Renters (Reform) Bill

Debate between Baroness Swinburne and Lord Khan of Burnley

2nd reading
Wednesday 15th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I will check that but my notes tell me that it is six months before they can serve their notice.

I reassure the House that we are exploring potential exemptions to this six-month period in extreme circumstances, such as where there are serious health hazards, the death of a tenant, for victims of domestic abuse, and other such important issues. We will bring these forward as the Bill progresses.

With regard to domestic violence, as many noble Lords raised, we recognise that domestic abuse can be interpreted as anti-social behaviour by neighbours—for example, frequent shouting and intolerable noise. It would be wrong to evict victims, which is why it is important that the judicial discretion is used in ground 14 eviction cases. To consider eviction would be a reasonable step in these circumstances.

Many noble Lords raised the issue of a longer notice period for possession grounds, and powerful arguments for that have been made today. However, we believe that the notice periods for the grounds are set at a length which balances the needs of both tenants and landlords. They give tenants time to find a new home while ensuring that landlords can manage their assets when they need to.

Noble Lords have called specifically for tenants to be protected from the moving and selling ground for a longer period at the start of their tenancy, and we are already protecting tenants’ security by ensuring that landlords will not be able to use these grounds in the first six months of a tenancy. We believe that six months strikes the right balance between improving security and, of course, allowing landlords to continue to feel confident in the market.

The Government are committed to preventing homelessness before it occurs. The Bill will help to do that by abolishing Section 21 evictions, giving tenants greater security of tenure and, we hope, reducing the risk of homelessness. We are also providing total support of £108 billion over 2022-25—an average of £3,800 per UK household—to help households with the high cost of living. This includes increasing the local housing allowance to the 30th percentile of market rents from April, which will mean that 1.6 million low-income households will be around £800 a year better off on average in 2024-25, and over 740,000 have been prevented from becoming homeless or supported into settled accommodation since 2018 through the Homelessness Reduction Act. Between 2022 and 2025, we are investing over £1.2 billion into the homelessness prevention grant, which funds local authorities to work with landlords to prevent evictions and offer alternative sources of accommodation.

With regard to Awaab’s law, I am grateful for this being raised. We agree that no tenant should have to live in dangerous housing conditions. We are taking steps to ensure that hazards in rented homes are dealt with, but how we achieve this needs to take into account the differences between the private and social rented sectors.

Awaab’s law was developed for the social housing sector, in which landlords manage large portfolios of usually between 1,000 and 10,000 properties, and have dedicated repairs and maintenance teams. We believe that it is not the right approach for the private rental sector, in which 82% of landlords have fewer than five properties. Instead, we are strengthening enforcement against hazards in private rented homes. Local councils will be able to issue immediate fines of up to £5,000 if a dangerous hazard is present in a privately rented property and the landlord has failed to take reasonably practical steps to address it. We are also introducing the decent homes standard in the private rental sector for the first time, providing local councils with enforcement powers to require landlords to remedy failures to meet requirements.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

We had all these enforcement measures in the social rental sector but we still brought in Awaab’s law. The argument is for enforcement and the decent homes standards, but in the social housing sector we had all the support mechanisms in place—I understand the difference between large social housing and houses for couples or mum-and-dad families—so why the differentiation? Why could we not have Awaab’s law? The Minister says that this is a different situation, but there is still the opportunity to enforce and fine social housing landlords, so why differentiate?

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

The difference, as I have just alluded to, is between one person having to get external maintenance people in, and so be at the mercy of their agenda, and maintenance crews that can be sent to those areas that need prioritising. I have a huge number of questions to get through, so I apologise for being abrupt.

Many noble Lords raised concerns about the impact of reforms on the student market. Since introducing the Bill, we have heard from across the sector that, as originally drafted, the Bill would have interrupted the student housing market, reducing the supply of vital properties in university towns and cities. We have listened to these concerns and have introduced a new ground for possession which will allow landlords renting to students to seek possession ahead of each new academic year, facilitating the yearly cycle of short-term student tenancies. The ground has been carefully designed to balance the needs of both landlords and students. It will apply to any property that is let to full-time students, as long as the landlord gives prior notice to tenants at the start of the tenancy that the ground will apply.

Regarding different dates being used rather than the traditional academic year, there is nothing to stop landlords renting properties in January to students starting their studies at that time. Most students will continue to move in line with the traditional academic year. This ground provides a backstop for the majority of students studying from September. The alternative would be to allow the ground to be used at any point in the year, which would give tenants no certainty.

Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Debate between Baroness Swinburne and Lord Khan of Burnley

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, as stated, this instrument increases planning fees to address the funding shortfall in the planning application service. The new fees will increase by 35% for major applications and 25% for all other applications. The instrument also adds an annual inflation indexation of fees from 1 April 2025. We on these Benches have previously called for increases in planning fees, so we broadly support these measures. The Government have stated that these increases will not be enough to address the funding shortfall—as we have just heard—which local authorities must pay for from their other budgets.

It is vital that there is a clear plan of how local planning authorities can improve their planning services as a result of the increase in fees. Housebuilders of all sizes and in every part of the country are experiencing significant delays in the planning process, principally because of a lack of staff and resources at local planning authorities. The situation is particularly challenging for SME builders, as outlined in the recent Home Builders Federation survey. Of the respondents, 76% cited a lack of resources in local planning authorities as a major constraint. This is supported by the results of the 2022 Local Government Association workforce survey, which found that almost six in 10 councils—58%—struggle to recruit planning officers and 36% have problems retaining them. In 2009, approximately 85% of planning decisions were made within statutory time limits and without performance agreements, but by 2021 this figure had fallen to 49%. This trend is concerning.

