Older People’s Housing Taskforce

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a very important point. I will take it away with me and discuss it with Minister Pennycook. It will also be a cross-departmental discussion with the Department for Transport to ensure that the particular issues that my noble friend raises are addressed and thought of when moving forward so that we can make not only the house accessible within, but the route to the house.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as set out in the register, particularly that I was a member of the Older People’s Housing Taskforce. It is widely acknowledged that supported accommodation can significantly benefit the health and well-being of older people. That has the additional benefit of saving social care and the health service considerable costs. In addition, if it is placed in urban areas, it can support town centre regeneration.

However, due to the additional facilities, the building costs of supported accommodation are substantially higher than those of mainstream accommodation. In recognition of this, one of the task force’s recommendations to help to deliver supported accommodation was that it should not be subject to demands as heavy as the affordable housing and Section 106 planning obligations of mainstream housing. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will support this?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

The Government will publish a housing strategy that will set out a long-term vision for the housing market that works for communities, building 1.5 million high-quality homes and the biggest increase in affordable housing in a generation. Supported housing plays a vital role in delivering better life outcomes, improved well-being and health, as the noble Lord mentioned, and greater independence for many vulnerable people, including older, disabled and homeless people.

We recognise the challenges local authorities are facing as demand increases for critical services. We have listened to voices across local government and have announced £4 billion in additional funding for local government services at the Budget, including £1.3 billion, which will go through the settlement.

Housebuilding Targets

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Jamieson]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what tools they will provide to local authorities to support the delivery of mandatory house-building targets.

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

My Lords, the Government have announced a £46 million package of investment into the planning system to support capacity and capability in local planning authorities, including the recruitment and training of 300 planners and the development of the skills needed to implement reforms and unlock housing delivery. We have also consulted on proposals to increase resources in the planning system by increasing planning fees and empowering local authorities to set their own planning fees so that they can carry out their vital role in supporting economic growth and delivering 1.5 million new homes during this Parliament.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as laid out in the register. I thank the Minister for her Answer. My particular concern is houses that have planning permission and sites that have been allocated that are not being brought forward. The LGA estimates that there are around 1 million houses with planning permission and around a further 1 million allocated sites that have not yet been brought forward for planning permission. What will this Government do to help councils get landowners, promoters and developers to bring forward those sites?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Lord is quite right to raise this. I am pleased to say that we have today published the National Planning Policy Framework, which sets out a broad framework of advice for local authorities. This is a particular issue, and we have set up our acceleration scheme to make sure that those sites that are stalled can be brought into use as quickly as possible. The department will work with all areas that have stalled housing sites to find out what the blockages are and make sure that we support them as they work to get those sites released as quickly as possible.

Planning Committees: Reform

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, the Government committed in their manifesto to involving local authorities in the planning process. However, the Deputy Prime Minister recently announced that applications that comply with local development plans will not have to get approval from local planning committees. Given that sites in local plans often have very little detail associated with them, how will the Government ensure that local voices are heard throughout the planning process?

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

My Lords, I want to be clear that I do not think local authorities should have the finger pointed at them for holding up planning. However, applications can get stuck, and we need to do all we can to make the processes as efficient and effective as possible. We recognise the great importance of democratic oversight of planning decisions. This is a working paper for discussion with the sector, and the changes we propose will support that plan-led system by ensuring that planning committees operate as effectively as possible and encourage better-quality development that is aligned with local development plans. The paper puts forward for discussion with the sector three models for how this could work. It is not the intention to exclude local authority members but to get them, and the public, more involved at local plan stage, so that they can influence things at an earlier stage in the process before detailed applications come forward.

Homes: Existing Communities

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as detailed in the register. I thank my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise for tabling this important debate and coming up with a provocative presentation that makes us think. In planning, we always need to think. The temptation is always to carry on doing what you are doing, which tends to mean you get the same result.

