working through its programme of how it is going to support the delivery of those affordable homes. I am sure that support for registered providers will form part of that.

Housing Supply and Homelessness

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as yet another vice-president of the Local Government Association. I begin by acknowledging the very personal valedictory speech of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. His wise but often challenging contributions will be missed.

As ever, it has been a stimulating, knowledgeable and important debate, but I confess that it has left me feeling a bit depressed. Noble Lords’ excellent contributions have shown that, yes, there is a consensus that we have a housing crisis—no surprise there—and, yes, there are lots of reasons why it has come to pass: noble Lords have cantered knowledgeably around the course, covering almost all of them. We also seem to agree that this is not new: it has been brewing for decades and the many and various attempts to build more homes have been, by and large, unsuccessful—hence my depression. But I am looking forward to the Minister’s response and I hope she can lift my gloom, because this is one area where we all want to see change, and radical change at that. It is a sign of the quality of the debate today that noble Lords have given the Minister many suggested solutions that give us hope.

As a result of the many and varied barriers to building more homes outlined in this debate, homelessness has risen, along with the number of families in temporary accommodation. It is also evident that the private rented sector is not coping with the increased demand, so in times of scarcity rents rise and tenants get evicted. All these points were amplified by many noble Lords, but I particularly enjoyed the contributions from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson.

This vicious circle was clearly outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, in her thorough, informed and compelling introduction. The contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Griffiths and Lord Bird, highlighted the very human consequences of people living without a home. It is about people and about poverty.

The causes of homelessness were very well outlined, particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Winterton, when she turned her attention to the young. That is where our attention should be too. These causes include restrictions to benefit entitlement, rising living costs, mental health issues, relationship breakdown and, of course, the number one: eviction from the private rented sector due to increasing rent prices, which have risen by almost 9% in the past year alone. We look forward to working with the Minister on the forthcoming Renters’ Rights Bill to ameliorate some of these issues.

One of the inevitable consequences of an undersupply of homes is indeed increasing rents, but the reason for this is irrefutably the significant decline in the availability of social housing, which to these Benches is the big lever to pull to unlock the logjam, as analysed by my noble friends Lord Shipley and Lady Grender. That social housing has declined to the massive extent it has was well outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Best. I loved his “bricks not benefits” slogan, which we should adopt. It is inescapable that this decline has contributed significantly to the problems we have now. The figures speak for themselves: a net loss of over 11,000 homes in 2022-23 and a quarter of a million over a decade. You cannot remove that amount of supply without it having a significant impact, and it has.

That is why these Benches see a substantial increase in the building of homes for social rent as the key route out of the vicious circle. This must and should be subsidised, and all builders—particularly local SME builders, who have been squeezed out of the market—should be incentivised to build homes for social rent. I seek reassurances from the Minister that Homes England is being directed to fund homes for social rent and in places of greatest need. How can we incentivise more SME builders back into building more? Is it too much to hope that the new planning Bill and attendant National Planning Policy Framework will set clear expectations that local planning authorities must assess their need for social housing, and state their targets for all tenures according to local need? This would send a very strong signal to developers that this is not negotiable. We have had a decade of it being negotiable.

Local planning authorities have to give greater priority not just to the numbers and targets but to providing more social housing. Perhaps we also need to seriously incentivise private investors to invest in social housing schemes in those areas. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Young, about getting financial stability into the private rented sector.

Noble Lords may notice that I have not used the term affordable housing. I believe it is a misnomer that has come to be meaningless in so many contexts. If our friend Lord Stunell were still with us, he would certainly be holding forth on this whole issue of affordability and how we should address the problem. He would probably have agreed with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Hain, proposed.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, outlined, we also have ample evidence of a declining and ageing workforce to build the homes we need. Where is the workforce strategy to deliver this number of homes? Targets and tough talk will come to naught if we do not have the capacity to actually build the homes, regardless of who builds them.

Among our many excellent briefings, one that jumped out at me concerned the number of empty homes, which was also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and my noble friend Lord Shipley. Nearly 700,000 homes in England are unfurnished and empty, and 265,000 are classified as long term. From experience, I know how difficult it is to gain possession of an empty home, and I hope that this Government will make it easier for councils to do so and will consider incentivising sellers by exempting them from a percentage of capital gains tax.

I am deeply concerned about councils’ ability to find suitable temporary accommodation. Anecdotally, I know they are really struggling. Councils spent £1.74 billion last year supporting 104,000 households in temporary accommodation. Worryingly, there is growing evidence that some landlords are leaving the long-term private rented sector in order to supply this much sought after temporary accommodation at—guess what—much higher rents. We also know that it is stretching some district councils’ finances to breaking point, and there are fears of Section 104 notices being served.

