National Policy for the Built Environment

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I join others of your Lordships in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, on securing this debate on the Select Committee’s report just four weeks short of its first birthday. I also congratulate my noble friends Lady Whitaker and Lady Andrews, whose idea it was to establish the committee in the first place.

The report was launched during the passage into legislation of the controversial Housing and Planning Bill, much of the impact of which will rest on secondary legislation still to be concluded. If I have one reservation about the thorough and challenging analysis of the problems reflected in the report’s title, Building Better Places, it would be that some might be inclined to infer that the problem—and the report’s recommendations —relate to future development, whereas the issues it addresses are already with us.

The report lists five “F” characteristics by which the quality of local places should be defined, namely that they should be friendly, fair, flourishing, fun and free. It defines the last as being “safe, accessible and democratic”. I would list three more Fs, which are matters of a different kind that need to be addressed because they threaten those positive objectives—namely, flooding, fuel, and fracking.

All three of these issues pose challenges to local communities, self-evidently in relation to flooding, as to which there is still insufficient investment in flood prevention. I do not suppose the chair of the Local Government Association—I ought to refer to my interest therein—will have been telephoned by the Secretary of State, as I once was by my noble friend Lord Prescott when he was Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for the Environment and York was suffering floods. He telephoned me from Downing Street to ask if I knew where to obtain sandbags.

Fuel emissions greatly threaten health. It is shameful and dangerous that in London they have apparently already exceeded what would have been a safe level for the whole year. There are also very real concerns over fracking, where the Government have effectively taken over from the relevant, democratically elected authorities the responsibility for deciding whether it will be permitted.

Any policy for the built environment needs to address these issues, though of course they are not wholly the responsibility of the Department for Communities and Local Government. The Government’s response to the report, which took nine months in the gestation, is, as others have mentioned, somewhat disappointing. It suffers from being a report from only the DCLG, it seems, whereas it should have been produced jointly with other departments, particularly those with responsibility for health, transport, business and culture, as well as what was the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the responsibilities of which have transferred into the business department.

The tone of the response is too often one of complacency. Given the Government’s failure to react to concerns raised by the committee—for example, relating to the permission in principle measure in the then Housing and Planning Bill—we should not be surprised. Of course, along with the formal response, we also have legislation in the form of the Neighbourhood Planning Bill and, as I have reminded the Committee, secondary legislation under the Housing and Planning Act, with the housing White Paper apparently imminent. I hope that it will reflect some of the concerns raised by the committee, notably around carbon emissions and energy efficiency for new and existing homes. The response to the committee report in these matters referred briefly to “looking at a range” of options in relation to the latter and,

“working with industry to carefully consider”—

their split infinitive, not mine—

“future policy options”,

which suggests a trip to the long grass. Has anything happened relating to this issue in the last year?

Rather feebly, on the committee’s suggestion that they should encourage local authorities to set minimum standards for green infrastructure and management in local plans and planning decisions to promote,

“wider recognition of the fact that Green Infrastructure is an asset, and offers wider economic, health and social benefits”,

the Government regard it as inappropriate,

“to specify minimum standards … as this is a matter for local discretion”.

Coming from a Government who have not hesitated to intrude on local discretion in matters ranging from fracking to the levels of council tax to the number of council newsletters that might be published, not to mention their call for weekly bin collections and their imposition of the bedroom tax and forced reduction of council rents, that is a pretty unconvincing argument.

What is much worse, however, is the cavalier dismissal of the report’s recommendations relating to the provision of what it describes as “long-term affordable rented housing”. Incredibly, in the midst of a housing crisis in which affordability is defined not by what people can afford after meeting their everyday living expenses, but by the arbitrary measure of 80% of the profit-making rents in the private rented sector, the Government refuse even,

“to review the impact of borrowing restrictions on local authorities’ ability to deliver housing”.

On the contrary, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, reminded us, and as we may already be aware, the increase in council rents that the Government are imposing will reduce councils’ capacity not only to build but even to maintain the existing housing stock.

The Government’s reply, amazingly, boasts about the building of all of 8,620 local authority dwellings in 2016. As I have mentioned in the Chamber more than once, Newcastle City Council alone built 3,000 homes in the year I was first elected to the council in 1967. Of course, there is huge pressure to build and no current willingness in the Government to encourage significant local authority building. I acknowledge, incidentally, that the last Labour Government did not build anything like enough new council houses, but they did at least invest heavily in maintaining and improving the existing council stock.

Unless I have missed it, the report does not deal with the role of the private rented sector at all, which includes some 35% of council homes acquired under right to buy and subsequently sold. Will the Minister tell us what, if any, work has been done to assess the condition of these properties, the rents that are charged and their impact on local communities, not least in terms of the rents being levied and the insecurity of tenure? The noble Lord, Lord Best, referred to the local housing allowance and the impact that that would have on housing provision and, indeed, homelessness. Certainly, in the ward that I represent in Newcastle, there are too many such properties that are badly managed such that they have a negative impact on the community. Is it too much to hope that the housing White Paper will address this issue and, in particular, make landlord licensing schemes easier to create than at present?

On a different front, the committee expressed concern about what it described as a significant challenge to our high streets. The Government’s response appears to be somewhat complacent, citing evidence that high streets are recovering from the impact of the global crash. But it is surely becoming clear that online shopping is growing rapidly, as Amazon and the like expand their operations, even looking to effect deliveries not just by underpaid, exploited, part-time workers, but by drones. Do the Government intend to examine the implications of these developments, not just for the high street but for those who work for the industry, whether as genuine employees or as zero-hours contractors or the like?

There are other issues which need to be addressed if we are to secure better places, whether in our existing cities, towns and villages or in new developments. One matter that the report does not significantly address, and has not been significantly addressed yet this evening, is the nature of housing construction that is going ahead. As many of us have pointed out repeatedly, the space standards of new housing in this country compare very unfavourably with those on the continent. That is a matter the Government ought to address. But there are also issues of public transport, which is a key problem in many areas, whether it takes the form of bus services or fragmented and, in many areas, dysfunctional rail networks. We also need to ensure that access to health provision, including pharmacies and recreation, is available, and that education, children’s play and the needs of an increasingly elderly population— I hardly need to declare my interest in that—are reflected in planned developments.

Many of these areas will be ones in which local councils will need to play an important role, but given the current and projected levels of cuts forced on local government by the coalition and the present Administration, already severely impacting on staffing and, as we have been reminded, particularly on planning departments and thereby the capacity of local government to deliver existing services, it really is difficult to see how the eminently sensible proposals of the committee, let alone those that I and other speakers raised, can reasonably be expected to be implemented. In future the Government need to respond to reports of this kind more quickly, thoroughly and effectively so we can see aspirations translated into the life of communities.