I think we all agree that we have a housing crisis, and the current planning system is not working as it should. Two important points were raised. First, how do we build houses where people want to live? Secondly, how do we extract a planning gain that is in many, but not all, areas for the benefit of residents not landowners?

I will focus on building the right houses in the right places with the right soft and hard infrastructure. The greatest need for housing in many parts of the country is in urban areas. That is also where there is the best infrastructure. I note that, in London, we are shutting schools because there are not enough pupils; in Bedfordshire, we are building schools because there are not enough schools. Should we not be having more children in London—that is, houses?

That is one of the issues: it is incredibly hard to build on brownfield sites. This is why the previous Government came up with the proposal—I was involved in it—that there should be a strong presumption in building on brownfield land. I am quite disappointed that the current Government are moving away from that and suggesting that we should build on the grey belt. There may be a need to build on the grey belt but we should do everything in our power to build on brownfield first. We should also regenerate on brownfield and regenerate some of our older housing estates in many of our urban areas with gentle densification.

I add that, if we compare some of our major cities—for instance, London—to others, Madrid and Barcelona are four times as dense as London. Paris is nearly twice as dense. That gives a whole number of advantages: as well as being able to use not as much greenfield land, it means that your transport system is much better and that people have much better access to local services. This really is a very important issue.

I want to come on to some of the issues with the planning system and the one-size-fits-all approach. By way of example, in Central Bedfordshire, we were inundated with speculative applications because there was a big uplift in land value. They were all supported by highly paid barristers challenging our planning system. I talked to some of my colleagues in areas with lower land value; they were not facing that issue. Their problem was that they did not have viable land, particularly where they were seeking to regenerate brownfield land, so they had a different problem. I then talked to developers who told me how hard it is to develop in certain urban areas.

What we need is a planning system that gives local authorities clear guidance on what objectives are to be achieved then provides them with the tools to deliver those objectives. It needs to be a coherent and consistent planning system—something that I fear we do not have. I welcome the new NPPPF proposals and what is said on the outside of the tin, so to speak. My concern is that, with planning, the detail is always the problem. Although we all superficially want better houses, more brownfield and better infrastructure, it is the detail that really matters—what is inside the tin—and it genuinely worries me that we will continue to get this wrong.

Finally, several noble Lords mentioned the Building Beautiful programme. The previous Government had the Office for Place, a department responsible for creating beautiful, successful and enduring places. I am very disappointed that it is not being continued. I ask the Minister: do this Government intend to build as many houses as quickly as possible, regardless of their appearance and impact on the local community? We must focus on building as many new homes on brownfield sites as possible and, where they are not on such sites, on ensuring that they have the right infrastructure and that the community is taken into account. We need to increase urban density gently and do so in combination with regenerating communities, such that we end up building homes and communities that people want to live in.

Housing (Right to Buy) (Limits on Discount) (England) Order 2024

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

I rise briefly to take part in this debate. Before doing so, I draw Members’ attention to my register of interest: I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a director of a fully privately funded affordable housing provider that actively encourages its tenants to buy their homes after five, 10, 15 or 20 years. It is called Rentplus and it does what it says on the tin: you rent at a discounted price and you buy at a discounted price. I work for somebody in the private sector who preaches the possibility that home ownership should be within everybody’s reach.

I will support my noble friend by going through the Division Lobby with him when he chooses to divide, but I will not agree on the reason. My reason is not that the Government are being unreasonable in setting the numbers they have chosen. Putting numbers on a piece of paper is a big mistake when talking about property markets; they are so varied in so many places for so many different reasons that it is better to put a percentage figure. I disagreed with what the last Government did by increasing the discounts to such a level that only really rewarded avaricious grandchildren, not the hard-working tenants who had occupied their homes for a long time. A number of elderly people were pressured into buying their houses for a capital sum that would go to their grandchildren. That should not have happened unless that grandchild had lived with those grandparents.

