Office Block Conversions: Essex

Debate between Robert Halfon and John Hayes

Thursday 13th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered permitted development rights for office block conversions in Essex.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I wish to talk about a pressing and ongoing issue in my constituency of Harlow that can be described only as ghetto building, human warehousing and social cleansing, under the expanded permitted development rights legislation.

Let me be clear: I believe in more housing. We face a crisis in this country, with 1.2 million people on the waiting list for social housing, and more than 682,000 people living in overcrowded accommodation. Yet studies by the University of Sheffield show that 94% of land in the UK is not built on. Housing consultant Colin Wiles even suggested that English golf courses occupy more land than homes.

I am pleased that the Government are accelerating our house building programme, with 1.3 million homes delivered since 2010. My constituency of Harlow is set to benefit from 16,500 new homes by 2033 from the Harlow and Gilston garden town alone. I agree in principle with the motivation behind expanded permitted development rights legislation, to make it easier for new housing to be built, and when the legislation came to the House of Commons, no party opposed it. I have even seen how permitted development rights can be a success. Edinburgh House, formerly home to Pearson publishers, has been converted by Land Charter Homes into quality apartments that are close to the station, with good transport links.

However, as the BBC “Panorama” documentary detailed last week, permitted development rights have been an unmitigated disaster for our town. The reasons for that are threefold. First, Harlow has become a prime location for such developments, with 12 former office block conversions, including Terminus House, Templefields and Redstone House. Harlow’s proximity to London and comparatively lower property prices make it a preferred location for developers; but, of course, the legislation does not require the builds to comply with local planning regulations. As such, around 1,100 units have been created in Harlow—a town of around 40,000 homes—none of which has been tested against the requirements of the local plan.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the creation en masse of new, relatively inexpensive accommodation in Harlow has made such properties an attractive option for councils outside Harlow looking to house individuals who have presented as homeless in their area. That has allowed predominantly London councils to socially cleanse their boroughs and to place vulnerable individuals, often with additional needs, into those converted properties as temporary accommodation. A freedom of information request that I made in July 2019 found that 32 Labour councils have made out-of-area placements.

In Harlow, we have had an influx, receiving placements from Barking and Dagenham, Enfield and Harrow, to name just a few. The placing authority does not have to notify Harlow Council, or offer any additional funding to cope with the increased demand on local services. The situation has been exacerbated by the fact that Harlow Council did not take up the full capacity of Terminus House when it was initially offered by Caridon Property to house Harlow residents in need of accommodation. We might well ask whether Harlow Council, had it accepted that offer, could have worked with landlords to ensure that the housing was of good quality. However, Caridon offered the remaining units to other authorities for rental, causing that increase in placements of individuals from other areas.

Thirdly, the impact of the influx on Harlow has been catastrophic. The rabbit-hutch housing developments have been a hive of criminal activity and drug abuse, placing huge pressures on our local police, A&E and social services. The “Panorama” investigation found that Essex police have been called to one site—Templefields—nearly 600 times in three years, and of course Harlow taxpayers bear the brunt of all such problems.

Our local schools are under immense pressure. One primary school, Tany’s Dell, looks after pupils from 20 families currently living in nearby temporary accommodation at Templefields House. The teachers have described issues relating to safeguarding, poor attendance, anxiety and even exhaustion from the 30-minute walk to school, undertaken by children some of whom are as young as just three years old. There are no buses or any proper public transport links around that building.

I believe passionately that it is my duty in Parliament to address social injustice. I am not blaming the individuals and families, who are taken away from their usual support networks of friends and family.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has always been a champion of social justice and, not for the first time, does this House a great service in bringing to our attention matters that are of both local import and national consequence. Does he agree that the report recently published by the commission that the Government tasked with looking at building beautiful places is highly pertinent to the debate? If we build homes in which people want to live, in places that they can feel proud of, social solidarity will be the result. I hope that the Government will shortly respond to those recommendations.

[Robert Halfon]

I thank my right hon. Friend. He is right: beauty is everything in building. When I initially saw the legislation on converting office blocks, I thought that it would be a good idea. I never imagined that loopholes in the legislation would allow the building of literal ghettos—of tiny rooms, as I will describe later—without any thought to beauty, aesthetics or the local environment for the poor residents who have to live in such places.

Often such properties are developed in areas never intended for residential dwelling. They are placed in isolated employment areas of the town with poor public transport routes, as I have just highlighted, making it difficult for residents to integrate socially and economically into the community. That is why it is so important that councils play at least some role in determining where such conversions take place. Individuals arrive, unfamiliar with social and counselling services and schools, and can feel unsupported in the new area. I am not against those vulnerable families—we have a duty to help every vulnerable family—but I have a duty to my constituents, and when families who have nothing to do with Harlow are brought to the town, they are separated from their own networks and support.

