Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, we all know that 14 years of austerity have left local government on its knees and, in many cases, reduced local government to little more than an agent of the Westminster Government. Huge percentages—almost all spending—are forced to go on statutory measures: that is, what is decided here in Westminster, not what is decided in local communities. Can the Minister tell me, either as a percentage or as a figure, how much extra money will be available in this financial settlement to local councils to spend on the non-statutory elements of their duties, such as protecting local green spaces, supporting and funding local libraries and looking after the local public realm rather than having to make expensive bids for pots of money to be able to improve it? How much non-discretionary money will be in this settlement?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point. I pay tribute to my colleagues in local government, who do an amazing job of continuing to deliver some non-statutory services in spite of the incredible financial pressures they have been under. For example, we still managed to keep a theatre open in my area. That happens all across the country, so all credit to local government for the work it does on this. The noble Baroness mentioned constant rounds of bidding for pots of funding. We think that is wasteful and unnecessary. It just sets authorities up against one another in competing for pots of funding. We will do our very best to get rid of that approach. As we develop the spending review proposals, we will build what local authorities need for the future into core funding.

Building Homes

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord. I gave an explanation of how we set the targets in response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson. The fact is that everyone and every area has to play a part in this if we are to deliver these challenging housing targets. It is important that the new formula takes account of affordability and the demand for housing in local areas. Where they have challenging targets, it is because there is a demand in those areas, including a demand for more affordable housing.

We all know that statutory consultees play an important role in the planning system, providing advice on technical matters to ensure that new development is good quality, safe and situated in the right place. It is important that statutory consultees play their role too, to ensure that the planning system supports the housing and infrastructure development that we need. We will work with them over the next year to achieve that. Part of our work on the new homes accelerator will be to look at the statutory consultees to try to understand why the delays have come into the system, in relation to the responses of statutory consultees, and to see how we can work with them to alleviate some of those blockages and barriers.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. My first question follows on from that of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and her focus on social housing and genuinely affordable housing. The Green Party has a target of 150,000 homes a year for that. This Statement is all about so-called affordable housing. Have the Government taken account of the housing Select Committee report from March this year, which looks at the increasing and deeply concerning problems with shared purchase, also known as “part rent, part buy”? That is very much included in those so-called affordable targets. The report finds that

“rents, service charges, and the complexity of … leases make shared ownership an unbearable reality for many people”.

Will the Government take action to deal with this issue, which surely has to be a big part of the affordable housing target?

On the other side of the target issue, are the Government taking adequate account of the physical limits of this country? In Cambridge, a major development was recently turned down because there was no water supply. Many places are thinking about building on flood plains. The flood plain is not beside the river; it is part of the river. Where will we find suitable locations and how will we have the resources needed to make this possible?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness. She will know that we are working through a process—for example, some changes were made to leasehold arrangements. She is quite right to say that the tenure of a property is critical, and we do not want to trap people into tenures that cause them problems. We are working through the process of designing a new Bill on commonhold. Where there are issues with shared ownership, we will look at them. We are trying to eradicate some of the more knotty issues people have had with that type of property ownership. Sometimes people think that they are buying a home, but some elements of leasehold tenure mean that they do not have the ownership of the property that they thought they were buying into. We are very aware of that and have taken account of it, and we will work on that further in the new year as we make our way towards the new commonhold Bill. There will be plenty of opportunity to comment on that as we go through the process.

I turn to the physical limits that the noble Baroness described. I made two recent visits to Cambridge: one to visit the development forum of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and another to look at South Cambridgeshire. The great thing is that some very good and innovative solutions are coming up there to look at the water issues. That does not mean that that is everything we need to do, but solutions are coming forward. I do not have time to repeat it all now, but there is a big section in the report about flood mitigation and how we are tackling the issue of flooding. That is all contained in the new NPPF. I hope the noble Baroness will look at that. If she has further questions afterwards, she can by all means come back to me.

These problems are not going away. We need to be creative with the solutions we provide, because we have to build the homes that people need. I add that about 10% of the country is currently built on, while 13% is green belt. There should be land to build these houses on.

Housing Supply and Homelessness

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, for securing this debate, which has been so well attended by noble Lords.

