Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Carter Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am not sure whether that is a question specifically on the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The hon. Gentleman will know that the provisional local government settlement was published and that he and I have had discussions about that, which show that there is a significant increase in core spending power.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I start by agreeing with the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) about openness and transparency. Last week, the energy company in which Warrington Borough Council bought a 50% stake collapsed. My constituents are rightly concerned that £50 million of public money was invested in a loss-making company. Will the Minister meet me to look at what steps we can take to protect local services and what lessons we can learn from governance in local authorities.

[Kemi Badenoch]

Yes.

Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords]

Andy Carter Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders]

Indeed: ground rents are payments for which nothing is received in return, which is why they should be abolished. For the record, I am a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform and have campaigned for the abolition of ground rents for a number of years, having seen the impact on individuals of their use and abuse.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale for tabling the new clause and for being a consistently strong advocate for leaseholders during his time as an Opposition spokesperson. He apologised at the start of his speech; I would ask him to resign based on that apology had he not already been moved to another position. [Laughter.] He has done a sterling job in this brief, and the new clause is typical of the way he has used every opportunity available to him to push forward the cause for leaseholders.

As we know, new clause 1 would not abolish ground rents altogether but, if it is agreed to, will set a timescale by which concrete proposals on their abolition must be put forward. That is important because for too long my constituents and thousands of others have suffered because of the leasehold scandal.

I know that the overturning of a system that has been in place for 1,000 years is not necessarily straightforward, and arguments will always be made as to why things cannot happen, but, as has been said so many times—I have already said it once in this debate myself, but it is worth saying it again and again because it is such a powerful point that can never be made enough—ground rent is a payment made for which absolutely nothing is received in return. Why, then, can we not get on and reduce that payment to effectively nothing so that the legal position reflects the reality of the situation? That would send out an important signal—not just a departmental press release but a signal that will make a tangible difference to people’s lives: that the days of leasehold are numbered and that this place does not accept that ground rent is a legitimate payment.

We see ground rent for what it is: a feudal device used to suck money away from people who get no benefit and no advantage from the payment but risk losing their home if they do not make it. Such arrangements have no place in the 21st century or, indeed, any century.

Some say that we should not ban ground rents on existing leases because that would introduce an element of retrospective impact on long-standing investments, including pension funds, but that is not an argument I have any sympathy with. The toxicity of leasehold has now been known for at least five years, which is plenty long enough for any investor to have taken a closer look at what they were involved in, looked for alternative sources of income and realised that nobody with an ounce of humanity should be using people’s homes as an investment vehicle—and especially not ones that included leases that were so onerous they made the homes unsellable.

Yes, there is a concern that we should not readily change the law so that it works retrospectively and changes the legal nature of a contract after it has already been entered into, but let us not forget that this place voted to introduce the loan charge, which retrospectively changed the law, arguably to the considerable detriment of many who say they were misled about what they signed up to at the time. There are parallels, because let us not forget that the victims of leasehold did not sign up to leases in the full knowledge of what they entailed. The developers, lenders and lawyers all have some degree of culpability, but the innocent victims—the leaseholders—do not.

The Competition and Markets Authority has been clear on several occasions that leaseholders have been wronged, and I welcome its decisions, but of course those decisions do not cover everyone, which is why we in this place need to step in. We often talk in the House about the plight of the Women Against State Pension Inequality—did the WASPI women not sign up for something very different from what they ended up with?

I know there are legal opinions about freeholders’ human rights, but what about my constituents’ human rights? In fact, I would love the owner of a set of freeholds to get on the witness stand and try to convince a judge that they are the wronged party in all this. I would love to ask them whether they think people should have the right to live in their own homes without them being used as an income stream for someone else.