The planning system is often cited as a barrier to building. In my view, this is overstated, usually by developers. They would say that, wouldn’t they? Councils are required to identify a five-year land supply, and 1 million planning permissions have been granted but not built out. Councils have no power to compel developers to come forward to develop these sites or to build out sites to which permission has already been given, yet they are judged and punished by the Government’s housing delivery test. Perhaps this Government might consider more powers for councils, such as being able to charge developers full council tax for every development that is not built out on the agreed time scale.

However, what certainly does deter developers is our NIMBY culture, as forcefully raised by the noble Lord, Lord Snape. Politicians of all stripes have pandered to this, to the detriment of more and quicker housing delivery. This is not new. The 1947 Act gave rise to the notion that development needed to be restrained and resisted as an antidote to urban sprawl. I note that, even back in those days, when the Minister with responsibility for housing visited existing residents on the site for the new town of Stevenage, he was driven from the meeting with shouts of “Dictator!” ringing in his ears, only to find his car tyres slashed and sugar in his petrol tank. I have received only online abuse, which lets me off lightly.

I hope the Government have a genuine new take on how to overcome this visible and negative impediment to development. We need to somehow change the narrative to “YIMBY” at both national and local level, and that takes real leadership. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, that we support a long-term cross-party strategy because we know this is a complex issue. It will take years, following the impact of decades of failure, to change the market significantly, yet the reality of people’s lives is that change cannot come quickly enough.

Landlords: Long-term Rentals

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Thornhill]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what incentives they propose to introduce to encourage landlords back into the private rented sector for long-term rentals.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my interest as a vice president of the Local Government Association.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her Question. The Government value the contribution made by responsible landlords who provide quality homes for tenants. They form a vital part of our housing market. Our Renters’ Rights Bill ensures that landlords have the confidence and support they need to continue to invest in the sector and we do not expect it to have a destabilising effect on the market. We have included provisions in the Bill to make sure that landlords cannot evict tenants simply to turn the property into a short-term let. Landlords and tenants are equally important. Landlords want good tenants. Tenants want good landlords. We hope that the Bill will make things better.

[Lord Truscott (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her reply and sincerely hope that the Government’s aspirations are met, but note that most of the actions are going to be in the future. However, I know that the Minister is only too well aware of the crisis in temporary accommodation that is actually caused by over 110,000 households unable to find any affordable accommodation in the private rented sector, where demand is demonstrably not keeping up with supply. What can be done when those landlords that are leaving the private rented sector precisely because there is a shortage can then relet the same property to their own council at a higher rent? Incredulously, this practice is fuelled by councils and the Home Office bidding against each other for the same property, at considerable cost to the taxpayer.

[Noble Lords]

Question!

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

I did ask what the noble Baroness felt could be done about it. I asked my Question first, but my question is: surely this is bonkers and can we not work out some protocol so that councils and government offices are not outbidding each other?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, of course the noble Baroness is quite right to flag up the issue of the terrible shortage of housing. The answer in the medium to longer term is just to get more housing built, and we are straining every sinew to do just that. In terms of the way that short-term lets work, we know that they can benefit economies through visitor spend and creating employment opportunities for local people. However, we appreciate that excessive concentrations of that in some parts of the country impact availability and affordability. I know that this competition between local authorities and government departments for housing is causing a real problem. We are introducing a registration scheme for short-term lets to protect our communities, abolishing things such as the furnished holiday let tax regime, to remove the tax incentive that short-term let owners have over long-term landlords. We recognise that more needs to be done to level the playing field between short and long-term tenures. Long-term tenures are important, and they need to be affordable long-term tenures.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry Report

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Friday 22nd November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness. I echo what she said about who holds the ring in government, because these changes will take time and we need to know who will do so, as government silos are well known and entrenched.

On behalf of these Benches, I pay tribute to Sir Martin Moore-Bick, his team, and the members of Grenfell United and their families and supporters for their relentless search for the truth. It has been a long time coming and I am sure we all regret that too much is still to be done before justice is finally done—if it ever is. The inquiry’s shocking findings place damning blame on companies, the Government, bodies responsible for building regulation and emergency services. It concludes that the victims were “badly failed” by those responsible for their safety and that all the deaths were “avoidable”. Could there be a more succinct, damning and deeply poignant sentence to sum up the Grenfell tragedy?