When we talk about housing policy, what is really noticeable is that the Government’s focus is on supply. For the Green Party, the focus is on what kind of homes the homeless need and how they will get them. We can all agree that fixing the current crisis of homelessness is a crucial priority for our society. It not just the people we see right here on our doorstep, on the streets of Westminster and in the Tube stations, sleeping increasingly uncomfortably and at danger to themselves, as winter draws in. There are also—and what damage is this doing?—the families in temporary accommodation. For England, the numbers are at the highest level since records began 22 years ago, with a 15% increase in the year to June. There are also the young—and not so young—people forced to rent a room in overcrowded shared housing. They are inadequately housed, with no realistic hope of future improvement, as reluctantly tolerated couch-surfers or in homes with several households squeezed in to them.

Yet when we hear the Government talk about housing, the focus is always on housebuilding. The milestone that Sir Keir Starmer set out with much fanfare this morning was “building 1.5 million homes”. The talk was about foisting homes on unwilling communities, with planning “reform”, despite the fact that a third of homes receiving planning consent are not being built. That means that more than a million approvals handed out since 2015 have not resulted in homes. Had all those homes which were granted planning permission been built, the previous Government would have hit the target of 300,000 new homes a year in eight out of the past 10 years.

So why are these homes not being built? They are mostly large-scale schemes of a handful of mass-market developers, whose entire aim and whose legal responsibility to their directors is to maximise profit. Their responsibility is not to build homes. What generally makes the most profit? It is so-called executive homes, often free-standing and wasteful of the scarce resource of land, built to poor energy-efficiency standards on greenfield sites without public transport provision, and feeding into already congested roads. What will those do for the homeless people on our streets, for the families crowded horribly into B&Bs without housing facilities, and for young people who have moved back home with the family, for want of a rental deposit?

The Government are applying the theory that suitable housing will eventually trickle down to those who need a decent, secure and affordable place to live. But, just as trickle-down economics has been a total failure, so has trickle-down housing policy. We need to build, or repurpose and refurbish, genuinely affordable and high-quality homes close to transport and other facilities, that meet the needs of people rather than focus on the profit for the market.

Of course, relying on an underregulated and non-competitive monopoly in the private sector to supply housing has not resulted just in a failure of housing numbers. The Grenfell tragedy exposed, in a huge disaster, the deadly failure of quality and safety. The campaign group End Our Cladding Scandal estimates that 600,000 people in Britain still live in homes at a heightened risk of a fatal fire, and 3 million own homes that they cannot sell, for fire safety reasons. Since Grenfell, more than 15,000 people have been forced to move out of their homes indefinitely.

What is the story behind that? I go to an account from James Meek in the London Review of Books of the now infamous Skyline Chambers in Manchester. The building was completed in 2007 by a company called Space Developments UK, which was bought by the multinational Ireland-based housebuilder McInerney. When it went down in the financial crash, Skyline was picked up from the creditors by Wallace, a company owned by an Italian investor sometimes styled “Count di Vighignolo” in official documents. It is a Cambridge-based network of companies owned by a Gibraltar-registered company, Perseverance Ltd, which in turn is owned by the Guernsey-registered Hauteville Trustees. That is what is supposed to supply housing.

What do we need to do to tackle homelessness to reshape our housing policy and our society, so that they work for people and the planet, rather than human needs and planetary essentials being ground down by the demand for profit? We need to shift our understanding to housing primarily as homes—affordable, secure and quality places for people to live—rather than simply as financial assets. We need to tackle the financialisation of our housing supply, just as we need to tackle the financialisation of our public services and our whole economy.

The Government are starting to demonstrate, just a little, that they realise that these old 20th-century economic models are not working. In Sir Keir’s speech this morning, we saw something of a shift, as previewed by Politico’s London Playbook, starting to realise that just talking about growth provokes the question: who is it for and who benefits from it? The same question must be asked about our housing supply.

High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I am afraid I bring a somewhat different perspective from that of the earlier speakers. It reflects the views that I presented in much discussion on the levelling-up Bill. The last thing our local communities, particularly the most disadvantaged, need is more meddling and more statutory requirements laid on them from Westminster, without the resources to deliver them. As the noble Lord, Lord Mair, pointed out, the Government are offering money to draw up the plans but not to deliver them. It is not within the power of your Lordships’ House to put down an amendment to demand that there also be funding from the centre, but, were it within our power, I would be very tempted to do so. I direct this comment particularly towards those on the Labour Front Bench: should they be in the position of implementing the Bill, I hope they would look at providing such a financial provision.