The irony of what we are debating is that many of those who have done the most to bring the leasehold scandal to the public’s attention—I think in particular of the National Leasehold Campaign—stand to benefit the least from this Bill because there is nothing in it to help existing leaseholders. That is why new clause 1 is so important. Four years ago, when he was Communities Secretary, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) promised an outright ban on leasehold houses, and we all hoped that by now a law would be in place for everyone so that these wrongs could be righted. Those people deserve an end to this. They deserve hope that something will finally be done to make their lives a little better. If the Government cannot support the new clause, then, at the very least, I would like to hear from the Dispatch Box a commitment in the form of a final date by which the scourge of leasehold will finally be consigned to the history books. The wronged leaseholders deserve that, and it is about time it happened.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders). I share his concerns and those of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), because a significant number of new homes built in the north-west of England, particularly in my constituency and in theirs too, have been on leasehold contracts. Although I recognise the aim of the new clause, I am not completely sure that it will resolve all the issues for my constituents, and I want to talk through some of the issues that they have told me about over the past couple of months.

I welcome many of the proposals set out in the Bill and recognise the important role that they will have in protecting leaseholders moving forward. I am, though, concerned that, as the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said, they will offer little comfort for the thousands of homeowners who have become trapped in historical leases, which I am afraid many were even unaware they were purchasing when they signed for their new home. That includes an number of constituents in Warrington South who have spent the past 12 years trying to resolve a situation that they were inadvertently drawn into when they were mis-sold their properties on the Steinbeck Grange estate in Chapelford village by David Wilson Homes.

My constituents believed they were purchasing their properties freehold, and many were not disabused of this position until several months after they moved in, when they received an invoice. One might rightly ask why their lawyers did not make them aware when they were signing the contract. It has become clear that most of them used a legal firm recommended by the developer—by the house builder’s sales team—and those lawyers failed to point out the tenure under which the properties were being sold, and failed to make Steinbeck residents aware of the important clause in their contract documents. By using their first names in dealings with clients, they made sure they could not be traced by dissatisfied customers once they became aware of the situation. The law firm went into administration within days of the estate being completed.

I note with interest that the Law Society’s response to the Bill states that it is not the solicitor’s place to dissuade a client from entering into a particular transaction; their role is to ensure that the transaction is legally sound and efficiently completed. I agree with that, but I believe that every lawyer has a responsibility to their clients, and in this case the client was not the developer but the homeowner, or prospective homeowner. They should have made clear all the elements of the contract and their clients should have been advised accordingly. I am aware of one Warrington solicitor who, when looking at the contract that was brought to him, advised the purchaser not to proceed because of the leasehold situation, and has come forward to give me all those details.

As hon. Members have mentioned, the Competition and Markets Authority is currently investigating several issues surrounding the potential mis-selling of leasehold properties. I thank the CMA for its endeavours in addressing this poor practice. It has been to Warrington and engaged with my constituents, and I am incredibly grateful for the work that it is doing there. These investigations have looked at four developers—Persimmon, Countrywide, Taylor Wimpey and Barratt Homes, which is the parent company of David Wilson Homes. To date, the CMA has reached agreements with the first three. I therefore encourage the management of Barratts to recognise the harm that has been caused by its past sales polices and agree a way forward with the CMA as soon as possible to put things right.

Many hon. and right hon. Members have raised these issues in this House, but progress is also down to the tenacity of the men and women trapped in unfair leasehold contracts across the country who have continued to fight for their rights. I particularly praise my constituent Mr Mike Carroll, who has refused to take no for an answer and is continuing to work tirelessly with me and his neighbours to achieve the right and just outcome for them.

Ministers also need to look again at how consumer bodies around the country, particularly trading standards, should be working in the interests of homeowners, to help them resolve some of these issues. In the case of homeowners in Warrington, trading standards appear not to have been interested and have done little to involve themselves in any investigations. That is not the case in other parts of the country, where resolutions have been reached. I note in particular that Cardiff trading standards got involved and looked very closely at some of these practices.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his tenacity in looking after his constituents. All of us across the House try to do that, and he has done a brilliant job. On other areas that need to be addressed, the solicitors that have gone into administration were insured. The big companies have liability insurance sitting in pots, so leaseholders could simply say to the insurers, “You’ve had the premium, and now we want to see some help from you.”

[Andy Carter]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The greatest challenge that my constituents face is that they cannot find the people who did the work—the lawyers no longer exist as a company body. My constituents are working to try to find some recompense, and I hope that the situation will be resolved by the CMA.