Sir Martin’s report does not hold back—thank goodness. He has shone a bright light on the cumulative decisions made in dark corners of boardrooms, in Cabinet and council meetings and during the regulation of fire safety and construction methods, and on the interconnectedness of these institutions, which all played a part in what happened on 14 June 2017. “Cumulative” and “interconnectedness” are the two key words that help me begin to understand what is at the root of the report’s reference to failures of government policy and decision-making. It is a simple phrase, but let us try unpacking it.

What shocked me most were the staggering accounts revealing cultures of complacency, denial, lack of scrutiny and accountability, back covering, buck passing, indifference, institutional negligence and even systemic dishonesty by the building contractors and these institutions. All of that created the perfect environment for this tragedy. The report exposes the systemic and entrenched refusal by every one of them to ensure that whistleblowers could speak up without consequence, confident that their concerns would be investigated and taken seriously. Civil servants were found to have ignored, delayed or disregarded concerns. Those who wanted to raise issues were simply too afraid to speak out and those who did were ignored or, worse still, branded as troublemakers. In short, there was a demonstrable endemic culture which led to the lack of importance given to fire safety and social housing tenants, which combined in a perfect storm—only the storm was a horrific fire that claimed 72 lives, including those of 18 children, left scores injured and displaced many families.

To say that the residents of that tower were let down by these institutions is a gross understatement, whether it was a cost-cutting local authority ideologically committed to outsourcing services, a regulation system completely gutted by successive Governments boasting about a bonfire of red tape, the privatisation of building safety testing, a fire service with inadequate controls or a construction industry focused on profits for shareholders and bonuses for senior executives. They were all in part responsible for the deaths that night.

Added to this were decades of underfunding of our public services. We have grown so used to cost cutting that it has become the norm across those services, including local government. We have watched our services be stripped to the bone and some abandoned altogether. There must be consequences from this over time, and we need to acknowledge that this has created a cost-cutting culture across these institutions, with staff under pressure to deliver regardless and discouraged from asking awkward questions.

Those asking such questions are seen as overly negative. They show a “can’t-do” attitude. “You’re not being a team player”. It is chastening to read on the Whistleblowers UK website that 96% of whistleblowers whose cases get to employment tribunals lose. To spell that out, whistleblowers more often than not find themselves on a redundancy list, not for their whistleblowing, of course—there are other ways—but due to “service re-engineering” or similar terms that are difficult to argue against. But some continue to whistleblow and, of the brave souls who do, almost all lose. No wonder they are afraid to come forward if they will lose their job, with the consequences that flow from that. Remember Mid Staffs, where Julie Bailey was forced to close her business and move away and nurse Helene Donnelly was attacked and bullied by colleagues and was too scared to even walk to her car. Do the Government plan to find ways to protect whistleblowers? There are many suggestions as to how this might be accomplished, as surely it is the only way to ensure that failings come to light before another major tragedy happens.

Many staff are stretched in their day jobs as “doing more for less” has been a mantra for years. Within councils, there has been a hollowing out of the role of scrutiny and audit functions, the effective working of which is fundamental to accountability, transparency and resilience. I recall one of the first things I was told as a brand-new councillor by the then Labour leader of Watford Council: “In this job you’ve got to know when you’re being hoodwinked by experts”—only he used more colourful language. I took that lesson with me as mayor and as a peer assessor.

Those on the board of Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation should have heeded it. It transpired that it was easy for employees to withhold information, doctor the findings of critical reports and downplay their urgency. Even outright lying was accomplished with ease. In fact, the fire safety reports were not even done by experts; they appointed someone without the relevant expertise and qualifications. Why? Because he lied and embellished his CV and nobody bothered to check his credentials, ask difficult questions, probe reports, scrutinise actions and timelines or test results. In other words, they failed to do their job. They were little more than nodding dogs. Some might call that a harsh caricature, but it is accurate given the evidence in this inquiry.

The cumulative impact over decades of policies designed to shrink the state, decrease regulation and let the market decide has led in part to their interconnectedness in Grenfell. Sadly, we appear not to have learned the lessons from history and so are doomed to repeat it—think Hillsborough, Windrush, Mid Staffs, infected blood and the Post Office, to name only the high-profile ones. Let us be under no illusion: those most impacted by this relentless trajectory are ordinary working people—the so-called “left behind” or “just about managing”. Whatever label we choose to put on them, they are the most marginalised and vulnerable in our society. I looked again at the photographs and heard the life stories of those who died at Grenfell, and they were all of those things. Most importantly, they were men, women and children with families who loved them. They loved and were loved, trying to live the best way they could.

