Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords]

Matt Rodda Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; I do not disagree in any way. The north-west was particularly targeted, for reasons that I do not understand, with tens of thousands of homes built in this manner. It really was disgraceful. It gave leasehold a very bad name and necessitated these changes and others that will be introduced in future. The Bill ends these practices for new properties; that is key. It will ensure that the business model behind ground rents—the creation of such properties as leasehold to benefit commercially—will come to an end. We are already seeing its gradual reduction, and the Bill will lead to its elimination.

I want to address the point that was raised about why the proposals should be extended to retirement properties. As Secretary of State, I came under fierce resistance and lobbying from the retirement property sector. Its lobbyists approached Members of Parliament and my Department and threatened judicial review of our proceedings. I considered it to be an unfair practice, targeted at the most elderly and vulnerable in our society, that in addition to paying their service charge they should pay a ground rent that might escalate at a significant pace. Why not have a fairer and more transparent system where an elderly person knows exactly what they are getting when they pay the purchase price on their property and then when they pay the service charge on an annual basis, instead of receiving two bills every year? I think that is a simple matter of fairness and transparency, and it was the right decision to bring that to an end. We did, however, give a longer period for businesses to transition and to change their business model, which is why that part of the industry will not feel the force of the Bill until 2023.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I appreciate the work that the right hon. Gentleman has done to try to get the right balance and stand up for the interests of homeowners rather than large corporations. Does he have any reflection, further to the point made by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), on the knock-on effects of allowing additional storeys to be built on existing blocks of flats? In my experience, there is an exploitation issue both for people who live in flats with top-hatted development—I think that is the word—and for the neighbours. In the area that I represent, there have certainly been a number of problems for neighbours to those blocks. Does the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) have any further reflections on that point? If he were still Secretary of State, would he have allowed that development to go ahead?

[Robert Jenrick]

I think it should be kept under review, like any permitted development. As we have seen with past examples, there are always cases at the edges that concern us, and there are usually ways to refine the permitted development over time to ensure that those cases do not happen again. With the permitted development that the hon. Gentleman mentions, I think—from memory —that we ensured that the developer has to work with the local council to ensure that there are not issues with building safety or loss of amenity to the leaseholders in the building, and that the design of the extra storeys is broadly in keeping with the neighbourhood. I certainly think that the issue should be kept under review.

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[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Let me first put it on record that, alongside the hon. Members for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), l am a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform. The group is assisted by the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, which has been campaigning for many years for the kind of reform that we are debating today.

We might have expected the Bill to be a cause for celebration, and indeed any legislation that puts another nail in the coffin of leasehold is to be welcomed, but we are left with a feeling that it is a rather modest measure. Given that it took four years for us to reach this point, it seems that we are making glacial progress. Perhaps four years is not much in comparison with 1,000 years of leasehold, but for those who are still trapped in unsellable or seriously devalued homes because of the leases they signed, progress is not being made quickly enough.

I am not generally a fan of market-based solutions—the market is responsible for most of the egregious injustices that we have seen in leasehold—but, to a significant extent, the market has already moved away from imposing ground rents for most houses, not because those who concocted the leasehold scandal have had a prick of conscience but because a spotlight has been shone on the devastating consequences of their sharp practice. In that respect, I pay tribute to the fantastic work of the National Leasehold Campaign, which has done more than just about anyone to bring the unfairness of leasehold to the public’s attention. It is an irony that those campaigners do not stand to benefit from the Bill because, as has been pointed out already, it does nothing to tackle the existing problems. That said, however, their influence has already benefited my constituents and many others.

A new Redrow estate not far from where I live originally had properties being sold on a leasehold basis. After some pretty determined campaigning from the National Leasehold Campaign, Redrow decided to stop the sale of homes in the second phase as leasehold, but unfortunately not before several hundred people had already bought their homes as leasehold. To be fair to Redrow, I should add that it did then offer them the opportunity to purchase the freehold after two years, although it was a little unfortunate, to say the least, when it subsequently lowered the purchase price for the freehold again, creating another unfairness. While I give Redrow credit for stepping back and weaning itself off the leasehold drug, that should not obscure the fact that all this could have been avoided had it not sold the properties as leasehold in the first place. That takes me back to the basic concern that remains with the Bill, which is that it enshrines in law a two-tier system of home ownership when really we should be ending it altogether.

Very few new houses are now being sold as leasehold, but around 1.5 million houses will remain leasehold after this Bill becomes law. Is there a risk that choking off income streams from those who see other people’s homes as an investment will cause them to turn their attention to redoubling their efforts to squeeze as much as they can out of the existing properties? A number of Members have already mentioned that, and I will return to it later.

Turning to the details of the Bill, I know that a lot of consideration has been given to how we define a ground rent. That debate is instructive, because how can a payment for which nothing is received in return be considered a proper legal payment? The short answer is that it cannot, and I believe that that is another reason to abolish leasehold altogether. The reality is that ground rent is a legal fiction and a method of maintaining control and securing an income for which the recipient is required to do precisely nothing.

It is therefore disappointing that lease extensions for houses are exempt from the Bill, because there is significant concern that freeholders will put in massive multipliers when offering informal lease extensions, just to make the premium look lower and more attractive. They would then make their money back through allowing the ground rents to continue. Let us not forget that both parties do not have equal bargaining power. This all just adds weight to the argument that what we have here is a minor change that will help people in the future, when what we really need to do is to deal with the injustices of the present, and the best way to do that is of course to abolish leasehold altogether.

As I said earlier, we also need to keep an eye on whether those who have been involved in the systematic deception and mis-selling change their sights to deal with the new environment that the Bill represents. They have not gone away, those offshore accounts, those trust funds and those private equity investors who see people’s homes as an opportunity to cream off the cash long after the people living in them think that they have bought them. In particular, we have to keep a close eye on estate management companies, because that is one area in which charges could easily be inflated to more than cover the loss of a ground rent.

[Matt Rodda]

My hon. Friend is making an important speech and he has hit on a number of central issues, particularly when dealing with his own legal experience of these dysfunctional markets where on the one hand we have developers with enormous financial power and legal resources and on the other we have humble first-time buyers. Does he agree that there needs to be a rebalancing, with far greater protection for first-time buyers and ordinary householders, and with a much greater attempt by the Government to hold these large developers to account?

