Covid-19: NAO Report on Government Procurement

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Helen Hayes

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Eagle. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) on securing this important debate. The National Audit Office investigation into Government procurement during the covid-19 pandemic reveals a series of calamitous errors in how decisions were made and taxpayers’ money was wasted. It is imperative that Members have the opportunity to debate its findings.

I am grateful to all hon. Members who have spoken in the debate. Many important points were made. Time does not permit me to mention every contribution, but I will highlight my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), who rightly raised the Carillion procurement scandal and asked why lessons do not seem to have been learned. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) spoke from her direct experience of the consequences of procurement failure for social care staff working on the frontline. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) gave the powerful example of Arco, a world-leading PPE supplier in her constituency that was ignored by the Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) raised her important work highlighting the ongoing national scrubs crisis.

The Opposition recognise that, when faced with a national emergency on the scale of the global covid-19 pandemic, the Government needed to act quickly to procure goods and services, but the National Audit Office found that, even allowing for accelerated processes, proper checks and controls were not carried out. The report states that

“procurement processes established by the cross-government PPE team enabled PPE to be purchased quickly, but some procurements were carried out before all key controls were put in place.”

Seventy-one contracts, with a total value of £1.5 billion, were awarded to suppliers before proper company checks were put in place. Even worse, some contracts were awarded only after the work had been completed, significantly increasing the risk of budget overspend and poor performance, and more than half of the £17.3 billion awarded to suppliers was awarded directly with no competition.

The report highlights the Government’s failure to set out clearly why they chose a particular supplier or how risks from a lack of competition were identified and mitigated. The National Audit Office highlighted that that was critical

“to ensure public trust in the fairness of the procurement process.”

It is clear that public confidence has been hugely damaged by this debacle.

We have contracts awarded without key controls, awarded sometimes after the work had already been completed, and often with no competition and without adequate documentation. On top of that, we find that the Government again and again awarded contracts not to trusted long-term suppliers of PPE with a track record of delivery but to companies with strong links to friends and donors of the Tory party—chaos facilitating cronyism.

With the huge gaps in transparency and company checks identified by the National Audit Office, the Government have serious questions to answer about the back door VIP special procurement route. How did it operate? Who had access? What weight was given to the individual making a referral through the route in the award of a contract? How many contracts were awarded through the VIP route without competition, company checks or adequate justification?

Reputable British firms with a track record of delivery who wanted to help at a time of desperate need such as Seren Plus—a long-term supplier of PPE to the NHS—were left to watch incredulously as inexperienced firms failed to deliver. Ayanda Capital received £156 million for PPE that could not be used. PestFix, with barely any money in the bank and no track record of providing PPE, received £160 million of taxpayers’ money, and the Health Secretary’s pub landlord received £30 million to provide vials, despite no track record in providing medical supplies.

The real bottom line in all this is that frontline staff in our national health service and social care, putting their lives on the line every single day and in desperate need of protection, did not receive the PPE they needed for weeks and weeks. We watched the heartbreaking footage of social care workers with no protection, hospital staff reusing masks and gowns, while the Government flushed millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money down the drain, employing firms with no track record, which unsurprisingly proved unable to deliver.

With procurement happening so quickly under emergency measures, the Government should have been creating more transparency, opening up to greater scrutiny, so that the public could have confidence in the pandemic response. Instead, the opposite appears to be the case. Again and again, the Government shrugged their shoulders at revelations of crony contracts and failed to make any commitment—

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a very serious allegation when she talks about cronyism, implying corruption. On the basis that the NAO report found no evidence that Ministers were involved in procurement decisions, at whom is she directing those allegations?

