Fire Safety Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

There is not the time to say what the Government have done for leaseholders. The Fire Safety Bill, in the form the Government want to return it to, if they get the House to reject the Lords amendments, would place an automatic, unchallengeable financial burden on residential leaseholders in building safety remediation costs, even in circumstances where a lease may have excluded such an obligation. I refer the Minister, if he has time, to the article by Martina Lees in The Sunday Times “Home” section about some of the building costs that are not justified.

The bishops’ amendments are intended to protect leaseholders from being solely responsible for the costs. The Bill strengthens the landlords’ and freeholders’ legal rights over leaseholders. The amendments provide for more balanced liability for costs. These Lords amendments should not be overturned. The alternative, which the Government are asking us to agree, wrongly and disproportionately disadvantages innocent leaseholders. Many are unable to pay, and they are frightened.

This is a Home Office Bill, and the Home Secretary gave this as her reason for rejecting previous Lords amendment 4:

“Because the issue of remediation costs is too complex to be dealt with in the manner proposed.”

I say, and I think people on both sides agree—and probably the Minister does so privately—that what is being proposed cannot be supported. It is too simple: it loads costs on leaseholders, who are the only people who cannot be responsible for putting right a building that they do not own and will never own, and of which in legal terms they are only the tenants.

I ask the Minister to ask his colleagues to let him agree to accepting these Lords amendments, and to let the leaseholders free.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab) [V]]

I support the Lords in the message it has sent back. The Lords is proposing very important changes to the Government’s position. First, not just leaseholders but tenants should not have to pay. For example, in a block where the social housing provider is the freeholder, according to the Government’s proposals, leaseholders would not have to pay, but social housing tenants—if it is not ACM cladding that is being removed—would have to pay through their rents for the removal of cladding. That tenants have to pay and leaseholders do not simply cannot be right.

We are not quite sure what costs leaseholders in blocks under 18 metres will face, because there is still an awful lot of vagueness and lack of clarity about what the Government’s loan scheme will actually mean. When the Minister for Building Safety and Communities came to our Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee recently, he said that leaseholders would not be responsible for paying the loan, but neither would freeholders; the charge would be on the building. A building cannot be legally responsible for a charge on a loan placed on it. Some organisation or some individual has to be responsible. Is it the freeholder? Is it the leaseholder? There is an awful lot of unclarity about that, and about how we limit leaseholders’ charges to £50 a month. There is a great deal of confusion. The Government are still working that through, so as things stand there cannot be an absolute assurance that leaseholders will not have to pay on blocks of under 18 metres.

Finally, there are issues other than cladding. It is not just that cladding will have to be taken off; very often, the cost of doing other fire safety work on blocks of flats is greater. Again, we were told that if the other work is associated with the removal of cladding, it will be covered by the Government’s financial help. If insulation is a composite part of a building’s structure along with the cladding, presumably it can be removed, as it is associated with the cladding. However, if the insulation is completely separate and distinct from the cladding, the Government funding might pay for the cladding removal but not the insulation removal. Very often, leaseholders simply cannot afford to pay for that, but the Government will not allow any of their funding to go ahead unless the leaseholders can find the additional costs.

None of those positions is acceptable. I support a position where neither leaseholders nor tenants are asked to pay to make their buildings fire-safe.

Building Safety

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am pleased that the hon. Lady welcomes many of the proposals we have set out today. This is an unprecedented intervention, and it is one of the most generous, if not the most generous, of its kind anywhere in the world. She asks, importantly, why we have focused on high-rise buildings. We have done so because that is time and again where all the independent expert advice leads us. We must make these judgments on the basis of expert advice. With the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, I think we need to follow the expert advisers, not her instincts. We are focusing on the buildings over 18 metres, where the work needs to get done, and in those buildings we are ensuring that the leaseholder never pays. We want the building owners to step up and meet the cost, but where that is not possible—in many cases, I am afraid it is not, because the building owners are no longer around—the taxpayer will step in and meet the cost, with the advantage of the levy and the tax to help recoup the costs. That must be the right approach.

The hon. Lady asks whether enough progress has been made. Actually, we have ended 2020 with 95% of buildings over 18 metres with the most dangerous form of cladding—ACM cladding—either having been remediated or with workers on site doing the job. That is 100% of the buildings in the social sector, which is a huge step forward. I pay tribute to everyone who has been part of that over the course of the year, including those keeping the works going during the pandemic, which many politicians, including Labour politicians, asked us not to do. That was the wrong judgment, but we kept those works going.