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. There is clearly an imbalance. We have already talked about how some enthusiastic first-time buyers who just want to get into their new homes put their trust in the people who have been assigned to deliver the legal niceties such as putting a value on the property and doing the conveyancing. They put their trust in those people, and sometimes that trust is betrayed through the egregious injustices that we have talked about.

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[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in tonight’s debate. I wish not only to address a number of issues that colleagues have raised, but to add in further details that I hope are particular to my constituency but fear may be common around the country.

First, I wish to support the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell). Obviously, I welcome this Bill, which will help, but the broader point about the deep inequities of leasehold still stands true and we should be moving much faster on this important matter, trying to remove leasehold from the system of ownership in this country. Is it not incredible that the UK still has this medieval system of ownership, which, as has been mentioned, so discriminates against first-time buyers, people on lower incomes, older people and many other groups, which in many ways deserve more support and encouragement to get on to the property ladder? They deserve not to have their lives blighted by what is, sadly, sometimes the behaviour of irresponsible developers. I am not saying that all developers are irresponsible, but Members have clearly highlighted some awful and appalling examples of behaviour.

First, Loddon Park is a pleasant development on the edge of Woodley, a suburb of Reading. It is a relatively new and really quite beautiful development, with many attractive homes. The homes are freehold properties but some of the shared areas in the large development are subject to charges. In many ways, the sort of problems described so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) are also occurring for those at Loddon Park—several hundred people living in an attractive new development on the edge of an urban area in the south-east of England. The residents potentially face unlimited extra costs for the maintenance of some attractive grounds—including meadow areas, large ponds and other areas where children can play—because no cap was written into the charging policy and they did not realise that when they bought their properties.

As explained earlier by my hon. Friends the Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston and for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), as well as other colleagues, some of the first-time buyers we are talking about are unfortunately not always aware of some of the difficulties into which they might get themselves. There is an unequal situation in which on the one hand there are powerful and articulate developers with an excellent team of lawyers and on the other hand there are first-time buyers. That is deeply unfair. In this case, young families face potentially unlimited additional costs to pay for the upkeep of the rather attractive communal areas around their houses. That is very sad and deeply unfair. I respect the fact that the local authority had difficulties in trying to provide the properties, but I wish it had been more careful. There is also an element of involvement from Wokingham Borough Council, which is the local authority involved. Will the Minister look into that issue? I will write to him to explain the situation and ask for his help and support.

Before I mention another egregious example from the Reading East constituency, I offer my support to colleagues who have mentioned the issue of snagging and the problems with developers that prevent the adoption of roads. I know of cases in both Reading borough and Wokingham borough in which different developers have started to build a new estate and completed all the properties, which have been sold, but the roads, street lighting and other services have not been properly completed. Although the issue has gone on for years, there has been an ongoing tussle—similar to what the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) mentioned—between council officers and developers. It has been deeply problematic for local authorities, which often have low levels of resource in their planning departments so are not well equipped to argue the case.

[Mark Tami]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. Quite often, the moment the developers sell the last property, that is it: they are not interested any more. They are not interested in snagging or doing the roads; they are off to build somewhere else. The problem is that, as my hon. Friend was saying, local authorities do not have the money to chase these people. In my opinion, if they do not finish an estate—what they were allowed to do under the planning permission—they should not be granted permission again to build anything else.

[Matt Rodda]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. There should be much stricter rules on this issue, because such sharp practice by developers helps no one. It does not help the building industry as whole, homeowners, local authorities or, indeed, other businesses that have to operate. In one estate near me, drivers can feel the difference as they drive on to the unadopted piece of road because their vehicle goes over a huge bump. That is not good for anyone, including many of the small businesses that have to deliver to that estate. It is surely in everybody’s interests, including those of the wider building industry, to get on with it and come up with a clear, simple and fair solution to the problem so that we can all move on and not spend vast amounts of unnecessary energy chasing after developers to sort out problems such as lamp posts that do not work or roads that have not been finished off.

I wish to address a specific issue that relates to a social housing enterprise in my constituency that operates across large parts of Berkshire. I have been deeply disappointed by Housing Solutions and ask for the Minister’s help. This organisation appears to have badly let down a number of residents in Woodley, the Reading suburb I mentioned earlier. It applied for planning permission to build properties next to a transport depot, where there are a lot of heavy goods vehicle movements, and on an industrial estate. The properties have been sold in a part-ownership scheme to local residents who were desperate to get on the housing ladder and were finding it quite difficult because they are on modest incomes. The local authority gave planning permission and carried out all the relevant checks—again, this is Wokingham Borough Council not Reading Borough Council. There was nothing in planning law to stop these flats from being built next to a haulage yard. The local authority looked into it and it was not able to reject the plans on that basis—on the basis that the flats were close to a noisy and polluting business. However, it did try to insist on conditions on the development. Sadly, though, it appears from lengthy inquiries from my office and also from one of the local councillors—Councillor Shirley Boyt—that these conditions have not been met. Residents, including a constituent of mine, Elise Maslen, who lives in the development, were not told of the additional changes that would need to be made to these properties—in particular, the need to adapt to air quality problems, such as mechanical ventilation and other forms of enhancements to the properties. They were also not told about the noise and pollution from the depot when they purchased the properties. That has resulted in around 20 families being trapped in flats that they do not want to be in, suffering from noise and air pollution.

The local authority has tried to find a way of bringing these properties up to spec. It has insisted on Housing Solutions doing that, but there has been a great deal of delay. This has gone on for five or six years. Sadly, some of the residents have moved away and are now having to pay for the cost of living in these properties while also living at a new address. They are deeply concerned about the health of their children and of themselves. This seems to be an egregious abuse of the situation. While it is not directly related to leaseholders, it has many of the same features, with powerful organisations, sadly, abusing their position of power and ordinary householders struggling and being provided with incorrect information. I wish to write to the Minister to ask for his help on this matter because it is of huge concern to me, to the local community and to the residents concerned. They have been treated appallingly by the housing association.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making some incredibly important points. I have parallels in my constituency, as I am sure do other Members across the House. In one example, we have a managing company, a massive social housing provider and a partnership scheme, as he describes it, and the builder. It is a big organisation, but there is no overall ownership of the issues. Residents get utterly frustrated—I am thinking about Ellie, Matt, Sarah and others. There are 200 of them in this one development and they cannot get answers from anybody because no one is really taking ownership of the problem.

