Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Debate between Baroness Taylor of Stevenage and Lord Fuller

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I have sat on the Local Government Association’s resources panel for at least the last dozen years—it might be more—so I am fairly well acquainted with some of these things. Local government already had a mountain to climb, but, if I may dwell for a moment on the national insurance increase, I regret to say that that has made it even worse. I am grateful to the Minister for identifying that the £515 million grant for NIC is not to be ring-fenced, but not making it ring-fenced does not make it go any further. The LGA has already calculated that the costs of the NIC will be £637 million and of contractors will be £1.13 billion. The shortfall is £1.3 billion. How does she account for that shortage, and what should be cut? The noble Baroness mentioned the new homes bonus. Does she agree that that will not say much about the incentives to build homes? Finally, the noble Baroness mentioned funding reform. Will she commit to the no-detriment principle in the previously envisaged transition methods, whereby no council will be worse off during the transition than it is today?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord. One of the reasons why we have set up the English devolution programme is to get a more effective and efficient way of managing local government. We will not solve overnight the funding problems that have accumulated over 14 years. It will take a while to do that, but in this settlement we have ensured an increase for most local authorities and no local authority will get less funding than before. We will invite views on reforming the new homes bonus as part of the local authority funding reform consultation that will be published alongside the settlement. Although the Government proposed that next year will be the final year of the NHB, we will look at it so that councils can do their financial planning around it and we will consider it as part of the spending review. I cannot commit to no detriment at this stage because we have not even started the consultation on the spending review yet, but no authority received a worse settlement in this year’s settlement than it had before.

Building Homes

Debate between Baroness Taylor of Stevenage and Lord Fuller

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for both his questions. We are very aware of the point he raises about the affordability of housing, which is why, in spite of a very difficult Budget round, we have put a great deal of money into enhancing the ability to deliver affordable housing and social housing—a total of around £1.3 billion, with £500 million announced in the Budget. Some of the changes we have made to the planning process—for example, to require local authorities to determine not just how many homes they need but the tenure of those homes—will help with that as well.

To identify the obstacles to housebuilding, the housing accelerator programme has, with the industry, local authorities and other stakeholders, looked at what the key barriers have been to delivering the homes we need. It is working with specific sites where building has stalled and more generally to look at the barriers and how we overcome them. We have identified capacity in the planning system as one of those barriers, which is why we have put in additional funding this year to improve the capability and capacity of planning departments. We will be working further with our colleagues in the Department for Education to improve the number of planners coming through the training system. We have made changes to the planning fee process as part of this which will increase the quantum of funding that local authorities will have available in the planning process. The new homes accelerator has looked across all those barriers.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, you cannot live in a planning permission and you cannot wish new homes magically into existence. All the encouragement in the world will not help if builders cannot find the staff, materials and finance to put roofs over people’s heads. I have led a council, and I really want to ensure that we can put this rhetoric into reality.

In cities where Labour tells us that people want to live, the targets have been reduced. That makes the mountain to climb elsewhere even steeper. I will highlight the case of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, where the new targets are nearly three times the best housing delivery that that district borough has ever achieved. Does the Minister think that setting these unachievable targets brings the planning system into disrepute?

I want to place on record a story I read in the Financial Times this week about the best quarterly housing completions ever in the last 50 years. In 1978, 75,000 houses were completed in a single quarter. The targets mean that, for the rest of this Parliament, a sustained completion of 90,000 is needed. The Minister and I have worked closely over the years to get homes built. I have helped her in a small way with PINS; she has helped me with parishioners. My concern is that the Government are pinning the blame on councils. That is unfair, and I think she knows that.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

What steps will the Government take to ensure that the national agencies that have single-handedly held up hundreds of thousands of homes being delivered over the last three years—such as Natural England, Highways England and National Rail, or whatever it is called nowadays—will roll up their sleeves and stop blocking building so we can get the nation building?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord. I gave an explanation of how we set the targets in response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson. The fact is that everyone and every area has to play a part in this if we are to deliver these challenging housing targets. It is important that the new formula takes account of affordability and the demand for housing in local areas. Where they have challenging targets, it is because there is a demand in those areas, including a demand for more affordable housing.

We all know that statutory consultees play an important role in the planning system, providing advice on technical matters to ensure that new development is good quality, safe and situated in the right place. It is important that statutory consultees play their role too, to ensure that the planning system supports the housing and infrastructure development that we need. We will work with them over the next year to achieve that. Part of our work on the new homes accelerator will be to look at the statutory consultees to try to understand why the delays have come into the system, in relation to the responses of statutory consultees, and to see how we can work with them to alleviate some of those blockages and barriers.