Housing and Planning Bill (Seventh sitting)

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Brandon Lewis]

Clause 10 inserts a new section into the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015 enabling relevant authorities to apply to the Secretary of State for an exemption from the duty to grant permission for sufficient land to match demand. There are some areas where the demand for self-build and custom housebuilding may far outstrip land supply. To ensure that we continue to protect the environment and build only in a sustainable way, we must be able to exempt relevant authorities that, with the best will in the world, are simply unable to grant permission for sufficient land to meet demand.

The detail will be set out in regulations, but the intention is that where demand on the register is a significant proportion of the land available for housing, as set out in the five-year land supply, the authority may apply to the Secretary of State for an exemption. Authorities that are exempt from the duty to grant permission for serviced land to match demand must still, of course, have regard to the demands on their registers when carrying out their housing, planning, regeneration and land disposal functions.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I will be brief. I fully understand the need to be able to have exemptions in some circumstances. The law will need to take account of very different circumstances in different local authorities with very different levels of land supply and demand. The City of London comes to mind as an obvious example, although there will be other intensely urban areas where this is also an issue. Can the Minister give an assurance that this will be a tight test and that not only will the requirement for authorities to have regard to their obligations still obtain, but it will be within the Secretary of State’s power under the proposed regulations to make the granting of an exemption to a local authority conditional upon it satisfying certain conditions that the Secretary of State might lay down, such as a partnership with another local authority that has more land?

This is a slightly different example, but it is relevant. The City of London sponsors an academy in the London Borough of Southwark. The City, being a very small borough, does not have enough students for a high school of that kind, but it sends some of its students to the high school on land supplied by Southwark. Does the Minister think there is room for that kind of partnership and that conditions could be imposed on local authorities before the Secretary of State agrees to make an exemption?

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I have a brief question for the Minister. Does he have any idea of how many local authorities are likely to be exempt and on what grounds? That would help us to make some sense of the clause.

[Brandon Lewis]

Clause 11 makes further and consequential amendments to the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015. In particular, it creates an additional power so that regulations may provide that the relevant authorities can set their own conditions of eligibility. These are expected to be restricted to a local connection test and, as we outlined and discussed, a financial solvency test.

The clause also provides for regulations to enable the register to have two parts. The second part would apply to anyone who had applied to be registered but failed to meet specified conditions of eligibility. We expect this to be used so that anyone who fails a local area connection test when an authority has chosen to apply one must be entered in the second part of the register.

Entries in the second part of the register would not count as demand when determining the number of service plots that a relevant authority must permit. However, authorities would have to have regard to those entries when undertaking their planning, housing, regeneration and land disposal functions, ensuring that, for example, when an authority has introduced a local connection test, people can still join part of the register, allowing someone who currently lives in the area where land for development is limited also to register in nearby areas where land might be more widely available—that touches on the point my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk made—even when those areas have their own local connection test.

The clause also enables the Secretary of State to provide in regulations that local authorities can recover fees connected with their duty to provide sufficient suitable development permissions. Regulations may also stipulate the circumstances in which no fee is payable. For example, when making these regulations, we may consider whether it is appropriate to charge those people on the second part of the register. It is expected that these fees will be set at a level that broadly reflects the costs incurred by the authority when undertaking its duties under the 2015 Act.

[Mr Bacon]

I crave your indulgence, Sir Alan, for just a moment longer. I agree with the Minister. Plainly, there must be some criteria for eligibility and a sensible approach to the recovery of fees. There must indeed be a local area test and it would be sensible if a local authority could exclude people from the operative part of the register if they did not meet the local area test.

However, I seek the Minister’s assurance on a specific point. The test will be applied relatively narrowly so as not to exclude people. I referred in the oral evidence session to the Community Self Build Agency website, and I will quote from it now because it is totally relevant. It states:

“I was encouraged by the local council to apply for the CSBA Scheme, I rang them and said: ‘I am disabled, unemployed, on benefits and I know nothing of building.’ They said: ‘You fit all the criteria!’ I have never looked back.”

I would not want this exclusion and the ability to be placed on the second part of the register to exclude people who, unaided and not as part of a scheme, might not be eligible or might not meet the financial conditions but who, if they were part of a sponsored scheme, might indeed meet the conditions of eligibility.