My question to the Minister is not a simple one. How do we know that such a culture has changed and how to we monitor such things? The regulator and the Government are holding Kensington and Chelsea’s feet to the fire on its recovery programmes, but how is this being done? Can the Minister write to me, as this is an important check and balance in the system and is probably quite detailed for an answer at the end of the debate?

In conclusion, the report is very detailed, and it has many wide-reaching recommendations, which is why I have chosen to concentrate on one bigger issue. There is stuff about emergency planning: they were ill prepared. There is stuff on building control: has competition worked, or should it be taken out of councils’ hands? There is stuff about remediating buildings: why is the amount of money available considerably less for social housing providers than private owners? Is height an inadequate measure of risk? Should the definition of a “high-risk building” be reviewed? But I have chosen just the one overarching major issue, knowing full well that other noble Lords will seek to get answers to those questions and many more. I look forward to their contributions.

I am sure the Minister will agree with my final comment that the report raises fundamental questions about societal attitudes to social housing and its tenants. The report highlights that systematic neglect and a lack of investment in social housing contributed to the tragedy. Residents felt marginalised and their concerns about safety were ignored. This aspect of the disaster underscored broader issues of inequality and neglect in housing policy. How will this Government seek to change that?

Social Housing: Awaab’s Law

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

On enforcement, seeking redress is important and tenants should challenge their landlords, whether it is a private landlord or the social housing sector. There are important ways to address this through the courts, but there is also the Housing Ombudsman. Tenants can challenge their landlord and if they do not get a satisfactory response, the Housing Ombudsman can address the issue, whether it is in the private or social sector. The noble Lord makes a valid point about the problems being widespread and not just in the private rented sector.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, only last week, the Housing Ombudsman said that damp and mould complaints constitute half of all its complaints. It named and shamed 20 social housing providers to which it had served severe maladministration orders. It is clear to me that the sector is already struggling with the timescales involved in Awaab’s law. Can the Minister assure us that all parties are ready for this? Following the comments made about speed, does he agree with me that new legislation is valuable only if it is enforceable? If it will not work, and if the sector is already struggling to make it work, do we not need to listen to the sector for a little longer before extending this legislation to the private rented sector?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, we are working with social landlord and tenant groups to consider the practical implications of the proposed requirements to be set through Awaab’s law. The Government’s response to the consultation, which will be published in due course, as well as subsequent regulations, will provide details on how Awaab’s law will work. We will issue guidance for landlords and residents on the new duties to be set by the regulations. The guidance will be published before the regulations come into force, to give landlords time to prepare and for tenants to know their rights.

Housing: Modern Methods of Construction

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I say at the outset that I am really grateful that, yesterday, the Government Whips’ Office gave the winders some extra time, but I feel that two minutes for a speech is not making use of the expertise in this Chamber. That said, all the two-minute contributions have been insightful and informative and have, amazingly, captured all the issues around modern methods of construction—and the debate has definitely bounced along. What is striking is that there is a consensus that there is a role for modern construction and agreement about the challenges and barriers to MMC but plenty of suggestions for improvement, which I hope the Minister will take back to her department.

I, too, was a member of the Built Environment Select Committee, which carried out the inquiry, ably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, whose contribution it is a pleasure to follow today. It was a wide-ranging, if frustrating, inquiry, as the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, accurately outlined.

It was not that the Government were not putting money into tackling the problem—our usual complaint—but that they had done so in an undirected and haphazard way without a coherent strategy and measurable outcomes, although I am certain that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, will put up a spirited and informed defence of the previous Government’s advances in modular build, and I genuinely look forward to her contribution.

I turn to the consensus that we have a housing crisis and that modular build could and should be a way to build more homes, more quickly and, more importantly, to the future homes standard. It will add diversity to provision, which is at present monopolised by the big builders.

The number one issue for the industry is the supply chain, which was mentioned by several noble Lords. There are clearly real issues of business survival when you have inconsistent and insufficient demand for your product, unpredictable delays and workforce challenges. In this climate, we have unfortunately had recent experiences of companies going out of business or struggling to continue in business. I really have only one question for the Minister: what is going to change and what plans do the Government have? Will they consider incentivising builders to use MMC by offering tax breaks, reducing VAT on modular homes, or giving tax credits to companies that invest in modular construction? We hear excellent mood music from the Deputy Prime Minister about a revolution in social housing. Will the Government consider setting targets for the construction of modular homes within public housing projects? Will the Government actively use their own land as part of a deal to create more public/private partnerships to build more modular homes and encourage and incentivise councils to do likewise?

