Baroness Gardner of Parkes
Main Page: Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Conservative - Life peer)
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, it is excellent that this subject been brought to your Lordships’ House today. I cannot claim to know a lot about rural housing, but I do know a bit about housing as I served on my local council and, in the Greater London Council, I had quite a major responsibility for it. The points raised by the right reverend Prelate are fascinating and I should like to take up some of them.
I, too, am most concerned about the sustainability of replacements for properties that housing associations might be forced to sell. I noted that the words of the right reverend Prelate were very careful. I served a long time ago on the Sutton Hastoe Housing Association. Indeed, it was there that I first met the noble Lord, Lord Best. I am delighted that he is speaking today because no one knows more about the situation than him.
My only experience of rural housing is that I have had a shared home in a village in Oxfordshire for more than 30 years. We have quite an interesting history, in that in the first instance five or perhaps seven small homes were built and no one wanted them. It was quite difficult to fill them, whereas more recently and currently everyone wants more housing for the people who were born and brought up in the village, as they do not want to change their way of life or be forced to go far away. That is important. Another very good thing in that village is that the people are really consulting carefully about where would be the best places to have developments, and whether the place you would most like is available or not available. A great deal of thought is being given in these small villages to this situation.
On Right to Buy for housing association properties, I support the point that the right reverend Prelate made about the problem of affordable housing. I ask the Minister: what is affordable? What is affordable to one person is not at all affordable to another. Therefore, it is far too wide a phrase to say “affordable housing” and then clump a whole lot of things together that all come up as “affordable housing”. We need to think about that.
My uncle, who was the Premier of New South Wales—a Labor Premier, I regret to say—introduced the first affordable housing built on the fringes of Sydney. At the very beginning, the only way they could decide who was entitled was to draw names out of a hat, because huge numbers of people wanted these houses. They built them on a different basis: every penny you paid in rent went towards your eventual ownership of the property you lived in. It changed, and now the housing commission is a vast organisation. I have been out of touch with what has been going on there for 60 years, so I am reporting only on the very beginning of affordable housing in Australia.
On Right to Buy, in the GLC days I met with Mrs Thatcher when either the 1,000th or 10,000th GLC home was sold—I do not know which. The people who bought it were terribly pleased to be able to do so. The GLC officer said that this particular family had phoned every day for six months with a query or concern about what would happen when they bought their house. It was a very momentous thing for them.
I have only another minute to say something, so I cannot say very much. One very important point is that sinking funds are terribly important. If people have the right to buy they should also be helped to have the means to continue to live in the property.