Will the Minister consider what actions his Department can take to tackle the problem faced by residents on Steinbeck Grange in Warrington and elsewhere who are locked into leaseholds and did not expect to be in this situation? I hope he will look very carefully at what the CMA says. I know that he has been working with the CMA to try to find solutions, and I hope that he will continue to do that, so that a satisfactory outcome can be found. Having met residents and constituents on Friday evening, I know that the impact that this has had on their lives cannot be overestimated. They have been living through a genuine nightmare, having bought what they thought was their dream home. I urge the Minister to think about the impact that this has had on those individuals.

It is time not only for us to protect those who will be looking to buy a new home in the future, but to secure justice for those who have been mis-sold properties in the past and are still paying a heavy price through unreasonable management fees and escalating ground rents. I am pleased to support the Government’s efforts, but I urge them to go further.

[Mr Betts]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I welcome the steps that the Government have already taken but encourage them to go that little bit further.

Thinking back to the Select Committee inquiry in, I think, 2018, I remember that we invited not just formal witnesses—I have mentioned certain very distinguished lawyers who advised us—but many leaseholders from up and down the country. Up to 100 people came to events. There were a number of roundtables at which they met individual members of the Committee and told us about their experiences.

All the issues that the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) has just raised were in our report, including mis-selling and how lawyers told people, “It’s just the same as freehold, really. It isn’t any different: you own your own house and, by the way, there’s an incentive to go with us on this leasehold arrangement. Here are the presents we’ll give you, the garden we’ll do up for you and the new carpets we’ll provide.” What solicitors were doing was scandalous, and we identified that in our report.

The simple message we had from everyone present was, “Everyone’s talking about changing the system for the future, but we’ve got problems here and now.” I understand why the Bill goes only so far on future ground rents and future arrangements, because it is more challenging and complicated to unwind existing legal arrangements than it is to describe what should happen in new arrangements, but I say to the Minister that the people in these leasehold homes who are experiencing all the problems that have already been explained, including in our report, think that that is unfair. They think that people in the future will be protected but that they will not and that Ministers, having raised the issue, should take it one step further and bring in the same rules for them. It is almost as simple as that. They cannot understand why, as they see it, they are being left behind and, so far, ignored on not just ground rents but a range of issues including the mis-selling of the service charge and all the other scandals that the Select Committee unearthed in its inquiry.

Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords]

Andy Carter Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes]

I do not want to jump forward several pages in my speech, but the right hon. Gentleman is predicting—or at least pointing to—the fact that we have identified this problem and have ensured that when we reduce ground rents to a peppercorn, people will not be able to cheat by introducing associated management fees and other charges. If he is looking for further changes, the second part of our seminal legislation, when it comes in due course, will no doubt satisfy his needs.

The starting point for this legislation has to be our shared recognition that for many people, to be a leaseholder is also to be a homeowner, and we are clear that homes that have been bought should be theirs to live in and enjoy, not be treated as cash cows for third-party investors. This Government are on the side of homeowners, which is why in our manifesto we committed to introduce this important legislation.

Hon. Members will be well aware of the problems that many leaseholders have faced in recent years, including, as pointed out by Opposition Members, spiralling ground rents and onerous conditions that have turned the dream of home ownership into a nightmare for some leaseholders. This Bill is the first of our seminal two-part legislation to reform and improve the leasehold system. Further legislation will follow later in this Parliament to continue to address the historic imbalances in the leasehold system.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the Minister for the work that he has done so far. He may know that constituents on Steinbeck Grange in Warrington South have been calling for changes for almost 10 years. Will he give an update on the current Competition and Markets Authority investigation, which is vital to people living in Warrington?

[Eddie Hughes]

The work of the CMA has been pivotal so far in already changing the behaviour of a number of significant developers. I have spoken to it recently; further work is ongoing and I hope that it will have further successes in the future. My hon. Friend is completely right to raise that point.

Both this Bill and the wider leasehold reform programme have been informed by consultation. I thank those present here today, including the Opposition Front Benchers, who have taken the time to discuss the issue. I look forward to further discussions over the coming weeks and months.

