Brandon Lewis
Main Page: Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)Housing and Planning Bill (Sixth sitting)
Brandon Lewis Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)
It is again a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan.
I will outline matters briefly, because people want to make progress today. The clause provides for a compliance direction to be issued by the Secretary of State if the local authority is failing adequately to comply with its starter homes duties and if it has a policy contained in a local development document, such as a local plan, that is incompatible with such duties.
Any compliance direction would say that the incompatible policy must not be taken into account when certain planning decisions are taken. It must set out the Secretary of State’s reasons for making the direction and must be published. A copy must be given to the local planning authority and the direction will remain in force until revoked by a further direction given by the Secretary of State, therefore ensuring that local authorities have full understanding, as well as a chance to make their case.
The compliance direction will be used only in limited circumstances. I am happy to put that on the record. It is for when the local planning authority is in breach of its starter homes duties. As outlined a number of times on Thursday, the chapter is very much about creating a new product, recognising the challenges for first-time buyers and the Government’s determination to do what we can to help them reach their aspiration to own their own homes.
The duty to promote starter homes and to grant planning permission in accordance with the starter homes requirement is a statutory requirement. If the local authority does not do that, it will be in breach of the law. The compliance direction mechanism is designed to provide a clear sanction if the duty is breached. The Secretary of State will decide whether to issue the direction based on the information in the monitoring reports that are required to be produced under clause 5.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way and I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead for not hearing more of her opening remarks. Will the Minister give us a sense of the type of situation in which he or the Secretary of State would feel that a compliance direction was needed? Clearly, one would be if no starter homes had been set in motion, but suppose five had been set in motion? Would that require a compliance direction? Or would the Minister expect 10 or 100 before a direction was issued?
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Gentleman was unable to join us last week, but I suggest that he looks back at Hansard for last Thursday’s debate, where he can see exactly what we outlined on our expectations for starter homes. He may link that to what I have said in the past few minutes.
Starter homes are a national priority to help a generation into home ownership. We therefore need to ensure that all local planning authorities are on board with delivery. The compliance direction will apply to an incompatible policy in a local development document, which does not include neighbourhood plans or the London plan. It will mean that the incompatible policy may not be taken into consideration as part of the determination of planning applications.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Brandon Lewis
Clause 7 sets out the meanings of the terms used in the starter homes clauses. It makes clear what the terms mean in the application of the clauses and will assist with their implementation.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 7 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
Definitions
Mr Thomas
I beg to move amendment 88, in clause 8, page 5, line 1, at end insert—
“or
community-led housing schemes as defined at Schedule [New Schedule 1: community-led housing schemes]”
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. Given your huge experience, you will know the disadvantage that Back-Bench Opposition Members are at in comparison with the massed ranks of the Government with all their civil servants behind them. In saying that, I hope you will protect me from any bullying by Government Members.
In moving amendment 88, I probe whether the definitions in clause 8 are sufficiently tightly drafted to allow the full range of would-be self-builders and custom house builders to benefit, while not creating loopholes for bigger beasts of the housing market to exploit.
It is interesting that the Conservative party, which is so committed to the free market, should be so actively seeking to meddle with the free market in the clause by creating almost a mini-market within the overall housing market. However, it would be a digression to go down that route.
To give the Committee a flavour of my interest in the clause and to amplify my concern, it might be worth imagining a situation where every member of the Committee lives in the same planning authority area—say Harrow, which is probably the best planning authority in the country and certainly the best place to live, with some very high-quality political representation, especially in the western part of the planning authority area. Let us assume we all live in the same planning authority area and have done so for a number of years. We are all living in houses that we do not see as suitable for our needs going forward and so want to be part of building a better home for each of us. We all get along famously, so we decide to work together and support each other’s efforts to get a better home.
If we were to build our homes under the self-build route, they would clearly, by their very nature, be somewhat different. I am a new man at the moment—I appreciate that is a controversial concept and my partner is not necessarily a supporter of it. As a new man, I do not need anywhere to watch the television. I simply do not have the time any longer to do that, because of childcare arrangements.
My property would be, by definition, very different from those of other Committee members who are not new men or do not have childcare responsibilities. The Minister looks like a man who would want a hot tub in his self-build property. Again, his would be a very different property from those that the rest of us want. The hon. Member for South Norfolk is the very definition of the type of Member who would want to create a mini-castle. Certainly, he would want a wide, sweeping drive to accommodate all his cars.
Mr Bacon
Yes, I do. In Berlin, people have come together, often led by an architect who has identified the site, people and finance, and worked in co-operation with the local authority, very much in a community-driven way, to produce housing co-operatives that people join. By becoming a member, they are entitled to a dwelling. As the co-operative grows, they can move to a different dwelling that is the right size for them—as they get older or become members of larger families—and they can continue to do that throughout their lives. I therefore support the idea of housing co-operatives.