For lower rise buildings—those of four to six storeys—we are bringing into play this important new financing scheme. That means that those leaseholders who at the moment have impossible costs, causing great worry and strain, will now be able to have the reassurance that those costs will be turned into manageable ones. They will never need to pay more than £50 a month—many will pay far less—and only where the cladding really does need to come off to ensure that the building is safe. That will provide peace of mind to hundreds of thousands of leaseholders, and I think it can be seen as a generous, affordable way forward for the taxpayer.

We have to remember that, when the Prime Minister and I came to office 18 months ago, there was only £200 million of Government money available to support leaseholders in this situation, and that that in itself was the result of incredibly hard work by my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire). Today, 18 months later, there are many billions of pounds of support in direct Government grant and then billions more, no doubt, in financing scheme funding available to support those leaseholders and to get the situation under control.

Meanwhile, what is happening in other parts of the country? We know that, in Scotland, according to a recent freedom of information request, the Scottish Government have done absolutely nothing. The funding they received from the building safety fund is sat in a bank account in Edinburgh, and they have done nothing with it. I would be interested to know from the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) what the Welsh Government are doing. I do not know. Perhaps she can inform us. The hon. Lady herself came to this late. It was only a week or so ago that she convened the first debate on this in her tenure. She did not offer a plan. She did not show an appreciation of the scale and complexity of the issue. She offered a taskforce, a committee. Empty words, I am afraid, and gestures. That is not good enough.

While the hon. Lady was doing that, the Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and I were working with the lenders, the insurers, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the leaseholder groups to bring forward what we have announced today, which I hope all fair-minded Members across the House will see as a significant intervention. It does get unsafe cladding off buildings and end the cladding scandal. It does provide reassurance and confidence to leaseholders. It does ensure that the developers and the industry pay their fair share. It does build a world-class building safety regime, and it does enable us now to move forward to reopen and restore confidence in the housing market so that the country can move forward again.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con) [V]]

May I first say that I am a leaseholder who is neither affected by the problem nor gaining by the solution?

We recognise that this is another set of major steps along the way. During the last three years, the problems have been spelled out by the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) for working together in a cross- party way. There will be more to do, and the Select Committee will no doubt have hearings.

Will my right hon. Friend thank the Chancellor and the Prime Minister for helping to make the funding available? I do not claim that it is going to be enough, but it is a major step forward and I recognise that.

There is a problem about low-rise accommodation in low-income areas looking at high-rises in high-income areas getting more direct help. Will my right hon. Friend talk about that?

Can he also confirm that no leaseholder who does not actually own anything will have to sign away any of their rights to eventual compensation, as and when the inquiry finishes and any civil claims of liability against developers, cladding manufacturers, local building control or national regulators come to be finalised?

[Robert Jenrick]

I praise my hon. Friend for his determined campaigning on the issue over many years, which I think everybody in the House has recognised and for which many leaseholders will no doubt be grateful. I have been pleased to work with him and to take his advice when it has been needed. I assure him that the funding that we have made available today will provide leaseholders with the certainty and confidence that they need. Any leaseholder in a building of over 18 metres will now know that they will not have to pay for the removal of cladding, and leaseholders in the buildings that are lower rise—11 to 18 metres—can take great comfort from the fact that this new financing arrangement will be in place. It does not preclude any actions by the building or the leaseholders against insurers, those holding warranties or the developers, and those actions should take place. We want to see those who made these mistakes brought to book. We do not want this all to fall on the taxpayer; that is absolutely essential. This is a very difficult judgment. We have to ensure that we are striking the right balance between the interests of leaseholders who are homeowners and those of the broader taxpayer. I think we have done that today, and I hope that this is a major step forward in the battle against this issue.

Unsafe Cladding: Protecting Tenants and Leaseholders

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con) [V]]

It is on record that I am a leaseholder, and I face no problems of these kinds. I have been working on leaseholders’ problems for well over 10 years, with the support of the campaigning charity Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister and to the Secretary of State, who are now showing that Government understand a large part of the scale of the problems. I believe that it is better if we do not have a vote today. We should look on this debate as a “take note” one. We are all trying to face the problems of our constituents who are living in homes that are unsafe, unsaleable and unaffordable. I pay tribute to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, and I look forward to hearing the Chair, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), speak shortly. Its reports on the situation of leaseholders even before we knew about this tragedy and its subsequent reports about the Fire Safety Bill are important.