[Matt Rodda]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, because he shows that there is a wider issue with this type of behaviour. It is deeply worrying. These are ordinary families trying to get on with their daily lives. They want to be able to find a home of their own in a high-cost area and they are being treated in the most appalling way by an organisation that should be much more responsible. As I have said, I, my office and local councillors have been struggling to find a way of solving this problem, but we have not had much success so far and would appreciate the Minister’s help. We hope that, at some point, Housing Solutions will compensate these poor residents for the way that they have been treated and, indeed, buy them out of their properties if possible. It is absolutely appalling to live next to a haulage yard. People are constantly interrupted by noise from HGVs, driving past at all hours of the day and night. The air pollution from diesel particulates and nitrous oxide is deeply worrying. There is no way of protecting children and other vulnerable people in that situation. I am sure the whole House would agree that no one wants that for their constituents. There is also an issue with planning law that needs to be addressed, by which I mean looking at the risks from air pollution and from putting housing in close proximity to an industrial development. I would appreciate the Minister’s help with that.

Finally, let me reiterate the points made by other colleagues about the wider issue of leasehold, which is a completely out-of-date system and totally unfair to first-time buyers and other householders—whether they be young residents, people in leasehold properties for long periods of time, or, as the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) said, older residents. This system should come to an end. It is a feudal system. Our country is unique in having such a system. Surely we need to end it once and for all and move on from it.

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[Theresa Villiers]

We would certainly need a cap, and the sort of levels that my hon. Friend mentions sound reasonable to me.

Let me turn to how this legislation will interact with new building safety laws. New building safety legislation will impose stringent responsibilities on freeholders, whether they are professionals or just flat owners who are banded together to manage their building. Frankly, not all leaseholders will want to take on such liabilities, yet this Bill will mean that for new flats, residents—whether they want this or not—will be jointly responsible for the safety, maintenance and upkeep of the apartment buildings in which they live, regardless of the size or complexity of those buildings. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) highlighted in his earlier intervention, worrying research in a 2019 report commissioned by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and Built Environment Forum Scotland indicates that the removal of professional freeholders in Scotland has contributed to buildings falling into disrepair. A key problem that has been identified is that difficulties in securing a majority agreement among leaseholders and getting all flat owners to fund the repair works needed can significantly slow down remedial work, and that pushes up costs.

[Matt Rodda]

I appreciate that the right hon. Lady wishes to make a point about the importance of shared ownership and the difficulties of managing the shared parts of a large block of flats. Has she looked into the way that this issue is managed in other countries, given that all western countries other than the UK do not have the leasehold system? Surely there are ways to manage communal areas other than by maintaining leasehold, which involves all the difficulties that we have heard about.

[Theresa Villiers]

The fact that English property law is unique does not necessarily mean that it is wrong, but I acknowledge that it is important to look at how other countries manage these issues. That is partly why it is instructive to look at what has happened north of the border. Of course, Scotland has a different legal system. Leasehold and commonhold have been a fundamental part of its system for a long time, and it seems that, in some instances, that is making it more difficult to keep buildings in a decent state of repair.

This is a very important Bill, but it needs careful scrutiny if we are to ensure that it protects leaseholders effectively from abusive and unscrupulous practices, operates fairly and avoids unintended negative consequences for the very people whom it was designed to protect.

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

It is a pleasure to speak after my former colleague in the Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt). She made some good points, not least on part-built developments. I support the Bill’s intent.

There is an expression that you should never take down a fence until you know why it was put there. As I set out in my intervention, I have one or two particular concerns. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have been involved in the property sector for a long time. I am not directly involved in it today and I have no vested interest—that is for the people who make comments on Twitter in particular, because I will not agree entirely with many of the points made about completely scrapping leasehold, in effect. I am actually a leaseholder, rather than a freeholder, in this context.

On the leasehold system, for most of my life, when it comes to selling and renting property, leasehold has been a perfectly workable form of tenure for most people—for most leaseholders and indeed freeholders. In recent years, there is no doubt that the system has been tremendously badly abused. It is right of the Government to act on that in no uncertain terms. However, the fence to which I referred is between freeholders and leaseholders, and it was put there to try to ensure a proper mechanism for resolving disputes. That is why we ended up with a professional landlord who had an overall interest in an entire block, rather than in a specific unit in that block. The Bill will in effect remove any interest that a professional landlord would have in a future block. My hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) is therefore right that the default will become commonhold.

On freehold, in my formative years of selling property in York, most flats were leasehold, and those flats were perfectly saleable and rentable. However, if ever we came across a development of freehold flats—a block where all the owners were freeholders, or commonholders, in modern-day parlance—we found that those properties were almost impossible to sell. In fact, mortgage lenders would not lend on them because of concerns about maintenance. If there was not a method to ensure that the building was maintained or that its insurance continued, the building might fall into disrepair and the lender’s security over the property would not be sufficient to cover the mortgage. That is the concern we potentially have here, as we move to this system of commonhold. I think commonhold can work for quite a number of flats—most blocks of flats, indeed—if it is simple and easy to operate.

However, commonhold is far and away not, in any shape or form, a panacea. We can see that from the current experience. There are some effective leasehold or commonhold ways of managing blocks, with residential management companies or right to manage agreements, where in effect the leaseholders manage the block and take on the responsibility of a freeholder. However, there are disputes within such blocks or organisations. The trouble with the commonhold rules—as I understand it, and the Minister may tell me differently—is that each commonholder has the right to raise their own dispute regarding the particular property, and I do not think there is any clear means of resolving such a dispute.