If families are not deemed vulnerable at the time of placement, it is easy for their new difficult living situation to affect that. Regularly in my constituency surgeries, and when I am out and about across our town of Harlow, I meet families living in such ghettos and hear moving stories. One lady, a recovering drug addict, was placed on a corridor where other residents were taking drugs right in front of her. That lady was sent from another borough. She had no links to Harlow, and was trying to get her life back on track, doing everything possible to get off drugs. She was a single parent, living in a room hardly bigger than the table behind me, and was now surrounded by drug dealers and people taking crack and other kinds of drugs. I ask the Minister how we can expect that lady, and so many others like her, to get their lives back on track living in such an unhealthy, unpalatable and unacceptable environment.

Ongoing support following placement is necessary if families are to thrive in their new area. Does the Minister not agree that in order to provide support, councils must first be notified of their placement and be given the funding to provide the care that vulnerable families need through local services? Permitted development rights were never meant to be about building ghettos. Nor were they about living space, and letting councils ship people off like cattle to the east of England and to Harlow.

I made this clear at the beginning of my speech: I know we need more housing, and I recognise that permitted development rights have made an important contribution in some parts of the country, but there have to be rules, particularly about quality, and councils must have some say in how the office blocks are converted. As one resident told me, the buildings were built for paper, not people, which sums it up exactly. If we truly want to help people, homes must be quality, safe spaces, not tiny box rooms where a single parent and a little baby live in a space where one can barely put one’s arms out without touching the walls and where the so-called kitchen is a yard away from the bed. They should not be housed in the same corridor as drug users and violent individuals.

In January, the Secretary of State confirmed to me in the Chamber that the review into permitted development rights

“will be taking forward any reforms necessary”.

He recognised that,

“All properties built in this country need to be safe.”—[Official Report, 20 January 2020; Vol. 670, c. 34.]

BBC’s “Panorama” documented cases where councils house individuals, couples and families in single rooms. Kitchens and toilets are metres apart. That is not a proper living environment. Shelter estimates that poor housing costs the NHS £1.4 billion a year. I ask the Minister again: in the Department’s review into permitted development rights, will he look beyond the numbers and consider the quality of housing being built? Will he work with colleagues to reform the legislation and make it a requirement in law that all properties, for temporary accommodation or not, meet minimum national space standards?

According to the House of Commons Library, local authorities have had powers to restrict permitted development rights under an article 4 direction at least since the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995. Changes made in 2010 mean it is now for local planning authorities

“to confirm all Article 4 directions”,

making it easier for councils to invoke restrictions on permitted development rights. In Harlow, the council should have acted earlier. Only in March last year did it seek an article 4 direction in certain areas of the town.

The issue has been ongoing for years, but there is another factor. The Library confirmed to me that,

“residential premises created from office conversions under permitted development which add to an authority’s council tax base... count for the purpose of the New Homes Bonus payments”

received by local councils. So is there therefore very little financial incentive to take action to restrict the developments? That is particularly the case in Harlow, where the new homes bonus created a grant back to the council worth more than £1 million in 2018-19. With more than half of the new properties last year being office conversions, Harlow Council should do more to use the money to help individuals and provide security around the town.

Furthermore, sections 76 to 93 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 grant powers to the council to seek a closure order for a property on the grounds of either disorderly, offensive or criminal behaviour; serious nuisance to the public; or disorder near the premises. To be fair, the order is not a permanent solution. It lasts only six months, and other local authority closure powers are substantially limited in their scope, for example, to deal with environmental concerns.

Councils need stronger powers to take meaningful action against permitted development right conversions where they create issues for our town. Having said that, councils should do more to use the powers that are available to them. I believe ghettos such as Terminus House and Templefields should be closed down once and for all. Will the Minister ensure that the review provides stronger solutions to allow councils to deal with the issues that permitted development rights have created and that exist now?

The current state of permitted development rights raises numerous issues. First, councils take advantage of cheap converted office blocks to ship people off to the east, where they believe there is living space. Individuals with additional needs, who require support from their local authority, are being dumped in shoddy, rabbit-hutch housing, with the receiving authority having to pick up the pieces. There is no sense of a duty of care for the individuals. There is no notification and no extra funding granted to the receiving authority to provide resources, and certain parts of the country are disproportionately affected. In areas such as Harlow, the pressure on the taxpayer, local services and schools is enormous.

Vulnerable individuals are housed together in isolated areas, away from their support networks, creating a breeding ground for criminal and antisocial behaviour. Those trying to get their lives back on track must do battle with an unhealthy living environment every day. I urge the Minister and the Secretary of State to spend 30 minutes watching the BBC’s “Panorama” programme, which makes an unanswerable case for the need for affordable and more quality housing.

The permitted development rights legislation has been disastrous in certain circumstances. The people of Harlow have been let down by councils and by flaws in the legislation that seems to support quantity over quality housing. They have been let down by the planning guidelines, which should give more powers to stop unsuitable accommodation in certain areas, and they have been let down by the fact that when the vulnerable families come through, there is no extra support or funding. I urge the Government and the Minister to take urgent action. In the 21st century—in 2020—we must put a stop to London boroughs’ social cleansing and the building of ghettos. We must put a stop to it all. We must give local authorities stronger powers to shut down human warehouses and ensure our councils have a real say on office block conversions.