I wish Michael Wade well in trying to advise Government on finding ways forward, and I commend the then Prime Minister who, on 27 June two and a half years ago, said that the Government do not rule anything out. What needs to be ruled in are, first, making the money available so that buildings can be made safe; secondly, challenging the insurance industry, which is putting premiums up at rates that I think should be investigated by the Competition and Markets Authority to see whether they are fully justifiable; and, thirdly, making sure that in the end, and as we know from court actions and inquiry results we can anticipate, the people who are responsible for this chaos—dangerous chaos—will actually have to pay. I do not think the taxpayer should necessarily have to do it; the Government have to make themselves responsible for finding the way forward.

Those who are responsible—not all, knowingly—include the developers, the builders and the present landlords, some of whom were the developers. They include local building control possibly, national regulators certainly and the component manufacturers. Those of us who have been speaking about the problem for the past three years—and I wish that some of the other advisers to Government on leasehold issues had been saying the same thing rather more clearly—think that this has to be tackled in a way that cuts short waiting for court actions that may take 10 years and provides the money now, by the end of the year, so that work can be started and finished as soon as possible and so that people have homes they can stay in or leave safely, and are affordable. I would trust those on the Select Committee most to work with Government to make sure that we find the solution, and I would hope to know that we have done that before we have got another few months further forward.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I bow in respect to the first two speeches, and I expect they will be matched by those that follow.

“We remember those who were murdered for who they were. We stand against prejudice, hostility and division in the world today. We learn from the tragedies and horrors of the past. We work towards a better future.”

Those were the words put out with the photograph of the candle we lit last night. Had I been born in the Dutch Jewish line of my family, I could have died at Bergen-Belsen with many of the other 113 members of grandfather’s extended family.

The purpose of the holocaust memorial and education centre is for us to know, to care and to act, whatever our heritage. It may be that the Secretary of State will announce that if the proposed national heritage memorial and learning centre is built—whether it is built in Victoria Tower Gardens or not—then entry will be free. We have always assumed it would be free, but the Government were not able to say that. What the Government did say through its agency is that the bulk of the money should be spent on education, not on construction.

The proposal in September 2015 was that the centre should be completed by 2020, a year ago, that it should have the support of the local authority wherever it was to be built, and that it could be built anywhere within 3 miles of London on a suitable site. Page 10 of the publication showed that and included: west of Regent’s park; Spitalfields; most of Southwark, including the Imperial War Museum—

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)]

indicated dissent.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The Secretary of State may shake his head. He will have his chance to speak. I want him at the moment to listen, if I may. I respect him and I respect what he tries to do, but I ask him to publish the analysis done before 2016 of the sites at the Imperial War Museum and Victoria Tower Gardens. I will publish what I know. He will need to consider what he is putting forward and his deputy needs to say whether he can seriously make a decision on the Secretary of State’s behalf when the Government are so implicated in an inappropriate scheme in an inappropriate place, with a design not accepted in Ottawa.

Leaseholders and Cladding

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his urgent question and for welcoming the proposals that we have tabled in the draft Building Safety Bill. He asks a number of important questions.

First, the hon. Gentleman asks whether the building safety charge will be retrospective. We envisage that the building safety charge will cover ongoing costs that leaseholders may have to pay for legal costs, building safety inspections and the like. In our proposals, we have said that the Secretary of State will be able to prescribe costs to ensure that unfair building safety charge costs do not fall unreasonably on the leaseholder.

We will of course look very carefully at the 80-page report from the Select Committee. I think there are somewhere north of 40 recommendations in the report. We want to look at it carefully and considerately, because we recognise it forms an important part of our answer to the challenge of building safety. I hope that we can develop a cross-party approach to our further scrutiny of the Bill when it comes before Parliament.

The hon. Gentleman asked me whether leaseholders will pay any costs at all. The point of introducing £1.6 billion of public money is to make sure that in the buildings that are most at risk and where there is no means to pay, the state steps in and supports those leaseholders, but, fundamentally, we expect developers and owners to step up and execute their responsibility to pay where buildings have been defective.