Previously, in a leasehold agreement, the freeholder would have been able to say, “This is what is actually going to happen. These are the terms of the lease, and these are the terms of the lease that you must adhere to.” A simple example of that is the payment of insurance. As I am sure most Members in this debate will know, in a leasehold agreement the freeholder will normally arrange the buildings insurance for the entire block, which obviously covers communal areas, as well as things such as the roof. That would be the responsibility of the freeholder, who would pass on the costs to each individual leaseholder in proportion. If one leaseholder decides not to pay the insurance, the freeholder can say, “Well, you must pay the insurance”, and they can actually carry out debt collection on that leaseholder. If it is an absentee leaseholder, they can go even further: ultimately, they could disenfranchise that leaseholder completely, and take the apartment back from the leaseholder.

I know that that has been used in some draconian ways in leasehold, but generally there is a mechanism that makes sure everybody in the block pays a fair amount for maintenance and things such as the insurance, but I am not sure how that happens in commonhold. If somebody stops paying for their particular element of responsibility for the charges, I do not think there is any such mechanism. The others could take that person to court, but again, the problem is that the fellow residents—fellow commonholders—in that block would have to take one of their own residents to court, instead of a freeholder doing so who does not have a cheek-by-jowl relationship with the resident.

This is why I think we have some of the maintenance issues in Scotland, and in Scotland there are some big maintenance issues, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) mentioned. The hon. Member for Reading West asked about other jurisdictions. Australia has a very similar system, which I think is called the strata system. There are issues there about the recruitment of people to sit on the management boards, with 37% of companies expressing difficulties in recruiting residents to sit on these management boards.

[Matt Rodda]

I absolutely appreciate the difficulties that the hon. Gentleman is outlining, including indeed in relation to my constituency. I should say that my constituency is Reading East; Reading West is the COP26 President’s. In Reading and Woodley, which I represent, there are a number of private roads and other shared facilities where residents come together and share the ownership of assets. Certainly in my experience as the local MP and previously as a councillor, that can be done quite effectively. I do appreciate that there may be issues with very large blocks, and the point I was making to the right hon. Lady from Chipping Campden—[Interruption.] Sorry, I mean the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers); there are various interesting places around the country that we come from today. The point I was making is that we really should look at the wide range of jurisdictions overseas and try to work through some models of what is most appropriate in each given set of circumstances.

However, it is possible to bring residents together. Certainly, that is my experience locally, and in the example of shared private roads, that has been extremely successful. We have a number of areas where they are maintained to a very high standard, the residents all work together effectively and that is absolutely fine. So I do not think we should try unduly to put obstacles in the way of progress on this matter. At the end of the day, the real issue is moving on from this totally unequal system to one where individual householders are treated more equally, and work together in a collaborative and sensible way.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Gentleman makes some good points and I am not saying that in certain circumstances commonhold cannot work. He pointed to the simple situation of a non-adopted road to which local residents have to contribute for the upkeep and it can certainly work in those situations, but I am just trying to point out that there are situations where it would prove difficult to make the system work.

Every jurisdiction—those in Australia or the US or Scotland—is different, and the UK is unique in various ways, one of which is in having a high proportion of absentee owners, such as in central London, where we all see blocks of flats that seem to be rarely occupied. Problems might arise in managing such blocks with for instance 100, 200 or 300 commonholders; there might be disputes and difficulties, such as in debt collection.

On the point about simple things to manage, the biggest issue is complex developments, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet mentioned. Let us consider a block of 300 or 400 flats built above a tube station or adjoining a shopping mall; effectively there will be a common freehold in that development but would anybody here be keen to sit on a committee managing that entire block with, for example, joint M and E—mechanical and electrical—so joint electrical, heating, ventilation and broadband installations, managed not just between the 300 units but the other infrastructure in that development? There are concerns that that would be beyond the appetite of many commonholders who manage that kind of development.

Building Safety Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I welcome you to your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate and to follow colleagues from across the House.

The Bill is a step forward. However, I have very serious reservations. I will build on the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) and other colleagues across the House, including the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley).

First, it is important to focus on the single most important weakness of the Bill, which is that many thousands of existing leaseholders will not benefit from it. They are going to be penalised with exorbitant costs —far above what they could possibly pay off—due to the way in which the Government are tackling this deep crisis and the insufficient funding to make good the very serious problems with leasehold properties around the country that have become more and more apparent in the four years following the Grenfell disaster. It is simply deeply unfair that people who bought properties in good faith, in Reading and across the country, should have to pay enormous sums of money to make those properties fire-safe and to deal not only with cladding, but with a range of other issues that I will address in my short speech.

There is also the serious issue of properties under 18 metres. In my area, many blocks are under 18 metres high. I am sure that colleagues across the House will have the same issues in their constituencies. The residents in those blocks deserve to be treated much better by the Government and the industry. Let me give colleagues a small example by describing a desirable, beautifully designed block with an attractive foyer that is central to the town and next to one of the rivers in Reading—a great place to live in many ways, but in the case of a fire potentially a dangerous rabbit warren of small corridors, from which it would be difficult to escape. The block contains a huge amount of fire safety problems and residents may have to pay £150,000 each to get them put right. The problems include: issues with fire doors and with the doors into flats; a lack of internal partitions, meaning that a fire could rip through a block that contains more than 100 separate flats; and a whole range of other difficult problems. Those issues are not addressed by the Bill and they need to be.

I wish briefly to mention the confusion about the EWS1 form and lack of information until the very last minute. There are serious issues with getting the forms and it is right that the Government look into them, but it surely cannot be right to present that information as a written statement on the eve of the debate. I ask the Secretary of State and his colleagues to reflect on that, because it caused a great deal of confusion and concern today and was perplexing.

Let me say equally briefly that there is already a model for how to resolve this issue, and that is the Australian model, as mentioned by colleagues from all parties. Ultimately, it is a question of leadership from the Secretary of State.

Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be able to contribute this afternoon. I want to address two areas; the first is my deep concerns about the Government’s planning Bill in the Queen’s Speech. I would like to reiterate the points made by our Front-Bench team and, in particular, to highlight some local issues in Reading and Berkshire, which one of the other Berkshire MPs here has hinted at.