The regulatory framework mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Banner, and others is designed with traditional construction methods in mind, making it more difficult for MMC builders to navigate the approvals process. The regulatory maze can deter builders from opting for modular approaches, even when they might wish to use them. This applies particularly to SME builders. Could the Government consider a fast-track approval process for modular housing developments to encourage quicker construction? Creating a streamlined process aided by national policies specifically for modular homes, as mentioned by a noble Lord—I apologise for forgetting his name—would encourage plans to come forward, reduce delays and overcome the bureaucratic hurdles that are currently faced.

As we heard in the contributions by my noble friends Lord Teverson and Lady Brinton, we feel that the Government should use the future homes standard to ensure that modular-built homes are built to high environmental and safety standards and provide for more lifetime M4(2) homes. In that regard, we disagree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, about building to a lower quality.

There is some disagreement about the overall costs of MMC build versus traditional build but from the perspective of housing associations, which was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, the upfront costs are more expensive than traditional build. The upfront costs are more pertinent to housing associations than the lifetime costs as they are under considerable financial pressure now and, regrettably, environmental standards are often reduced to keep costs down. Additionally, as more accessible homes take a larger floor plan you get fewer homes for your money, a realistic dilemma that targeted grants could help to solve.

As the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Best, pointed out, there is a skills shortage in construction in general and in MMC specifically. The skill sets and technological challenges are different. The Government should encourage more investment in research and development in MMC technologies to improve efficiency, reduce costs and enhance design options. There are still too many stories of poor construction and construction failure. As we know, this does not need to be the case; we can only envy my noble friend Lord Thomas’s tenants. The risk aversion of warranty and insurance providers plus the reluctance of lenders to provide mortgages on homes built by MMC are further barriers. These issues need unpacking and only the Government can do that and offer strong clear guidance about what will be expected in future.

Finally, to make this shift needs radical change, and the current system is not being sufficiently incentivised to change. We have a risk-averse culture and are cautious in trying new methods. Therefore, the Government have a real role in being the driving force for change. I do not think we can wait for demands from clients and homeowners because for me the other significant barrier, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, and my noble friend Lady Miller, is public perception and the stigma left over from the prefabricated homes of the past. I remember visiting my Auntie Marion’s prefab in Tenby, south Wales. She lived in it happily until she was forcibly evicted. These two things—cautiousness and public stigma—act as barricades to change.

It seems from the debate that MMC is part of the housing crisis solution, but nobody is dewy-eyed about this. It is certainly not a silver bullet. It could contribute significantly but it needs political will and leadership to create a whole-market approach to ensure that consumers, manufacturers and lenders are all aligned in their aim of embracing MMC to create sufficient demand in the market to grow the approach. Without this alignment and subsequent demand there is no clear catalyst to drive the change needed. Will the Government provide that catalyst and be the ringmaster? If the answer is yes, how and when?

Building Homes

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I first add our condolences to the community of Southport after the horrific incident yesterday. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the friends and families of all those who have been affected.

We on these Benches support policies to provide more housing in this country, particularly affordable and social housing. Our previous Conservative Government fulfilled their commitment to build over 1 million homes over the previous Parliament and 2.5 million homes since 2010, but targets do not ensure that homes are delivered and I do not see that any of the changes announced today will aid any delivery.

Our last Government put £11.5 billion into the affordable homes programme, delivering 700,000 more homes. What will this Government invest to build more homes, or will homes suffer the same fate as hospitals and transport, with no investment? Compare this with the previous Labour Government, where construction slowed to the worst peacetime housebuilding rates since 1924. Let us hope that this Labour Government will invest and deliver, and not just produce targets.

How will the Government deal with communities having a say over what homes are built in their area? The Prime Minister admitted on Radio 4 that he will ignore local councils, but the Secretary of State for MHCLG and the Chancellor have both tried to stop developments in their own constituencies. What will Labour’s policy be? So many questions.

The levelling up Act simplified local plans to work with local communities on the housing and infrastructure needed in their areas. Will the Government continue to support local plans and what exactly will they do if a local council does not produce a local plan or produces one with too few homes? If combined authorities are to be responsible for strategic plans of housing growth in their area, how is this devolving power to communities? Surely this is just adding another tier of bureaucracy. Will this not once again slow down the system, adding complexity between conflicting strategies? Noble Lords have only to look at Mayor Khan’s London plan and what that has not delivered for our great capital city.

Labour’s top-down green belt review seems to go much further than grey belt. The NPPF already allows for brownfield site development in green belts, for example of redundant car parks, petrol stations et cetera, so how far will Labour’s changes to green belt policy go? Will farmland be included in the top-down review? How long will that review take? Will there be any national or local consultation? Once again, we see a slowing down of the housing delivery system.