We need Westminster to get out of the road of local communities: to stop sticking its oar in and give people the power and resources to make decisions locally. One example from the framework of the Bill is that artificial time periods for review are set out here in Westminster, saying, “You will review this every five years”. But it may be that local circumstances are different: maybe everything is going swimmingly and everyone can see it, or maybe something is going wrong in another area and resources need to be moved. That is an artificial imposition from Westminster.

I note that we are in a situation where councils overwhelmingly need a long-term funding settlement—they face a £4 billion gap over the next two years—to protect their statutory services and to provide what is needed on the high street, such as cleaning and maintenance. They are under enormous pressure because there is simply not the money, and this is just one more imposition being laid on.

It is interesting to think about what the guidance will say. There is a question of powers but there is possibly some ability to use the guidance for an issue that was also raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mair: permitted development rights. Your Lordships’ House has heard from two noble Lords not currently in their place—the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Crisp—who highlighted the terrible nature of the housing that has been developed under permitted development rights. Some 100,000 dwellings have been created since 2013, but many lack fire safety standards, adequate ventilation and natural light—imagine housing without natural light. They do not have the facilities, such as schools and health facilities, that are needed. The Government have ruled out giving councils control over this within these zones, but is it possible to put anything in the guidance that might help to address this issue?

I will particularly focus on privatisation, because public land ownership in Britain is in crisis. Since the late 1970s, half of all of what was public land has been sold off: 2 million hectares in total, or 10% of Britain’s total land area. Can the Minister—or the Labour Front Bench in the future—comment on whether the Government would consider making a recommendation in the guidance that there be no further privatisation of public space in these high street plans? That is absolutely crucial to our politics.

I am going to declare an interest here, because I believe that our high street should be a place of political activity —something that privatisation has often led to the exclusion of. My declaration of interest is that I was with Occupy London on day one, when it was driven out and unable to occupy what many people think of as a public space, Paternoster Square—a long-term historic political space in London. Now, of course, it is owned and managed by the Japanese group Mitsubishi Estate, which was able to close that square off, and Occupy London ended up in front of St Paul’s instead.

I hope that we might see some guidance on this. I hope that we might also see in the guidance whether the Government are going to provide all kinds of prescriptions to make sure that we protect small independent businesses against large multinational companies.

Finally, I will put on the record that I did really struggle with this—but eventually I decided that, however limited and controlling from Westminster it is, it provides a little bit more in the way of resources to local councils. So it is not my intention to seek to slow the progress of the Bill, despite the very deep concern of the Local Government Association and local authorities.

Traveller Site Fund

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Bourne for all his work when he was a Minister in my position. I do not have an update on the Bourne review, but I will certainly write to the noble Baroness and the House with an update on it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, next month is Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month, and I hope that all Members of your Lordships’ House will take the opportunity to learn a little more about the many centuries of history of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people in the UK. In that light, I am sure that the Minister is aware of the High Court judgment this week against the Police Act 2022 that said that 12-month bans from an area for Gypsy and Traveller people were incompatible with Article 14 rights within Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Noble Lords may remember that a significant number of your Lordships’ House voted against that provision in the Police Act. There now has to be a legal review. Can the Minister tell me what the Government’s plans are for it?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No. That is a very recent decision. I do not know that there are any plans but, certainly as soon as we have them, I will let the noble Baroness know.

Representation of the People (England and Wales and Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to welcome my noble friend Lady Scott, back to her position. We have missed her through many SIs that we have discussed in this Room at different stages, and we are pleased to see her back. That is particularly so, because a number of people in this Committee, not least my noble friend Lady Scott, as well as the noble Lords, Lord Rennard and Lord Khan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, helped me to pass the Ballot Secrecy Act through the Lords and the Commons. That Act was implemented for the first time at the elections on 2 May. Now that it has completed its course and been fully implemented, I express my appreciation to them for their involvement at one stage or another in achieving that legislation. I merely observe that, unfortunately, in my polling station there was no notice relating to the Ballot Secrecy Act, but I will live with that.

While that legislation was going through, I wrote to my noble friend the Minister, raising the question of comments made in a ministerial write-round. She said that she could not comment; I well understand that, and I do not expect her to do so now. However, in her absence—I am sure it is not because of it—I have since received clarification that the Electoral Commission’s counsel’s opinion was received by officials on 26 August, which was a month and three days before a ministerial write-round said that we had been given some “headline information”. However, I appreciate the clarification at last.