But, as my noble friend Lord Fuller said, right to buy is probably the single biggest piece of social mobility legislation enacted since the war. It enabled a million families to gain access to capital who never had done in the history of their families. I do not think anybody has done any work, but somebody should do, on how many businesses were set up in this country by people who could leverage capital they had not previously had access to. For a number of reasons—I think about our care sector, as people need access to capital to be able to pay to have care nowadays—this country would fall apart without it.

We should not lose sight of the fact that just over a million homes were lost to councils through right to buy, but 2 million homes were lost to councils through propositions put forward by the Tony Blair Government. Out of the 4 million homes that used to be in council ownership pre-1980, 1 million, so 25%, were lost through right to buy and 2 million—50%—were lost through LSVT. Councils such as my own were summoned to the Government Offices for the Regions to explain why they were not transferring their homes out. So this is not a tribal issue between the red team and the blue team; it is a proposition about whether we believe most people in this country aspire to be home owners. Clearly we do—I think all of us across the Chamber believe that—but do we also believe that people should be able to live in a safe, secure, decent, affordable home even if their financial circumstances mean that they are unable to do that completely unaided at the time they need it?

Right to buy is a good thing, but the right to build is the most important thing, and I agree that the Labour Government are right this time round to allow councils to keep 100% of the receipts, which would otherwise have been lost to the Treasury. Who wants to give money to the Treasury? It is much better for it to be spent locally. If the Labour Government had said that the discounts would be set at a local level by local councils to stimulate demand but not to reward avaricious grandchildren, I would not be going through the Division Lobbies tonight. But that is not what they have said; they have said, “Whitehall knows best. We’ll set an arbitrary figure that’ll have no bearing to the marketplace in a year or two’s time”.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I draw Members’ attention to my interests as detailed in the register, including being a councillor in Central Bedfordshire, which has its own housing HRA. I very much support my noble friends’ comments regarding the opportunities that right to buy has given to so many people, but I will highlight the fact that this is an issue not of the sale of council homes but of a complete failure to build.

There are 4.25 million affordable homes—an increase of some 35,000 over the last two years, even with the sale of around 30,000 affordable homes in that period. I am pleased that the last Government had the 100% retention of right-to-buy receipts, which facilitated councils building homes. If we are to build the homes that we need, it is essential to maximise all avenues to building more homes. Allowing tenants to buy their own homes with a reasonable incentive and reinvesting the proceeds in new homes is an opportunity for more, not fewer, homes.

I will give the example of my own council, and I will trump my noble friend Lord Fuller because Central Bedfordshire was at 1.5%, not 1%. I am proud that, as leader of Central Beds, we had a proactive council house building programme. For example, in the period 2021-23 we built 259 homes and acquired a further 76, and we sold 82 under the right-to-buy rules —a net increase of 253. Without the proceeds from right to buy we would have ended up building substantially fewer homes. That would have meant tens of families—possibly even 100—not having a home because we would not have had the right-to-buy proceeds. That is important, because it gives more people the opportunity for an affordable rented home.

I reiterate: the ability to reinvest proceeds from right to buy is an opportunity to provide more, not fewer, homes. The issue is one of getting homes built, which should be the focus, not curtailing opportunity.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, from listening to this debate, I recognise that there is a certain amount of agreement around the Chamber. It seems, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Porter, that this is very much a question of balance. Of course right to buy was a wonderful thing for many people, but the right to have a roof over your head is also pretty important. Therefore, if you take it too far and there are no council houses to put vulnerable people into, you will have a real problem. It seems there is a consensus that could lead to the right way forward—namely, the right amount of houses being available for right to buy but preserving enough and, as has been said, building more to protect fragile communities.

Housing Supply and Homelessness

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in the register and my membership of the previous Government’s London housing task force and the Older People’s Housing Taskforce. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, for securing this very important debate on the genuine housing crisis that we face. I also thank the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for the great work he has done in this area. I really appreciated his speech.