I am afraid that the planning Bill, as it is set out at the moment, looks as though it will sweep away 70 years of relatively sensible town planning, which started with the post-war Government’s Town and Country Planning Act 1947. That is a system that has given local people and local councils, as other Members have mentioned, the right to have a say. I personally would like to see councils and local residents’ groups having more of a say and big developers having less of a say. However, sadly, the Government’s approach to the problem seems to be, rather than to listen to local people and, indeed, local authorities or other valid stakeholders, such as some of the countryside or planning groups, to listen to large developers and to redesign a system that has been quite accurately described, in my view, as a developers’ charter.

I want to run through three specific problems that have a very direct effect on Reading and the neighbouring area of Berkshire, in other towns such as Woodley, and further afield. First, the pressure on out-of-town land—the development of green sites—in our area is enormous. We currently face a number of proposals on the outskirts of Reading that are completely unsuitable, will lead to large amounts of extra car traffic, pollution and congestion on already crowded roads, and will not necessarily solve our housing problems.

Secondly, we have the issue of unwanted development by irresponsible landlords in and around the town centre, with houses in multiple occupation over developed sites, residents overlooked, and people’s back gardens taken for unnecessary development. As far as I can see, the Bill does not address these issues. In fact, it makes it easier for unwanted developments to take place because it grants developers carte blanche.

Thirdly, as other Members have mentioned, including the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter), there is the issue of brownfield. I am lucky to represent a town that has an ample supply of brownfield—enough in its local plan to provide all the housing that is needed in the borough of Reading until 2036. At present, we have difficulties getting that developed because of delays with developers and other issues such as contaminated land. I cannot see how the proposal from the Government to give developers yet more power and more influence on the planning process will actually address the very serious problem of developing brownfield, which is so important if we are to regenerate cities and towns in a constructive way, as other Members mentioned. So I urge the Government—the Minister is, I hope, taking notes—to rethink this proposal completely.

Secondly, I would like to raise some deep concerns about fire safety and mention correspondence that I have had with one resident that illustrates the scale of the problem. While the Government have made progress on Grenfell-style cladding—I do acknowledge that—a huge number of other related problems have not been addressed. I will give an example of just one typical block in Reading town centre: £150,000 of work is needed on fire safety doors, compartmentalisation and fire extinguishers. Please can we have some urgent action on this?

Fire Safety Remediation: Leaseholders

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I am very grateful for the opportunity to add to this debate tonight. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) for his excellent speech, which covered a wide range of very serious issues that are faced by residents in towns and cities across the country. In my constituency in Reading and Woodley, we have exactly the same set of problems, which he so eloquently outlined, affecting the city of Portsmouth. I understand from colleagues across the whole country that this is a serious national problem. Indeed, it is fair to say that it is a national scandal. Three years after Grenfell, we still do not have the full set of effective measures in place to take action against these terrible fire safety problems.

Briefly, let me thank the Minister for the work that the Government are doing on some of the taller buildings, but one or two very serious issues remain. I do not want to repeat all the points made by my hon. Friend, but, I will, if I may, address one or two key points that particularly affect local people in Reading and Woodley. As many people will know, our town is growing. We are not a city, but a large town, with many taller buildings in our town centre. That is only likely to increase over time as greater development takes place in the Thames Valley. The same is true across the whole of Berkshire and, indeed, across much of England and the wider UK.

I wish to make two or three key points about the nature of the problem and the range of issues that go beyond the very tall blocks with the Grenfell-style cladding. First, on the height of the blocks, it is important to underline the point made by hon. Friend that there are many blocks under 18 metres. Indeed, the majority of blocks in Reading town centre of any description, whether or not they have problems, are way below that height. However, they are tall enough to make it difficult for people to escape from them if there were an emergency. What we are seeing in our area is a number of issues in blocks of that height—from Grenfell-style ACM cladding, from other types of cladding and, indeed, from other problems.

First, I ask the Minister to reassess the difficulties facing residents living in blocks of under 18 metres. They are being offered a loan, which, as my hon. Friend said, is some assistance, but many of these residents do not have large financial resources, so this is still a very significant imposition on them, and it may take them many years to pay off the loan. They are in this position through no fault of their own, undergoing a huge amount of stress and a great deal of anxiety because of the cladding and other issues in their blocks. As my hon. Friend quite rightly pointed out, many are people who would like to sell, but are unable to do so because they cannot get the right certification.

Secondly, in my experience, this issue goes beyond the very serious one of cladding into a range of other fire safety and building quality issues. There are what appear to be from the outside some beautiful blocks in Reading, next to the River Kennet. There is one with a beautiful white exterior and a modernist appearance. However, the sad reality for its residents is that the compartmentalisation of that building is not up to standard, and if there were a fire, it would be extremely dangerous for them. Therefore, we are seeing issues with compartmentalisation and proper quality of firewalls, whether it is in the original building or through subsequent changes that have not been carried out as they should have been carried out. There are also serious issues with fire spread within buildings and with fire safety doors. An elderly gentleman who lives in sheltered accommodation in a suburb came to me with very serious concerns about the fire door on the front of his property in a low-rise block. He replaced it only to then be told that, because of confusion around the quality of the replacement spec needed, he had to replace it with a further one and, as a pensioner, he was faced with an enormous bill of about £2,000 for a new door. These are the kinds of things we are talking about: cladding, doors, compartmentalisation, and a range of other serious issues. I ask the Minister to look again at the challenges that we face with the large number of lower-rise blocks—he obviously knows about the dangerous fires in the two lower-rise blocks in Barking and Bolton—and at the issue of compartmentalisation and other subsequent and additional fire safety problems.

I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me an opportunity to speak in this debate at somewhat short notice. I do very much appreciate that and I wish him a happy St David’s Day—I am afraid that I cannot say that in Welsh. I also ask the Minister if he might be able to reply to my points.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 7th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that many people around the country will find it absolutely staggering that the Government can make an agreement one year and go back on it the next?

[Bill Esterson]

That is exactly right, and it was the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) who pointed out to Government Members that they all voted for the withdrawal agreement that they now want to abandon. Most people believed the Prime Minister’s guarantee—that he had an oven-ready deal for them—when they voted for him in last year’s general election. This is not about ignorance or dishonesty, as the right hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly) would have us believe; it is about the shameful abandonment of the trust of the people of this country. If no deal is the consequence, people will remember the promise made by Conservative Members when they were elected last year on the back of the Prime Minister’s promise.