To come back to this SI, the noble Lords, Lord Rennard, Lord Wallace and Lord Khan, and I, met the new chief executive of the Electoral Commission a few weeks ago, and we discussed the sheer quantity of pages of statutory instruments that are being passed in relation to all elections law. This error—the Minister has acknowledged that it was an error, and that this is intended to put it put it right—indicates the sheer quantity of pages that one is dealing with. I make a request of whoever are the next Government: there is a desperate need for the consolidation of all electoral legislation. To be honest, it is a mess at the moment, which I think we all agree on. There may be slightly different interpretations on one or two matters, but there is no question but that elections law needs consolidation. In that meeting, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, identified that we had considered in Grand Committee some 1,100 pages of SIs arising out of the Elections Act. It is impossible to give adequate scrutiny to that sheer quantity of legislation, and much of it arises from the lack of consolidation.

I seek specific clarification in relation to the one point that I wanted to raise. I referred just now to the elections of 2 May but I think I heard the Minister identify that this did not apply on 2 May. I think I heard her refer to the date of 7 May in terms of implementation, in which case my supplementary question becomes otiose—that is, did it have any implications for 2 May? Can my noble friend confirm that she used that date? I conclude with that question.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, and I commend the enormous amount of work that he does in the whole area of electoral space.

It is customary to thank the Minister for explaining; on this occasion, I say that with particular passion, because this is a very complicated SI, and the circumstances that led to its being necessary were clearly very complicated. As the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, just said, that is a reflection of how difficult it is both for electoral returning officers, but even more so for voters or potential voters—people out there on the street—to understand what is happening.

I assume that this situation came to light when people were affected, so I wonder whether we know how many people were affected by the circumstance that this is correcting. Looking at the list of countries here—Malta, Cyprus, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Luxembourg and Ireland—when I knock on doors and note the view on the street, most people who are not engaged in day-to-day politics have a general view that “since Brexit, European citizens don’t have a vote”. I think that this view is very widely held. What will the Government do, with a general election forthcoming, to ensure that all those who have a right to exercise their vote, as residents of the UK with these various criteria, have a chance to know this as individuals and will encounter the right answers if they ask questions at their local council office or other relevant place?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do not know about “incorrectly registered”. I will take that back and look at the numbers but we have to accept that, in any democracy, some people just do not want to vote. I do not know whether noble Lords have been knocking on doors but I have; there are certainly people in this country who do not want to vote, for whatever reason. That impacts on us all as politicians and party members. We should encourage people to want to vote but, unfortunately, some people do not want to do so. We are not a country that forces people to vote.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I want to respond to that response. The Minister talks about knocking on doors. I am sure that we have all encountered people who think, “But I’ve got my driver’s licence and I pay my council tax. I must be registered to vote because I’m on the system”. Does the Minister acknowledge that significant numbers of people who would like to vote do not find a way to navigate the system—or, indeed, do not know that they have to navigate it until it is too late?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, I do not accept that. The Electoral Commission and the Government have always been out there advertising and promoting the need to vote in this country, as have the political parties. Since we have had to have voter ID, that has not seemed to be an issue; most people have it and know that they have only to go to their local authority to get a voter identity document if they do not. I do not think that that is the case; I think that some people do not want to vote.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee. From what the noble Lord has said, I realise that I probably should have said that I was a leaseholder when I spoke.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to offer Green support for this clear, obvious and essential amendment, which already has strong support across the Committee.

I want to pick up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, about how both buyers and sellers desperately need confidence and how that confidence is utterly lacking at the moment. A lot of our discussion has focused on the problem of estate management, where there are clear and obviously pressing problems, but to focus a little on sales of properties and the need for some oversight there, I note that, last year, trading standards warned that many agents were not passing on the best offers that they had received from purchasers, as they are legally required to do, because they were getting commission fees from mortgage brokers, solicitors, surveyors and other third parties. They were choosing to go with what would produce a better result for them but a lower price for the seller. The only way that this is generally uncovered is if the would-be buyer who did not succeed in purchasing the property happens to look at the Land Registry sales price, says “but that’s less than I was offered” and creates a fuss. That is a sign of just how utterly cowboy the current situation is without regulation.

