Housing and Planning Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Debate between Helen Hayes and Seema Kennedy

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Helen Hayes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, notwithstanding the reference to Soviet dictators, which is never a helpful contribution to political debate in this Parliament—I stand by that. He made a good point about the need for timescale and for the development management process to be rigorously managed. I agree with him on that point.

The content of permission in principle for which I argue could be contained in the entry on the brownfield register about a particular site. It could be part of the process of designating that site on the brownfield register. It could be part of the local plan process, and it could be something that the local authority designates when an applicant comes forward in person.

Without that level of detail, permission in principle is a very confused concept. It purports to be a move towards a zonal system but it misses the key point about the zonal system in countries such as the Netherlands, which is that all of the work required to give certainty through the planning process is undertaken in those countries during the plan-making stage. A zonal system that has comparatively little detail at the plan-making stage, and apparently even less detail in the planning permission stage, gives certainty to no one, will fail to minimise risk and may even succeed in increasing—

[Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)]

Would the hon. Lady give way?

[Helen Hayes]

I would like to make a little more progress, if I may.

It may even succeed in increasing alarm local communities, leading to further objections and challenges at the technical details stage.

The amendment is supported by the National Housing Federation written evidence that says:

“We believe that permission in principle should be broadly comparable with outline permission. So, for it to be granted, there will need to be clarity over the number of homes to be delivered, the tenure mix, the house type, the density and other permitted uses…and the permission in principle, should be time-bound to incentivise delivery.”

Amendment 285 seeks to ensure that sufficient investigatory work is undertaken prior to permission in principle being granted to determine that the site in question is suitable for the proposed development. It would require the Secretary of State to make regulations on the information about a site that must be known before permission in principle is granted. The content of that information should be defined by the regulations, but obvious examples include heritage and archeological considerations, ground contamination, wildlife habitats and protected species, flood risk and rights of light to neighbours. There are several others.

It seems only sensible that planning permission in principle should not be granted on whim or a hunch but on the basis of a sufficient level of information for all concerned to be confident that the land is suitable and that development can be delivered.

It is not at all clear how permission in principle will relate to technical details consent, or that other forms of consent that are currently required in sensitive locations, such as demolition consent, listed building consent or conservation area consent, will still be required.

Historic England has presented a case study that illustrates the issue well: brownfield land in an historic town centre. It may be possible to judge without too much detail that 10 housing units might be developed on the site. Permission in principle could, therefore, be given, but what may be very serious is the impact on below-ground archaeology, the massing of the building and the style of the architecture. If these issues cannot be dealt with thoroughly at the technical details stage, then nationally important archaeology and historical places, which I think all of us on the Committee would agree that we value, could be seriously at risk.

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[Helen Hayes]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. In drawing to a close, I simply say that the amendments taken together seek to ensure that permission in principle is underpinned by a sufficient level of knowledge about the site and its context, so that it is genuinely meaningful both to local communities and developers. Without that, I fear that developers will find this device to be a hollow one that provides no certainty at all, and communities will simply be let down and will feel the need to object to and challenge the process at the technical details stage, or through the courts.

I hope the Minister will consider the amendments and provide reassurance about the issues I have raised.

[Seema Kennedy]

I will speak quickly about amendments 285 and 285, which were tabled by the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood. Referring to what my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough said, I think that the whole thrust of these clauses is to have permission in principle to allow people to start building quickly, and attaching too many conditions would slow the process down. I speak as somebody who has acted as a developer, developing a piece of land that had been occupied by Courtaulds for 50 years. It is highly contaminated, but the cost of decontamination has been gradually coming down during the last 30 years.

I wanted to ask the hon. Lady about paragraph (a) in amendment 284. Are there not already adequate provisions in environmental law, land law and laws of tort that cover that material? She talked about risk and knowledge. Currently, there is a good balance in the Bill between the knowledge that a developer would have and the risk they are willing to take, whereas the paragraph (b) of the amendment would put more of that risk on to the taxpayer. Again, it would slow down the process and put more of the burden on the public purse rather than on the developers.

Housing and Planning Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Helen Hayes and Seema Kennedy

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)]

I draw Members’ attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Chairman, I would like the Committee to note that I am a councillor in the London Borough of Southwark and that I employ a councillor in my parliamentary team.

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[Seema Kennedy]

Q 29 So as a concept you think it is a good idea. Do you also think that it helps communities to have ownership of these things, because there will be something very visible for them to see and feed into?