[Helen Hayes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, my former colleague on the Select Committee, for his intervention. Cronyism and corruption are different in law. I am talking about cronyism. The important point that was made by the National Audit Office and reiterated in the debate today is that, when the Government have a scenario where normal rules are bypassed because of an emergency, it is incumbent on the Government to have absolute transparency on connections, conflicts of interest, routes taken and the reasons for decisions being made. I am sorry to tell the hon. Gentleman that the NAO has found the Government wanting. What is lacking from the Government is appropriate contrition and an appropriately transparent response to those allegations that the NAO has made.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Helen Hayes

Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady refers to the Minister’s comments about speeding up delivery. Does she accept that permitted development rights have in many cases done exactly that? She talks about the negative consequences of that policy but has not spoken about the positive consequences. Does she accept that there have been positive consequences, including the delivery of more residential units?

[Helen Hayes]

I was just about to say that in addition to the numbers, which I do not dispute are important, the size and type of homes that we are delivering matters. It matters whether we are delivering homes that families can live in and have a good quality of life in, or only homes that are too small even to fit adequate furniture into. Minimum space standards matter, and the Government have failed to address that issue. The provision of amenities matters. It matters whether there is a local park that is properly funded through the planning process. It matters whether the roads and pavements are of an appropriate standard, whether there is lighting and whether our neighbourhoods are attractive to live in. It matters whether there are places in schools and GP practices for an expanding population to access.

Above all else, affordability matters to my constituents. It is simply not fair and not appropriate that new homes are allowed to be delivered with no contribution at all to the affordable housing that we need more than any other type of housing in London. As a Member of Parliament for a London constituency, the Minister should, quite frankly, know that.

The extension of permitted development rights is a disaster for the delivery of the high-quality neighbourhoods with good facilities and services that we all want to see. We want to see the right numbers of homes being delivered, but we also want to build attractive and successful communities for the future, not tomorrow’s regeneration projects. I am deeply disappointed that, through the Bill, the Government are trying to patch up a broken policy, rather than accepting that it is not working in the way it needs to and reforming it to make it more fit for purpose, so that we can deliver not only the number, but the type and quality, of new homes needed within the successful neighbourhoods that we all want to see.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Helen Hayes

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I have listened to evidence from both the development industry and local authorities both as a member of this Committee and as a member of the Communities and Local Government Committee. Although there are some examples, which have been much quoted, of the excessive use of pre-commencement planning conditions, the evidence is really not very strong. There are many reasons why the measures proposed in clause 7 are, in fact, an attempt to treat the symptom of a problem rather than the cause of that problem itself.

When asked, and when I have questioned them, all the witnesses—pretty much without exception—who have spoken about pre-commencement planning conditions have acknowledged, and in some cases spoken extensively about, the constraints on local authority planning departments. As we know, planning is the second most cut area of local authority services since 2010. It is an area that has, for good reason, lost out in the competition for local authority resources between it and statutory services such as children and adult social services, which affect some of the most vulnerable in our communities. To my mind, that is because the funding of planning, and in particular development management, is not on an appropriate footing.

I was very disappointed and frustrated that the previous Housing and Planning Minister simply ignored this issue during the debate on the Housing and Planning Act 2016, and did not acknowledge that we needed well-functioning, properly resourced planning departments to facilitate the building of the new homes that we need. It is absolutely not right that planning should be competing with services that are needed by the most vulnerable in our communities, and therefore we need a different way of funding planning departments.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

How will extensive pre-commencement conditions that are difficult to discharge help with that process? Local authorities will choose where to resource their departments. The pre-commencement conditions simply increase the burden on planning officers.

[Helen Hayes]

If the hon. Gentleman bears with me, I will explain exactly how that part of the argument hangs together.

There is evidence that officers are currently using pre-commencement conditions because they are simply unable to resolve every aspect of the planning application before the deadline for making a decision. In some cases, they are unable to look in detail at all the documents submitted as part of a planning application. In some cases, they are unable to spend the time negotiating and discussing with the applicant the type of detail that might be necessary. There is no question but that that is clearly not acceptable practice. Some have referred to that as lazy conditioning, but I would argue that it is, in fact, more commonly a symptom of the problem of under-resourcing, rather than deliberately poor practice.