A report out yesterday noted that for 34% of the “for sale” stock on some major websites there had been an asking price reduction. People often need to sell for all kinds of reasons—including divorce, bereavement or perhaps because they need more bedrooms for extra children. These are all stressful, difficult situations where delays can cause damage and create uncertainty. We have a cowboy situation out there, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, the people in the industry who want to do the right thing know that there are cowboys out there who are a threat to them. Therefore, the amendment is clearly essential to making our housing sector less of a cowboy environment than it is now.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I too support Amendment 94 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, which was so well outlined by him with his usual clarity and reason. It is an amendment that I was determined to put my name to, but its popularity was such that I was too late. However, I listened intently to the informed contributions from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and look forward to the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor. This will therefore be possibly my shortest and easiest contribution to the Bill, simply saying that, between them, the proposers have nailed this issue with an amendment that should be workable and which we hope that they will take forward on Report.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, listed the broad coalition of support for a regulator and indeed it appears that it is ready to go. This is something which the noble Lord has campaigned on for years. His report was widely accepted and praised for its thoroughness and its remarkably workable plan for the way forward, which he has stated in detail. Interestingly, the recommendations of his working group went much further than this amendment, so the movers of the amendment are being pragmatic and measured because they want to see change now—we support that.

I found the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, on redress, particularly interesting. It reminded us that, currently, regulation in the property sector is voluntary and sanctions are limited. This Bill will not change that enough. Do your Lordships not think it is shocking that anyone can set up a firm from their bedroom and very soon be handling hundreds of thousands of pounds of leaseholders’ and taxpayers’ money while being largely unaccountable to the leaseholders who, on the whole, do not choose them to manage their block or control their service charges? This cannot be right. An individual can set up in business as a property manager without any formal qualifications, experience or even insurance.

It seems shocking that there has been so much good legislation to protect much smaller sums, such as deposits for renters, but nothing to protect leaseholders’ funds. We have regulations and regulators for individuals and companies handling much smaller amounts of people’s money. Leaseholders are usually required by the terms of their lease to make advance payments towards the service charge and to contribute to a sinking fund or reserve fund. These sums can be substantial, especially if major works are planned, which is why we supported the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, earlier in the Bill on consultation on major works. The Federation of Private Residents’ Associations has asserted that there is no other area in the UK in which money is held by a third party that is not regulated—unless somebody can tell me otherwise. The federation suggests that moneys held by unregulated and unprotected third parties may well exceed £1 billion.

If we want to change the behaviour of such property agents, there needs to be a much more professional approach to training and development, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, exemplified well. Mandatory professional standards should be set, along with the oven-ready code of practice.

Even within the sector, the good guys—and there are good ones—do not want the rogues giving them a bad name and tarring everyone with the same brush. It is clear that the Government are procrastinating on this issue, so much so that several years after the report from the noble Lord, Lord Best, very little has happened. The fact that the Government have not taken the opportunity with this Bill to introduce relevant property agent regulations proves that they have probably yielded to the anti-regulation voices among their ranks, despite their acceptance in principle of the case for regulating property agents, which has also been accepted by the majority of interested and affected parties. We are all seeking a solution, and Amendment 94 is certainly worthy of consideration, and we urge the Government to give it that consideration. I look forward to the Minister’s reply and to Report, definitely.

Affordable Housing: Supply

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is an honour and a privilege to follow the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, whom I will call my noble friend because constructive, co-operative politics has to be the way forward in this changing, challenging world. I am delighted to congratulate her on her spectacular maiden speech. The voice of Wales has very definitely been heard, as it so often has been heard from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. The arrival of Doc Martens has been duly noted. We need to hear many more younger voices in your Lordships’ House, and I hope that she will not be the youngest Member for too long. She and her peers are the experts in the experience of being a young person in the world today. It is crucial, and I have no doubt at all that she will bring so much of that voice to us.

As we have just heard, and as the noble Baroness told the Times, she plans to stand up for the people of Wales. Of course, as a former chief of staff for Plaid Cymru in the Senedd, and having worked in the European Parliament, she brings great experience and knowledge from that. We are also talking, of course, about the balance of representation. In respect of gender, we are still a very, very long way from the 50:50 Parliament that the excellent campaign group of that name is calling for. There is also an issue about age. We desperately need these experiences. The newspapers have also got very excited about the noble Baroness’s desire—which I share—to replace your Lordships with an elected body. She, with greater cause than me, has great reason to ensure that she does not have a life sentence in your Lordships’ House.

