Housing and Planning Bill

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)]

My Lords, I should remind the Committee that if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 62 or 62A by reason of pre-emption.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of this group of amendments, and specifically to Amendment 62. I and my colleagues remain totally opposed to the sale of high-value council properties in order to subsidise the right-to-buy discount for a small number of lucky housing association tenants who may well qualify for the right-to-buy scheme. We are not opposed to housing association tenants having the opportunity to buy their homes, but this should not be at a cost to council tax payers in general. The way the Government have constructed the calculations on the sale of high-value housing is nothing short of a tax on local authorities which is neither transparent nor equitable.

For the vast majority of councils, selling off their high-value homes will mean that they are unlikely to be able to discharge their duty to rehouse larger families. It is not the case that every area has a stock of homes in conservation areas, or in areas where house prices are beyond the reach even of the council officers. We heard from my noble friend Lord Greaves earlier in Committee about the prices the houses in his area are likely to fetch.

--- Later in debate ---

As part of the data-collection exercise, we have asked local authorities to tell us not only the market value of each house but the number of bedrooms. We are intending that the formula for high value will estimate the number of homes of one, two, three and four bedrooms that fall above the threshold. Specifically, we will set out the different monetary thresholds for what constitutes high value for homes of different bedroom numbers. For example, the threshold that applies to a one-bedroom property will be completely different from that which applies to four-bedroom homes. The result of this is that in general the threshold for larger properties will be set higher than if we had set one threshold that would apply to all properties regardless of the number of bedrooms. It also means that we are not just looking at vacant larger homes, which would by their very nature be the most expensive, but are determining high value separately from the number of bedrooms.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville]

Could the noble Baroness say whether this will take into account regional and area variations in the price of properties?

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Can the Minister also tell us whether all this information—and as a result, the Government’s estimate of the size of the levy and the contribution to be made by local authorities, according to their turnover and so on—will be available before we get to Report?