When faced with the threat of appeal on the grounds of non-determination, local authorities and individual officers will look to use conditions as a way of making a timely decision to avoid losing control of every aspect of that planning application to the Planning Inspectorate. That is an entirely rational way for authorities to behave, rather than taking the risk of losing an appeal on the grounds of non-determination.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Is the hon. Lady not arguing for the clause? She talks about best practice and engaging with the applicant and the planning authority to agree the way forward rather than unilaterally sticking in some pre-commencement conditions without discussing those with the applicant. Is that not exactly what the clause will do?

[Helen Hayes]

It is my view that a clause that requires an exchange of letters and makes agreement to the principle of pre-commencement conditions the preserve of the applicant rather than the local authority does the opposite. It does not encourage best practice; it encourages a much more litigious and formalised approach to negotiation, which does not allow for genuine engagement between applicant and planning authority. It would be far better to resource planning authorities properly to undertake those detailed discussions with applicants, so that they can agree and discuss the issues that are important to local communities and ensure they are properly addressed, with as many as possible being within the planning permission itself rather than within pre-commencement conditions. However, there is a role for pre-commencement conditions and it is a very important one.

Finally, we should remind ourselves of what pre-commencement conditions seek to achieve and why they are important. Conditions cover many aspects of application, such as the choice of materials, which is sometimes belittled as a trivial matter but is in fact so important in determining the impact that a new development will have on a community in the long term. Once something is built, it is there certainly for the rest of our lifetimes and perhaps those of future generations. What a development looks like, the impact it has and how sensitively considered the materials are plays a really important role in how acceptable it is to the local community.

Conditions also cover issues such as sewerage capacity, which influences whether residents will have serious problems, sometimes in their own homes, in the long term. They are a key means by which local authorities can safeguard the interests of local communities and ensure the quality of new development. Of course, they should not be overused or misused, but where that occurs it is a symptom of the lack of resources rather than wilful misuse or poor practice.

I argue that the setting of conditions should be the preserve of democratically elected local authorities, not contingent on the agreement of the applicant. Local authorities must be properly resourced to undertake pre-planning discussions, to review properly the content of applications and to agree as much as possible within the framework of the planning permission itself, in order to minimise the use of conditions. The clause is simply misdirected. It is trying to treat the symptom of a problem, rather than the cause. I hope the Government will therefore reconsider it.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Helen Hayes

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

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

I congratulate their Lordships on their meticulous and effective scrutiny of the Housing and Planning Bill and on their staunch opposition to many of its most damaging provisions. Having heard the Government response, I see that what remains is an ideological commitment to the undermining of social and genuinely affordable housing, which flies in the face of evidence from across the housing sector; and a package of measures that will fail to deliver for my constituents and for people across the country the solutions to the housing crisis that they so desperately need.

There is a universal consensus that starter homes will be out of reach for people on median incomes in most areas of the country, and particularly in London, and that the very strong obligations on councils to deliver starter homes will undermine their ability both to deliver genuinely affordable homes and to meet local housing needs. Councils will see their waiting lists grow, while scarce valuable land will be used up delivering homes that very few can afford. Home ownership will not grow in the way that Members on both sides of the House would like to see it grow, while too many people are spending too high a proportion of their income on rent and letting agents fees in the private sector to be able to save for a deposit.

It is therefore extremely disappointing that the Government are refusing to accept Lords amendment 9, which would allow councils to decide how many starter homes are built, based on their own assessment of local housing need. It is astonishing that in their ideological commitment to starter homes, the Government are prepared to override the detailed local knowledge of councils and their ability to respond best to what their local communities need.

It is also disappointing that the Government are refusing to accept Lords amendment 47, which would allow councils to retain the receipts from the forced sale of higher value council homes to provide new homes of a tenure that is in demand locally. Without this amendment, there is no guarantee that homes built to replace those sold under right to buy or forced sale will be of the same tenure, or indeed in the same area, and this will have a devastating impact on the social mix and economy of London in particular, and in many other areas.

