Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Lord Cameron of Dillington(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
I shall start with the noble Baroness’s point because I think it probably refers to the previous group in terms of local authorities and agreements with the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State and I, on behalf of the Government, absolutely acknowledge that local authorities know their own local communities. In the spirit of the approach that this House has taken, that is what I am trying to articulate today. Rather than it being central government’s suspicion of local government, we are head-on acknowledging that local authorities and local leaders best know the needs of their communities. I know the Secretary of State respects that.
I now move on to Amendments 62 and 63. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy, Lord Best and Lord Cameron. No, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, did not make any points on these amendments. He is so good that I think he has spoken. I have been particularly struck by the points that have been made about housing that is located in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty by the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Best. Greater planning constraints apply in these areas, which would make it more challenging to replace homes that are sold off with new housing. The Government want affordable housing in rural areas to continue to provide for those who need it the most, and in certain cases I agree that we should be clearer about how we can best protect it. Therefore, I hope the noble Lords will be pleased to hear that I am making a commitment—although the noble Lord kind of preceded me—to exclude local authority housing that is located in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty from the housing to be taken into account under this chapter. Housing in these areas will be excluded under regulations.
More broadly, throughout the passage of the Bill I have heard many powerful arguments about the need to protect rural housing. Amendment 119, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, who is not in her place, emphasises the need to protect rural areas more widely. I commit to look at the detailed points that have been raised about housing in rural areas during the remainder of the passage of the Bill to consider how we might use existing powers to make further exclusions to ensure that we reach a reasonable balance. I hope noble Lords will agree that these two commitments go a long way to meeting their concerns. In light of these undertakings, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, will withdraw his amendment.
Turning to Amendment 63, I agree that local authorities should make the best use of housing stock to meet people’s needs. This includes transferring tenants to alternative vacant social accommodation when it suits their circumstances—for example, if they are underoccupying or overoccupying a property. That is good stock management. However, I am concerned that Amendment 63 could open the door to local authorities seeking to reduce or minimise their payment. This would mean that there would be a lower level of receipts to build additional homes and fewer housing association tenants would realise their dream of home ownership. That said, I am not in a position to make a decision about whether to exclude transfers from the types of definition of vacancy using the regulation-making powers in Clause 77(2) until we have concluded our data analysis and understood the impact of such an exclusion. I assure noble Lords that we will use the views expressed to help inform decisions regarding situations when housing would not be considered as becoming vacant. With these assurances, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Cameron of Dillington
I thank all Members of the House who have supported the amendment. I again thank the Minister and, indeed, her Secretary of State for the compromise position that they have offered. I look forward to discussing the details of the government amendment that will be provided at Third Reading. It is quite clear that the process in national parks, AONBs, the Norfolk Broads and other special areas is quite a simple matter to deal with. Housing in communities of fewer than 3,000 people where it is impossible to replace sold housing due to planning regulations, either as spelled out in the National Planning Policy Framework or where they have been interpreted by a local plan, will be the key to whether the government amendment will be acceptable. I look forward to the discussion and, in the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Lord Cameron of Dillington
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I support Amendment 1. For the purposes of Report, I declare my interests as a farmer and landowner, as a rural landlord of domestic property, and as the ultimate landowner of an exception site leased to Hastoe Housing Association.
I wish to make only one point—to re-emphasise what others have hinted at. We are all aware of the shortage of affordable housing in our country. We are also aware that this is not a short-term problem. I expect that most of us will have received the rather bleak report from the National Federation of Property Professionals, predicting that property prices and rents will continue to rise until at least 2025 because of the shortage of housing, particularly affordable housing. Meanwhile, the Government have promised to build 200,000 new starter homes by 2020. This will be the main plank in their policy to deal with the severe shortage of affordable housing. Let us say that it is 50,000 starter homes a year, although I expect that it is even more than that by now. The transience—that is the key word—of these starter homes, which causes them to fall out of the affordable sector currently after only five years, maybe eight, means that we will have to go on building 50,000 starter homes a year for ever.
We are trying to fill the bath with the plug taken out. Amendment 1 is an effort to put the plug back in. Therefore, I strongly support it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, before I begin, I note that those of us discussing the housing Bill on the last day before recess were the last ones out of this place, and we are the first ones back in to discuss it today. I am very glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, back, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell—who is much chirpier than she was. I apologise for anything that the housing Bill took out of noble Lords.
Before I turn—or, in some cases, return—to the amendments we are discussing today, noble Lords will have seen that over the recess I wrote giving further detail on how the Government have reflected on the debate so far, and saying that we will amend the Bill as a result. It is worth considering where we have come from. For example, to reflect noble Lords’ concerns about starter homes we introduced a requirement to consult when changing price caps, and have now introduced flexibility on the upper age limit so that more couples and injured service personnel can benefit. Many noble Lords—for example, the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Shipley—were also concerned about parents exploiting starter homes for their children. Today, I will move an amendment to address that.
The consultation document we published in March—referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham—has been directly influenced by your Lordships’ House, as have amendments I will move later when we discuss banning orders. Those amendments were inspired by contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Campbell-Savours. We are due to debate electrical safety, and I look forward to discussing with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter—who is not yet in her place—and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, the steps we can take to make homes as safe as they can be. The amendment I will move later is a direct response to the points raised through your Lordships’ House.
I will continue to reflect as we turn to later parts of the Bill. I know, for example, that there is a lot of concern that noble Lords would not have the opportunity to see how we plan to implement the Bill’s clauses on social rents. I will write this week giving that further detail, so that noble Lords can approach next week’s debate as informed as they can possibly be.
