Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Gardner of Parkes and Lord Kerslake
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, I seek clarification on this amendment, in particular the phrase “the same tenure”. I thought that tenure meant how a property is occupied, whether it is freehold or leasehold, but the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said in his speech that the property should be the same size. I thought that that was rather different from the tenure.
I particularly want to ask about this because I took a little time out of the previous session of our debate on the Bill to go to a meeting of the British Property Federation in the House. A person who spoke at that meeting said that the federation was very much in support of build to rent and that hundreds of millions of pounds were available for that. He seemed to think that this would be a way to deal with the housing problem. These people already have the land, along with hundreds of millions of pounds that they would be putting in. Does the noble Lord think that local authorities could work with a scheme like this? Is it a possibility that should be considered?
Lord Kerslake
My Lords, the noble Baroness has raised two important points. What I am seeking to say in my amendment is actually related to tenure—retaining the same tenure. That goes to the point I made that the position in terms of access to social rented properties is different from access to market rent and market sale. As we have touched on in previous debates, if a social rented property is replaced with, let us say, a starter home, the people who can access those two different types of homes are very different in terms of their incomes and situation. Of course, it would be desirable in my view that wherever possible, a property is replaced in the same neighbourhood and is of the same size, but I recognise, in the spirit of some flexibility, that it would be very hard to specify to that level of detail. In the circumstances, it is reasonable to look at whether it is possible, where practical, to achieve the same tenure.
The noble Baroness also raised the question of build to rent. I am a strong supporter of this as a new mechanism of supply. But the whole point about build to rent is that it is market rent; it is not the same as affordable rent. What we need is more houses of all types and tenures. We need more houses for sale, more houses for market rent, more houses for shared ownership, and we need more affordable rented properties. It is not any single one of the above; it is all of them. Market rent is a very powerful mechanism for driving new supply, but it is for a particular income group which is not the same as social rented.