The abolition of secure tenancies is deeply concerning. I welcome the extension of the maximum length of a social tenancy from five years to 10, and the introduction of some protection for families with children, but I continue to question the principle of the abolition of secure tenancies. People on lower incomes aspire just as much to a secure home as those who can afford to raise a mortgage. I remain concerned that fixed-term tenancies of 10 years simply postpone the anxiety that will surround the ending of the tenancy.

A tenancy review for families with grown-up children presents the very real prospect that adult children may no longer be accepted as a legitimate part of the household for any new tenancy for the purposes of a housing needs assessment. Where would our young adults go then? It would be far better if the Government accepted the benefits of secure tenancies for families and communities, and removed this damaging measure from the Bill.

I remain concerned about the pay-to-stay provisions, which are a further attack on hard-working tenants—a tax on aspiration and achievement. I recently heard from a constituent who had lived with her partner and children in a council home for 14 years. She wrote:

“You see, our joint income for 2015-2016 is estimated to be £38,000. That’s with me working part time and my partner working full time. I intend to work full time from September 2016. If I do then our income will be over £40,000—the government have decided I will have to pay market value rent. I’m sickened at the idea of having to move as there is no way we can pay that level of rent. We don’t have any savings so we are in no position to even contemplate getting a mortgage.”

How can the Government justify legislation that will have such perverse and damaging consequences?

Let me turn now to the elephant in the room. The single biggest cause of homelessness is now the ending of a private tenancy, yet this Bill does absolutely nothing to improve either security of tenure or affordability for the millions of people living in the private rented sector. I have been contacted by 50 constituents since the beginning of January—more than two a week—who are facing homelessness, the vast majority of them in the private rented sector. Residents whose private tenancy comes to an end are increasingly ending up in temporary accommodation at great financial cost to the public sector and great personal cost to the residents and their children, who often end up a long way from their children’s schools, in overcrowded accommodation, too often sharing kitchens and bathrooms with strangers.

In the London Borough of Lambeth alone, there are 5,000 children living in temporary accommodation—more than in the entire city of Birmingham in a single London borough. The Housing and Planning Bill entirely ignores the plight of these families. It will make it harder for them to access a genuinely affordable home to rent; impossible for them to access a secure tenancy; and offers no hope that their family’s next private tenancy will have any more security than the last. How can the Government introduce major housing legislation that ignores the single biggest cause of homelessness?

The housing crisis has become all-pervading. It is already affecting London’s public services, with schools and the NHS finding it difficult to recruit suitably qualified and experienced staff, and it is affecting London’s economy, as the workforce our city needs cannot afford to live here. This Bill will make the situation worse.

We are debating this Bill during a week when Londoners will vote for our next Mayor. We need a Mayor who will stand up for Londoners who are unable to afford a secure home to rent or to buy. We need a Mayor who will make good use of publicly owned land to deliver genuinely affordable homes. We need a Mayor who will stand up for Londoners against a Government who are determined to divide our city, undermine our diversity and make it a place where only the wealthy can afford to live. I look forward to seeing my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) doing just that in two days’ time.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Opposition Members have made the point that starter homes will be built, rather than affordable homes to rent. That is, of course, true to some extent, because people want to buy homes and people on lower incomes have been excluded from the housing market for too long. We have been building an average of 50,000 affordable homes to rent for the last 20 years. Why have we not been building more affordable houses for sale, if that is what people want? Given that we have 20 years of catching up to do, it is absolutely right for the Government to set the ambitious target of building 200,000 starter homes over the next four years.

The hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) gave the example of someone who will have earned £40,000 by the end of this year and is living in an affordable rented property. The average price of a London home for a first-time buyer is £250,000. I believe that, under this policy, a starter home in London could be built for about £200,000. The information provided by Shelter about the unaffordability of starter homes in most local authority areas is flawed, or deliberately misleading, because it is based on the median house price. First-time buyers buy at around 25% below the median house price, and in my area, the average house price is about £200,000.