Before I finish, I go back to nutrient neutrality. Some 160,000 homes in this country cannot be delivered —homes for young people, families and older people trying to downsize. These are not large developments, but one or two houses here and there, quite often across a rural landscape. Will the Government take another look at this?

So many changes, so much consultation, so much extra time in the system—it seems to be a field day for the Planning Inspectorate to go out and look again and again and again.

I am confident that the whole House wants more good-quality homes in places where they are required. What I am not sure about is whether this Government’s policy changes will deliver that, but what I can assure the noble Baroness opposite is that we will work with them to deliver where it is right to do so, but we will challenge them where we believe it is not.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, we too are shocked by the appalling incident in Southport and feel very deeply for all the families concerned, and the knock-on effect in the community.

What a pleasure it is to listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott; now that she is no longer opposite me on the Benches I will have to get used to seeing her in profile. She always engages constructively and generously with her time, and I am sure that will continue. I agree with a lot of what she said, but I have a slightly different emphasis because I passionately want this housing agenda to succeed. We all know and understand the problems and the bigger picture, and it is indeed dire. There is so much to commend in what has been said today that it is almost too difficult to decide which bits to pick.

I start by saying that I welcome the link between economic growth and housing. Of all the things to get UK plc going, housing has always been there as a solution to a lot of our economic woes, so I sincerely hope that it works. The challenge will be in turning the Deputy Prime Minister’s passionate rhetoric into reality. It is a wicked issue, and it has been caused by decades of failure to build enough homes. I do not think we should be always apportioning blame; this is a long-term systemic problem. I look forward to working on the forthcoming legislation, but I feel that there is going to be a lot of it. The devil will be in the detail, and that will come later. Within the rhetoric, there are a lot of conflicts, as the noble Baroness to the side of me hinted at. The Statement said that the Government want to bring stability into the planning system—I doubt very much that this will bring much stability.

Let us go to the big issues. I start with targets. At the election, all the parties tried to outbid each other with the numbers game. Targets do not build homes, but they send a very powerful message to local planning authorities. However, there have to be consequences. Can the Minister outline what they might be? Councillors are not going to change their behaviour overnight, so what are we going to do to change the public narrative and turn our nimbys into yimbys? How do the Government intend to engage the public and the councillors in the need for more homes? What is the future of the housing delivery test? What about the two-thirds of councils that do not have an up-to-date plan? I would like to ban the phrase, “Build the right homes in the right places”, as it is a fig leaf for anybody to say anything. You hear it said by protestors who are for and against building. I want to know what it actually means. My big question to the Minister is, in short: what is going to change to change the narrative and the culture around housebuilding?

That brings us to the standard method to allocate the targets. I welcome a more balanced approach; I felt that the previous approach pitted urban authorities against rural authorities, which is never good. The Statement talked about an uplift where house prices are more out of step with local incomes. What does that mean in practice? Do the Government really believe that we can build enough homes to affect market prices? Is that even desirable? Both Barker and Letwin and several academics have said that that just is not possible, and if it were that it would take decades. I feel we should be concentrating on affordability as an issue. In those areas where there is that discrepancy, it is all about the need for social housing. I hope that the Government will stop saying “affordable” and use the terms appropriately. In high-cost housing areas we need social housing to keep balanced communities and keep people cleaning our streets, working in our care homes, et cetera. I hope that funding from Homes England reflects a real shift towards social housing.

In effect, all the Government’s ambitions will come to nothing if we do not tackle the skills shortage and the issues within the workforce. What are the plans to reverse this current trend, especially as we know that a considerable number of the current workforce are due to retire? What are we doing differently from what was already in position to reverse that trend? How will SME builders be incentivised to build more and join this council house revolution? As the noble Baroness asked, what is happening in the areas that have been in an effective moratorium due to biodiversity net gain—where some of them are clapping their hands and saying, “Whoopee-do! This is the best thing that has happened”?

With regard to the green belt, in my authority I used to talk about bronze, silver and gold. We all knew what our gold was, and there was some debate about what was bronze and therefore able to be built on, but doing that is not going to be as easy as it would appear. Take the petrol station example. I know of a petrol station near where my daughter lives; it is derelict and an eyesore, but it is right next to a dual carriageway, miles away from any other homes, and it has no facilities. I hope there is a little more local flexibility on that.

As for building the infrastructure upfront and aligned to the development, that is ideal but very challenging. It is perhaps slightly easier in larger-scale developments, but in my area a lot of the development is smaller sites and infill. The impact on infrastructure is cumulative and lags behind the building of houses. I will be interested in how the Government intend to reverse that.