I cannot say that there will not be some costs at some point related to some defect in historical building safety that will not fall upon the leaseholder, but we want to make sure, through the public money that we are spending and through the work of Michael Wade, that we find innovative solutions to make sure that such costs are as minimal as possible. We cannot write an open cheque on behalf of the taxpayer. That would send the wrong signal to developers and those who are responsible for these buildings that they do not have to pay because the taxpayer will.

The hon. Gentleman asks about my noble Friend the Building Safety Minister in the other place. I can tell him that Lord Greenhalgh is working round the clock to find solutions to the challenges that face leaseholders up and down the country. He is determined, with the work that he is doing with insurers, developers and the financial services sector, to ensure that we come up with those solutions, and I look forward to working with him closely as the Bill, which he will introduce to Parliament, works its way through both Houses.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

It is on record that I am a leaseholder, but I am not affected by these proposals or problems.

The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and I chair the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform. We give our support to the work of the Select Committee, which, in this report, as in its previous one on lease renters, has laid out starkly one of the problems of some particular tenants. Social tenants do not have to pay, ordinary tenants do not have to pay; it is leaseholder tenants who have been lumbered with unimaginable anxiety and with costs beyond possible chance of payment. Until we get a full grip not just on the very high buildings and the aluminium cladding but on all the problems, including the developers who used wood for balconies in ways that were against the house building regulations, we are going to be left with a frozen part of the housing market in every single one of our constituencies.

We are grateful for the work that my right hon. Friend and his colleagues have done, but he should go on paying attention, as I think Lord Greenhalgh has, to the work of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, which was the first campaigning charity to get a grip of the scale of the problem. Also, will he say a word about waking watches, which are going on too long and at too high a cost?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his contribution and for his ongoing interest in and commitment to this very important area of work. As I said earlier, we do not want leaseholders to carry the burden of these costs. That is why we are working with Michael Wade, who has a 40-odd-year history in the insurance market, to find innovative solutions to what is a very complicated problem. It is why we have also put aside a significant amount of public money in this financial year to remediate the buildings that are most at risk where the owners have no other means of paying.

My hon. Friend also asks about waking watch. We have published data on the costs of waking watch so that leaseholders are able to see the relative differences in charges by waking watch providers. It is entirely wrong that some providers charge so much, and I would point leaseholders to that data so that they can better understand where they may get better service. They may also know that alarm systems can pay for themselves within seven weeks and obviate the need for waking watch.

Town and Country Planning

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I have an email from someone from a constituency outside my own who bought a flat 13 years ago and has received a letter saying that two more storeys are going to be put on top. He is living in a block of 15, and it is going to be a block of 25, with apparently no consideration for the leaseholders whatever.

If I were part of a Government, rather than just a supporter, who said they were for the many, not the few, how could they possibly put a four-year blight on every leaseholder in virtually every one of the 1.2 million flats? It is possible for more homes to be built in four years’ time under a statutory instrument that has “coronavirus” in it, as though it will have a short-term impact on the construction industry. It will not.

During the time of my speech, I invite the Secretary of State—through his colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), I invited him to Worthing to see how he could invent more land between the South Downs and the sea—and the Minister of State to say why the impact assessment does not have a section on leaseholders. The Government consulted on that two years ago and then went in for technical consultations with the public and the industry, but not with the leaseholders. Did they invite the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform, led by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), me and the Liberal Democrat, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey)? No. Could they have done? Yes. Did they not think of it or did they forget about it?

In St Andrews Gardens in Tarring in my constituency, the tallest building is the church and the second tallest is a 1960s block that should not have been built, which is three storeys high—higher than any other house. An application to put an extra floor on it a year ago was turned down flat by the council and flatter by the inspector. I ask the Secretary of State, through the Minister and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to look at what the inspector said and then write to me to say: if the developer, which has had their second application turned down, appeals again, the inspector has the same power to say that it is totally unsuitable for the neighbourhood.