I will correct the hon. Gentleman on one thing, though. To take the example of Housing People Building Communities in Liverpool, which I visited recently, he described owners as active, albeit collective. Of course it is possible to have co-operative action by communities that results in individual ownership, and that is what has happened in Liverpool. I support the idea of housing co-operatives being covered by the Bill. The difference I have with him is that I think they already are.
Brandon Lewis
As I said on Thursday, I always think it best to start by outlining what we agree on before moving to what we perhaps do not agree on. I agree with the opening comments of the hon. Member for Harrow West. I am sure we agree that he believes that he is the best representation that Harrow could have. I say gently that I hope that his other opening remarks were meant with some tongue in cheek, because otherwise Conservative Members will have found them pretty offensive.
I am sure that all members of the Committee will have spent many hours during mornings, evenings and weekends working through issues behind the Bill to ensure that what we are presenting will be transformational in how we make housing supply and increase home ownership. If the hon. Gentleman looks back at Thursday’s Hansard report—I appreciate that he was not with us on Thursday, as he obviously had other commitments—he will find that amendments were withdrawn and ideas were taken on board from both sides of the Committee in that proper tradition of working together where we can agree in the best interests of all. In that spirit, I hope to give him and my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk some words of comfort and reassurance about what the clause seeks to do.
The Government very much support community-led housing schemes, and the hon. Gentleman was right to outline the importance of co-operatives and those schemes. His amendment would add housing built by community-led housing groups for the good of the community to the clause. However, the individuals who first live in such properties would not necessarily have an input in their design, and I argue that that is not self-build or custom house building, nor should it be considered as such.
Where a group of people want to build or commission their own homes next to each other to enable them to live as a community, legislation already allows for that, as my hon. Friend rightly identified. Indeed, supporting such people in the way we see elsewhere around the world, and in Europe in particular, is the reason why “associations of individuals” is included in the definition, as he rightly pointed out. I categorically assure him that groups of people coming together in whatever format—whether loosely and informally or in a more formal organisation—to develop a genuine self or custom build property into whose design and build they have an input is intended to be included in the definition.
Mr Thomas
I am grateful to the Minister for his opening remarks thus far, but I wonder whether I could push him a little further. When he writes to every planning authority—as I have no doubt he will—perhaps he can be clear that housing co-operatives in the format that he has described, using the language that he has used, would be covered under the definition of self-build and custom house building. They would then benefit, crucially, from being able to indicate their interest and from being on the register and would have to be contacted by the planning authority if suitable land became available.
Brandon Lewis
Obviously our words in the House are widely read by people far and wide, and I am sure they will pick up on that. In any communications that we send out following Royal Assent, I will very happily make it clear that any group of people coming together, if they are genuinely looking at custom building and self-building and having an input into the design, where the owner and occupier will have been part of the process, would qualify as custom build and self-build.
I would go a bit further in qualifying that. Traditional community-led housing schemes can include members who are not interested in self-build community house building and therefore would not benefit from joining the register. In those cases, I do not see why individuals within community groups who are interested in self-build and custom house building cannot join together, as individuals or a group, or, if they wish for land close to each other, as an association of individuals, as the qualification outlines.
The overriding rationale of self-build and custom house building is that the person who lives in the finished property has a choice over the design of that property. My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk spoke powerfully about this on Second Reading. As he outlined, this is also about moving the housing market. Even where a developer is involved, it is about moving into building property that is focused on the customer’s needs, with the customer being involved in that outline, rather than the traditional build method that we have seen previously in this country.
Mr Bacon
Because I was speaking to the amendment of the hon. Member for Harrow West, I did not deal directly with the point the Minister is now making, about the effect of clause 8(1) on the definition of “wholly or mainly” in proposed new section 1(A2) of the 2015 Act. I would be happy to have your guidance, Sir Alan, on whether now is the appropriate time to intervene on the Minister on this point, or whether I should do so in the clause 8 stand part debate. I have a query for the Minister, although I do not wish to amend anything.
The Chair
There probably will be a stand part debate on this clause, so you could talk about it then.
Brandon Lewis
I look forward to that conversation with my hon. Friend.
Let me finish by saying that although we all see the benefit and goodness of a community group building for unnamed individuals or for the greater good of the community—it is incredibly worthwhile in itself, and I am sure all of us across the House would encourage it—it is not self-build and custom build. For that reason, I hope the hon. Member for Harrow West will withdraw his amendment.
Mr Thomas
I welcome the Minister’s efforts to move at least partly in my direction. There are opportunities for us to discuss the state of the housing co-operative world more generally through other amendments that I have tabled. Let me gently raise again with the Minister my concern about clause 8(2) and the example I gave of the Lewisham initiative, where a local community land trust working with the council is coming together to provide homes at local level. There are members of the land trust who want to live in the community-led housing scheme, but it is effectively a corporate body being set up to do this work. Would it be covered?