There have been many statistics, and normally I throw out lots of statistics, but I am going to try to curtail that today. Homelessness is a genuine scourge for this country. For most people, that is perceived as rough sleeping, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Bird, mentioned, is a very complex issue. But I want to deal with the rest of the iceberg that people do not see—the temporary accommodation, the sofa surfing, the overcrowding and the cost to families and their budgets, limiting their ability to pay for their energy bills and food bills and support their children. This is a genuine housing crisis and it is simple: we are not building enough houses in this country.

I shall compare us to, say, France. Between 1983 and 2021, the UK built 7.3 million homes. France built 13.5 million homes. It is no surprise then that the real increase in house prices in the UK since 1970 has been 400%, whereas in France it has been 170%, and elsewhere in Europe prices are now substantially lower. Build more houses and houses will cost less. It is relatively simple. This is exacerbated in the UK by our very uneven demand. Demand is very much focused on the south, particularly in London. London is the issue I want to focus on. It is where we have the biggest housing crisis, with 300,000 people on the housing waiting list, 70,000 children living in temporary accommodation, local authorities spending more than £1 billion a year on temporary accommodation and rents representing more than 50% of average gross earnings. House prices are approaching £20,000 per square metre in central London. In my authority or the authority of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor—Stevenage—the figure is more in the region of £3,000. That has a massive impact on availability. The ripple effect of London is impacting homelessness and the cost of housing outside.

London is not doing well on delivering houses. It is down at 32,000 in the last 12 months, 30% below the figure of a few years earlier. The rest of the country is also down, but only by around 10%. The risk is that, this year, London will deliver even fewer houses. The London Plan suggests that we should build 52,000 homes. The latest government figures suggest it should be 80,000. The previous Government suggested 100,000. Whatever the figure, it is genuinely far more homes than are being delivered today. And it is not because of a lack of opportunity. The GLA identifies that there are sites for more than 1 million homes in London. Anecdotally, this could be increased significantly through regeneration of housing association and council housing estates, densification and the use of industrial land. It is not unreasonable to suggest that we could build 2 million homes in London.

Why is this not happening? As I speak to developers, they constantly tell me that it has got harder and harder to build in London. There is more and more regulation, more and more legislation, more and more consents: it is just too difficult and the planning system is incoherent. Many housebuilders are no longer prepared to build in London unless they have the full co-operation of a local council.

The London Plan is one example of this, and while there are many admirable aims in that local plan, its 133 clauses were described to me by one developer as “133 reasons not to build”. There is not one clause in the London Plan that actually makes it easier, faster or quicker to build a home.

That is why, when I was on the taskforce, we recommended that there should be a strong presumption in favour of granting planning permission on brownfield land where the local authority in question is not meeting its housing targets. This was adopted by the previous Government. Will the Minister also commit her Government to this?

Planning Reforms: Net-zero Carbon Emissions

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My noble friend is quite right about onshore wind and solar, and that is why the Chancellor announced in July the immediate removal of the inexplicable ban on onshore wind in England. The planning restrictions in place in England since 2015 could have led to a single objection to an onshore wind turbine preventing it being built. As I said, we are considering further the issues of solar, particularly the importance of connections to rural areas. His point about mayors is well made. We will be making a Statement about the English Devolution White Paper in the next few days. That will give powers to mayors to do the right thing and to drive this clean energy agenda forward in a way that is right for their area.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as laid out in the register. In their press release of 23 September, the Government said that all social housing will have to achieve an EPC rating of C. Can the Minister tell the House how much additional grant funding the Chancellor will allocate to support local authorities and councils to achieve this for existing properties?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

There has been significant additional funding for affordable housing, and some of that will of course be used for the net- zero agenda. That funding was found in spite of the £22 billion black hole we found in our budgets, and I am very pleased that we have been able to do that. It is important that, as we drive forward a revolution in social housing, building more of it than we have seen for generations, we make sure that those new social homes do not have to be retrofitted and are at the highest standard of net zero.