My point, really, is this. Let us not be concerned about leaseholder blocks that are owned by the leaseholders—they are freeholders, as I am in my small block in Worthing. Let us take the ones that are not. If the leaseholders want to form a recognised tenants association—another place where the Government can make an improvement—any freeholder or their agent should recognise that. The property baron William Astor, with his Long Harbour, spent years and years resisting this. The Tchenguiz interest in housing, which has done things that many would describe as crooked and others would describe additionally as improper, has been given a gift of tens of millions—potentially billions—of pounds, and who is paying? The leaseholders. Absolutely nobody else can.

The occupants of 6 million lease-rented homes own nothing except the responsibility to pay for cladding removal and other things—although I am grateful for the help that the Government are giving on that. Any benefits go to the landlord and freeholder; none go to the ordinary people who are probably on their first home. We can talk about the people whose homes are blighted by cladding, but think what it is like for those who have a home blighted in a block where they can be pretty sure the developer will not get around to getting the permission or doing the building for five or six years, and they cannot sell until the work has been done.

How did this happen? If I were on the Front Bench, my face would be red, and I would stand up at the end of this debate and say, “We apologise—we got it wrong.” The Town and Country Planning (Permitted Development and Miscellaneous Amendments) (England) (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020 is one of the worst things that has got through Government in my time here, which has been quite long. I say to the Government: revoke it. Even if they do not lose the vote today, they should put in a provision so that, if there is to be an application, a condition is that the freeholder landlord gives the freehold to the leaseholders, and they can decide whether to go for the application. The Government could additionally add a requirement that means that, in going to the local authority for pre-approval, the landlord shows what they are prepared to give to the leaseholders whose lives will be blighted, at least during the time of uncertainty and building.

This House should rise up and say to the Government, “Come with us. If not, we are going to make you, if not today, then in the days and weeks to come.” Six million households and 10 million voters are losing a great deal of money and who gains? It is not that many homes, but it is an incredible amount of money for the people the Government are trying to make an improvement for in the leasehold reforms.

Have the Law Commission reports been enacted? Not yet, and they need to be. How about getting the property tribunal to work properly? How about getting the Leasehold Advisory Service to work in the interests of leaseholders? We need to do better, and I ask the Government to join me in doing it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

Character and aspect are important, and if the proposed building were to be out of character with what is already there, the local authority would be quite within its rights to deny prior approval.

To ensure that homes delivered under permitted development rights are of the quality that people want and expect, the regulations we have introduced include a requirement for adequate natural light to be provided in all habitable homes.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Will the Minister give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will carry on, but I am always happy to speak to him beyond the Chamber, as we have done on several occasions in the recent past. If I have time, I will give way to him at the end of my remarks.

While independent research by my Department shows that the vast majority of homes built through permitted development rights are no different in terms of quality from those that come through ordinary planning applications, I have heard powerful representations from Members across the House—including from my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), who have been tireless advocates on this issue—that there are a small number of developers who abuse these rights to build homes that are unacceptably small.

Those bad developers are damaging the credibility of these rights, which are crucial for regenerating brownfield land across our country. That is why I am pleased to confirm today that the Government will stamp this out once and for all. We will legislate so that all homes built through permitted development rights must meet space standards. They will be required to meet the nationally described space standards that the Government have already published, which will mean that permitted development rights can no longer be seen as a route to undercut housing standards. This Government will fight for increased standards and improved quality of design. We want to build more, we want to build better and we want to build beautiful.

We want to support local authorities through this change. That is why we have separately introduced a fee for new homes created under these rights of £334 per unit. The hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) knows that, because he sat opposite me when we debated the SI, and he did not say no to it. The money is there to help local authorities.

It seems that Labour has already decided—it has decided to say no. It is turning its back on the people it used to represent. It does not want to build homes for hard-working, aspirational owners and renters because it failed to build them, and it is ashamed to admit that. Look at the failure of Mayor Khan in London. Look at the failure of the Labour Administration in Wales, where in 2018 they built just 57 council homes. Could they do worse? Yes, they could: last year, they built just 12—not even enough to house a Welsh rugby team. That is the failure of the Labour party to build decent homes for people in this country.

We will not follow Labour’s route. We will continue to support and build the homes that this country needs with an unwavering commitment and priority. We will build homes for first-time buyers. We will build affordable homes for renters. We will reimagine and rebuild our brownfield sites and town centres. These regulations are an important tool in helping us drive up delivery by simplifying and speeding up the planning system. I call upon the House to reject the negative views of the Labour party and support our determination to build and build and build again for the people of this country, who deserve good homes.