The Government have allowed planning permissions to collapse to the lowest on record and, by the time of the next general election, new home completions are forecast to have dropped to as little as 160,000 per year. Meanwhile, two-thirds of local planning authorities do not have an up-to-date local plan, with this number set to fall even lower as councils pause plans due to the chaos. Without urgent action, we face a generation locked out of home ownership. Already since 2010 there are half a million fewer young home owners. Meanwhile, millions are stuck in expensive, poor-quality and insecure rented housing.

On these Benches, our vision is an immediate blitz of planning reform delivered in our first days and weeks in office to rescue the housing system from the chaos of the Government. We want to enhance local communities’ power and their voice over how housing is built to best service local people, while challenging those who question whether homes that people need should be built at all. We need to work with local authorities to quickly draw up and agree local plans that have stalled, recruiting hundreds of extra planners in a sprint to agree new plans, as announced by the shadow Chancellor. We will also strengthen requirements to approve new homes in areas that do not have an up-to-date plan and will intervene to approve new homes in poorly performing areas, including using call-in powers in the most extreme cases. The Government’s consultation received 495 responses. What steps has the department taken to ensure that these are representative opinions of the sector? The regulations mean that if there is deflation, the fee will not be adjusted. Does the Minister expect that there could be an exemption to this in extraordinary circumstances?

Can I press the Minister in relation to not ring-fencing budgets, a point mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley? The Local Government Association has highlighted that local planning authorities have

“borne the brunt of budget cuts since 2010”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, mentioned Section 114 notices being issued by some authorities recently. The department states that the national planning fee rise

“will increase resources for local planning authorities to determine planning applications in good time”.

This increase in local planning resources is not guaranteed, however. Without ring-fencing the additional revenue, local authorities may spend it in other policy areas, a concern outlined by the British Property Federation. How will the Government monitor this and alleviate the concerns of utilising the increased fees in other statutory services, given the desperate funding situation of so many councils? Finally, the 2020 White Paper Planning for the Future promised a comprehensive resources and skills strategy for the planning sector, but the Government have no plan to increase performance and there has been no strategy.

There is a clear lack of government planning to support local authority planning. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their thoughtful contributions. If they can bear with me, I have a lot of inserts and Box notes which I have been handed, so this may not sound like a closing speech. I will endeavour to answer the questions rather than to sound too eloquent.

I covered ring-fencing in my opening remarks, but I should be clear on why we are not saying that this additional income generated should be ring-fenced: it is because it is in primary legislation. There is a requirement for planning fees to be used by the local authorities to perform the function of determining planning applications. That is already in primary law so it is does not need to be restated here in a different format. As there is no surplus to planning fee income, logically there is no overspend that could be used to cross-subsidise other services. We therefore do not believe that this has to be ring-fenced.

However, I agree that, having made clear to all local planning authorities that they are expected to retain the income from planning fees for direct investment in their planning services, we should reiterate this expectation after the regulations are made. Indeed, I hope to have reassurance in writing from my department that we will monitor how these fees are generated and used.

I come to the issue of whether performance will be enhanced and how it will be monitored. In return for increasing planning fees, we expect local authorities to invest more in their planning services and deliver better performance. The fee increase provides the opportunity for authorities to consider how they might use that additional income to improve their performance and whether they are resourcing their planning application service adequately. We need to see them assessing this for themselves.

We are also developing a new framework that will measure that performance across a wider set of criteria to ensure that local authorities are delivering on all fronts, for all users of the system. That is really important. I am sure that the department and certainly the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, will welcome the involvement of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and his thoughts on how to develop service level agreements further.

A “free go” was mentioned by many noble Lords. We recognise that a free go has a significant resource impact for local planning authorities. Therefore, if applicants still want to arrange an extension, they can, but they cannot have a free go. I hope that has a positive impact on planning departments’ ability to resource planning efficiently.

I know that planning authorities setting their own fees is controversial. There are some who believe that they should be able to set their own fees, at an appropriate level. However, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, there is also a risk that fee variation between areas could dissuade home owners and small developers from undertaking development. It could introduce unpredictability at a time when we need developers to accelerate the number of homes they are building and to support economic growth. I am sure that that objective is supported across the House. A national fee increase ensures that all planning authorities can benefit, so we consider that to be the appropriate measure in the meantime.

Why do fees not cover the full cost of that planning application service to local planning authorities? It is fair to say that we want to proceed in a measured way. It is important that we provide additional resourcing to local authorities without disproportionately impacting businesses and householders. If we were to set full cost recovery now, we could see a substantial rise in some fees that could adversely impact potential developments. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and others who mentioned this that we intend to undertake a wider review of the actual cost of processing different types of applications, as the proposed planning reforms are implemented and the savings, particularly from digitisation, are realised. In future, we might see fees relate more directly to the cost of the service itself.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, is correct that there is a difference in the numbers that I mentioned in opening. Between the £225 million deficit and the £65 million new funding being raised, there is a difference of £160 million. As was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, there are measures that will make an impact on that, including the free go.

I also draw your Lordships’ attention to the fact that local planning authorities are, we believe, under- resourced, but there are ways in which we are addressing this. Staffing issues and efficiencies were mentioned. We have developed a comprehensive planning, capacity and capability programme, which provides the direct support that is needed now and upskilling opportunities for existing planners, while developing the future pipeline into the profession. As part of this, we have also launched a new £24 million planning skills delivery fund; this will directly support local authorities to help clear the backlogs of planning applications and to address skills gaps. We have also announced an additional £13.5 million to stand up a new super-squad of experts to support local planning authorities to assess specialist resources to accelerate the delivery of homes and development, starting with the activities in Cambridge with which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is familiar.