Housing and Planning Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Helen Hayes

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am not saying that all those sites are developable, of course, but 6,500 of those sites are occupied by Durham County Council and 200 are vacant today. Why can those properties not be put to better use? I am not just focusing on Durham. Southwark Council owns 43% of the land in Southwark—there are 10,000 garages. We need to put that to better use.

[Helen Hayes]

Southwark Council is indeed a large landowner in the borough, but I hope the hon. Gentleman recognises that it also has the single biggest commitment to building council homes—11,000 new homes over 30 years—on much of that land, including many garage sites in the borough.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am very pleased to hear that but, when I travel home this evening, I will start at King’s Cross, which was a desolate brownfield site for decades. At the other end of my journey is York central, a desolate brownfield site for 20 years—in fact, since I started in business in York nearly 30 years ago.

Housing and Planning Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Helen Hayes

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Q 230 But local plans and neighbourhood plans have been through a democratic process.

Dr Hugh Ellis: They have been through a democratic process, but at the moment there are two bites of that democracy: there is the democratic process that says that there is a plan allocation, and then there is a second process that says that a planning application comes in on the detail, and you have a right over that as well. That is the two-stage process we have at the moment. If you want to change that, that is fine, but it is a significant democratic change.

The most important issue is a fundamental planning principle that has not been discussed, which is that the detail and the general principle are intimately related. Anyone who does planning will tell you that you cannot make a decision in principle about a site until you know the detail of its flood risk appraisal and the degree of affordable housing you want on the site. To try to split principle and detail as if they are not connected in reality is extremely dangerous. Understanding the principle of a site means you have to understand the detail of its implications.

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

Q 231 You have already touched on some of the issues I was going to ask about. I want to come back to the issue of place making. As representatives of the planning profession—I was once a planner myself—you know that planners try to secure the best possible place making outcomes across all types of planning decision making. Can you comment in broad terms, but perhaps with some detailed examples, on the implications of the Bill for the ability of planning to deliver high-quality places? What consequences might we see in future as a result of the Bill?

Trudi Elliott: I suppose one of the challenges with the Bill is the amount of detail that is going to be covered by the regulations. For example, we think that if permission in principle is going to work with a local authority’s place-making and plan-making function, an amendment to clause 102 would probably be the way to go. If you limited the qualifying documents to the development plan and the register, and if you limited that to the brownfield register, you have a fighting chance of making this mini-system within a system work within the overall place-making agenda.

As Hugh has outlined, not all brownfield is the same. Part of the reason why brownfield land has not been developed is the constraints of the site. The Government have been looking at the criteria to address that. We think accessibility needs to be added to the proposed criteria—it is a massive issue for place making.

If we do not link homes to jobs, we really are in a difficult situation. The other challenge we have on place making is linking up homes, jobs and the infrastructure required and when that infrastructure goes in. There are places in the Bill where that challenge is acknowledged. One thing we may need to look at is mechanisms outside the scope of the Bill on getting more resourcing into infrastructure, because the more infrastructure we can have, the more sites we can unlock. We are doing work with a number of organisations from Adam Smith to Shelter on land value capture and how we can generate more resource in the system for the necessary infrastructure that creates great places.

Dr Hugh Ellis: One brief example in the Bill on place making is changes to urban development corporations. The development corporation model is extremely powerful. There are procedural changes to the way in which we designate urban development corporations, but nothing to secure high-quality outcomes on the corporations themselves—no obligations on place making or quality. Starter homes are another clear example.

The interesting thing is that England is falling very badly behind, both on individual building standards and building techniques in terms of innovation and on the wider project of place making. Internationally, many other cities and countries are doing much better. The reason is that they set democratically very high standards for their industry to achieve. Plainly, with the loss of things like zero carbon and other standards, we have set that process in reverse. There is an opportunity in the Bill, a significant one, to make clear that the achievement of housing growth is both about numbers, particularly for those people most in need, and also about inclusive places and strong place-making standards. That is the English tradition—that is how we built garden cities and how we achieve Letchworth. We achieve Letchworth through very strong planning.