It has been proved that the most dispossessed and downtrodden, who are told that they cannot have any hand in their own future and cannot help themselves, can do so with a bit of help, and they should not be excluded from the operative part of the register. What assurance can the Minister offer that the eligibility criteria will not be used in a way that reduces opportunity to take part in schemes where jointly the eligibility criteria could be met?

[Brandon Lewis]

Areas that are more generally exempt must still have regard in the register that has been carried out to general housing, planning and local disposal issues.

My hon. Friend makes a more focused point, with which I have sympathy. As we go forward and develop the regulations, local authorities will be encouraged to notify people on both parts of the register of opportunities to purchase sites suitable for self-build and custom build. That will be set out in guidance. There will be opportunities through regulation and guidance to ensure that we cover all those opportunities.

We want to ensure that custom and self-build land is available for everybody who is eligible and potentially could develop their home in that way. I will take my hon. Friend’s points on board as we go through the regulations and guidance. I hope that reassures him that we will do everything we can to ensure that everybody has the chance to take forward the revolution that he has inspired in self-build and custom house building.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 11 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 12

Introduction to this Part

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[Mr Bacon]

I wondered whether the hon. Gentleman intends to table his own amendments to deal with these exploitative vermin, who really need much stronger measures against them.

[Mr Thomas]

I might do that on Report, now that the hon. Gentleman has encouraged me. However, hopefully in the interventions that I have made, I might have encouraged the more reasonable of the two Ministers to fight the fight within the Department and strengthen the teeth that are available to housing authorities to fight this problem. I do not know whether the hon. Member for South Norfolk, when he meets housing officials in South Norfolk Council, talks about these issues. I know that he talks to them a lot about self-build and custom build—that is excellent news—but does he go into detail about the powers that they will have under the Bill in other areas? I hope that he does, and if he has not up till now, I hope that he will in future.

I apologise to you, Sir Alan, as I think I have been led astray by the hon. Member. We are, after all, talking about London and whether the London rental standard might benefit from the amendments moved by the hon. Member for Wimbledon. I simply urge the Minister to embrace with enthusiasm the concerns expressed by colleagues on the Conservative Benches about the database.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Thomas]

That was an extremely good intervention and a further powerful point that I hope the Minister will take into account.

I can imagine the hon. Member for Peterborough seeing constituents turn up at his surgery in 2020. The next Labour Government will be introducing new housing legislation. The hon. Member for South Norfolk will have been drafted in on the housing Bill Committee for the new Opposition and he may be tempted to make a speech about self-build and custom house building. I am always excited to hear him speak, but the hon. Member for Peterborough may not be and he may use the opportunity, if he has been approached by a constituent who is worried about their landlord, to put in a request under the freedom of information legislation to see whether that landlord had in some way come to the notice of the housing authority and was therefore included in the database.

[Mr Bacon]

The hon. Gentleman tempts me to intervene. Under my revolutionary approach, there would not be any of this faffing around the edges. If landlords were misbehaving, the tenants would have the power to take their destiny into their own hands, remove the property from the bad landlord and form a housing co-operative. The hon. Gentleman might like to know that buildforlife.org.uk—the start of the revolution—was launched this afternoon.

[Mr Thomas]

I am very happy to have been the vehicle for the revelation that the hon. Gentleman has just provided. His intervention reminds me that I have not yet sent to him the membership form for the Co-op party. Perhaps I should also send him a Labour party membership form, although I do not want to fall out of order.

We were discussing whether the hon. Member for Peterborough, during one of the speeches by the hon. Member for South Norfolk, might put in a freedom of information request, and I was about to appeal to the Minister to prevent the hon. Member for Peterborough from being tempted to do so. Allow us to see that information as Members of Parliament. Allow us to help our constituents. I think of the caseworkers in my office. They are extremely experienced and effective. If they are concerned that a rogue landlord is operating in my constituency and there might be a way of teasing out confirmation of that fact through an FOI request to the local planning authority, they would be at me straightaway to suggest that I put that FOI request in. I suspect that that would be the case for all Opposition Members and even, I suspect, for one or two Government Members. I therefore say to the Minister: let us try to avoid that situation by accepting the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead.