Housing and Planning Bill

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Lords Chamber

We need a mixed economy of housing provision. We need good local authority housing, good social housing, good private rented housing and as much affordable owner-occupied housing as can be provided. We are moving away from that mixed economy, and I very much hope that your Lordships’ House will encourage the Government to get back on track.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, graphically described why we need more social housing in this country. For one thing, it is to help the very poorest in society. I fear that the Bill will do nothing to help those people. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and my noble friend Lord Beecham described how the buying of starter homes will essentially help only those who ultimately could have afforded to buy those homes on the open market anyway. It will merely exacerbate the growing inequality in our society. Until I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, that element of growing inequality as a consequence of the Bill had not touched me too much. Now, I am thinking, “Oh my God! It is even more important that we do something about this Bill”. It is absurd that a housing Bill could add to the inequalities in this country.

In response to a consultation on proposed changes to the NPPF, the Gloucestershire Rural Housing Partnership said:

“Starter homes is a short-term attempt to implement a corrective measure to the housing market. It is unlikely to be sustainable or affordable for the Government in the long term and may not be attractive for all developers”.

It asks:

“Will demand for housebuilders’ standard first-time buyers product be negatively affected by starter homes production levels?”.

I would say that the promotion of new homes across all tenures would be a much more sustainable policy for the Government, housing associations, local councils, communities, individuals and the country as a whole.

Have the Government considered the impact if starter homes replace affordable housing on a huge number of new sites? There may be no Section 106 affordable rent or shared ownership homes provided by developers in future. Have the Government thought about that? My own housing association says:

“Developers’ appetite for starter home delivery remains to be seen, since it goes up against Help to Buy product, and developers like the fact that they can pre-sell affordable homes at a guaranteed price to a housing association, accounting for 30% or 40% of the total number of homes built on the site, giving them certainty of sale, less risk and a good cash flow”.

The Bill, as we have heard so many times, will ensure that starter homes come ahead of affordable homes in the provision of housing in future, yet surveys undertaken in Gloucestershire reveal that the majority of need in rural parishes is for affordable rented homes. As so many have said, if we want sustainable communities with shops, schools, pubs, et cetera, we have to have homes where people can live. Often, they cannot afford to buy them, so we have to have good social housing.

In 1980, 24% of rural homes were affordable. That figure is now 8%. That compares with 19% in urban areas—although of course I accept that the situation in London is very difficult, and very different. But I suggest that that difference between urban and rural areas, and the fact that the Government have not really taken that into consideration, demonstrates the fact that this Bill has sadly not been rural-proofed as it should have been, and as every piece of legislation should be.