On right to buy, I hope that there is some local flexibility to suspend right to buy if a local authority can prove that that is in its interests within its community.

There is loads more in this Statement. I expect we will have plenty of time over forthcoming years to discuss much of this, because, as the Minister said, there are no quick fixes. However, it is important to send out messages different from some of the messages we have had hitherto.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Thornhill, for their contributions on this topic which were thoughtful, as usual. We have had many discussions in this House on these subjects, and it is interesting to be on the other side of the Chamber doing so.

Without immediate bold action, the number of homes will continue to decrease, falling even further behind the needs of the people of this country. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, mentioned targets. I have already commented on the dramatic fall off the cliff in housebuilding since the removal of targets. It is clear that we need to set targets. The measures announced today are ambitious, but they are measures we must take if we are going to improve housing affordability and turbocharge the growth we need.

The scale of the response must match the scale of the challenge—and it is a challenge; I am not making light of that in any way. This is the worst housing crisis we have had in living memory. There are not enough homes. This matters for all the reasons we have discussed so often, such as skyrocketing rents, record homelessness, falling home ownership and the setting of unreachable housing targets that have repeatedly not been met. The previous Government failed every year to meet that 300,000 homes target and presided over this drop-off in very recent times.

I turn to the specific questions. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, spoke about the local voice and asked how it is going to be heard. The local voice is always important in the planning process, and it will remain so. There are no plans to change the process of deep and wide consultation on local plans, as I said when I repeated the Statement, but it will not be about whether or not housing is built, because we need to deliver the targets. It might be about how it is built and where, but it will not be about whether it is built. That is the difference that we are setting out in this Statement today.

On the simplification of plans, it is not the intention to make plans more complicated; this is just a change to the way plans will take housing targets into consideration.

On future funding, there definitely will be a new affordable homes programme after the current programme ends. The announcement is clear. We will bring forward details of future government investment in social and affordable housing at the spending review, enabling providers to plan for the future as they develop to deliver the biggest increase in affordable housing in a generation. We will also work with our mayors in local areas to consider how funding can be used in their areas to support devolution. In fact, I will be having a conversation later this afternoon with our mayors and leaders around the country to discuss some of the issues in this consultation with them.

The noble Baroness asked about nutrient neutrality, and it is important that I answer that question specifically. In order to secure the win-win situation for the economy and for nature that we know we can achieve, it is important carefully to consider the way forward, with the help of nature delivery organisations and stakeholders in the sector. That work has already started, and we will continue it over the summer. In the meantime, we will continue to boost the supply of mitigation. We will announce the successful recipients of round two of the local nutrient mitigation fund in the coming weeks. We are also exploring the potential for greater use of strategic approaches to mitigation, whereby, rather than individual developers having to secure their own mitigation for each new project, they are able instead to pay into high-level mitigation projects that are co-ordinated strategically, so they can deliver more effectively and efficiently.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, talked about stability in the planning system. The intention of this process is to introduce these changes and have a settled system going forward. There have been a lot of changes—we had 16 Housing Ministers in the last two Parliaments—which has created all sorts of turbulence in the system. This has caused local authorities a great deal of concern and has not allowed the system to settle down. I hope that, once the changes are brought in, it will settle down once and for all. The noble Baroness also asked if we can build enough homes to affect house prices. It is an issue, and we will keep that under review, but what is certain is that prices are going up and are unaffordable, as are rents. We have to increase the housing supply in order to have some impact on both the level and the cost of the housing available to our communities.

The noble Baroness also spoke about affordability and social housing. She will know, because she has heard me speak about this issue many times in this Chamber, of my determination not to conflate the two things. There is a difference between affordable housing and social housing, and we must deliver both. There will be funding and incentives to deliver more social housing, but both are necessary. I hope we can move that forward as quickly as possible.

The noble Baroness also asked about right to buy. It is not currently the intention to suspend right to buy, but some significant changes to that regime are coming, particularly to the way we allow local authorities to use the funding from right to buy. The problem has been not right to buy itself, but the failure to replace the houses sold through it. We have seen a very significant drop in the availability of social housing because the houses sold under right to buy have not been replaced. We need to address that issue, and the measures put in place today will, I hope, help.

The method for calculating housing need was not fit for purpose. It relied on 10 year-old data and arbitrary uplifts to that data, which is why it has been being changed. We will make all the targets that result from this mandatory. All local planning authorities without an up-to-date local plan for housing will be held to account for their new housing target once the revised framework is published.

