Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Baroness Greengross Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 17th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Greengross (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register, including my positions as chief executive of the International Longevity Centre-UK and yet another vice-president of the LGA. I am also patron of the Associated Retirement Community Operators.

I am sure no one would argue that an effective and democratically based planning system is critical. As in so many policy areas, however, we are not starting from a level playing field. Equally, I am sure that the vast majority of people are convinced that we must do all we can to promote suitable, accessible housing, both for older people and for those with disabilities. Both groups need to be at the heart of the Bill.

I welcome the main aims of the Bill—to further strengthen neighbourhood planning, to boost the housing supply by identifying and freeing up more land to build homes on, to give communities more say and more certainty about where and when developments will take place, and to ensure that plans and policies address the strategic priorities for development of the area—but I have some reservations about some aspects of the Bill, and today I will concentrate my remarks on older people and their needs.

The huge savings in health and social care expenditure and the release of underused property, to say nothing about the huge environmental benefits for the people themselves through the provision of retirement housing, especially that which provides extra care, have been demonstrated time after time. For example, there is a real undersupply of housing with care, or retirement villages. Only 0.5% of people over the age of 65 live in such a community, compared with 5% in countries such as New Zealand or the United States. If we are to get to only half the levels seen in those countries by 2030, we would have to build around 250,000 new units. The Bill gives us the opportunity to get somewhere towards this goal.

I warmly commend the work already carried out on the Bill by the Member for South Cambridgeshire in another place, Heidi Allen, who pressed the issue. I believe the Government, to their credit, have accepted the basic principles in her arguments, and we may hear more from them in Committee. But it is difficult to determine the full implications of some of the Bill’s clauses since much is apparently to be determined in regulations. For this, as in so many other matters, can the Government publish those regulations very quickly, so that we can properly scrutinise what is proposed?

I fully understand that the National Planning Policy Framework requires local planning authorities to plan for a suitable mix of housing types and tenures, including those for older people. At present, it is for those authorities to determine the level of provision, based on identifiable need. Land values obviously have a big part to play in the viability of such provision, and the Housing Commission of the LGA has called on the Government to establish clear, robust and transparent procedures to help manage this situation and ensure the delivery of affordable housing and the infrastructure needed to make such developments viable.

We need to do something and we need to do it now. Putting action off will not make the solution easier. Current estimates show that in the housing-with-care sector there could be a shortfall of some three-quarters of a million units by 2025. To fill that would mean that around a half of all new homes built in the next decade would need to be housing with care or other types of retirement housing. This would help everyone by releasing a huge number of conventional units back into the mainstream housing market, making affordable housing available, particularly to the young.

It is absolutely essential that if any of this is to work appropriately, local plans must take into account, properly and fully, the change in housing needs caused by rapid demographic change. Housing with care is a very important element of housing for older people, and a sector that is massively underserved relative to need. At present, there is a huge gap between need and provision. These developments are fundamentally different from other provision. Unlike general housing, they have considerable communal and non-residential space: lounges, restaurants, libraries, fitness facilities and so on. The residents are no longer on their own and can access all the benefits when and if they require them. This means, however, that fewer units can be provided in the same area of development, which can make it very difficult for housing-with-care providers to compete on an equal footing when it comes to bidding for sites.

In general, unfortunately, the planning landscape for such developers can also be hostile. Added to this is the fact that many local authorities, apparently, still seem to fail to grasp the hugely important social benefits of housing with care to older people and to young people seeking somewhere to live. It is for this reason that I would like to go further and explore in Committee the possibility of placing a duty on local authorities to plan and quantify the need for and provision of this type of specialist housing when they prepare their local plans, and for them to have an obligation to ensure that every housing planning approval has a record of the fact that this has been taken into account when considering and granting permission. This could possibly best be secured in an appropriate form through the forthcoming White Paper, which, as we know, is due shortly.

Many older people are empty-nesters or alone, and thus their current property is too big for them, making simple maintenance and gardening tasks seem very daunting or expensive. So for them downsizing makes a lot of sense, but to date most people are reluctant to consider it as emotional ties, familiarity and fear of the unknown very often rule it out. As a result, the demand for downsizing remains poor, but the promised White Paper on housing presents an opportunity to help resolve the housing shortage by getting into the market, for occupation by families, houses lived in by just one or two older people. Analysts say this could free up 2.5 million homes in the UK. The White Paper could contain incentives to downsize, including things such as stamp-duty relief, relocation assistance or help-to-move loans, which I understand might even be a welcome possibility.

Some mention has been made of the difficulty of defining what is meant by an older person. I do not think this is really beyond the capability of specialist lawyers or of something along the lines of the independent Cridland review into amending the state pension age as life expectancies change, but in any case, there is already a minimum age for occupying retirement housing. Perhaps this is an issue to look at in Committee, because I feel that merely strengthening planning policy and guidance in the way that is currently suggested is insufficient to bring about the changes that we need and desire.

No one would deny that planning has an essential role if we are to provide more housing of any sort, but the more that I listen to the debate, not just this evening but over the years, I am getting increasingly worried that we are moving more and more to a position where proper planning is seen as the key to proper housing provision. I would like to know how much research is being done into why there is a shortage of housing stock. Clearly the availability of sites to develop is critical, but is that the only thing standing in the way of adequate provision? Why are houses not built in adequate numbers? If all the permissions that have been granted already but not yet implemented were implemented, there would be an enormous spurt in the number of houses available. Do we know if there are other factors? Is it the tax system, a shortage of labour or even a shortage of material? We know that recently there was an acute shortage of scaffolders and scaffolding generally. We need to know the answers to this. Unless it is investigated, we may end up with a better planning regime but similar housing problems, so these things need to be looked at.

As I said earlier, there are huge benefits for all of us in an adequate supply, not merely for the users of retirement and extra care housing but for all of us, old and young. Anything that can reasonably make this more achievable should be one of our key priorities.