I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, for giving us the opportunity to debate this absolutely crucial issue, and particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, commented, on the way the debate is titled in talking about “genuinely affordable housing”. That qualifier is needed because, of course, we now have something of a word soup of terms relating to the kinds of housing tenure. There is the Government’s term “affordable rent” and the related “intermediate rent”. Affordable rent was introduced in 2021, set at 80% of market rates, inclusive of charges. Intermediate rent is also available, but at levels of about 20% lower than the market rate, primarily to lower-income households in London and the south-east. We have the London living rent, introduced to help middle-income earners save for a deposit to purchase a house. We have shared ownership—a form of tenure that, all too often, we increasingly hear, is not so much a step up on to the housing ladder as a great weight around the neck of people who are unable to escape from service charges and unaffordable mortgages. We have the first home scheme—a kind of discounted market sale house offered at a minimum reduction of 30% against the market value. We have to hope that there are not too many people in the current level of mortgage rates who find that also a great burden.

We have to look at this in the context of how genuinely affordable housing rent—what has been termed a “genuine living rent”—can be calculated. The general rule is that households should not have to spend more than 30% of their monthly income on rent. That is in a broader frame of what is known as the 50:30:20 rule: households should be able to spend 50% of their income on their needs and 30% on their wants, and have 20% available for paying off a debt or saving. There are very few households in the UK today that are in that situation—the situation that we should actually aim for.

If we look at some figures from the National Housing Federation, we see that it estimates that by the end of the next Parliament, one in five households—more than 4.8 million households—will be forced to spend more than 30% of their income on rent. That is an increase of 30% on the figures now.

Of course, the other end of this rather disastrous housing pipeline is rough sleeping. We all see this every day—we see it on the streets around your Lordships’ House. There has been a 20% increase in rough sleeping in the last year, and 280,000 households in temporary accommodation.

I have done the depressing stuff; I want to focus on the positive—just a hint of what is possible. For this I am going to Lewes District Council, and Fort Road in Lewes. In 2020, the council took a disused council office building there and replaced it with an award-winning block of 13 council-owned apartments, providing safe, spacious, bright apartments with a very high level of building performance and a renewable energy strategy. Designed using fabric-first principles, they have a large solar photovoltaic array, with 13 individual domestic batteries. That means that the electricity costs are estimated to be 60% below the normal level. The house also, importantly, has fire safety features which are currently not required but are anticipated for the future, with fireproof materials and cutting-edge suppression systems. These are not only affordable quality homes but are very safe to live in—something we need to think more about.

I point to this because it is not simply a one-off. I go to announcements made by the Green leader of Lewes District Council, councillor Zoe Nicholson, who in March pointed out how the council has purchased brownfield land around the Peacehaven golf club and is hoping to also develop a council-owned brownfield site in Ringmer. Twenty-four homes will be built on the Peacehaven site and more homes on these other sites. The council is also looking at old garage sites: 11 locations that could see 45 new homes.

I focus on that because both the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Whitty, focused on a centralised, national approach to solving our housing crisis. There is no doubt that resources and changing regulations and rules need to come from the centre, but I argue that we need to resource local authorities to provide the housing they need in their local community according to their local desires, rather than having something enforced from the centre.

The need for change in the centre comes to one particular issue that I want to focus on in this speech, which is right to buy. That has been one of the enormous privatisations, continued over decades under Governments of different hues, that has done great damage to our national social structure and our communities, and continues to do so. I spoke about the exciting things happening in Lewes; similar things happened a few years ago in Norwich, in Goldsmith Street, where ultra-low-energy Passivhaus homes just outside the city centre were built in 2019 and won the RIBA Stirling Prize for architecture. However, after three years, the tenants have the right to buy, and it now looks as if Norwich will lose a number of those brilliant social homes to the private sector.

Of course, this has happened to 2 million homes since 1980. Norwich has more than 4,000 people on the waiting list, yet there and all around the country, we are still losing more social homes than we manage to build. I have a question for the Minister: what is the current rate of loss of social homes to right to buy? I also have a question that perhaps noble Lords on the Labour Front Bench might like to address: why do they not plan to abandon this disastrous policy of privatisation?

I come now to some of the other costs. I should perhaps declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Councils are spending £1.74 billion a year on temporary accommodation. This situation is a large part of what is driving councils towards bankruptcy. On LGA figures, 10,896 homes were sold in the last financial year under right to buy, and only 3,447 were replaced—a net loss of more than 7,000 homes. Since the scheme began, £7.5 billion has been handed out in discounts through right to buy.

