Housing and Planning Bill

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by declaring my interest as a private landlord. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, on her maiden speech. Her expertise is very welcome and I wonder whether her pastoral care experience might come in very useful in this House.

I also have very high regard for the Minister, and I share the Government’s aspiration to build thousands more new homes, but as is the case with so much legislation, the rhetoric does not match the reality. The Bill, rather than providing solutions to the housing crisis, exacerbates it. It also cuts across the localism agenda of which the Minister is such a powerful advocate —a vast number of new powers are being granted to the Secretary of State, and local councils’ ability to respond to the needs of their communities is being diminished.

We have had much debate recently about secondary legislation and the Government’s increasingly undemocratic use of framework Bills. In this Bill, the regulation rot sets in at line 14 and continues throughout. In my view, it would be improper and irresponsible for this House to complete its scrutiny of the Bill until we have seen the draft regulations. The Bill changes the housing landscape in our communities, both urban and rural, it changes the balance between private and social housing, and the impact on our society is potentially enormous. The details will be determined by regulation.

I will focus on the Bill’s impact on rural housing. The Bill could and should be a great opportunity to provide the housing that would reinvigorate rural communities. In the south-west, the housing crisis is made worse by the highest level of second homes anywhere in the country. The average price of a home in 2014 was just over £240,000, and in areas such as the Cotswolds this increases by more than 50%. According to the Government’s extraordinary and indefensible new definition of “affordable”, these homes are affordable, but they are simply not affordable for people living on low or average wages, who are already spending more than a third of their income on renting privately and are absolutely unable to save for a deposit, even at a 20% discount.

Affordable housing is crucial to the vitality and sustainability of the countryside, and the failure to create affordable homes is fuelling many of the challenges facing rural communities. The excellent CPRE and Hastoe Housing Association tell us that in 1980, 24% of rural homes were affordable, but now the figure is 8%, and the housing affordability gap is greater in rural communities than in urban—house prices are higher, earnings are lower.

Young people can no longer afford to live in the towns and villages where they grew up, and rural demographics are changing. The centres of community life—schools, post offices, shops and pubs—are all closing, while more older people are moving in, leading to increasing demands on health and social care services, but without the young people to provide the services. What evidence-based cross-government consultation has there been on the Bill?

The greatest and most adverse effect that the Bill will have on rural communities is the extension of right to buy to housing associations. I am against the sale of any housing association home, but the unfortunate, if understandable, deal between the Government and the National Housing Federation means that that cannot be stopped. However, together with noble Lords from all Benches, I will do my utmost to exempt housing associations in rural areas from the provision. Such a move would have the support of the CPRE, the CLA, national parks, the LGA, the Rural Services Network and many housing associations, including Two Rivers, which does a fantastic job in the Forest of Dean, sustaining communities as well as building homes.

I realise that the new agreement to sell is “voluntary”, but what does that mean and how long will it last? Will the Secretary of State eventually intervene? How will tenants react when the aspirations that have been raised by the Government are stymied by an association’s board, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, pointed out? We are told that available discounts will be portable, but what does that mean?

The funding of this right to buy is deeply offensive, and the sums do not add up. Quality council housing stock will be decimated, including in rural areas. I understand that of the homes that Shropshire Council would be forced to sell, 190 might be bungalows for older and disabled people, and 207 might be rural properties. Some settlements would be almost totally hollowed out of social housing. It will be impossible for councils to meet the decent homes standard. Rather than improving the quality of our housing stock by making homes resilient, the Bill will lead to more rabbit hutches of a poor environmental standard that simply will not last.

Few will be able to buy starter homes in rural areas, where the real shortage of homes relates to social housing. The Minister said that starter homes will be additional to the package of support, but the Government have already said that they will not be additional homes, but instead of other affordable homes. Moreover, allowing starter homes to be built on rural exception sites will act as a disincentive for landowners to release future sites for affordable housing. The recent government exemption of Section 106 affordable housing contributions for sites of 10 units or fewer is already reducing the number of affordable homes. I will seek to ensure that rural-80 and rural-50 local authorities will be able to set and negotiate the level of affordable housing contribution on individual sites to reflect local need. This would be localism in practice.

There is much more that I would like to say, including on the threshold of “pay to stay” and the protection of secure tenancies, and on community leadership, as eloquently expressed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester. The Government seem bent on increasing people’s insecurity and putting more money into the hands of private landlords, as well as increasing the housing benefit bill. Do they not agree that homes should be places of safety and security, and not just for those who are able to buy? Do they not understand that secure housing is inextricably linked with physical and mental health, with educational outcomes and the ability to grasp opportunity?

Finally, in respect of rural housing, the plethora of definitions of “rural” causes confusion. I hope, therefore, that we will be able to agree on a definition of a rural community which can be supported by the majority of stakeholders and used for housing and other purposes.

The Bill requires a huge amount of scrutiny and amendment. As it stands, it threatens further to fray the fabric of our rural communities so that they are beyond repair. We cannot and must not allow that to happen.