The Bill has a specific focus: the ground rent in future long residential leases. Some existing leaseholders face substantial difficulties, including costly enfranchisement, a lack of transparency and burdensome lease terms. Escalating ground rents in particular can reach unaffordable levels and make some properties difficult to sell. That is not right, which is why we have asked the Competition and Markets Authority to conduct a thorough investigation into potential mis-selling and unfair terms in the leasehold sector.

Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Andy Carter Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook), and I too remember buying my first home; it was quite a few years ago, but I am sure we have all had that experience of getting the keys for the first time and knowing what it is like to be on the property ladder and faced with a 25-year mortgage.

I want to start by welcoming the intention to update the country’s planning system to deliver the high-quality, sustainable, affordable homes that communities really do need. Getting on to the housing ladder is difficult, and many of the initiatives introduced by this Government —changes to stamp duty, first home schemes, Help to Buy—are designed to make it more accessible, but the reality is that the average house costs almost eight times the average salary. In Warrington, the average price of a home has gone from £140,000 a decade ago to £210,000 today. So we must consider affordability in what we are doing. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier, we all aspire to see our children and grand- children owning their own home, so I am very supportive of the Government’s mission to reverse the fall in home ownership and to give young people an opportunity to benefit from getting on to the property ladder.

The time limit is short, but I want to briefly talk about a couple of issues. First, on getting the 1 million approved homes built in developments that have been agreed but have been land-banked by developers, we need construction to start, particularly as many of these schemes are in areas where there is a significant shortage of new homes. That has to be a priority for Government, and if developers do not move forward within a time limit, they should not expect future permissions to be granted.

Secondly, I have looked carefully at the way councils base their housing needs, and it really is important that the Government are as certain as they can be on economic needs assessments. I am sorry to be technical here, but are we using the right data to project into the future? Covid has shown how behavioural needs and habits change in a very short space of time, and some of the projections will be based on population forecasts from 2014. Given that local plans will count for a further 20 years, anything we can do to update population forecasts should be considered; we should be using the latest census data from 2021.

During the local plan-making process, we also need a clear focus on prioritising brownfield and regeneration sites. In Warrington, our town centre is in a perilous state. Rethinking planning gives us the opportunity to redefine this space close to jobs and transport links, but where the local council has an opportunity to redesignate green belt—we know that this is something developers will push for—we need to ensure, in the plan-making process, that developers are challenged by planning inspectors to ensure that regeneration and brownfield sites are a priority.

Finally, I really want us to look very carefully at the way that we reform leasehold. There are so many in the leasehold sector who have been affected by long-term leasehold decisions, and this is something that the Government can do much more on.

Liverpool City Council

Andy Carter Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I would just like to say before I call any other Members that, although a number of individuals are under investigation, I understand that there have been no charges. There is therefore no sub judice involved, but I would caution Members not to compromise any of the ongoing investigations in anything they may or may not say.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con) [V]]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement today and welcome the steps he has outlined in relation to Liverpool City Council. I welcome the steps he is taking to preserve the good name of local government, too. I regularly hear from constituents with concerns about the level of commercial activity that councils are now undertaking. Does he agree with me that some of the transactions are incredibly complicated and well beyond what councils would have traditionally been involved in, and that external audit and public scrutiny need to be reviewed and greatly improved to protect taxpayers’ interests?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. We asked a lot of local councils, and we will do so once again as we come out of the pandemic. We want them to be regenerating town and city centres and investing in new housing, but we want them to do so carefully and not to invest in risky investments or transfer toxic assets from the private sector to the public sector. We have taken action as a Government through reforming the Public Works Loan Board. We are providing further guidance to local councils, including through the work of the report we commissioned from Sir Tony Redmond, to ensure that the sector improves the way it handles this situation. The allegations made against Liverpool City Council are of a different magnitude to the ones that we have seen in other parts of the country, so I do not want to draw direct comparisons, but there is more work to be done with some other local authorities as well.

Local Government Finance (England)

Andy Carter Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con) [V]]

Let me start by saying what an incredible job the people who work on the frontline of our local council services are doing. That includes Warrington’s binmen, social workers and environmental health teams—local people who have been supporting communities across Warrington South throughout the pandemic. I want to put on record my thanks for their efforts, because the last few times that I have spoken about the decisions taken by elected Labour councillors in Warrington, they have suggested that I am criticising the frontline efforts of the hard-working people who deliver our services. To be clear, those brilliant public sector workers have stepped up to support the most vulnerable people when they have needed it, and I thank them for their efforts.