I am not sure that many people know about this, but it is worth highlighting that, in desperation, Wandsworth Council in south-west London is offering £120,000 help to tenants to buy a house anywhere in the UK—or anywhere in the world—provided it is not a council property. The council is so desperate to save its homes that it is offering people this very large sum of money. I note that four in 10 of the homes sold off under right to buy are now owned by private landlords. I talked about the cost of temporary accommodation, but we also have the massive cost of commercial-level rents on what were council homes for which the state is having to pay housing benefit. This is, clearly, a disastrous policy.

We knew that from the start because the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, back at the origins of this policy, said that

“no single piece of legislation has enabled the transfer of so much capital wealth from the State”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/1/80; col. 1443.]

That is, under that ideology, a description of reducing the size of the state, but of course what we are actually doing is making all our communities and our societies much poorer.

What we should be doing is moving towards a housing policy that treats homes as comfortable, affordable, secure places to live, not primarily as financial assets. So my final question to the Minister is about community land trusts, co-operative housing and other alternative tenure models. I absolutely champion council housing, but there are other models that can protect communities from the government policy of right to buy. What are the Government doing to encourage them?

Impact of Environmental Regulations on Development (Built Environment Committee Report)

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Friday 19th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Best, with whom I usually agree, but on this occasion I am afraid that I will come to a point of disagreement. Yes, of course people need homes but they also need healthy homes, which requires those homes to be in a healthy environment. The level of pollution in our rivers means that that is just not available at the moment; you cannot have a healthy home without a healthy environment.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and his committee for this excellent report. I also thank him for this introduction to this crucial debate. I stress that what is clear from the whole report is that this is a failure over decades. I often hold the Government responsible for many things that they have done in the last 14 years; I do in this area as well, but the current mess we are in is not just this Government’s fault.

We are, as the noble Earl, Lord Russell, said, one of the most nature-depleted corners of this planet. We also have an enormous housing crisis, with both a lack of housing and its incredible cost. The Green Party says that we need the right homes in the right place at the right price. The part of that most relevant to this report is the right place, which means essentially a healthy place. To get to all those requirements, we need a total turnaround in policy.

I learned about extraordinarily bad planning in Australia, where there is no green belt. I grew up in Sydney, a city that just sprawls and sprawls, destroying everything in its path, so I really want to stress the value of the green belt. It is there to protect land but also to keep urban centres compact, close to public transport and shops, et cetera. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, referred to the potential biodiversity value of brownfield sites and we really have to take account of that. Those who are inventing a new term of “grey belt” might want to reflect on some of those issues.

I also want to refer to biodiversity offsetting, which I have debated with many other Ministers, so I will not go in depth on it now. But with the local elections approaching, I have been travelling around the country a lot by train recently. Looking out the window at new estates, with biodiversity net gains often being off-site, we are all too often looking at biological deserts—homes set on tiny pocket-handkerchief lawns, while for street after street there is not a tree or even a shrub to be seen. Increasingly, we know that that has massive negative impacts on human health.

For the next part, I should probably declare my position as vice-president of the Local Government Association to pick up the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about the resources available to local councils. I have to note the Government’s response to paragraph 59 of the committee’s report:

“A well-resourced local planning authority is crucial to the delivery of all planning functions”.


I can hear the hollow laughs in councils up and down the land at this moment. We know that local authorities have been starved of resources and of the power to make decisions.

I note also that paragraph 120 of the committee’s report states:

“Public bodies are facing challenges recruiting and retaining ecological expertise. It is necessary to bring expertise into the system through recruitment or training”.


Unfortunately, the Government’s response to that paragraph says absolutely nothing about education or training, yet there is an issue with green skills. When I talk to local councillors—noble Lords might be interested to know that 10% of councils in England have Greens as part of their administrations—they basically say that ecologists are like hens’ teeth. It is not that they are not trying to recruit them. These ecologists do not exist, and those green skills do not suddenly pop up out of nowhere. People need to be trained; I do not know whether the Minister is able to comment on that, but it would be very useful.

Finally, I have to come back to the Office for Environmental Protection’s report in January. I am sure that many noble Lords will say, and have already said, that we need housing, but we need a healthy environment for our people to live in. The Office for Environmental Protection said that the Government are well off track to meet their long-term water targets, that there are issues of water scarcity—to pick up what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said—and that there is not sustainable resource use. None of this is working and the answer is not just build, build, build; it is to build the right house in the right place at the right price. I look forward to the noble Lord’s maiden speech.

