New Housing Supply

Peter Aldous Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Chelmsford, my constituency, has a vibrant community, excellent schools, low crime rates and a popular city centre, and is an easy commute to London. It is also the home of the legendary Essex Cricket, so it is no wonder that it is a very popular place to live. Since becoming a city in 2012, Chelmsford has grown considerably. In the past five years, about 1,000 new homes have been built every year, and in Chelmsford a new garden community is being built right now. Many right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned that they want to see more new garden cities and communities—if they pop on the train down to Chelmsford, I will take them to see what we are doing.

Many of the new homes that have been built meet the Government’s definition of affordable housing, because when a new development of over 11 homes is built in Chelmsford, the local authority applies an affordable housing obligation of 35%. Furthermore, over the past decade many Chelmsford people have used Government schemes to help them get a foot on the housing ladder. However, despite the many new homes, the fact that many of them meet the Government’s definition of being affordable and the many years of generous support to help people buy their homes, we still have a shortage of housing that people can afford either to buy or to rent.

The pressure on social housing is acute. About 360 families are currently housed in temporary accommodation, which is an all-time high. I spoke about that in this place when I presented my Bill on conversions of office blocks into homes. In Chelmsford, many office blocks are being converted into homes. In the past nine years that we have data for, approval was given for over 1,400 homes to be created by converting office blocks into flats, and we are expecting to see even more of that. Post pandemic, more people are of course working from home and there is less demand for office space, so we expect to see more conversions.

However, there is currently no ability for the local authority to apply an affordable housing obligation when a commercial property is converted into flats. Someone can take an entire office block and convert it entirely into luxury flats without causing one single extra affordable home to be created. My ten-minute rule Bill would enable local authorities to apply an affordable housing obligation to conversions of commercial property to residential use. If we had had that in the past decade in Chelmsford, it could have released 453 more affordable homes—that is more than the number of families who are currently in temporary accommodation because they cannot get social housing. I do hope that my wonderful hon. Friend the Housing Minister is listening this evening, and that she will continue to look favourably at my suggestion.

Another issue that is often raised by my constituents is infrastructure. Many people in Chelmsford tell me that they are not opposed to new homes being built—they know that people need somewhere to live—but that they are getting more and more frustrated at seeing new homes going up and the infrastructure not keeping pace. It has not kept pace with the massive growth in housing in Chelmsford. In Chelmsford, the city council uses the community infrastructure levy, which is much better than the old section 106 approach. It gives more flexibility to how developer contributions are used for infrastructure, which means that both existing residents and residents of a new development can benefit from the new infrastructure.

However, there are some problems with CIL funding. For example, there is no CIL contribution for new houses on previously developed land. As a lover of the green belt, of course I want to prioritise building on brownfield sites. I recognise that some brownfield sites are costly to develop due to previous contamination, and if a levy cost was put on top of the decontamination cost, that might make those sites unprofitable for developers and they would not get developed. However, not all previously developed land is contaminated and brings that cost, yet every single home that is built puts additional pressure on the infrastructure. Let me give an example. If someone builds on a field that used to be a farm, provided there are more than 11 homes, they pay a contribution towards infrastructure, but if they build on what used to be a riding school, they do not. I hope that the Minister, through the work in the Department, will look at closing that anomaly.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

In many ways, what my right hon. Friend is saying cuts across what I am going to say, which I think is because property values in Chelmsford are much higher than they are in Lowestoft. We are therefore illustrating what my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) said, which is that we actually have lots of different property markets throughout the country. Would she not agree with me that what is right for one place may not necessarily be right for another?

[Vicky Ford]

I absolutely agree that what is right for one place may not be right for another. I would just like to point out that the purpose of all my suggestions is to enable local authorities to make the right decisions for their area. These would not be top-down quotas set by Government; they would not set the proportion of affordable homes to be put on which office block development. That would be the decision of the local authority in line with the local plan. At the moment, however, the local authority does not have that power at all.

A second point about CIL funding is that at the moment it is not sufficient to cover all infrastructure needs, especially when we have larger infrastructure projects due to larger developments. I am extremely grateful to the Government for the quarter of a million pound housing infrastructure fund grant for Chelmsford. As a result of that grant, a new train station is being built. This is the first time a new train station has been built on the Great Eastern main line for over a century. It is the most amazing engineering project, and the grant will also help to deliver our north east bypass. Both of those are crucial to delivering the garden community. However, those two projects alone will not deal with other massive problems we have from traffic jams due to the increased number of people living locally. People from all over Essex are wasting valuable time stuck in Chelmsford’s traffic jams and that is hampering economic growth in large parts of Essex. So I ask DLUHC Ministers urgently to help me get support for the bid, currently with the Treasury team, for funding to upgrade the Army and Navy junction with a package of new sustainable traffic measures. Without that investment, Chelmsford will grind to a halt and will not be able to support the future housing growth.