Brandon Lewis
To qualify for self-build and custom build, individuals who are going to own and live in the property need to be part of the design and production of that property. If the organisation is commissioning properties for people who are not part of the design panel, they would not by definition be self-build and custom build.
Mr Thomas
I am grateful to the Minister for that. In which case, helpful as his comments have been, it sounds to me as though some housing co-operatives, but not all, could be covered by the clause. Given the forces arrayed against me, I will perhaps accept the Minister’s words of encouragement for one part of the housing co-op sector and return to my concerns about the need to support the wider housing co-op sector later in proceedings on the Bill.
Amendment 88 was very much a probing amendment. I say gently to the Minister that this is a very bad Bill overall, but, in accordance with the spirit of Committee proceedings, we can make it slightly less bad through our debates; I hope my remarks are seen in that spirit. I welcome at least part of the Minister’s remarks, which were helpful. I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Matthew Pennycook
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Access to finance is a very real issue—it is perhaps less of an issue than land and land assembly, but it is an issue none the less. Amendments 81, 82 and 83 will touch on that area, and I hope we will hear from the Minister in response.
The concern that the Bill might place unreasonable burdens on local authorities was touched on by a number of witnesses in written and oral evidence to the Committee. For example, the chair of the board of the Planning Officers Society, Mike Kiely, raised such concerns in his written submission, in which he stated that the right-to-build provisions could place a considerable additional burden on local authorities. Similarly, the CPRE expressed the concern that the new duty may be too onerous in many areas. If the Bill is to achieve its objective of scaling up the sector, it is vital that local authorities view prospective self-build and custom house builders as partners in helping to meet housing need, not as a burden.
However, we want to make sure that the Bill strikes the right balance between a common national framework for the full right to build and local discretion. There is a danger that few people will join registers, particularly if they are not well publicised by local authorities or if the eligibility criteria are too restricted. Some in the industry have raised that concern directly with me. If we are to see large numbers join local registers, as I hope we will, we need to make sure that local authorities do not face disproportionate or unduly onerous costs or debts as a result of meeting their new duty. Different parts of the country have different housing and land markets, and there will be some, particularly in rural areas, where the costs of servicing plots could be disproportionate or, in some cases, simply impractical. We know that many local authorities can expect to make a profit from the sale of the land at market value in due course, but there will also be increased costs, as the impact assessment accompanying the Bill makes clear.
We appreciate that, in the short term, the Government intend to provide support to cover the costs of developing the register, under the new burdens doctrine. We would appreciate clarification of whether they intend to provide support to cover all the associated costs of developing and implementing the register, including servicing plots of land, and also whether the fees—which, as part of clause 11, can now be recovered in connection with a duty—can be legitimately used to cover the cost of servicing plots of land for the purposes of the duty.
In instances where the local planning authority is not exempt from the duty, as permitted by clause 10, and where full recovery of costs is not possible, our concern is that some LPAs could be hit with unreasonable costs. We believe it is important to ensure that the costs remain proportionate, whether they are for servicing plots of land in the ownership of the authority itself or whether they relate to cases where the granting of suitable development permission opens the authority up to servicing costs on land owned by others. Where they are not, or where servicing is simply impractical, local authorities have a means of avoiding unreasonable costs and debt.
Amendment 84 would achieve that by revising the proposed definition of “serviced plot of land” to cover land that has access to a public highway and connections to electricity, water, waste water and other services, or that can be provided with those things in specified circumstances, or within a specified period, and without unreasonable cost. That would protect local authorities by allowing them to avoid the high upfront servicing costs that might otherwise be involved in fulfilling the full right-to-build duty in some instances.
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Gentleman commented on some of the finance issues, particularly relating to mortgage lenders. I should outline in opening my response to him that the Government have made a £150 million custom build serviced plots loan fund available to enable greater access to serviced plots. I encourage local authorities to work with private or third-party partners to take advantage of that funding to move these issues forward.
Last Friday, I visited one of the custom build areas, in Stoke, which is one of the vanguard areas for the pilots, and met a couple of families and visited one of the homes. I spoke to the chief executive of the mortgage lender—a local building society—who outlined his desire to go further with custom build lending. He said small and local building societies were particularly keen to do that, because it gives them a clear niche in the market, where they can be competitive against the larger companies, which obviously want to work on a more national, organised scale. That gives small local lending companies—we all want small and medium-sized enterprises of all types to grow—a real opportunity and a real niche, and I would encourage people to look at that option.
Mr Thomas
I am always encouraged by references to building societies, and I welcome the Minister’s experience. Just to be clear, would the local authority in Stoke have been able to benefit from the fund, to help make self-build plots available? That is the point the Opposition are trying to probe the Minister on.