Martin Tett: I think you have asked a slightly different question. Brownfield sites—previously developed sites—are normally more acceptable to local communities. In terms of the development hierarchy, it is nearly always the area that local communities would support first, rather than going into greenfield or green belt sites.

As for local communities, that is a different issue to do with the infrastructure surrounding them and that is where people look. I go back to my previous observation about ensuring, for example, that any development does not lead to undue pressure in terms of road congestion, pressure at junctions, doctors’ surgeries and so on. That is a separate issue that goes back to section 106 and CIL obligations, which most local authorities look to housing developers to provide.

[Helen Hayes]

Q 30 From your understanding from your respective boroughs and work undertaken across the LGA, do you believe the sale of higher-value council homes can cover the costs of both the right-to-buy scheme and the levels of replacement of both the housing association homes lost to the rental sector and the loss of those council homes? Is that a realistic scenario?

Sir Steve Bullock: The difficulty in giving you a definitive answer to that is that it depends on how you implement the scheme. The definition of high value will be crucial to this. The initial work done on this, certainly from the London perspective, does indicate that there would be an outflow of funds from London to the rest of the country, which we are deeply concerned about. We are clear that we would need to know more before we could give you a hard and fast answer on this.

Philippa Roe: I completely agree with what Steve has said, and I would certainly endorse what Rick Blakeway said about trying to keep as much money as possible within London, where the greatest housing crisis is, so it seems sensible to keep the money there.

One thing that has been mooted is that, instead of the money being put in a pot for literally every high-value council house sold, the boroughs should be given a fund—a sum of money that they have to find, however—which is then supposed to be driven by the council house sales. One concern we have in Westminster about that is that obviously we have some very high-value properties, but our churn rate is very low. Up until very recently we gave tenancies for life and they could even be inherited. A sub-market-value rental property in central London is an extremely valuable asset. People do not give them up easily, so our churn rate is incredibly low. I would call for recognition of that if any targets are set, particularly for central London boroughs. I do not think ours is the only one to face that issue.

Martin Tett: Taking a wider perspective than just London, one of the ambiguities I mentioned earlier, as my colleagues have said, is about the definition of high value. How would you define that in different parts of the country? High value in London may be different from high value in Buckinghamshire, which may be different from high value in Doncaster or Teesside. There is ambiguity at the moment on that. In addition, what is the definition of a vacant property? If you have a tenancy exchange, is that property vacant or an occupied property in transition?

So we need to work through some of those ambiguities and negotiate with the Government. The other issue we have is how the model actually works. How do you predict for a particular year how much money is required for the RSL discount, which means you know effectively how much you have to charge to local authorities as a levy? That in turn dictates how much they have to sell. We are not clear yet on the details of how that will operate. Again, we are happy to negotiate that with the Government.

Phil Glanville: We need to see some clear exemptions around the value of new properties that are being built. Councils such as Hackney and Islington, Camden and Southwark have ambitions to build new affordable housing on their own land in London in order to meet that housing need. If that is taken into account when they become void, building any new home in the centre of London is likely to see those homes included within any cap or formula. Although there could be flexibility on exempting them, if their value is still included in the formula, the effect is the same: you would have to sell more of your existing stock.

It is worth saying when we are talking about high-value properties in London that Hackney is still the 11th most deprived borough in the country and the wards on the City fringe are some of the most deprived in Hackney. On Rightmove today I saw properties there that are worth £450,000. That is for a two-bedroom flat in a block that was built in the 1930s and ’40s; it is not a street property in Kensington, Islington or Stoke Newington. That is the effect that the overheated London market is having on our council stock. These are still very humble family properties on council estates in London; that is not the definition of places where poorer people should not live, which is what I think was the genesis of the policy in the Policy Exchange report.

Housing and Planning Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Helen Hayes and Seema Kennedy

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Helen Hayes]

Q 135 You both lead charities that seek to support homeless people. Will the starter homes benefit any of the clients you seek to help week in, week out?

Jon Sparkes: No. The clients we work with—about 8,000 clients a year—are living in shelters or sofa-surfing, and some of them are rough sleeping. There will not be a benefit to them from this. As Campbell said, that does not mean that it is not a good thing for the people it does help, but it will not help the clients we work with.

Campbell Robb: From our analysis, it genuinely will not help most people who are on an average wage. It should be the aspiration, I think, of any home ownership policy to open that up. That is where we see the problems with it. It would not help many of our clients.

[Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)]

Q 136 Mr Sparkes, I am looking at paragraph 14b of your submission, in which you say:

“Outside of the North of England, Starter Homes will be unaffordable to the majority of households on wages below the median”.

What is the north of England, first of all, in geographical terms? How many people comprise the north of England? I am interested in how you came to that.

Jon Sparkes: I have to say, we lifted that item completely from Shelter’s research, so I will pass it to Campbell.

Campbell Robb: I do not know off the top of my head what the north of England is in terms of the analysis, but I will happily send the detailed geography to the Committee. In terms of incomes and numbers of people, we took Government statistics on average wages and national income and used that analysis against what the cost of starter homes would be, on average, what an average deposit would be and what a normal deposit would be. That is the analysis data.

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[Seema Kennedy]

Q 183 Perhaps that is because of that stock transfer from Macclesfield Borough Council, but surely in the rest of Cheshire there are definite examples where this sort of percentage would not be paid.

Tim Pinder: Absolutely. I would agree with that.

[Helen Hayes]

Q 184 I wanted to ask your views on the pay-to-stay measures in the Bill. I would be interested in your views on what you think the impact of pay-to-stay will be on your organisation, administratively and in terms of your capacity, on your tenants and your relationship with them, and also on the wider communities that you manage as housing associations.

David Montague: I will start by saying that we welcome any flexibility on the way that we set our rents. As charities, we will always use that flexibility carefully and prudently. We would prefer to see that flexibility extended across all of our stock, particularly given that we are not sure what will happen to rents in five years’ time. We think that the best people to set rents are the boards of charitable housing associations. We broadly welcome any flexibility that we are given.

On this specific measure, we think that pay-to-stay, for those who can afford to, will equal right to buy. It will encourage people to exercise their right to buy. They will have a choice of either seeing their rent doubled or accepting a discount of up to £100,000 to buy their home. It is a big incentive to buy their home. The difficulty is that if someone is living in a one-bedroom flat in Westminster and they cannot exercise their right to buy, then they could be stuck. That is why we welcome the flexibility that we are being offered through the voluntary deal, which will mean that the discount is portable —people can take it to a more affordable area. We are concerned about the administrative complexity of pay-to-stay. It is going to be a bit of a burden, and we are not yet convinced that the income we will receive will outweigh the cost of collection. It will require co-operation between us and statutory agencies in a way that has not happened before.

We would like to see some of the detail as well. We are not sure whether the same rules apply to a single person on £40,000 as to a couple on £40,000. There is a danger if it does that we could be drawing more people into the benefit system as a result of this policy.

Sue Chalkley: If it was a simple system to administer, we think that pay-to-stay might help to offset some of the rent reductions that we are facing. However, there are rural considerations with this initiative as well, in that many of the schemes that we have built for rural communities have been built with an undertaking that we will hold them as affordable housing in perpetuity. This could trump that deal with the rural community and cause a lack of confidence going forward, so that is a concern.

The other issue from the point of view of a rural community is that many families have seasonal part-time work and they have a portfolio of jobs, so it will be potentially quite complex to decide what the income is and how the rent is calculated on that. On top of that, there is plenty of evidence to show that living costs in rural communities are between 10% and 20% higher than they are in urban communities. Should the taper be in some way tapered to reflect the difference between rural and urban communities? We really just call for this to be fully rural-proofed.

Tim Pinder: We welcome pay-to-stay. I said before that our association had taken its view on right to buy because of its charitable status. On the same basis, pay-to-stay makes sense to us as a charity because to maximise our charitable assets, they should be going to the people in greatest need. We actually welcome it as a principle. I think, again, there is a bit of a potential conflict here with the Government’s intention to have us reclassified as private bodies, because they are talking about a legislative provision rather than a voluntary arrangement.

Some of our concerns are around the proposed level. For us, it is £30,000 outside London. From April 2015, a couple on the living wage would be at that £30,000 mark, so in our view £30,000 does not feel like the right level to reflect a high income household. Some of the details around how this would work in practice also give us some concern. If you are £1 above the £30,000 limit, does that immediately mean that you will move to market rent? If so, you are suddenly faced with an extra £3,000 rent per annum, which seems to fly in the face of the whole concept of “work must pay” and people bettering themselves in a way that does not have a financial disincentive. We very much welcome the principle. We would very much like, perhaps through the National Housing Federation, to work with the Department for Communities and Local Government to look at how that would pan out in practice.