In recent weeks, as well as dealing with the impact of covid-19, our council workers have also dealt with the fallout of Storm Christoph, with more than 700 homes flooded across the town, affecting homes in Dallam, Sankey Bridges and Lymm. There is no doubt that the challenge of dealing with the floods will be costly, and I am keen for the Secretary of State to look at how central Government can assist locally.

Let me turn to local government finances. I thank the Government for the assistance that they have given to local authorities. During the current year, Warrington Borough Council has received £102 million from central Government, including support for businesses in our town. It is worth breaking that down: £32 million in business rates relief; £15.5 million pounds in additional un-ringfenced support for the council; £1.6 million in council tax hardship funding; £1.14 million for test and trace; £4.76 million for infection control; £400,000 for emergency accommodation funding; and £580,000 for the covid winter grant scheme to help fund families and those on free school meals during the holidays. The list goes on. The Government are backing councils with the resources that they need during this challenging period.

For the year ahead, Warrington will see a real-terms increase in its spending power of 4.5%. There is an additional £6.7 million for Warrington Council, but, quite rightly, it is down to local councillors to decide how much they want to raise in council tax each year. They are elected and they hold the tax-raising powers.

Let us just go back to 2015-16, long before covid hit. The average council tax band D property in Warrington was paying £1,206 a year. The average band D figure for 2021-22, which has just been agreed by the council, will be £1,565. That is just short of a 30% increase over the period. That is an extra £360 per household for a band D home in Warrington, before police and fire precepts are added. Under Labour in Warrington, we have seen an almost 30% increase in council tax. At the same time, some Conservative Councils are freezing council tax again. At every opportunity, Labour says that it is down to the Government that council tax has increased so significantly, but we know that that is simply not the case. Local councillors decide the services to be delivered and local levels of taxation, and Labour authorities are past masters at putting up council taxes.

In the time remaining, I will turn to a number of other concerns regarding local government finance in Warrington. As the Secretary of State will know, Warrington Borough Council’s statement of accounts is yet to be signed off by the independent auditor. I refer not to the current year, which is due to end shortly, nor to the previous year, nor, for that matter, to the year before that; the statement of accounts in Warrington has not yet been signed off for 2017-18, due to an objection over a £30 million investment in Redwood Bank. Despite promises after promises, there are still technical issues as to why Grant Thornton has not signed those statements off. We do not know those technical reasons, and I have lost count of the number of times that we have had promises that the statement of accounts will be signed off.

There is increasing concern locally that public money is being used for commercial purposes and it is not being used in a transparent way. That is not a good thing. It is not a plc with shareholders; it is a local council, and the risks are borne by local people. We also have not seen the full report from the auditor who investigated the objection that was raised by a member of the public about that £30 million investment. The council could choose to make it public, but so far it has not done so.

Before Christmas I raised my concerns about the level of borrowing by the council to invest in commercial ventures. Those concerns have not gone away, with £1.3 billion borrowed, at preferential rates, to purchase commercial property, invest in an energy company and buy a solar farm. The uncertainty caused by covid confirms the need for new measures to restrict and monitor these investment activities. Analysis by the TaxPayers Alliance shows yields well below forecast for a sample of local authorities that have been down this route. There are no guarantees with any of these investments. Today we may well find that there are no shortfalls in income in Warrington, but there are no guarantees as we navigate our way through the rocky times ahead. They will continue to deliver and ultimately it is down to ratepayers, who will end up footing the bill for underperforming portfolios.

Perhaps one of the most frustrating elements of the level of borrowing is that services such as Broomfields leisure centre in Appleton, which is in such an awful state, are not able to reopen, yet at the same time money is being spent on a superstore in Salford and a new set of council offices in Time Square—a project that was originally priced at £107 million, but finally came in at £142 million.