Housing Developments: West Sussex

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

May I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith) that I am glad he secured this debate? I fear the penalty may be that he will be taken into Government: either made a Whip to keep him quiet or a Minister to answer devastating points such as he has made today. I congratulate him, as I congratulate the four of the eight West Sussex MPs who have become Ministers, one of whom has become a Minister again: my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb) and my hon. Friends the Members for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies) and for Horsham (Jeremy Quin). Those of us who are not Ministers—my hon. Friends the Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), for Crawley (Henry Smith) and for Arundel and South Downs and I—have to provide the balance, and we can encourage Government to pay attention.

I say to my hon. Friend the Minister, who very kindly looked after me for some years when he was my Whip: could he please send the Secretary of State to West Sussex and bring the Prime Minister with him, first of all to learn that in Sussex we will not be druv—that means treat us with respect and treat our area with respect—and, secondly, to explain where the land is going to come from for development between the South Downs national park and the coast?

If we take the borough of Worthing, which makes up two thirds of my constituency, the council is proposing to have 200 homes built on Union Place, where the old police station was, opposite the old Conservative office, and over 300 homes, if things go right, at Teville Gate by the station. In the long-term plan, there were proposals for over 700 homes in West Durrington, below the national park, and those have basically been built. There are many other smaller schemes coming forward, including the Aquarena site, where a building application for 21 storeys was rightly refused, and 18 storeys was accepted—still, I think, too high.

I would say to the Minister that if he looks at St Andrews Gardens off Church Road in Tarring, an area where there is no residential building of more than three storeys, there was a proposal by some landlords—freeholders—to stick on an extra floor. The council rightly turned it down, the inspector came along and turned it down in even more firm language, and what happened when people read the Government’s proposals for planning? There is a pre-application now in at the council that is putting people up in arms. People do not vote in my constituency to have a Government proposal misinterpreted and then have everything in that particular ward wrecked, where there are all sorts of other problems. But the main problem, I think, is that it is out of scale for the local area. My constituents, Jon and Michelle Mayes, have written to me to say on the original St Andrews Gardens that, although the people there are nice, the homes are out of place in that particular area. Why should that be coming forward again?

On Thursday, I shall go to celebrate the change of name of Chatsmore Catholic High School to the St Oscar Romero Catholic School. If the Minister and the Secretary of State put Chatsmore in a Google Earth search, they will find that that school, by the railway line, is between the north and south Goring gap—the green fields between Goring in Worthing, Goring-by-Sea and Ferring in the Arun District Council. Persimmon has put in an application for over 450 homes that will totally change its character. Were green belt to spread further than London and Oxford, there would be a green belt around Worthing that would certainly include the north and south Goring gaps, one of which includes Chatsmore Farm to the north, just below the A259.

I would say to the Minister that if he has a chance of looking up Chatsmore on Google Earth, he will see the problem. Where there is an open field now, that is where Persimmon plans or hopes to get approval. It is not in the Worthing Borough Council plan and it is not in any sensible plan. As a shareholder in Persimmon, I can say to the board, “If I get a chance, I’ll come to the AGM”—perhaps I can get many other people to buy one share; I have got more than one share in my private pension—“and say, ‘Could they please pay attention to the shareholders, but even more to the nature of our countryside running down to the coast from the national park?’”

I hope that when we look at the planning proposals, we can accept where it is possible acceptably to have homes, even though there may be local objection, but we should not have homes where it is wrong. The difference between being right and being wrong is even more important than between being right and being left. Having said that, I say to my local Labour party in Worthing West, which for a long time was chaired by Ed Miller, who was secretary of the Ferring Conservation Group, “I will back you all the way. You may have tried the best you can at various elections to get me out, but between elections let us work together to protect the Goring gap.” I say the same thing to the Liberal councillors and others involved in Tarring to protect St Andrews Gardens and the rest of Tarring as well.