Brandon Lewis
Yes. That is what I am saying. I would encourage any local authority, particularly as we go forward beyond the vanguards, to work with private and third sector partners or other vehicles—including, potentially, co-operatives if they qualify for self and custom build—to take advantage of that funding. The pilots have been doing some phenomenal work. On average, we had 80 people coming forward on the register in just the first three months of the scheme, which is an indication of the appetite to take this forward. That backs up the comments by the National Custom and Self Build Association, which we support and want to deliver on, building on the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk in his private Member’s Bill, to see that part of the sector double in size over the next few years.
Matthew Pennycook
Will the Minister clarify one important point, because it is instructive as to how the registers will operate? Over what period did those 80 people come forward? How many people are on the local registers in the 11 vanguard plots now? How many joined in the first few months?
Brandon Lewis
As I said, it was 80 in just the first three months, which is a clear indication of the appetite. We want to make sure that we do what we can—partly through the clause and partly through my hon. Friend’s Bill—to double the number of people who take up this opportunity.
I welcome and understand the intention behind the amendment to protect local authorities from excessive costs, but I would argue that a plot of land that required excessive costs to service would probably not be suitable for self or custom building. People wanting to build or commission their own homes usually want to be able to start building as soon as they have purchased their plot of land. That is why the Bill requires local authority to permission suitable serviced land to ensure that the plots are—I use the definition advisedly—shovel-ready. Land that requires excessive costs to put in the basic services should not count as suitable land, and the local authority should seek alternative sites to permission to comply with its duties. For that reason, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.
Matthew Pennycook
Perhaps the Minister could clarify where that is in the Bill. Proposed new section 2A(2) puts a duty on local authorities to
“give suitable development permission in respect of enough serviced plots of land”.
Clause 8 defines what those serviced plots of land are. Nowhere in the Bill can I see that the protection of the kind he has just outlined would be an option for local authorities. For example, if they have a register of 800 people with a mind to build their self-build homes, but have fewer plots than that, they might be forced into bringing impractical or costly serviced plots of land into use. Nothing in the Bill seems to protect local authorities in that way from unreasonable costs.
Brandon Lewis
We do not expect local authorities or developers to make a loss on land, services or on sales for custom building. It is right that the costs incurred for serviced plots should be borne by the custom builders.
Mr Bacon
I wish the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich were wrong, and that there were no protection and nothing in the Bill, and that the overriding duty of local authorities, with no exemptions, were to provide serviced plots at scale, because that would make the biggest difference. In fact, does the Minister agree that the protection sought by the hon. Gentleman is already in clause 10, “Exemption from duty”? There are circumstances—I will ask the Minister about this later—in which the Secretary of State may direct that the local authority is not subject to the duty to provide development permission.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, which is why I hope the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich withdraws his amendment.
Matthew Pennycook
I have to disagree with the hon. Member for South Norfolk. Clause 10 is about exemption from the duty as a whole, not from the duty to service particular plots of land. He is making a different point. That said, although we might return to the subject, given some of the Minister’s assurances, at this point I am happy to beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
I apologise to the Minister, because I should really have called him to speak first, before the hon. Members for South Norfolk and for Harrow West, informative though their speeches were.
Brandon Lewis
I would not for a moment presume to speak before my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk on matters of self-build and custom building. His speech on Second Reading showed the House his passion, knowledge and expertise, not least in the pioneering work that he has done to drive an agenda culminating in his private Member’s Bill.
I was honoured and proud to be a small part of that, as the Minister supporting the Bill in Committee. I have a vague memory that we might even have been in this very room—if I remember correctly, we even finished with mince pies. It was a great experience, with cross-party support, and a good example of the House moving things forward. It is important to drive the agenda to bring about big change.
My hon. Friend made a good point in his closing remarks. The clause would for the first time create a clear definition of self-build and custom house building. The creation of a legal definition will enable us to prevent the gaming of the system for which there is arguably potential. We can agree on my hon. Friend’s core point about the customer deciding and specifying what gets built—they should not simply have a say in a standard template.
I have spoken before about the difference between custom building and walking on to a building site to speak to the developer about buying on plot 5, and being told, “As you have got in early you can choose the colour of the kitchen and maybe the carpet colour in the bedrooms.” That is not self-build or custom building, in which the customer is a part of the design process.
My hon. Friend is also right that the measure helps us to do something—although as the hon. Member for Harrow West pointed out, we are playing just one part—for small builders, particularly on access to finance, including through the builders finance fund and by working with mortgage lenders. He made a fair point about making lending accessible to people who want to enter the field. That is why I stressed the point about people who want to work with small, local societies that have a key part to play, where there are niche opportunities and expertise. That helps small and medium-sized businesses.