Building Safety

Andy Carter Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Actually, the Government acted decisively in the immediate aftermath of Grenfell Tower. Expert opinion has evolved over time. The first expert advice that the Government received was, as I said earlier, to focus on ACM cladding—the type of cladding on Grenfell Tower—and on those buildings over 18 metres. We put in place the funding to do that where the building owners and the industry were not able to, or would not, pay themselves. The expert advice then said that there were other materials that were somewhat less unsafe but which, none the less, still could be unsafe. That work is under way, and the Chancellor gave an extra £1 billion to do that at the Budget a year ago. Now, we have brought forward this very substantial intervention today. We are working intensively and extensively to tackle the issue, and I hope that today’s intervention will be a permanent and lasting settlement.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con) [V]]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement on building safety. Warrington does not have any apartments over 18 metres, which would require remediation, but I have heard from a number of parents concerned that their sons and daughters are paying additional charges, levied by landlords, to cover the cost of insurance and waking watches in apartments that they have purchased. What steps are the Government taking to cover these costs, so that the burden does not fall on families in my constituency?

[Robert Jenrick]

The announcement that we have made today and the work that the Chancellor and I have done with each of the major retail banks, which strongly support the intervention, give much greater confidence to lenders, surveyors and insurers to re-enter the market, to bring down those premiums, to lend against these buildings and to enable the market to move forward again. This will take time and there is more to be done, but I think we will see the market moving forward now in a way that it has not done in recent months.

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Andy Carter Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I join the right hon. Gentleman in thanking and praising the staff of his local council and wishing Mr Collins a happy retirement. With respect to the balance of funding across the country, I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman is mistaken. This settlement will ensure that funding is there for all councils in all parts of the country. We have taken particular care to address the issue that he raises. In fact, County Durham will receive £5.2 million in equalisation payments. That will ensure that it has a 4.5% cash and real-terms increase in core spending power, which comes on top of a 7% increase last year—very substantial increases to ensure that his constituents get good-quality public services.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, and particularly the review of the effectiveness of local authority external audits. Warrington Borough Council’s accounts dating back to 2017-18 still have not been signed off. Given the recent news from Croydon Council, which was effectively declared bankrupt when it issued a section 114 notice last month, does he share my concerns about Labour-controlled Warrington Council, which has debt of around £1.6 billion? Similarly to Croydon, it has used the funds to purchase a shopping centre, offices, a bank and—guess what?—an energy company. Does he agree that it is time for a Government inquiry into the level of council borrowing, which puts local services at risk and loads huge debt on to council tax payers such as my constituents in Warrington South?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We all want to see councils have access to funding at low interest rates to fund housing and regeneration within their own boundaries. We do not expect local councils to indulge in risky financial ventures, either within their own area or beyond. That is a mistake. Many local councils quite clearly do not have the financial management skills to do that. My hon. Friend highlights at least two egregious examples of that, in Nottingham and Croydon. Warrington may well be another; I will look it up myself after this statement. We need to bear down on those councils that appear to be using taxpayers’ money as if it were Monopoly money and respect the individuals who actually pay the bills at the end of the day.

Planning for the Future

Andy Carter Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) on securing this debate. We appear to have a bit of a zoning theme in the way that this debate has been scheduled. We have had the south-west and we are in the north now. Now we are up north, we will talk proper and get this debate sorted.

I am sure most of us in this place will agree that our planning system has been in need of urgent reform for some time; the disagreement is about how we actually do that. The speed at which we need to level up and the changes we need to see—the changes that voters backed a year ago—mean that we need to start to do things differently. Many of the issues that are relevant today—the technologies we use and the way we live our lives—have evolved, and that needs to be reflected in planning legislation. There is no doubt our planning system is far too complicated, driven in part by the litigious nature of developers, and that has been a barrier to building the homes people need to see and getting them in the right places.

That is exactly the case in Warrington, where the borough council has spent the past five years producing a plan, largely ignoring 4,000 responses to consultations, and still we have no plan available for inspectors to review. We are now told we will not have one until at least the summer of next year.

Many of the proposals put forward by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government back in August are a welcome step. They lay the foundations for a brighter future. It is about providing affordable homes for young people and creating a better quality of neighbourhood right across the country, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) said, it is also about getting the detail right in the legislation. That is why I am so pleased we have the consultation at this stage, so we can bring those issues forward to the Minister to address.