Building Safety

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I have numerous statistics in terms of the number of buildings that are involved in this programme. Of course, what we know is how many of those buildings over 18 metres are left without a programme or have completed their programme. Some 10 are left, and they all have programmes in place, so they will be completed as soon as possible. The highest-risk ACM cladding buildings are being dealt with, so we will get very close, in that 98% of them have now started or completed their works.

On buildings of lesser height, of 11 to 18 metres, because the fund was established only last July some of those buildings will not be known to us. We are still working on an estimated number for those requiring remediation. In England, that number is somewhere between 6,220 and 8,890. That figure is based on an estimation and, therefore, a methodology behind it. We expect those numbers to come forward as that fund is called on; as people utilise it to put pressure on the owners of those buildings to deal with this, we expect that number to rise.

I shall come back to the House regularly to update it on progress. We believe that pressure is the right way here, and pressure across the House is definitely the right way to keep up the work and get this done at pace.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister has indicated a number of times that the Government are focused on buildings over 11 metres in height and suggested that other buildings are not really a priority. Is she aware of the Moss Hall Grove fire in Finchley, north London, a few weeks ago, where four terraced houses went up in flames astonishingly quickly? There were 70 firefighters there and a significant number of engines had to be called to this blaze. Luckily, it happened at 10.30 am, so eight people were able easily to flee the circumstances, but this has led Barnet Council to recognise that there are significant problems particularly with timber-framed homes with plastic cladding on the outside. This one council in north London has identified 580 low-rise homes in need of urgent remediation. These are mostly 1930s to 1960s-built timber-framed homes with uPVC panels fitted in the 1980s. Are the Government looking into this issue? The identification of 580 homes in one London borough suggests a very large problem across the country.

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question; however, I do not have any data with me on that. I will make sure that the department looks into it and I will write to her with an answer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

Of the funds that have been made available, there are a number for different sizes of buildings; the fund for buildings between 11 and 18 metres was available from July last year. Therefore, from that perspective, everyone is open to being able to use them. Regarding how the issue sits as a priority, it certainly sits with me as a priority and, as a new Minister in the department, I will ensure that I do everything I can to monitor progress. The monthly data will be checked and we will put pressure not only on developers but on the enforcement side, with regards to the regulators and the local authorities working hand in hand.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I raise an issue relating to what has happened with high-rise buildings since the Grenfell tragedy. This week, the Independent reported that, in high-rise buildings that have been declared safe, substantial numbers of leaseholders and residents are seeing massive increases of up 1,000% in insurance premiums. To give an example, there is a one-bedroom flat occupied by a single parent and a baby where the insurance has gone up over two years from £274 a year to more than £2,600, making it essentially unaffordable. Will the Government look into why, if buildings have been declared safe, the insurance premiums are going through the roof? Surely risk to life and risk to the fabric of the building, which the insurance primarily relates to, have to be interrelated?

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

If there are instances where that is the case, then you can either work with our department, or directly through the Association of British Insurers to alert them to the fact that it is happening. There is an agreement with insurance companies that, if remediation work has been done, the insurance premiums should not be excessive.

With regards to other parts of the insurance market and those buildings which have not yet had full remediation work done, they are also expected to be working with residents to ensure that insurance is affordable. There is a fire-safety reinsurance facility led by the Association of British Insurers, which reinsurance brokers can utilise. There are a number of insurance-led schemes which are supposed to be helping. If noble Lords know of any instances where they are not, please let us know.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

Sorry, bear with me for a second. I need to go back to an earlier section—I have ripped all my papers out and therefore they are in the wrong place—to allow me to help the noble Lord.

The commitment made by the ABI and its members is that the premiums should reduce where buildings have completed remediation, or have achieved the PAS 9980-compliant external wall assessment, and have therefore shown a reduction in risk. We are working with the insurers to build a better understanding of these building standards, and we expect insurers to honour their commitments and ensure that premiums are fairly priced and appropriate to the level of risk after remediation.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Since there is time, I will follow through on that—for public information, really. If it is not happening, and if we have a case such as the one I cited, from £270 to £2,600, who does an individual or a campaigning organisation go to in the Government? What are the actual steps to say that this is not happening and the ABI is not delivering? What is the mechanism that can be implemented?

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

In the first instance, I suggest that they go to their insurance company directly and notify it of the requirement that this should be fair and assessed based upon the existing current risk rather than prior risk. If that does not yield results and the ABI is unable to help, I am more than happy, as the Minister here, to have those sent to me.