Local Authority (Housing Allocation) Bill [HL]

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

2nd reading
Friday 8th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mann, for sponsoring this Private Member’s Bill and for providing me with the opportunity to highlight this important matter, as well as to draw attention to the upcoming Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which is in the other place.

I start by saying that the Government will be opposing the Bill for a number of reasons. First, the Bill seeks to put into legislation matters that are more effectively addressed through planning policy. We would not want to constrain future ability to make appropriate policy adjustments in response to changing public needs or priorities.

Secondly, local planning authorities when preparing their local plans already establish their own housing requirements, informed by the standard method for assessing local housing need. It is for local authorities to choose how and where to meet their housing requirements in response to the needs of their communities.

Thirdly, neighbourhood planning provides a powerful set of tools for local people to shape development in their area to meet their community’s needs. I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Mann, gave a bit of background on how that approach to neighbourhood planning had its genesis in the Blair Government and was continued under the Cameron Government. Like all the best policies, it has had support from both parties in government. However, we should not exaggerate the impact of neighbourhood planning. In Bassetlaw, the contribution of the neighbourhood plan was only 459 homes, against an allocation of 4,057 homes. Therefore, while it is important, it is certainly not the silver bullet for the delivery of housing.

The fourth reason we are opposed to the Bill is that, through existing regulations and legislation, communities are able to comment on what a local plan ought to contain.

Finally, we have recently introduced our Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which will reform the process for preparing local plans so that it is simpler, faster and easier for communities to engage with. We are clear that communities must be at the heart of the planning process, and better engagement with them on planning matters is critical. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill is taking real steps to address this. The Government are clear that, to help make home ownership affordable for more people and to help more people rent their own home, we need to deliver more homes.

In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, I say that the target of building 300,000 homes a year by the middle of this decade remains government policy; I made that point in response to a Question. But there is a recognition that we should not just have a drive for volume without thinking about quality. That is why there is a clear commitment that we want those homes to be built particularly on brownfield rather than greenfield developments. It is often cheaper for developers to build on greenfield, but we want more urban regeneration as well as more affordable housing. There is a commitment through the affordable homes programme to have a greater number of socially rented homes, up double from the previous period with 32,000 as the target, should economic conditions allow. So there is a commitment to more affordable housing, and a commitment to quality and not building on greenfield.

To get enough homes built in the places where people and communities need them, a crucial first step is to plan for the right number of homes. That is why, in 2018, we introduced a standard method for assessing local housing need to make the process of identifying the number of homes needed in an area simple, quick and transparent. I have to be clear that the standard method does not set a target for councils to meet. It is a method used by councils to inform the preparation of their local plans. Councils decide their own housing requirement once they have considered their ability to meet their own needs in their area. This includes taking local circumstances and constraints—for instance, the green belt—into account and working with neighbouring authorities if it would be more appropriate for needs to be met elsewhere. This recognises that not everywhere will be able to meet its housing need in full.

I cannot stress enough the importance of having an effective up-to-date plan in place. It is essential to planning for and meeting housing requirements in ways that make good use of land and result in well-designed and attractive places to live. The Government expect local authorities to work together to plan for and deliver the housing and infrastructure that our communities need. Without an adequate up-to-date plan, homes can end up being built on a speculative basis, with no co-ordination and limited buy-in from local people. That is the point the noble Lord, Lord Mann, made, and he is absolutely right. It is why we need these local plans in place.

Further to the local plan-making process, neighbourhood planning provides a powerful set of tools for local people to shape development in their area to meet their community’s needs. We know that over 2,850 groups have started the neighbourhood planning process since its introduction in 2012. However, despite all this, we acknowledge that the planning system has a poor record of community engagement and that it can often be adversarial. That is why the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill will modernise our planning system and put local people in charge of it, so it delivers more of what communities want.

