Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Lords Chamber

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, raised the interesting and important question of whether servicing will include broadband. The Secretary of State has a regulation-making power to amend the definition of a “serviced plot of land” to add other services. At the moment, he has restricted the definition to electricity, water, waste water and highways, because we do not want to be prohibitively burdensome. The aim, after all, is to encourage more plots of land to be found. However, if broadband ought to be added in the future, we can certainly return to that issue. I believe I have covered the questions that were asked and I therefore ask noble Lords to withdraw their amendment.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

Will the noble Viscount say a little more about the point on planning delay made by the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy? He has made that point a number of times in the Chamber. I am a member of a local authority and I do not necessarily agree with him but it is important to clarify the issue. As this is my first intervention today, I declare that I am a local councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham, a trustee—this is particularly relevant to what we are discussing—of the United St Saviour’s Charity, which runs a number of supported housing schemes in south London, and a member of the Co-operative Party.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, makes a good point. I stress that powers to speed up planning are included later in the Bill. My noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy made a good point. It is very important that we speed up planning.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

On that point, I am a member of a planning committee. Most of the planning matters go through under delegated powers; very little comes through committees now. I do not see this delay.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I knew that I would run into trouble when I mentioned planning and local authorities, given how many noble Lords represent, or have represented, local authorities. Page 21 of the impact assessment states:

“In June 2015, 68% of respondents in the quarterly survey of homebuilders, conducted by the Home Builders Federation—

which, obviously, may have a dog in the fight—

“considered planning delays a major constraint”.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank the noble Lord for that. I can see that we are not going to agree on this because I just do not see the delays that he referred to. This is an issue for regional planning committees and planning departments. Certainly, in Lewisham many plots of land have multiple planning permissions but they are not being built on. That is the problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate at all until I heard what I can only describe as the brilliant exposition by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, of the economics of housebuilding. He showed quite clearly that the cost of land is the critical factor in all this, and the additional cost of building in environmental protection issues, such as solar energy or whatever, is marginal. The only reason why I rise is to draw to the attention of the Committee the series of amendments which will come up later—Amendment 89L and a number of attached amendments—which deal with the cost of land. At the heart of the Bill is the failure to deal with the cost of land. If we could deal with the cost of land in the United Kingdom and bring it down to the prices charged for land abroad, we would not even need the Bill or any of the incentives in it. The whole Bill is predicated on the need to compensate for the benefit that landowners make out of selling land at huge profits, which the rest of the country has to bear when they buy their houses.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, Amendment 54A, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, has our full support. As noble Lords have heard, the amendment seeks to ensure that the Secretary of State makes regulations that will require that all new homes built after 1 January 2018 achieve the compliance standards as set out in the amendment. This is achieved by using an energy-efficient approach to building design and reducing the CO₂ emissions on-site through low and zero-carbon technologies. As noble Lords have heard, Britain has been a world leader in taking measures to reduce carbon emissions. With that in mind, it is disappointing that we have to have this debate at all. The amendment is achievable and realistic and pushes us further forward as we seek to reduce the energy demands of new homes. I very much agreed with the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, when she expressed her regret that the Government have removed the zero-carbon target for new homes.

I do not often agree with what the Prime Minister said, but I also agree very much with the quote from him that my noble friend Lady Young read out. However, it puts the Prime Minister at odds with his Chancellor, who removed it a few days later. It will be very interesting to hear the response to that from the government Benches. The amendment will of course help to support innovation in construction by requiring high standards and will help future-proof homes, reducing the need for retrofit later, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said in his contribution. In particular, I will be interested to hear the response from the Minister to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, about the whole issue of agreements that are made and then reneged on. I will also be interested to hear the Government’s response to the very challenging points made by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, in his excellent speech.

