Housing: Affordability

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. No one could have introduced it in a more authoritative or measured way than my noble friend, who has been so instrumental in showing us the way forward. As she spoke, the facts of the present Government’s housing policy appear only starker in my eyes. Consensus is that they are facing the wrong direction. I am sure that the Minister will tell us of the raft of initiatives on the demand side that the Government are putting in place, but she is sensible enough to know that that will not do anything to address affordability, accessibility or housing market failure.

The fact is that, if the Government are serious about housing supply—it is very good to have the reference to the Barker report, which set the foundations a decade ago for very clear thinking—they have to be serious about an investment strategy based, first, on proper assessments of housing need across the country, linked to labour markets and local economies across boundaries, and having a planning system that enables that. As one example of what has been lost in recent years under this Government, the chair of the South West Housing Initiative told the inquiry chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that,

“since the abolition of the regional spatial strategy housing target, planned new housing in this most stressed of regions”—

that is, the south-west—

“has been cut by 81,000”.

I do not know what it takes by way of evidence to convince the Government that they cannot rely on private housebuilders to supply the 240,000 homes that are needed. Clearly, the housebuilders themselves do not have the conviction that they can do that. They know that they do not have the scope, the competitive conditions or the incentives to step up to the scale of what is needed. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Best, will tell us about the challenges facing the housing associations following the welfare changes.

To compound all that, there is evidence that the local planning system is being increasingly driven not by local plans but by the high emotions of national policy and the appeals system. The Government complain that the planning system is not delivering when, in fact, 400,000 planning permissions have been granted for houses which are waiting to be built out. However, more insidious at the moment is how the local planning system is being undermined in two directions. A quarter of local authorities cannot show a five-year supply of land and, therefore, their local plans are out of date and they are in thrall to the development priorities of the National Planning Policy Framework. At the same time, even where there is a local plan in place, there is increasing evidence that the Planning Inspectorate is overturning local decisions because they are not delivering enough development. Endless appeals, constant uncertainty and longer delays mean fewer houses which are agreed by the local community. I should be very grateful to the noble Baroness if she could tell me how many local decisions have been overturned by PINS in the past five years, so that we can get some notion of trend here.

The tragedy is that the local authorities are the answer, but in order to become the answer the Government have to respond to some common-sense appeals—from the housebuilders as well as everybody else—not to limit but to remove the housing borrowing cap. Local authorities can then build 60,000 houses a year. We should get rid of the archaic arrangement whereby the HRA is still on the public books.

As regards what my noble friend said about new towns and land supply, my goodness I do not want to pile agony on the Liberal Democrats this week but what confusion there is. Who wants new towns? The Prime Minister wanted them at one time. Now he appears not to want them. The Deputy Prime Minister is desperate for them, but a report has been produced which has been hidden. The Communities Secretary says that he would like a couple of garden cities and that he does not know where the report is. He thinks that it is in another department. Will the noble Baroness please clarify the confusion that surrounds this policy? We would all be very grateful for that.