As noble Lords will know, the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill was introduced in Parliament on 11 May 2022. The Bill sets out to modernise our planning system and put local people in charge of it, so it delivers even more of what communities want. It will also give local leaders greater powers to improve town centres, bring land and property into productive use, and use the planning system to deliver the beautiful and sustainable homes that their communities want. It will reform the process for producing local plans so that it is simpler, faster and easier for communities to engage with. It will remove barriers to engagement and create a more democratic planning system, and local plans will be informed by a larger and more diverse range of community views. However, the introduction of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill is only the first step. We will continue to work on the detail of regulations, policy and guidance—on the guidance, it is incredibly important that local authorities know where they have local discretion, as opposed to central discretion—and we will consult on a number of important provisions as we take this programme forward.

I take this opportunity to reassure noble Lords that the Government continue to listen to the representations of MPs, councillors and communities on the effectiveness of our housing policies. Alongside the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, we have set out a number of specific areas where we plan to consult further in the coming months. We will announce details of those, as well as any other consultations, to use the ministerial phrase, in due course.

In conclusion, the Government strongly believe that local communities should have a say in what development takes place and where. As I have explained, a number of provisions are in place to ensure that local communities can have their say about what development happens, and community engagement will be strengthened by the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill.

Local authorities can already set their own housing requirements through existing policy. It is important that we do not constrain the ability to make appropriate policy adjustments in response to changing public needs or priorities by putting into legislation matters that are quite rightly more effectively addressed through planning policy. The Government must therefore oppose the Local Authority (Housing Allocation) Bill.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions. This is the problem with the big state and Whitehall. The Minister just gave the figure of 431 houses out of the 4,500 housing allocation in Bassetlaw coming from neighbourhood plans. I will read the actual figures, because when the people in charge, who make decisions that they impose on local authorities, do not know the facts as determined by law, and then try to impose them on local people, then democracy, which we cherish, is undermined.

Here are the figures on completed plans. For Blyth Parish in 2021, the housing allocation was 62. For Carlton in Lindrick in 2019, it was 560. For Clarborough and Welham in 2017, the housing allocation was 38. For Cuckney, Norton, Holbeck and Welbeck in 2017, the allocation was 35. Elkesley in 2015 had 39. Lound had eight in 2022. Mattersey and Mattersey Thorpe in 2019 had 31. Misson in 2017 had 50. Misterton in 2019 had 187. Rampton and Woodbeck in 2021 had 21. Sturton in 2021 had 21. Sutton cum Lound in 2018 had 45. Walkeringham in 2021 had 66.

The total was 1,163, but those are completed plans. Built into the local housing plans are plans made “with review in progress”. I will not cite them all—there are too many, because neighbourhood planning has really taken off—but Misterton has 194; Hodsock and Langold has 227; Tuxford has 250; and the largest, Harworth and Bircotes, has already built more than 450 in its neighbourhood plan, never mind having it in its allocation. It has already built more than that and can build thousands. It is prepared to keep increasing, as the local plan goes on, to significant numbers. The last number I can recall is 1,130, but that area wants more. Mining villages want housing.

That is what local power is about: building houses and creating land for the houses. It is not the national state—Whitehall—telling people, “Here’s a number that we’ve created by magic. You’ve got to do this.” What happens then is that developers go for easy pickings. They go for the farmer’s field that they can build on and stick 300 houses where no one wants them and that are all the same. They build houses with five, six or seven bedrooms when local people need two or three-bedroom houses to live in, in their own communities. That is democracy, but it is also housebuilding.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

If we are talking about specific numbers, it is important that the noble Lord understands that I was referring to data on the most recent figures for December 2021. That is a window of time whereas the noble Lord is referring to historic achievements in terms of neighbourhood plans. We are quoting different statistics at each other, which I think is confusing for people listening to this. I am happy to write on that point.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

I am quoting statistics about how the local council is allocating land for housing where the numbers have been arrived at using the law in order to reach a target that the Government have arbitrarily set. If the local council had the power to set it entirely, as other local councils did, that council would not just have the housing allocations that were needed; it would have the houses needed in places where people wanted them and in a style that they liked, with popularity, with demand and with agreement. That is what happens with neighbourhood development planning: building is actually happening, of real houses with real people living in them. But across the country the Government are trying to create a national system where the Secretary of State and a few officials make up the numbers arbitrarily and force them on local people and local councils. We ought to reverse that. It is the heart of traditional conservative philosophy that you put power at the local level, which is why so many Conservative MPs support my approach. I beg to move.