If my hon. Friend’s work does anything, it will drive and grow the market, and the larger it gets the more attractive it will become to lenders generally, which is a good and helpful thing. Other parts of the Bill will potentially help with access to finance as well, particularly when we think about planning in principle, which we will get to later on. All these things come together to be part of the work we do to help small and medium-sized builders.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I think it does. We will issue guidance that makes it very clear to local authorities and ensures the proposals are driven forward to deliver exactly what we want, which is a clear identifiable ability to get access to land. That is good for small and medium-sized builders. That kind of development will be perfectly suited to a small and medium-sized business. The hon. Gentleman is quite right: I have visited the Builders Merchant Federation’s members and we have benefited from seeing the work they do to support their local communities. Local builders are good for everybody. They drive jobs locally and they tend to build high-quality homes because their reputation relies on it. They build at a good pace, in contrast to the building rate of the larger developers. That is good for all.
Self-build and custom house building includes homes built by people themselves and homes built on behalf of individuals, where professionals are commissioned to do the work by the eventual owner-occupier. The common theme is that the individuals have significant input and choice over their finished home and intend to live in it as their main and sole property.
The second part of the definition is to exclude the sale of off-plan homes, where the developer agrees to minor changes to the property but where the finished home is wholly or mainly the original specification, into which the buyer had no input. That tends to fit the description of most new build properties around the country. However, the definition of self and custom house building includes where someone has bought a shell of a building because they will have significant input into the final internal layout and specification.
Turning to other Members’ points, clause 8 provides the definition of a serviced plot of land. That is land that has access to a public highway and connections for electricity, water and waste, or can be provided with those things in specified circumstances or within a specified period. The clause provides for regulations to amend the definition of “serviced plot of land” by adding further services to the list—I am sure many Members will be thinking about broadband. That allows services such as broadband to be included in the future as and when required.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. I want to make a few brief points, because I know time is precious. I have already raised a number of issues that are relevant to my constituency with the Minister in the Adjournment debate. Like my hon. Friends the Members for Harrow West and for Greenwich and Woolwich, we are very keen to join the revolution that has been promoted by the hon. Member for South Norfolk. There is common agreement across the Committee about the benefits of not just the grand design but the ambition for self and custom build for everyman that the Bill espouses. Some 100,000 properties over the lifetime of the Parliament seems incredibly ambitious, but will bring many benefits, not least to the building supply sector, in terms of employment and meeting housing needs.
Will the Minister respond to the points raised by my hon. Friends about the obligations to be placed on local authorities? Notwithstanding the existing or potential demand for custom and self-build, there is a concern related to subsection (4) and the various conditions that are placed on the definition of a serviced plot of land. Subsection (4) would define a serviced plot of land as one that,
“(a) has access to a public highway and has connections for electricity, water and waste water, or
(b) can be provided with those things in specified circumstances or within a specified period”.
Will the definition place any additional burdens on local authorities or service providers to connect properties or serviced plots of land at costs which they cannot meet? My own local authority is facing immense costs as a consequence of budget cuts from central Government. On the eve of the spending review, we are making some difficult decisions.
Grahame M. Morris
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Again, the Minister might respond to that point in his concluding remarks.
Finally, I remind the Minister of the Adjournment debate we had at the close of the last Parliament, in which particular problems were highlighted in the former colliery village of Horden in my constituency as a consequence of the withdrawal of the housing association Accent, due to housing market failure. The Minister suggested, on that occasion, that we look at what was termed “homesteading” on a large scale. Sadly, that was not possible, perhaps because of some of the issues raised by the hon. Member for South Norfolk about access to finance, whether the necessary skills and leadership were available at that time and perhaps the lack of a housing co-op with the dynamism to take it forward. I think we will address a little later some of the issues that have arisen since that debate, with rogue landlords and problems as a result of a failure to adequately address that. I would welcome any assurances the Minister can give.
Brandon Lewis
There is obviously a process that the Government go through in agreeing with local government the new burdens that will still apply. With regard to our general position on plots and the cost of servicing them, I refer the hon. Gentleman to the comments I made earlier about our expectations. I am happy to give him further feedback on that over the next few days.
Matthew Pennycook
I would like to press the Minister on the specifics of this. He said that under the new burdens principle, local authorities will be covered. How much has the Department allocated to cover new burdens that might arise as a result of the Bill? That is not in the impact assessment. Has the Department bottomed out that area and allocated actual funds?
Brandon Lewis
I shall be brief, because I know we want to make progress today. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the rest of the clause and, indeed, the comments I made about the previous amendment, he will see that he needs to look at this in the whole, and that will answer his specific question.
Let us look at what we are learning from the vanguards. As I said, I visited Mr and Mrs Sproston in Penkhull in Stoke just last week, and saw the six new homes that have been delivered on that particular site. Under the new administration, the authority wants to deliver the pilot and find a way to make it work for people. It is a really exciting opportunity that both lenders and the residents are getting behind, and I therefore encourage them to go further with it.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 9
Duty to grant planning permission etc
Brandon Lewis
The amendment is aimed at ensuring that authorities give suitable development permission to housing across all tenures, not just custom build. We heard earlier what that does for a military veteran who is not interested in custom build. I would say a couple of things to that military veteran.