Mike Kiely: I want to touch on two things. One is the nationally significant infrastructure projects. The Government are introducing the ability for an element of housing to be provided—we accept that and it is sensible—where it is functionally related to the infrastructure project. The caretaker’s house is the example, although you cannot have one of those now and it is a nonsense. Another example would be Sizewell B, where the workers’ accommodation will be converted to housing later. That is fine, but there is this “next to or close to” test, which suggests that housing—up to 500 units is suggested—completely unrelated to the nationally significant infrastructure project can be given consent just because it is nearby. I heard that they were talking, or thinking, about fairly significant distances, not close proximity. We are not saying no to including housing in NSIPs, but if we are going to include it, let us have a proper debate about it. The measure seems to be a bit of a fudge and that part of the proposal should be reconsidered.

Permission in principle is a potentially good idea that is in danger of going off the rails. It would be wrong if we see it as a move to a sort of zoning principle, for all the reasons that Hugh has given. It is a fundamentally different way of going about things. It has its origins in complaints largely from small house builders that the outline application process has become burdensome. It has become burdensome because of myriad changes to the planning system over many years, many of which come from Europe. That makes the process more complicated. An outline application is complicated because it produces a planning permission that has conditions attached to it. That is the only point in time at which the authority gets to put conditions on that consent, and therefore it has to look into the matters behind those conditions. That is what drives the complexity. The idea of separating the permission from the conditions was the origin of the proposal, but the measures in the Bill on converting allocations and allocations that go down to five units is a massive additional burden on local authorities.

The people who drafted the Bill have misread the national planning policy framework. On when a strategic housing land availability assessment needs to be produced, it talks of looking at sites larger than 0.25 hectares that are capable of taking at least five units. The threshold is a quarter of a hectare, not five units. In London, that will more than double the amount of work that local planning authorities will have to do on their SHLAAs. I urge you to read carefully your own definition in the NPPF, and use that in the Bill rather than what is in there at the moment. Frankly, every site in London is capable of taking five units, and producing the register would be an impossible burden. If the threshold is at 0.25 hectares, that is manageable. We are doing that work already and we can easily convert it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Q 253 Talking about some of the provisions in the Bill, such as the brownfield register, I know the CPRE has been very keen on providing housing on brownfield sites. How do you think that will play out in future housing development?

Shaun Spiers: We were very pleased to see the brownfield register. There is a statement in the impact assessment that says that we have wildly exaggerated the availability of brownfield sites. We did research with the University of the West of England to show that there was enough suitable brownfield land, most of it already in planning, to provide 975,000 homes, and that that stock is constantly replenished. We do not understand why the impact assessment queries that, because we have never seen any analysis from the Government to query it. That aside, the fact of the brownfield register is a positive thing. It will make smaller sites available for small builders, which is a big need—possibly for self-builders. I think that when the brownfield register is completed it will entirely verify our 1 million figure.

Duncan Wilson: If I might comment on the brownfield register from the Historic England perspective, I should start by saying that we are also in favour of brownfield development, but the national planning policy framework contains a number of checks and balances which we are concerned may be lost, perhaps inadvertently, in whatever process emerges from the brownfield register proposals. That is more about the law of unintended consequences than anything deliberate, but it is not entirely clear in the Bill how it will operate. That may be left to statutory instrument or ministerial statement, but we would like to see it explicit at the outset so that we could be confident that the role we have under the present system to make the case for the historic environment is not entirely bypassed by the brownfield register.

The factors that we normally highlight either need to come into play at the inscription of the site on the register or in the technical detail stage. By calling that stage the technical detail stage, there is an implication that nothing very major can be raised. So we do have some concerns. Let’s take the example of a brownfield site in a conservation area. Our concerns relate to the sensitivity of a development in terms of massing materials or the archaeological implications of developing a brownfield site, which could be missed. They might not be known when permission in principle is granted, but might subsequently become clear. The present system allows some due diligence to take place before final permission is granted. We are concerned that the new system may not allow for that stage.