I said before the recess that I trust that, as we discuss this Bill on Report, we can move closer on a number of matters about which we will all agree. I do not think there has ever been any dispute over the need to increase the number of homes built to meet this housing crisis. There is the need to ensure that housing markets and the planning system that enables their growth work as well as they can. I hope that a number of our debates will not divide us, and that we will take to Third Reading a Bill that is practical and improved as a result of the expertise that noble Lords have shown throughout.
Turning to Amendments 1 and 5, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Best, for Amendment 1, which would require the repayment of the 20% discount reduced by 1% for each year of occupation for a period of 20 years. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Shipley, Lord Beecham and Lord Kennedy, for their Amendment 5, which would require the minimum 20% discount on a starter home to be retained permanently with the property. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked for clarification on when the discount might be larger. That would be in the situation where local authorities, for example, negotiated a larger discount. I think it was my noble friend Lord Porter who pointed out how he had done that in Lincolnshire. It is difficult to speculate at this point where this might be done with starter homes. The point is that local authorities can and do negotiate larger discounts.
I made clear in Committee that we want to ensure that starter homes are sold to those genuinely committed to living in an area and not to those who would simply wish to quickly sell to secure financial gain. However, we also want to support mobility. Many noble Lords expressed concerns about the proposed five-year restriction that would enable the owner to sell at full market value after five years of occupation. I listened carefully to the quite extensive debate in Committee and to the views of the sector. As a result, we are seeking views in our consultation on whether a tapered approach should be introduced. This would enable owners of starter homes to sell at an increasing proportion of market value over time, stepping up to 100% after a maximum of eight years. We consider that restrictions beyond eight years would unreasonably limit young people’s ability to move on. That is a similar point to the one made by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, on the growing family, although I think that we made them for slightly different reasons. We do not want these houses to be restricted in perpetuity as we think that that would make it more difficult for the first-time buyer to move to a new home as their family needs grow and their circumstances change. Starter homes are for young first-time buyers whose needs will change. If you only ever own a proportion of the property, the step to full ownership is a much, much greater challenge. We want to support mobility, not hinder it.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I thank noble Lords, particularly the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Best, for the persuasive arguments they put forward in Committee. We would not want to create some of the effects they talked about, such as benevolent landowners putting forward sites that are then slapped with a starter home policy. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, to allow me to take this issue away and return to it at Third Reading. I hope that that will help him and other noble Lords who plan to speak on this amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Lord Cameron of Dillington
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 41. I was going to list the range of various abuses that I felt the starter homes regime would be open to, but that has been done with much greater expertise and experience by my colleagues, my noble friends Lord Best and Lord Kerslake, and, indeed, with greater eloquence.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Williams of Trafford)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I just do not want to happen today what happened on Tuesday. Amendment 41 is in the following group, but I am very happen to listen to him and to respond.
Lord Cameron of Dillington
I do apologise; I meant Amendment 41A.
The point that everyone has made, including the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, who I did not mention just now, is that the moment you falsify a market, there will always be someone looking to make a turn. If the Government are experimenting with a new product, I am certain that financiers and traders will be very quick to find new ways of taking advantage.
To my way of thinking, starter homes do little, in the countryside at any rate, to solve the urgent housing problems of those many families in real need. The other big shortfall of starter homes, when compared with, say, shared equity, is their transiency. Unless we continue to build, let us say, 50,000 starter homes every year in their currently proposed incarnation, not only until 2020 as promised by the Government but ad infinitum, then their very small benefit to society will in each case be lost after only five years.
The lack of affordable housing in this, our very crowded island, is not a short-term problem. I cannot see it diminishing, so we need something more permanently fixed in the affordable sector than starter homes as currently planned. By way of a compromise, to assist starter homes to give a little longer-lasting benefit and to avoid, as has already been said, some of the possible abuses, I believe that Amendment 41A is worth serious consideration by the Government.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I think I addressed quite a lot of my remarks to the local test.
Lord Cameron of Dillington
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their participation in the debate and for their nearly universal support—especially the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Deben, who are both old hands in this area—even if they only assisted in the birth of the site, not being the rightful daddy, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said.
I was reminded when the noble Lord, Lord Deben, was speaking of a phrase that I believe he did conceive when he was Secretary of State at the DoE, “executive ghettos”, which is what we are all trying to avoid. I have heard another phrase recently in planning philosophy, which is “place making”. What we are trying to do here is place saving, because I hope that, mostly, we already have reasonably good places in the countryside.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, talked about Section 52 agreements. I am not too concerned how we organise the exception sites or homes for locals; the real point about the exception sites is that they are outside the planning system: the land would not normally get planning permission of any sort. It is the cheapness of the land and the way that the house can be built by the housing association which enables houses to be very good value for locals, not only the control of the marketplace, as the noble Lord rightly says, which the Section 52 agreement dictates. They start off being of very low value. I would be very keen on trying to maintain the houses being owned by a housing association; in that way, no one owns them outright so that they can sell them, whether at a low value or not.
I repeat that 45% of all rural affordable houses built in the past year are on exception sites. Without the amendments, the supply of exception sites will dry up; neither landowners nor parishes will accept them. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said that, without them, we could easily kill the village. It depends what your definition of village is, but it would definitely kill the community, which is perhaps the major point, as they very possibly revert to the said executive ghettos.
I am glad that the Minister supported the sentiment behind the amendments, even if she did not totally accept them, but I was very dismayed when she said that starter homes could be allowed on exception sites, and would also still fall out after five years and be sold as homes. That very statement will kill exception sites stone dead. I cannot see parishes or landowners agreeing to continue on that basis. It is all very well saying that the landowner can place a condition of sale, but conditions of sale are very difficult and expensive to enforce, particularly after the first sale.
I hope that we can continue to discuss the arrangements between now and Report so that these executive sites will be able to continue to come forward, but at the moment I do not think they will.