The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, asked about intervention. We want a system that allows for future intervention action to be swift, proportionate and justified by local circumstances. That does not mean there are no circumstances in which local authorities will not be allowed to build to their targets. If there is a very specific set of circumstances, such as flood plains and national parks, they will be taken into account; but otherwise there will be intervention, and we want that to be quick and straightforward to achieve.

It is not about forcing homes on local places. We believe that planning is fundamentally a local activity, and new homes should be built for communities with communities, but less than one-third of places have an up-to-date plan, and that has to change. This has to be about ensuring that local plans are ambitious enough to support the Government’s commitment—and that is the point about numbers—to get to 1.5 million homes in this Parliament. I am not saying that that is not an ambitious target; we are clear-eyed about that, but we cannot shirk the responsibility to all these thousands of homeless families and future generations locked out of home ownership. That is not just for the sake of those who are homeless, although it is very important for them; it is about the cost to the economy of this country. Some local councils are spending one-third of their revenue budgets on homelessness, and the DWP cost has gone up and is now extremely high. So we have to tackle it from an economic as well as a housing point of view. That is why, a matter of weeks into this Government, we are making the bold changes that we need to get us where we need to be.

We have taken decisive and bold action to deal with the housing crisis we are facing. This is just the start: we will set out our long-term strategy shortly, and I am sure that that will be music to the ears of those who produced the recent report calling for a long-term housing strategy. There is a plan to deliver 1.5 million homes that are affordable, high-quality and sustainable, and we will bring forward details of future government investment in housing at the point of the spending review.

Lease Extension Policies for Residential Properties

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord says, when property becomes ownerless, the land and buildings escheat to the Crown. That includes the Crown Estate and the royal duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall. If a purchaser is interested, the Crown can sell it so it goes back into private ownership, or the leaseholders are able to collectively purchase the freehold from the Crown. The Government recognise very much that when a freehold becomes ownerless it causes significant problems for leaseholders, but ownerless goods and escheat are complex areas of law, as I have discovered since I heard the noble Lord’s original discussion on this, and need to be considered very carefully. The Law Commission has flagged ownerless land as a possible project for inclusion in its 14th programme of law reform; I think we will be very interested to see what comes out of that review.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, can I segue a little from Crown Estate tenants, if the noble Baroness will forgive me? We have 5 million leaseholders in limbo land waiting for the enactment of the 2024 Act. Indeed, we were promised in the recent King’s Speech a new leasehold and commonhold Bill—I see a big smile from the Government Chief Whip there. Therefore, could the noble Baroness urge the Government to set out a timetable as soon as possible for both these things, as limbo land is not a good place to be? Leaseholders have already waited long enough for this much-needed reform.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Baroness will know that I agree with her sentiments. I have certainly already had the Chief Whip speak about this. As outlined in the King’s Speech, the Government will provide home owners with greater rights, powers and protections over their homes by, first, implementing the provisions of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. Some of that has already been enacted, but there will be a need for some secondary legislation to do the rest. We will then further reform the leasehold system by enacting remaining Law Commission recommendations —which we tried to do with amendments but were not successful—relating to leasehold enfranchisement and the right to manage; tackling unregulated and unaffordable ground rents; and removing the disproportionate and draconian threat of forfeiture as a means of ensuring compliance with the lease agreement. We will take steps to bring the feudal leasehold system to an end, reinvigorating commonhold through a comprehensive new legal framework.

Spending Commitments to Local Councils

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Thornhill]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they intend to review existing spending commitments made to local councils.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

In asking the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I declare my interest as the vice-president of the Local Government Association.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, mayors, leaders, councillors and officers around the country have done an amazing job of supporting their communities, but too often in recent years that has been in spite of the Government and not with them. This Government are committed to ensuring that councils have the resources they need to provide public services to their communities in this Parliament. Of course, spending commitments beyond 2024-25 are a matter for the next spending review, but the work of engagement has already begun.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

I thank the Minister for her Answer and warmly welcome her to her new role, for which she is most ably qualified. I am pleased to hear what she has to say, but this money is crucial. Can she be specific about a timeframe as to when councils will hear whether they have got the money? We are talking about many millions of pounds, in certain cases. More importantly, can she reassure the sector that, when decisions are made, they will involve looking at how advanced those projects already are, how much money has already been spent and, in particular, the impact on the financial sustainability of the council if it does not get the promised money? As she knows, for some councils that is critical.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her kind comments. We worked together often in Hertfordshire, and I hope that that relationship continues. Local places will rightly seek clarity on existing funding commitments, but as all noble Lords would expect, the Government are fully considering funding arrangements, including the very hard work that has been undertaken on projects to date. We will confirm as quickly as possible how we are going to take those projects forward.