[Helen Hayes]

Q 254 Taken in the round, the Bill introduces some fairly substantial reforms to the planning system. Could you comment on the extent to which, in your respective areas of expertise, you think that rural and heritage matters will continue to receive appropriate attention at the appropriate stages in the planning process and whether you have any concerns?

Duncan Wilson: I refer to my previous answer. Our main concerns relate to uncertainty around the brownfield register. We do not believe the present process, at least on our part, is unduly cumbersome. Our turnaround time on planning applications and listed building consent is 99.8% within 21 days, with an average turnaround of 12 days. From our perspective, I am not sure the proposals are shooting at the right target. We acknowledge that local authorities are very stretched, and we have been doing our best to make up for those deficiencies with additional training and support for planning departments, but realistically it is a much bigger problem than we can address. There at least needs to be some acknowledgment of that, as well as a streamlined process.

Housing and Planning Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Helen Hayes

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Helen Hayes]

Q 116 If I may, I wanted to ask about permission in principle. The Minister came to the Communities and Local Government Committee yesterday and said that his understanding of permission in principle is that it is simply a site that has been agreed by the local authority that will have permission for housing. Could you explain to me, from the industry perspective, what is the value of that? How does it give you any more certainty and any more leverage with your lenders than a site allocation, on the basis of which a local authority could still not turn down an application on a matter of principle without losing an appeal?

Brian Berry: I think it is particularly attractive to small builders, because getting the permission in principle at the beginning gives them the confidence actually to bring the application forward. It also means they are not having to spend large sums of money on providing technical details at the first stage. That, as I understand it in the Bill, is removed into the technical consent part. Turning it into two parts and getting the permission in principle at the beginning will, I think, bring forward more applications from smaller builders, and it does not pose any risk in terms of discussing the merits of the scheme because that will be in the second part. This is a welcome development and very similar to the redline application route endorsed in the Lyons review.

Andrew Whitaker: I would like to share your optimism that an allocation in a local plan would mean that you did not have to argue the principle of development on that site when making a planning application. Unfortunately, I can point you to many, many examples of where the principle of development gets discussed at length even for an allocated site. I think what this will do is ensure that local authorities, when allocating sites, do a lot more due diligence about whether they are committed to bringing that site forward for development. If we never need to make an application for permission in principle, that will be fantastic, because it will mean that local authorities become more committed to the delivery of the sites that are in their local plan.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Q 117 This Bill, taken in the round, is designed to tackle the fundamental problem in the housing market, which is lack of supply. And the lack of supply is partly about who is going to build the houses of the future. I am thinking particularly of SMEs, Mr Berry. SME house builders used to build about 100,000 homes a year in the UK. I think that at the moment they are building about 18,000 homes every year. Is there enough in the Bill to help SME house builders?

Brian Berry: You are absolutely right. The number of house builders has declined rapidly over the last 25 years. In 1988, two thirds of all new homes were built by SMEs; that fell to 30% last year. There is a desperate need to get more SMEs into the market if we are to deliver those homes. The challenge, of course, is that there are barriers to SMEs coming into the market. Those barriers fall outside the scope of this Bill, but access to finance remains a concern for SMEs—62% of our members say it is a barrier to bringing forward developments—so it would be useful if the Government considered some form of help to build, perhaps underwriting homes. That would be very beneficial.

The other key issue that affects the house building sector is the growing skills crisis and how we are to address that, because if we do not have the skilled labour, we are going to have a serious problem. It is already an issue. We know this from our own surveys: 60% of our members are having problems recruiting bricklayers, and 50% are having problems recruiting carpenters. It is right across the board. There are a number of issues that are outside the scope of the Bill, but that are absolutely fundamental to delivering the number of homes required and that we all need to work with Government on.