They must move on from this. They have 24 days left and the clock is ticking. No deal will be disastrous. It will be disastrous for those workers in the car industry, whom the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook) mentioned. It will be disastrous for livelihoods and for national security as well. It will be disastrous for security in Northern Ireland if the Good Friday agreement is upended, and it will be disastrous for the prospects of future trade agreements. In the United States, President-elect Biden has already made clear what it would mean to him if the Good Friday agreement is threatened by this Bill.

As for our reputation and authority on the world stage, prior to this debate we had an urgent question on Hong Kong. My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) mentioned those countries mentioned by Lord Howard. We will be in no position to lecture anyone on the world stage if we go ahead and break international law. Our credibility will be shot. How will investors be able to trust that their investment will be safe in this country if we are prepared to tear these things up so readily? Who will trust our word? Who will believe anything we say? Who overseas will believe in this country?

Our people deserve better than this. For the sake of the jobs and livelihoods of the people I represent and the people that those on the Government Benches represent, I say to the Government: do not allow no deal to happen. If they fail, the British people will remember who was responsible and they will blame the Prime Minister. They will hold him responsible and they will hold Conservative Members responsible, too.

Exiting the European Union (Building and Buildings)

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown).

I rise to speak in this debate because of the importance of building safety in my constituency—as in many parts of the country—following the dreadful disaster at Grenfell. We have a number of tall blocks, many of which are unfortunately still covered in dangerous cladding, including ACM cladding, cladding made from other materials and, indeed, dangerous wooden cladding. Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service has uncovered a series of problems in Reading and other Berkshire towns, and there is a great deal of concern from local residents about these matters. I appreciate the Minister’s reassurance on the nature of the UK standards and the fact that they are separate, although they interconnect with the European ones. I wish to reiterate residents’ concerns and ask some questions, in a helpful way, to try to elicit a response that might reassure local people.

First, let me outline the scale of the issue in our community, because at first sight it might not be obvious that in a medium-sized town thousands and thousands of people are affected by this building-safety scandal. It affects not only the people who live in taller blocks, nearly 10 of which are affected in Reading. They are all either privately owned or have a mixture of different forms of ownership, but they are not council-owned—the council blocks are safe. These privately owned blocks have been clad dangerously and are affected by a series of other matters, such as a dangerous car park ventilation that could lead to fires on the side of buildings.

There is a range of issues and a great deal of concern among thousands and thousands of residents. In fact, that is something of an understatement, because another group of residents might also be affected, and the level of risk in their buildings is unclear. I am talking about people who live in lower-rise blocks of flats and houses of multiple occupation. The issues are similar: many have issues with potentially dangerous cladding; others have issues with fire safety doors or just the very fact that a block has multiple occupation and requires greater scrutiny of the fire safety messages, briefing and information provided to residents.

In a town the size of the one I represent—and its suburbs—a substantial number of people live in medium-sized accommodation of three to six storeys, and however technical these matters may be, all those people are affected deeply by changes to building safety.

[Alan Brown]

I was hesitant to interrupt the hon. Member’s flow because this matter is obviously important for him and his constituents. Is the real issue the products that are on the market or governance in terms of building control, inspection and regulation?

[Matt Rodda]

I am grateful to the hon. Member. I believe it may be both of those as well as the lack of resource for the fire service, which sadly has been cut significantly since 2010. There are, therefore, a number of significant issues for us as parliamentarians. I seek the Minister’s reassurance in particular on, as the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) and my hon. (Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) mentioned, what happens as we move out of the scope of EU regulations and into a UK-based regime covering Great Britain while there will be continuation of EU measures in Northern Ireland. There is a great deal of scope for confusion.

[Mike Amesbury]

Of course, many of the products, whether ACM, HPL or insulation, have been tested, though some of those tests have been questionable. As my hon. Friend rightly says, any divergence beyond the arrangements that we have now for transition out of the EU—of course, we do not have a trade deal—may have a further impact, and building safety issues go much broader than cladding, whether ACM or HPL, affecting thousands of buildings and hundreds of thousands of people.

Of course, 1.5 million people are now trapped in flats that largely have a zero rating for a mortgage. They also have to pay additional costs for waking watch, which in some cases can be thousands of pounds a month. Going forward, measures in the building safety Bill have the potential to put even more charges on leaseholders. Does my hon. Friend concur that, beyond Reading, this is a national scandal—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I am sorry but this intervention is way too long. Has the hon. Member got the gist of the point?

[Matt Rodda]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I thank my hon. Friend on the Front Bench. He is right that this is a national scandal. I seek to give one example of one constituency and to represent local people. It is utterly abhorrent that millions of people in the United Kingdom face these dreadful problems and are living with the nightmare of an unsafe flat that they cannot sell or leave. It is dreadful that they are living through this utter nightmare. I call on the Government to step up their action and address this with far greater urgency. I find it staggering that, three years after Grenfell, it is still an issue on the scale that it is and that the Government are only now beginning to address it. I ask the Minister respectfully to explain—perhaps in front of the House, or he could write to me—how the Government will deal with the risk of confusion about regulation and the potential watering down of the current standards once we are no longer in the EU regime.

Town and Country Planning

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I would like to briefly address my remarks to both the SIs and the wider changes that the Government propose to make to planning policy. I also endorse the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) about some unscrupulous developers.

My first concern is about the proposals to increase the number of houses that can be built in many parts of England, which could lead to a significant growth in unwanted developments on green land, such as the countryside near Woodley and Earley in my constituency. I should add that, as other Members have pointed out, there is a plentiful supply of brownfield land in many towns and cities, including in the Thames valley, and in Reading there is a great deal of brownfield that could be developed.

The sheer size of the increase in house building numbers in the countryside could cause significant problems for our community, from both the loss of green spaces and the knock-on effects, in terms of increased traffic and pollution, and pressure on schools, doctors surgeries and other local services. Some of these problems are indeed all too obvious already in Woodley and Earley, where there has been a great deal of development.