The amendment would allow the housebuilding and supply industries, related trade associations, consumer representatives and bodies with a specific interest in environmental objectives to play their full role in being properly consulted in what is achievable and what is the way forward. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who posed the question, “Why build homes today if they are not fit for purpose tomorrow?”. I will listen with interest to the Minister’s response and I may have a few further questions depending on the Government’s position.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, first, I applaud the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for braving the Chamber today with what sounded like a few unwanted gremlins in her voice. I heard her loud and clear. I thank her for giving us the opportunity today to debate her proposed new clause, which seeks to put into primary legislation a carbon compliance standard for new homes from January 2018. The proposed carbon compliance levels are well intentioned—we all share the desire to see energy-efficient homes built that help to reduce carbon emissions and fuel bills—but the new clause is a step too far at this time. I listened very carefully to all the comments and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, pointed out, this issue has certainly been much debated in this Chamber in recent months.

Over the last Parliament, we implemented significant strengthening of the energy performance standards for new homes—a 30% improvement on requirements before 2010. These standards are reducing energy bills by £200 annually on average for a new home and saving carbon. At this stage, we need to give the homebuilding industry breathing space to build the highly energy-efficient homes already required by the recent changes to building regulations, and I will say more about that in a moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

The evidence is pretty strong from the Federation of Master Builders, but in the same letter that I shall write to other noble Lords I will include any further evidence that can be produced to back up the evidential information that we have.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked about the scrapping of the zero-carbon element and where else carbon savings might come from. I reassure him that we are already starting to look at heating systems in existing homes. As noble Lords will probably be aware, heat accounts for around 45% of our energy consumption. More than 1.2 million new boilers are installed in our homes every year and we want to consider whether the time is right to raise standards upon boiler replacement, and what the benefits and risks are if we do.

I will also make a point that I wanted to raise slightly earlier in this debate about being overzealous in protecting homes. There is an issue which I know has cropped up in previous debates about overheating homes. There are concerns about making homes so energy efficient and airtight that they can contribute to health issues, so DCLG is looking at that. We need to create a balance between stimulating the building of new houses and making sure that they are user-friendly for people to live in.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

The Minister suggested to my noble friend Lady Hollis that people would not be able to pass on the £3,000 cost. Is he suggesting that people will be building houses and selling them for less than they cost to build? If so, it seems extraordinary.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Yes, it is at build cost rather than purchasing cost.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I assume that the builder would pass that on when they sold their houses and make sure that it was paid for when they were bought.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

The point is that the onus of the £3,000 is on the housebuilding sector.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

Of course, the properties are bought at the end of the day; that is what they are built for. That is an extraordinary comment from the Minister.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, can I declare all of my interests, although we might be here for ever? I am chairman of the Local Government Association, leader of South Holland District Council, chairman of South Holland homes, which is a community interest housing company. I am also a private sector landlord. One of our rural housing providers delivered six code level 6 homes for us about four years ago, which are the closest to real zero carbon. The zero-carbon homes that the Committee has spent the last hour talking about are not really zero carbon. There was no proposal to ever deliver proper zero-carbon homes in this country because they are far too expensive.

The code level 6 ones that we delivered a few years ago did not save people a few hundred pounds on their electricity bills; they generated a few hundred pounds. Once the feed-in tariff had been factored in through the solar panels and the wind turbines that were installed on the site and the way that they were built for carbon mass heat production, which maintained the homes at a standard 18 degrees, the tenants actually made money on those homes. So that is really good news. We built six of those, and that is really bad news because the same capital cost of delivering those six would have delivered 12 standard construction three-bedroom semis that we were also building on a similar site at the same time. The homes on the affordable site were built on rural exception sites. There was hardly any land cost in there and the capital cost of the physical build was almost twice as much as for the three-bedroom standard semi-detached properties.

We can talk all we like about a few thousand pounds being saved, but that is not an accurate figure and I do not know where that figure came from. Zero carbon costs considerably more than £3,000 a unit. Even if you only put a 4 kilowatt solar system on your house that would be at least £6,500, and that would generate probably enough electricity to run your lights during the day when you do not need them.