Housing and Planning Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Helen Hayes

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Helen Hayes]

Q 64 Some of the housing associations that recently appeared before the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government indicated that they thought the likely impact of this Bill would be fewer homes delivered by housing associations for social and other forms of affordable rent. I wanted to ask both of you, first, what you think the net impact of the Bill will be on housing associations’ delivery of social and other affordable forms of homes for rent and, secondly, whether you fear developers deserting housing associations in favour of delivering starter homes themselves?

Sinéad Butters: Our members have raised significant concerns about the potential erosion of social rented housing as a result of a combination of impacts. That combination includes the pay-to-stay option, the starter homes initiative and, depending on what is replaced under right to buy, the erosion of social housing under right to buy. What I would like to make absolutely clear is that our members collaborated with the Government on the home ownership options and see home ownership as one part of something—it is not “either/or”, it is an “and” for our members.

The impact on the future for social rented housing prompts the question, where will the poorest live? If there is nowhere for poor people to live in future, one might imagine that poverty is decreasing, yet I do not see that. It is a very real question. We would ask for the flexibility to have local solutions in the areas where we work closely with local authorities to determine what is needed in that area, including a range of social rented housing, home ownership options, market rent and sale. Our members would embrace the opportunity to work locally to make sure that what the community needs is what the community gets.

David Orr: The Bill itself is a relatively small part of a combined package. If we are going to build a whole lot of new homes we need land first and foremost. Anything that this Bill can do to help to release land for new home building would be helpful. Like Sinéad, I have anxieties about the competing priorities in the space where section 106 presently operates. It has been a useful mechanism for delivering affordable homes for rent and for shared ownership, and a useful mechanism for volume developers to front-end the cash for their developments. If all these things are squeezed out by starter homes, the impact is likely to be a reduction in the overall supply. If we are able, as Sinéad has said, to have an environment where we see significant growth in new home building across all tenures—some for market sale, market rent, social rent, shared ownership, starter homes—that is where we need to be. We need to have this mixed-tenure package. The new homes that we build need to be across all tenures.

With regard specifically to the ability to provide social rent, I think that the Government have made it clear that they do not consider social rent to be their top priority. It remains the top priority for housing associations. The spending review will obviously be an important component, depending on what money, if any, is available to support that. Right to buy, certainly in some markets, has the potential to liberate assets that would then be turned to cash and could be used to build social rented homes. That will vary according to the different markets in different parts of the country. There is a range of factors that will influence this, but I am anxious about starter homes appearing in the section 106 space and crowding everything else out.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Q 65 I also sat through the Select Committee hearing, and listened to the evidence from the housing associations. I took the absolutely opposite view, so perhaps we should review the evidence together.

In an article on your website, Mr Orr, under the heading, “More homes to rent (and buy)”, you state that,

“our offer to the government will see an increase in the number of…homes built, which has the potential to ease pressure in all parts of the market, including the rental market.”

Do you still stand by that in the overall context of this agreement?

David Orr: I completely stand by that being the offer that housing associations want to be able to deliver. We published a document called “An ambition to deliver” and I commend it to you, because it is a very strong statement of ambition about getting—at some point in the future—to a position where we are able to build perhaps 120,000 homes a year, half for sale and half for rent, half market value and half subsidised. That is exactly that: making a contribution across all parts of the market. We are completely committed to doing that. Ideally we would want to be working with Government—whichever Government—and local government to work in partnership to deliver that kind of package.

The most fundamental thing that will make a difference is access to land, both publicly and privately owned land. If you look at the pattern of provision, we have failed dismally to build the number of new homes that we need, particularly in rural England, and part of the reason is that we just say, “There’s no land.” We have kind of given up. We need to stop giving up because there is plenty of land that we could build on. Measures that speed up planning are helpful. Measures that give priority to the expectation of delivery of new homes are helpful. Accessing land is the thing without which the rest will not really work.