First, they should think about self-build and custom build under these new provisions. I visited a company called Beattie Passive in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk, which can develop and help somebody like that learn how to build their own home and deliver it for about £30,000, making it a very affordable proposition.
We come back to the debate we had, in part, on Thursday. Members should read this part of the Bill not as the entire solution to what we want to do to get house building back to where it should be after we inherited an awful legacy, but as part of the work we are doing. The Bill is part of the work and this clause is just part of that. In the same way, starter homes are part of the solution, as is custom build. It builds on the fact that we have exceeded our target for affordable house building over the past four or five years and we are now in the process of the new scheme to deliver 275,000 affordable homes. That is the fastest rate in more than two decades and, of course, in terms of council housing we, as a Conservative-led Government, have a strong record of delivering more in five years than the previous Labour Government did in 13. I am extremely keen that we continue to press ahead with further reforms to the planning system to drive up housing supply.
Through the national planning policy framework and the Localism Act we have put local plans at the heart of the system. Such plans set out a vision and a framework for the future development of the area, including where to locate new housing to meet the needs of the community, but we must be realistic about what can be achieved and when. That applies to the provision of infrastructure, and when sites might come forward for development. Linking this action to the earlier comments, I clarify for hon. Members on both sides of the Committee that we recognise that this is a new burden and, as such, money will be set aside. The process for this and the work of local authorities, not least in the 11 vanguard areas, is not complete, so I will not give specific numbers today, but I assure hon. Members that it will be sufficient to ensure that local authorities are not disadvantaged by the introduction of this policy.
Mr Thomas
The Minister has mentioned the 11 vanguard authorities a number of times and has given the example of his recent visit to Stoke. I would welcome hearing whether any of those vanguard authorities are in London. Given the scale of housing need in London, what has the experience been of the vanguard authority in London, if there is one?
Brandon Lewis
I do not think there is a vanguard authority in London, but if the hon. Gentleman is offering to put Harrow up to take this forward for London, I would be very happy to talk to him about that opportunity.
Local planning authorities are already required to meet the full, objectively assessed needs for the market for affordable housing in their area. Although that includes the demand for custom and self-build housing, many local authorities are still not proactively planning to meet the demand for custom and self-build in their area. As we want this area to double over the next few years and to deliver that through this Parliament, it is important that we drive this forward and have that focus, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk said. Placing a statutory duty on relevant authorities to commission sufficient serviced plots in line with demand will ensure that pent-up demand is also starting to be addressed. The proposed amendment would set an unrealistic expectation and burden on local planning authorities.
In addition, local planning authorities simply may not have sufficient land available to meet their need, or sufficient landowners willing and able to come forward for development within the allocated time. The proposed requirement in the national planning policy framework to have a five-year supply of deliverable land is a more effective tool. Among the vanguards, it is also interesting to see that areas of natural beauty and national parks were coming forward wanting to play their part. Even in areas where land can be challenging, we have vanguards wanting to do their bit. The Bill is intended to ensure that there is more permissioned serviced land available which is suitable for self-build and custom house building.
As we have heard, the numbers are still low. Custom build still only constitutes around 10% of all housing, and there are considerable benefits in promoting this type of housing further: it will diversify the sector and encourage development on sites which are too small to be of interest to the major house builders and perfectly suited, therefore, to small and medium-sized businesses around the country. It will provide business for the smaller builders and developers who are happy to offer those bespoke properties. Our ambition is to double the figure to 20%. Our proposals seek to embed custom build as a legitimate form of housing supply, as part of the wider housing mix, while still keeping expectations at a manageable scale compared with 100% of housing need. So I ask the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich to withdraw his amendment.
Matthew Pennycook
Aside from the Punch and Judy stuff over the historical record, which I had hoped we could avoid, it was very interesting to hear from the Minister.
Brandon Lewis
I appreciate the point that the hon. Gentleman made. I am very happy to progress on that basis, but when he says that he does not want to play Punch and Judy politics, that does mean that he and the other hon. Members on his side do not quote figures that simply do not give the facts of the housing market that we inherited.
Matthew Pennycook
I simply quoted the figures on how much housing need there is and how much is currently being built and completed, which, as the Minister well knows, falls far short. The hon. Member for South Norfolk raised a very interesting point. He said that powers are already available to local authorities to meet the need for self-build and custom build housing, and that there is the land and the finance.