Finally, there are real concerns about how CIL money is allocated locally. The process is not transparent and decisions about significant amounts of money are made without them coming back to full council members for approval. Cost overruns appear out of control, especially since the Lib Dems took control of the council. They spent £4 million on refurbishing a theatre, which was meant to cost £1 million, and redesigning Tindal Square with fancy pavements at the top of the high street has cost over £4 million, more than double the original budget.

Furthermore, CIL monies are not necessarily being spent by the Lib Dems on people’s priorities. My constituents often tell me about the pressure on NHS GP surgeries. Tens of millions of pounds have been spent in the past four years, but the two projects to help enlarge the capacity of GP surgeries have been massively delayed. We need better planning by local authorities in all the different areas that need infrastructure, including the NHS, to ensure that all sectors of critical infrastructure keep pace with housing growth. If we do not do that, we will lose public support for the new homes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing and leading it.

Before I came to this place, I practised as a chartered surveyor for 27 years in Suffolk and Norfolk. Much of my work focused on the residential development sector, advising landowners, house builders and local authorities. Today, my involvement revolves around meeting the needs of often desperate constituents seeking a decent home, addressing concerns about the pressure on infrastructure that arises from developments and working with local authorities to regenerate town centres.

The extent of the national housing crisis has been graphically illustrated by what we have heard across the Chamber this evening, and by the briefings provided by Crisis, the National Housing Federation and Policy Exchange. They all illustrate the advantages of a vibrant and dynamic house building sector. In the time available, I shall briefly highlight how I believe we can meet this major challenge.

First, it is important to focus on all sectors of the housing market, including the elderly. We need to ensure that we have sufficient and properly laid out and designed homes for older people. I mention that as I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on housing and care for older people, along with Lord Best, who does much vital work in this sector. We have an ageing population who need and deserve properly adapted and comfortable homes. The provision of more such accommodation will free up other homes for others to move into.

Secondly, we must also build more homes for social rent. Crisis and the National Housing Federation both calculate that we need to build 90,000 homes for social rent each year if we are to tackle the current homelessness crisis. Policy Exchange also highlights that if we invest in and expand social house building, we will also restart the stalled conveyor belt of home ownership.

Thirdly, there is a need to improve the planning system, to ensure that all local planning authorities are functioning properly, have up-to-date local plans, supplemented by local design codes, and that they all determine planning applications promptly. Planning departments must be properly resourced and adequately staffed in order to do that, which means they need funding from national Government.

Fourthly, one of the solutions to the housing supply crisis is already in place in the form of Homes England, which does good work in facilitating development on challenging sites in urban areas and provides development finance through the levelling-up home building fund. It would help if its role and resources could be increased, so that it can do more to facilitate urban regeneration.

My fifth point is that we should consider whether there is a need for investment zones to promote the redevelopment of derelict sites in urban areas. In Lowestoft, in my constituency, the enterprise zone, which is focused on commercial development, has been a great success, although to a degree it has run out of steam and is in need of re-energising. The proposed investment zones, announced last September, provided a vehicle for doing that. The proposals, worked up by Suffolk County Council and East Suffolk Council, included three large, primarily residential redevelopment sites—the Sanyo, the Jeld Wen and the Brookes sites. It is disappointing that the plans for investment zones announced in the March Budget were much more limited than those originally proposed.

Finally, I am mindful of another challenge that confronts us in towns and cities across the country: the decline of our high streets and town centres, which urgently need revitalising. In those locations there are millions of square feet of former office and shop space, often on upper floors, and we need to promote and encourage their residential reuse. If we do that, we can provide customers for the shops and leisure facilities that remain in those town centres. Invariably, such properties can be difficult to convert, so developers prefer greenfield sites, too readily at times. We need to work with those developers to remove the barriers to carrying out town centre projects. As a start, the Government could consider the zero-rating of VAT for conversion and refurbishment work, so as to put such projects on a level playing field with new build.

In conclusion, increasing the supply of new housing opportunities is a panacea for many of the challenges that we face: providing people with warm and decent homes, enabling them to get that first important step on the housing ladder, improving the nation’s health, regenerating urban areas and town centres, and delivering meaningful levelling up.