This is a cross-party issue. If the Government get it right, they will get more homes—acceptable homes. If they get it wrong, I do not think they will be respected by the people of all parties who want to have a proper planning system that delivers new homes at affordable prices to a range of people who otherwise would find themselves suffering from housing stress. Do not do it at the expense of a ward such as Tarring. Do not do it at the expense of those who want to protect the Goring gap, where the Goring and Ilex Conservation Group unite with the Ferring Conservation Group, and I back them all the way.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I will join my hon. Friend in thanking Nehemiah housing association for its work on housing in the west midlands over the past 20 years. Compared with the start of the decade, the number of homes built in the west midlands last year had doubled. She is right to talk about skills; delivering the homes this country needs depends on having a skilled workforce. The Construction Industry Training Board estimates that we will need 688,000 skilled construction workers if we are to deliver our target of 300,000 new homes every year.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

What his timetable is for bringing forward legislative proposals on leasehold and commonhold reform. [R]

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Luke Hall)]

We are committed to reforming the leasehold market and have already set out that we will reduce ground rents to zero on future leases and ban new leasehold houses. We are also working with the Law Commission on enfranchisement, commonhold and right to manage. Given the impact of covid-19 on the agenda and the Government’s wider work to restart the economy, we will bring forward legislation on leasehold as soon as parliamentary time allows.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Mr Speaker, if you and the Minister came to Worthing station and walked from there to my flat, you would walk past a site where Homes England could help Worthing Borough Council to produce extra social housing and potentially more leasehold or commonhold homes. Six times a year, on average, over the last 10 years, Ministers have talked of progress on ending leasehold abuse and providing better homes for the future, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said just now. This time, can we have action, and could Ministers also look at whether statutory instrument 2020/632, the Town and Country Planning (Permitted Development and Miscellaneous Amendments) (England) (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020, takes into account the disbenefits to leaseholders of people putting extra storeys on leasehold blocks?

[Luke Hall]

I know that my hon. Friend has raised issues about this particular statutory instrument. We believe we need to encourage the densification of our towns and cities to allow for additional homes. In the last four years, 60,000 additional homes have been delivered through permitted development rights for change of use. This new permitted development right could deliver an extra 800 homes a year for families across our cities and help to protect the countryside too. Of course, permitted development rights remain subject to prior approval by the local planning authority on a number of matters, including the amenity of neighbours and occupiers of the block.

Covid-19: Housing Market

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now go over to the Father of the House, Sir Peter Bottomley.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con) [V]]

The Secretary of State is right to talk about people living their lives. Most of the people going to new homes will be going to leasehold ones.

When will he, and we, act to ban the sale of leasehold and pre-sold houses? When can he announce actions for justice for leaseholders and lease renters who are stuck with excessive ground rents?

Can he advise residential landlords and smart developers that the financial games are over, and that the leasehold knowledge campaign and the all-party group on leasehold and commonhold reform are going to make sure that there is justice for leaseholders?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the Father of the House for that question. I pay tribute, once again, to his campaigning over many years against rip-off practices in the leasehold sector. We are committed to bringing an end to those practices, to legislating to bring ground rents down to a peppercorn, and to ensuring that no new homes are built as leasehold properties except in the most exceptional of circumstances. We will shortly be bringing forward draft legislation for scrutiny. I am pleased that, in general, such practices have reduced enormously as a result of the Government’s firm stance and that of campaigners, including many Members across the House. I want to see that continue.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall]

First, I thank my hon. Friend for his work as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism. I agree that people should take action. We are proud to support the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which unites experts and 34 member states behind the need for holocaust education, remembrance and research. In 2016, the IHRA created a working definition of antisemitism, which is now internationally accepted. The alliance seeks to ensure that no one can shirk responsibility for their words by playing with semantics, but it will succeed only if organisations sign up to the definition and support it. The IHRA definition is already used in guidance for the police and Crown Prosecution Service, to help them to identify hate crime. I urge public organisations in the UK to sign up to the IHRA definition.

I will finish by saying a few words about the holocaust memorial and learning centre we plan to build in Victoria Tower gardens next to Parliament. We are fortunate that the foundation delivering the memorial is headed up by the right hon. Eric Pickles and the right hon. Ed Balls. By placing the memorial and learning centre next to Parliament, we ensure that it will serve as a permanent reminder that political decisions have far-reaching consequences.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

The main purpose of today’s debate is to highlight the importance of people remembering, not forgetting, and of making sure that future generations know what the survivors knew and what the outside world knew and did not stop. May I suggest that today is not the day to go into too much detail of proposals that do not fulfil the specification of September 2015 for a national memorial? We might do better on another day.

[James Brokenshire (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

rose—