Social Care Strategy

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my registered interests, in particular as a councillor in Central Bedfordshire and a member of the Older People’s Housing Taskforce. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for initiating this important debate and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, on her maiden speech, which was excellent. I also express my thanks to the extraordinary contribution made by the many people employed in the sector and the carers—with that, I also pass a virtual hug across the Chamber to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy.

As many have outlined, social care and health are in crisis. We are all living longer, which is great news, but an ageing population means that more of us will need care for longer. We just do not have the care or health service that is up to providing the services that we need today. As has been mentioned here, it is not just pensioners; there has been a 25% increase in working-age adults needing care and a near doubling of SEN over the past 10 years.

The instinctive solution is to say that we need more funding—more money. Unfortunately, that is just not practicable. In my experience of councils, they have seen the share of expenditure taken up by social care increase from 50% to over 70% in the past 15 years—somebody said that it was 80% for some councils. If we look at government expenditure, we see that the amount spent on health, social care and social security has gone up from 30% to 45% over the past 30 years. The health and social care workforce is forecast to increase from roughly one in 10 of the current working population to one in five over the next 20 years. Unfortunately, this is simply not sustainable. We need a radical change of direction, and we need to be honest with ourselves and stop kicking this can down the road.

As a society, we need to support people to live healthier for longer and to live independently. Of current health outcomes, only 20% are down to health interventions; around 30% are down to the environment in which we live and another 30% are down to the choices we make about how we live our lives. It is outside the health system that we can make the biggest differences to our longer-term health and independence.

As the Darzi report mentioned, we need to change the NHS, focusing on prevention, early intervention and a move away from medicalisation. This means more GPs, community health, better public health and changing how we work, with things such as community health hubs that bring together a multifaceted approach and treatment outside of hospitals. We need to accept that this will mean a transfer of funds away from the acute sector and the consequences of that.

Housing has an absolutely crucial role. An active, healthy life involves having friends and living somewhere suitable that promotes independence. We do not need more mass housing estates; we need to bring people into cities, towns and larger villages, where they can be part of the community and where services are on their doorstep. It is about having the right accommodation for the right point in your life. Having the right housing saves money. In Central Bedfordshire Council, we estimate that extra care facilities save the council and the NHS around £4,000 per apartment and improve the lives of the people living in them.

Technology has a huge role to play, and innovation, as was mentioned earlier. That will happen only if we have real devolution and integration at a local level. I am not in favour of a national social service, but one locally led by local leaders, with devolution of health, housing, DWP, skills and other budgets. Underpinning all this is the need for a cultural change, personally and as a society. The state has a crucial role in supporting those who need it, but it is also there to facilitate the changes we as a society need to make as we plan for our future. It is about facilitating as much as delivering. It is not just funding, it is housing, health and social care—it is culture. We need a radical structural change.

Housing: Modern Methods of Construction

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the committee for its report and my noble friend Lord Carrington for his introduction. I also declare my interest as set out in the register as a councillor and, previously, a member of the previous Government’s London housing task force.

As with so many issues in the development and housing market, the key is providing confidence to investors, suppliers and prospective workforce that there is a long-term market. Currently, everyone in the housing market lacks certainty, most particularly that they will be able to access land upon which to build. This is exacerbated by the ever-changing regulatory and planning environment. It is no wonder that companies seek to maximise value in the short term and are unwilling to invest in technology and training when they have no long-term visibility.

MMC has significant potential, particularly in our cities, but adoption has been limited to date and tends to focus on the limited area of timber-frame open-panel houses. To really move forward, an investor in MMC will need to be confident that there is a market, which means they are no longer hamstrung by a lack of sites and the delays and unpredictability of the planning system.

It is not that this nor the previous Government do not recognise the need for site availability. However, it is crucial that the detail of government planning proposals delivers sufficient viable sites and gives the industry confidence this will continue. I ask the Minister: how will they ensure that mandatory targets are delivered, particularly in urban areas that have previously delivered so little?