Secondly, to make matters worse in the longer term, the Government have announced that they want to deregulate the planning system, making it far easier for developers to build exactly what they like. These SIs include a foretaste of exactly those measures, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) mentioned earlier. I am particularly concerned about the measure to allow two-storey redevelopments without planning permission, which my hon. Friend the Member Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) mentioned. Just imagine the likely impact of that on neighbours in terraced streets in Victorian neighbourhoods around the country, where there will be serious concerns about people being overlooked and their whole quality of life turned upside down by unwanted development led by the needs of developments, not local people. Surely that is why we have planning in the first place—to give everybody a fair say and to let local people raise reasonable concerns about planning, not to allow developers to ride roughshod over residents.

Thirdly, in my opinion, the Government are not doing anywhere near enough to encourage the right mix of development, and Berkshire is a prime recipient of that poor mix. There are far too many executive flats and expensive houses, and there is a limited supply of family housing, which has been mentioned by colleagues from across the country. I believe that there should be a major programme of investment in council house building and in other forms of affordable rented properties and homes to buy, and that renters should be protected from the unscrupulous nature of some landlords to ensure proper standards of quality and affordability.

These three areas of policy where the Government are letting the public down amount to a serious failure for residents in Reading and Woodley and, indeed, across the country. I am afraid that the Government are simply heading in the wrong direction, and I urge Ministers to think again.

Housing, Communities and Local Government: Departmental Spending

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

That leads into another area. The Select Committee has just produced a report about cladding and other such issues. We have challenged the Government to produce funding through that report, so I am sure that we will take up that issue as well.

The change came when the Secretary of State appeared before the Select Committee. Suddenly, he was saying that they had asked councils to do things, but that they would be fully compensated for the things that they had been asked to do. Then there was a very general list. The Public Accounts Committee and the Select Committee, as well as the Local Government Association, have been trying to get more information on that. There is still a lack of clarity about precisely what will be funded. That is important, and quite different from the national health service, which seems to be given, rightly, “everything that it takes”—the commitment given to local councils.

We have had tranches of money—£2.16 billion then £500 million—given to councils to cover both extra costs and lost revenue, which is just as important for many councils as the extra costs they have incurred. However, the LGA is saying that by the end of June, according to the returns that went to the Ministry, the costs were £4.8 billion against the £3.7 billion received—a gap of £1 billion. The Government said they would give some help with lost income by compensating councils for 75% of the amount after the first 5% of losses, which is welcome, and somehow apportioning the lost revenue from council tax and business rates. There are two questions to ask about this. The Government have already included loss of income in the £3.7 billion compensation, so will the commitment to cover 75% be reduced? I see the Minister shaking his head; it would help if that was explained very clearly indeed.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Mr Betts]

Normally I would give way, but Madam Deputy Speaker is looking askance at me, so I think I had better move on.

The second question is can the Government not bring forward a bit sooner the apportionment of losses from council tax and business rates? Waiting until the spending review introduces an extra element of uncertainty.

I have another question about compensation for losses in the leisure sector. Many authorities—about 60, I think—of all political persuasions do not provide leisure services directly; instead, they provide them through arm’s length arrangements. Sheffield does it through Sheffield International Venues and has some magnificent facilities, including Sheffield Arena and Ponds Forge, which is an international-class swimming pool, and lots of community facilities. What we need is an assurance that income losses for councils in that situation will be treated the same as income losses for councils that provide the services directly. That is an important point for many councils up and down the country.

It still feels like local government is on a life support machine, waiting for the next bit of revenue to trickle down from the next ministerial statement, rather than having the certainty that they need to plan. Many councils are now looking at making cuts and emergency budgets and talking openly about section 114 notices. Yes, okay, the Ministry has said, “Come and see us before you issue a 114 notice,” but that is too late. We do not want councils to reach the point where they are thinking about a 114 and planning for it. We want them to have the certainty of getting funding so they are not driven into that position.

This is not just about funding for this year; it is about funding for next year as well. Many councils, including Sheffield Council, have reserves to see them through this year, but using them will just postpone the problem to next year. Also, many councils had plans for efficiency savings, which have been put on hold as managerial expertise is put into dealing with the current crisis. Efficiency measures that have had to be put to one side for the time being are another loss for councils that needs to be recognised properly.

Let us have more certainty that all the costs that local authorities incur in covid-related matters will be covered by the Government. Let us have another discussion with the LGA and consider whether it is fair that councils should have to stand even 25% of income losses. Let us have an assurance that arm’s length arrangements for leisure will be covered. Let us bring forward the commitment on council tax and business rates to before the spending review. Let us not get to the point of discussions about section 114 notices by providing certainty of funding.

Finally, there is the future. What local authorities need is a proper long-term sustainable financial settlement.

The covid crisis offers a watershed, a turning point, an opportunity to change things, but I want to put down five markers for the Government, drawing on the Select Committee’s report in 2019. First, we want at least a multi-year settlement, to give that certainty. The last four-year settlement was welcome. I understand why it has not been repeated in the current crisis, but it is certainly needed.

Secondly, we need a recognition that local authorities need a significant real-terms increase in their funding. The Local Government Association’s calculation of an £8 billion gap, even before covid came along, has to be recognised. Thirdly, if we really are to end austerity, it is not just about funding local councils so they do not have to make more cuts; it is about giving them the money to restore many of the essential services they have had to cut.

Fourthly, we have to devolve to councils the power not merely to spend but to raise resources in the first place. If we do that, however, we must recognise that some councils are less able to raise resources than others, so if we devolve more spending arrangements to councils, we will need a fall-back position—a central fund for councils to deal with the equalisation problem.

Finally, let us have a proper, cross-party, long-term funding agreement for social care. The two Select Committees proposed a solution with a social care premium three years ago. Let us reactivate that. Giving councils that direct source of funding for social care will also release funding for other essential services. I say to the Minister: think of MPs here today arguing for extra funding as allies in the battle with the Treasury to get the money that councils need to fight the covid crisis, but to fight it in a way that does not produce extra cuts to essential council services already devastated by 10 years of austerity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is genuinely a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess). I want to draw the House’s attention to a very serious issue, which is fire safety in flats and shared housing following the Grenfell disaster. This is linked to the funding of councils such as Reading Borough Council in my area and Wokingham Borough Council, and the funding of fire services such as the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service.