I want to reflect on the proposed submission version of the Warrington local plan, which expected growth above anything previously achieved, with little evidence to support that expectation. To me, that highlights why we need some of these changes. The scale of new development being proposed in Warrington meant that large areas of the green belt, particularly across my constituency of Warrington South, were to be released for development. That is where the current Labour local council plan gets it so wrong. It concentrated on placing new development on the green belt and previously undeveloped sites, rather than providing for regeneration and redevelopment of a town centre massively impacted by years of neglect. While the council needed to reflect Government requirements for the assessment of the number of new homes to be built, the figure they used in the PSV exceeded all national requirements and proposes housebuilding at a level never, ever previously achieved in Warrington.

The plan does not address more obvious housing needs, but instead proposes large new suburbs and urban extensions, and there is no clear plan as to how developers would be required to deliver the type of housing in the right places of the town that would most benefit existing residents. In short, the number of homes does not make sense, but the location of the new houses is even less understandable.

Frustratingly, the largest brownfield site in Warrington—one of the largest brownfield sites in the north-west of England—the Fiddler’s Ferry power station, which closed earlier this year, has not been included in a plan that extends for the next 20 years. It even has its own rail line, which would satisfy some of the issues that we need to address in how we move around the country. It would allow us to retain some of the green belt, but it has not been considered.

On the back of the planning reforms, I am pleased to see that Warrington borough council will be pausing its work on the local plan, looking again at the homes we need and making a fresh assessment of the opportunity to redevelop our town centre and use brownfield sites. I have a request for the Minister: can we have some clarity soon on the housing numbers? The proposal in the White Paper will actually reduce the number of homes being built in Warrington, so I am perhaps one of the few people in this place who really like the algorithm—it is doing the right thing, and I thank the Minister.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I particularly welcome my hon. Friend’s making that point. It is the understanding that building houses in the right places is the most suitable point to go back to our constituents with. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Andy Carter]

Absolutely. It is about getting the right types of homes in the right places. Land designated for growth will allow new homes, schools, shops and hospitals to be built quickly, and we need that levelling up to happen urgently. Getting the right places is the most important thing.

The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), and I think also the hon. Member for Richmond Park, talked about how local councils are best placed to try to work these things through. I have to say that is not the case in Warrington. The local Labour council ignored all the Liberal Democrat councillors, who argued that it was building in the wrong places. I am afraid that the very simple system that we have at the moment is broken and needs to be fixed.

I welcome the new planning system. There are a lot of good elements in the proposals, but it will come down to the detail. I look forward to continuing the conversation with the Minister, who has been so good in responding to the issues that have been raised with him.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Last but not least from the Back Benches, Ms Felicity Buchan.

Towns Fund

Andy Carter Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I already responded at departmental questions that the question of Barnettisation of the fund will be a matter for the spending review. The hon. Gentleman I think said erroneously at departmental questions that it had taken us a number of weeks or even months to respond to him. That was not the case; actually, we responded immediately to his question at the previous departmental questions. I am happy to resend him a copy of that if he seems to have mislaid it.

With respect to the hon. Gentleman’s wider questions, I have already answered that we followed a robust procedure. That has been set out by the Department. My permanent secretary, in giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, made that abundantly clear.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con) [V]]

May I congratulate Warrington’s town deal board, which is cross-party, private and public sector, for its tremendous collaboration in securing £22 million for this area? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the shadow Communities Secretary, who pretends to be concerned about taxpayers’ money, should look closer to home, where his friends in Croydon have bankrupted the local council through terrible investment and financial mismanagement?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. If we are looking to the shadow Secretary of State as the guardian of value for money and the Exchequer, I think the public will be sorely disappointed. It is probably about time that he spoke out about the activities of Croydon Council. Croydon Council’s mismanagement of public money has been, frankly, catastrophic and shocking. Who will lose out as a result? It will be the people of Croydon, who will see their services reduced and will have to deal for years to come with the toxic legacy of a Labour council that the shadow Secretary of State has fastidiously supported.