Matthew Pennycook
My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is a specific weakness in that area, but there is also the wider problem of access to finance for self-build and custom build. To give the Government their due, they have put support in place, but it would be useful to hear what more is currently being done to ensure that more of those who want to take this route can be supported to do so. Alongside efforts to make finance more accessible, the Opposition believe that, given the burdens the Minister recognised that the new, full right-to-build duty places on local planning authorities, there is a case for ensuring that the authorities in any given authority area reflect the effective, rather than notional, demand for self and custom build. By that, we mean the number of people or groups who are in a position to fund their project past foundation stage rather than the sum total of individuals or groups who are vaguely interested in taking that route and may begin the process of exploring whether they can access the necessary finance some years down the line.
Clause 11 already provides for the entering of persons who have failed to meet particular eligibility conditions in a separate part of the register and makes it clear that further refinements to the eligibility criteria may be brought forward in regulations. However, our amendments would make it clear that those on the register who genuinely seek to build or commission their main home and have the finances to do so should be entered in a separate part.
Amendments 81, 82 and 83 would ensure that local authorities are required to provide suitable planning permission on serviced plots of land for those with a reasonable prospect of building their own home in the immediate future. It would not exclude those who are yet to demonstrate that they have obtained effective mortgage finance from the register entirely; they could still be entered in a separate part of the register to which we would expect local authorities to give reduced priority. That would ensure that local authorities, in so far as they must now respond to local demand for self and custom build in a fuller way, will respond to the effective, as opposed to notional, demand in their area for these types of homes.
Brandon Lewis
I am pretty much in complete agreement with the hon. Gentleman. In fact, the only demand on the register should be effective demand. It is important that local authorities are confident that everyone on the register for self-build and custom house building is in a position to finance their project. The amendments, however, are unnecessary because we will achieve our mutual aim of ensuring effective demand through locally set eligibility criteria for the registers. We can build on some of the work done with the 11 vanguards and how locally led is the way to go. We asked all local authorities to submit expressions of interest, so I want to put on record our thanks to the 11 who have worked with us on that over the past few months.
Mr Thomas
I appreciate that the Minister may not be able to say so at this point, but, perhaps later in our proceedings, will he say what lessons can be learnt from the 11 vanguard authorities to deal with the scale of the housing crisis in London? There is potentially quite a bit of interest in self-build and custom house building in London, but the cost of land and other factors driving the housing crisis may make it even harder for those who want to do that. It would be helpful to hear a little more on whether the lessons from the vanguard authorities are helpful in any way for the specific London element of the picture.
Brandon Lewis
Obviously, it would have been good if a London authority had wanted to play a part by being one of the vanguards, as that would have given a direct outcome. However, some of the vanguards cover areas of high value, and the experiences in areas such as Stoke, which may have lower land value but is still a city with the challenges of land in and around it, and even those such as Cherwell—and, although not part of the vanguard, some of the work being done around Bicester to make custom build more viable in specific areas—show recognition that we have put in place a £150 million loan fund to which developers can apply to service plots for self and custom building to help make that more achievable and affordable for people. Hopefully, London local authorities will want to come forward as they start to appreciate that.
Clause 11 provides for regulations that enable relevant authorities to determine their own eligibility criteria and it is intended that one part of the locally determined criteria will be a financial solvency test. I suggest that enabling local authorities to apply such a test before acceptance on the register is a more effective means of achieving effective demand than the amendment, not least because that will enable each authority to specify in detail what reassurance it thinks it needs about the financial position of people seeking to join its register in its area.
The tests will be tailored to the specific requirements of that local area and may take into account the fact that not all self and custom house builders will require mortgage finance. For this reason, I hope the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich will be able to withdraw the amendment.
Mr Thomas
I was briefly provoked by the Minister’s response to my intervention. I say to him gently that it is incumbent on the Minister setting up an initiative—given the scale of the housing crisis in London—to have worked a little harder to try and get a vanguard authority in London. Why, for example, did Bromley, Bexley, Westminster or Richmond not seek to become a vanguard authority? The Minister, with his links into Conservative associations in those areas, surely could have persuaded the leaders to apply to become vanguard authorities, with all the helpful lessons for the housing crisis in London that their self-build experience might have demonstrated.
Matthew Pennycook
I beg to move amendment 85, in clause 9, page 6, line 35, at end insert
“except where extant permission can be revived”.
This amendment would ensure that extant planning permissions which are revived after the start of the first base period are taken into account for the purposes of this section.
Given the time, I will be extremely brief and I hope that we can wrap up these clauses this morning. I believe the amendment is self-explanatory and I hope it is relatively uncontroversial. It is a small technical amendment that would clarify what permissions are taken into account for the purposes of clause 9, by including extant permissions that might be revived after the start of the first base period. It is, of course, entirely logical that planning permissions granted before the register has been established in any given area should not be counted as a suitable development permission under the amended Act. We wish to probe the Minister on why planning permissions that replace extant planning permissions, where the applicant is seeking to extend the time period for implementation, should not be brought within the scope of what should be counted as suitable development permission, given the contribution that such authorisations—albeit small in number and declining—could make to increasing the supply of self-build and custom build homes.