I would like to start by paying tribute to the Grenfell families. It is utterly impossible to imagine what they have been through both on the night of the disaster and in the three years since that dreadful time. We all want to find a timely and effective response to the problem of removing dangerous cladding and to other fire risks, and progress has been made. Many local councils and some owners of private blocks have removed cladding. Temporary fire safety measures have also been taken, such as regular patrols at night by either residents or security staff. However, this problem is on a vast scale, and there are significant obstacles that make removing cladding very challenging.

It is sad and deeply worrying that most dangerous cladding remains in place three years after the disaster. That includes the type of cladding used in Grenfell and a range of other highly flammable materials, such as wooden cladding and laminate. All these materials are found in Reading town centre in my constituency, and there are deep concerns about a wide range of other buildings across the area. Fire services have real concerns that temporary measures may no longer be effective because they rely on human behaviour, and they are seriously worried that human error will start to creep in and that measures such as patrols will lapse or cease to be fully effective.

I would like to draw the House’s attention to some of the issues in my constituency, to illustrate the scale of the problem. We have a number of large blocks over six storeys high that have these types of cladding. We have difficulties in getting owners to remove the cladding because of the complexities of the process. There are also a huge number of blocks of under six storeys, with hundreds of people living in them across Reading and Woodley, and many thousands of houses in multiple occupation, which may be terraced houses or flats above chippies or other takeaway restaurants, where there could be serious fire safety risks. New resources are needed to inspect all these premises, and more powers are needed for local authority building control departments and fire services to take action to speed up this process. I urge the Minister to work with me and other colleagues to address this important matter, and I look forward to hearing from him.

Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew]

It is absolutely inexplicable, and it lasted right up to the evidence heard last year by Mr Justice Fraser. As was mentioned, he said that the Post Office acted rather like the flat earth society, refusing to believe even its own facts. But there is a strong suspicion that it went further than a refusal to believe; there was actually a question of dishonesty, particularly in the evidence given by Fujitsu. The learned judge expressed serious concerns about the veracity of that evidence and took the very unusual step of referring it to the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider whether criminal prosecutions should follow.

This matter was discovered only by the brave and tenacious actions of the victims themselves over a 10-year period, faced with unending delaying and cost-increasing tactics by the Post Office.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses are at the heart of many local communities and not only have the respect of those communities but deserve the respect of the Post Office and people in authority? This whole sorry saga shows a complete and utter lack of respect and trust. It is deeply disappointing and, as he suggests, it is deeply wrong.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I entirely agree. It was the very fact that postmistresses and postmasters are at the heart of the community that made the devastation of their reputations all the worse when they were unjustly accused by their employer of dishonesty and theft.

I conclude by imploring the Government not to hide behind the corporate veil. Albeit at arm’s length, the Post Office is a part of the Government—it is part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It was referred to earlier as an example of unaccountable power, and I fully endorse that statement. It is part of a wider problem with the lack of accountability in quangos throughout our society. That leaves open only one sensible solution: a judge-led inquiry that has the power to investigate who knew what and when, and to give justice to these people and award real compensation.

Housing and Planning

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Westminster Hall

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

I thank the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) for securing the debate and for raising a series of important issues about the planning system. I agree with him that the Land Compensation Act 1961 is in urgent need of reform. In fact, I introduced a Private Member’s Bill in the last Parliament to exactly that end.

We need to remove hope value from the planning system. Lest any Member is in doubt about why that is important, I give the example of a site in the middle part of Southwark—not in my constituency—that became vacant with an existing use value of £5 million, but was put on the market by the developer with an auction starting value of £25 million. That tells us about some of the gross injustices in our housing and planning system. The system recognises the right of a landowner to a windfall value of £20 million, over and above the right of residents in Southwark to genuinely affordable council homes on the same piece of land.

Reform is important, but cannot be limited to looking at hope value. That is important, but unless we also reform the definition of an affordable home, homes that are not affordable to the vast majority will continue to be built in this country. In my constituency, a definition of affordability recognises homes of up to 80% of market rental value as affordable. They are simply not affordable to the vast majority of my constituents.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

As a fellow MP from London and the south-east, does my hon. Friend agree that the current policy has a disproportionate impact on local communities? There are severe shortages of professionals in key parts of the public sector and for some private sector employers. We have a huge shortage of NHS staff in Berkshire, as she probably knows. There is also a shortage of people for key commercial businesses.

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. That is certainly true of some key public services, such as King’s College Hospital in my constituency, where staff are moving further and further away from the hospital because they cannot afford to live close to it. It is a widespread issue.

Recently the Government have come forward with mooted proposals to increase the cap on the Help to Buy scheme to £600,000 within its affordable housing programme. It beggars belief that the Government think that that will do anything to address genuine housing need in this country.

I want to highlight one further aspect of the planning system that needs urgent attention: permitted development rights. In the last Parliament, the Government expanded permitted development rights. They did so against all advice from the sector, resulting in examples of the most appalling accommodation being delivered across the country, with office accommodation being converted into homes without full planning permission.

There are a number of things wrong with this system. The first is that in bypassing the planning system, a number of the checks on quality of design and space standards are being bypassed altogether. Section 106 opportunities are also being lost, so those homes are not contributing anything to public or open space or to facilities in in the surrounding area.

Those homes being delivered under permitted development rights that are good enough and of a standard would not have had a problem getting through the planning system, so I fail to understand why the Government are continuing to cut the planning system out of this important aspect of housing delivery. We cannot be delivering the slums of tomorrow in order to satisfy spreadsheets today. It simply will not do. It has to stop. I hope the Minister, in responding to the debate, will say some positive things about the need to scrap permitted development rights, rather than expanding them further.

Finally, our planning system has a vital role to play in combating climate change. The relationship between the built environment and climate change is substantial, and unless we fully resource our planning system and enable local authorities to play the fullest possible role in place-making and in driving up standards of insulation and carbon reduction in new development and in new housing, we will not achieve the level of carbon reduction that we need to in order to resolve the climate emergency, and we will still be building homes today that will need to be retrofitted tomorrow. I end with that point, calling on the Government to resource our planning system properly and to recognise the role that it has in facilitating and delivering the high-quality homes we need to build, at scale, in order to resolve both our housing crisis and the climate emergency.