New Homes: Developers, Housebuilders and Management Companies

Matt Western Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Westminster Hall

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

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I wish a happy new year to you and to all present. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston) on securing the debate.

The lack of reference to local authorities and councils in the debate and its title is very telling. Although I understand that the focus is very much on developers and house builders, looking at the changes to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities—the former Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, which no longer includes local government in its name—I am concerned about the future of the provision of housing.

As many have said, we need to look at the sector in the round. It is clear that, for many years, there has been too cosy a relationship between developers and certain preferred management companies and builders. The role of locally elected representatives and the voice of communities really matter in delivering housing, as does knowing what is required in the area. Good local authorities can absolutely help with that. Throughout the pandemic, it was local authorities that delivered and helped us through the challenges.

We have good planners in our local authorities and, with proper consultation, they can build the right mix of housing to meet the needs of local people, not the needs of developers. We need truly affordable housing—social housing—for young people who are so often priced out of their communities, whether they be in villages, towns or neighbourhoods. We also need provision for seniors, who may no longer need several bedrooms and may want or need to downsize. Retaining independence is critical to their mental health and wellbeing, and access to town centres and communal spaces is vital for them, but they are often left remote from the communities they have lived in their entire life; they are denied access to transport networks and it is not a short walk into the centre of their community.

Too much has been left to the enterprise of the market, which has been shown not to work in the interests of people. The Government have, perhaps, been too giddy on the donations of developer donors to act and do what is right. The Government were predated by a coalition Government who so diluted building regulations and planning legislation that they delivered a developers’ charter, resulting in low-density housing developments, unsustainable housing with poor energy performance, and greater car dependency. In my constituency, there are estates with no community centres or shopping areas, although they have been promised.

Councils need greater power. As many have said across this Chamber, rather than emasculating councils, the Government need to empower them by giving them the tools and the authority to deliver what is needed in their localities. The number of applications approved by councils that remain unbuilt is striking. According to the Local Government Association, 1.1 million homes are yet to be built out, and there are a further 1 million for which developers are yet to seek planning permission. That is 2 million homes that could be built.

We have heard about the role of developers who are land banking and not building out—look at the Letwin review of some years ago and where that led. Although the review contained some decent findings, it was inconclusive and could have been much harder hitting, as I discussed with Sir Oliver Letwin when he was still in this place. The issue of the national planning policy framework and the Localism Act 2011 led to the question of viability, which is premised on the cost of land. Giving greater authority and power to local government would address that and change the dynamic between developers, builders and authorities.

Builders are sometimes linked or tied to developers. There are good ones and bad ones, and there are also subcontractors in the mix. When we talk about the quality of house building, it is often not the builders but the subbies who come in and do the work. There are then issues of legality and contractual responsibility in any subsequent claim.

On management companies, as we have heard, residents are locked into high annual fees. People are being bullied and exploited, and as we have heard—it is certainly true of my Warwick and Leamington constituency—many residents do not want to be named. They do not want to have information in the public arena about the estate they live on for fear of the impact on property values, and of course the developers and builders know that.

These estate management companies are exploiting residents; we have heard so much about that already. Developers are claiming that residents will get a discount on their council tax because of the management fees they pay for green spaces. It is complete nonsense that they are being promised. There are streets that refuse lorries cannot even go down.

We need to see what the actual housing need is. We have seen the output from the Government’s questionable algorithms over recent months. We need to deliver power to local authorities, and we need localised and regionalised planning to help deliver that. The infrastructure that comes with housing, such as transport, schools, GP provision and even shops, needs to be put in. On environmental standards, thousands of homes have been built in Warwick and Leamington, including some with solar panels on north-facing roofs, believe it or not. We have the future home standard, but it lacks ambition. In 2016, we were meant to have zero-carbon homes. We would have built 1 million homes to that standard by now if that had been allowed. We need greater consumer protections.

Finally, housing is too expensive in this country. So much of that is down to the cost of land. It is a huge economic cost, which is having huge impacts on our wider economy. We need to bring down the cost of housing.