Brandon Lewis
First, I would like to reassure the Committee that under the current drafting of the legislation, land which has been granted planning permission prior to the start of the first base period but where that planning permission has now lapsed, can count towards compliance with the duty. That is part of what we are learning from the programme of vanguards. Picking up on the earlier point raised by the hon. Member for Harrow West, I would say that this was widely published at the time but it is disappointing that nobody in London came forward—neither his own authority nor the others he noted. I hope they will also learn from what has been going on. For example, the National Custom and Self Build Association is publishing a comprehensive toolkit on their website on 9 December, and hopefully all authorities, including those in London, can benefit from that.
The reason that these permissions can count towards compliance with the duty is that a person would need to submit a new application in order to extend the time limit on an extant permission in order to implement the existing permission. So an application for an extant planning permission would, if granted, be considered as a new permission, and therefore count against the number of permissions required. I hope that with that explanation the hon. Gentleman will be able to withdraw the amendment.
Matthew Pennycook
I thank the Minister for the clarification that extant applications will be counted as new permissions. A theme that has emerged from this morning that I would like the Minister to take away is that it would be useful to know much more of the detail about the experience of the vanguard authorities. He mentioned earlier that there have been 80 people on the register within the first few months, but that does not tell us the differences between those 11 vanguards, or what the experiences might be in different parts of the country with different factors at work. It would be useful for the Committee to have numbers and to have a better sense of what those vanguard authorities are doing and what the experience has been. On the basis of the Minister’s comments, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Bacon
I have one concern about clause 9; I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me. Clause 9(1) will insert new section 2A into the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015. Proposed new section 2A(6)(c) says that,
“development permission is ‘suitable’ if it is permission in respect of development that could”—
could—
“include self-build and custom housebuilding.”
I recognise that having a specific percentage in the measure would be unhelpful and impractical, because local circumstances vary so much, but it could have been drafted to say that development permission was suitable if it was permission in respect of development that included self-build and custom house building. That would be practical. I would like to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that. Perhaps he will take the matter away and consider whether we might tweak the clause at a later stage.
Brandon Lewis
I will touch on the comments of the hon. Member for Harrow West before coming to the core of the point on clause 9. We will discuss some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised later in our proceedings; he tempted me to touch on points that are not covered by the Bill at all, but I will not test your patience by doing so, Sir Alan. I reiterate my earlier general comments about co-operatives. They have an important part to play as part of the housing mix, but that is separate from the issue of custom house building. If co-operatives are doing self and custom house building the measures will apply to them and, I hope, will be beneficial for them.
On the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk, the Bill aims to get more permissioned serviced land into the system and ready for development. Although local authorities cannot force landowners to market their plots exclusively to those on the register, guidance will encourage them to keep those on the register aware of any land suitable for self and custom house building that has been permissioned. We do not want to do anything that would hinder land becoming available for much-needed housing more generally; putting planning restrictions on land about the type of housing that may be built on that land could do that. Instead, the clause creates opportunities for those interested in self and custom house building.
I have sympathy for my hon. Friend’s point, however. I know that he is driving towards making sure that the land is put forward. I have met representatives from the National Custom and Self Build Association in the past few weeks to discuss some of the issues. I think we are getting the balance right, but I am sympathetic to his point and will look at it again.
The Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015, which my hon. Friend championed through Parliament, requires relevant authorities to hold a register of individuals who want to acquire a plot of land to build their own home in an authority’s area, and to have regard to that register when carrying out their housing, planning, regeneration and land disposal functions. Clause 9 inserts new section 2A into the Act; that will require authorities to give development permissions suitable for self and custom house building to enough serviced plots of land to at least match the demand on their register. Regulations will detail how long relevant authorities have to permission sufficient land.
The number of people who join the register in each base period will dictate the number of permissions required. The first base period starts on the day on which local authorities are required to open their register and will end the day before this clause comes into force. Subsequent base periods will run for a period of 12 months beginning immediately from the end of the previous base period. Requiring relevant authorities to permission sufficient serviced plots of land to match demand in their area will make it easier for prospective self-build and custom house builders to find suitable land. It will promote an increase in housing supply generally and provide much-needed work for smaller house builders, who were hardest-hit by the recession and for whom the recovery has been slower. That will go some way, we hope, to deal with the issue of supply and demand raised by the hon. Member for Harrow West—
The Chair
Order. It being 11.25 am, the debate is adjourned until 2 pm. I make an appeal to all Members: when I took over this Committee last week, we were moving from clause 2. We are now just about to get to clause 10. We have 145 clauses and five half sessions to go. Our job is not debate but scrutiny. The sooner we get on with that, the better. Will Members please make future questions concise, to the point and not repetitive?