English Devolution
Debate between Baroness Thornhill and Baroness Taylor of Stevenage(2 days, 17 hours ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, there are two absolutely key incentives to this programme of going forward with a mayor. Mayors will get new powers, devolved from Westminster, in a number of areas of competence. With the patience of the House, I will repeat those again: transport and local infrastructure; skills and employment support; housing and strategic planning; economic development and regeneration; environment and climate change; health, well-being and public service reform; and public safety. We are already setting out integrated budgets for the more established mayoral authorities to enable them to do that. There is a huge incentive to do that, as well as a seat around the table of the Council of the Nations and Regions. I hope local areas will see that as a positive opportunity. If they want to take more time to get there, that is fine, but it will be a great opportunity for our local regions.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, I have the dubious distinction of holding a job as a directly elected mayor for 16 years, in the role that my party wished would never exist, so we have had an interesting debate. I absolutely understand some of the positives of the mayoral model—she would say that, wouldn’t she?—but I also appreciate the issues about democratic deficit. When Tony Blair imagined and brought into being directly elected mayors, he saw that the democratic deficit and the electoral process worked against a mayor having a real broad consensus in an area to be the chosen person. So he rightly ditched first past the post and brought in what we would consider to be an inferior PR: the alternative vote system. As we know, that was abolished by the previous Government—and one can only think about the reasons they might have had to do that. Genuinely, if you want a super-mayor with superpowers to really command authority and respect over an area, people must feel that their vote counts. At least in an AV model, the vast majority of people actually get their first or second choice candidate to win. Under first past the post, the winner, as we all know, can actually receive fewer votes than the rest of the field put together, which cannot be right if you are devolving that amount of power.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The noble Baroness provided a wonderful role model for mayors going forward. Some of the innovations that she introduced during her time as Mayor of Watford are legendary, so I thank her for that service.
Mayors can use their mandate for change to take the difficult decisions needed. As the noble Baroness will be aware, they have both standing and soft power to convene local partners and tackle shared problems directly, exercising devolved powers and attracting inward investment. They have a platform for tackling obstacles to growth that might need a regional approach. Mayors are accountable to their citizens, as she rightly points out, and have the profile to stand up for them on a national stage and to partner with and challenge central government where needed—and of course it is needed sometimes.
As for the electoral system for mayors, we are not proposing to change that just now.
Housing: Permitted Development Rights
Debate between Baroness Thornhill and Baroness Taylor of Stevenage(3 days, 17 hours ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My noble friend makes an excellent point about funding for affordable housing. Even in a very tight budget round, the Government have allocated an additional £500 million towards affordable housing, which brings the total up to around £3 billion altogether. But we need to consider all sources of funding. I spoke to a housing investment forum in the City of London just a few weeks ago, and there is great interest in this area; and of course, we still need to look at pension funds further for local investment to drive the housing market.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, surely it is the Government’s mission to create decent homes and not the slums of the future, and I am at a loss to know why the Government are procrastinating on this. Surely it is time to insist on full planning permission for the larger schemes, or at least to revert to the regulations that were in place before 2012.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I take the noble Baroness’s point; we need to keep this continually under review. Some of the permitted development homes have been of fair quality and have provided homes for people. But we need to continue to press that all new homes delivered through permitted development rights must provide adequate light, meet nationally described space standards and be decent, fit and safe for the people who live in them. We will continue to do that. Where there are bigger schemes, equally, they must meet those requirements.
Planning Committees: Reform
Debate between Baroness Thornhill and Baroness Taylor of Stevenage(1 week, 2 days ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I am not a lawyer, so I do not want to get involved in discussions about the merits of judicial review. People need to have some recourse to law at some stage. I will take her question back, because she makes a very good point. If she wants to put in a submission as a response to the working paper, I would be very pleased to consider it.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, the Deputy Prime Minister has flagged up the role of elected mayors of combined authorities. As someone who lamented the coalition scrapping regional spatial strategies, I see this as a possible way of replacing those. Can the Minister perhaps flesh out a little how she sees that layer working?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. There certainly needs to be a strategic planning level above the level of local plans. She can expect to see more news about that in the English devolution White Paper that will be coming out shortly.
New Homes
Debate between Baroness Thornhill and Baroness Taylor of Stevenage(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving me the opportunity to say that I went to visit British Offsite with Weston Homes in Braintree earlier this week. What a fantastic example of British innovation, using recycled steel to build MMC products. MMC is an important opportunity to improve productivity in the construction sector, to deliver quickly the very high-quality energy-efficient homes we need, and to create new and diverse jobs. We are working to address the strategic barriers to the further uptake of MMC, including improved supply chain confidence, clarity for warranty and insurance markets, and planning reform. We will say more about that in the long-term housing strategy next year.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, there are currently tens of thousands of Section 106 affordable homes with detailed planning permission waiting to be built out on active sites, but stuck because the registered providers will not take them on due to the current financial capacity in that sector. Will the Government as a short-term emergency measure consider the use of Homes England grant funding specifically, so that registered providers can afford to take up these much-needed affordable homes on these stuck sites?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The noble Baroness is quite right about the stuck sites but, in spite of the very difficult Budget round this year, the Government have put £500 million more into affordable housing. That takes the total for affordable housing up to about £3 billion. Homes England is working through its programme of how it is going to support the delivery of those affordable homes. I am sure that support for registered providers will form part of that.
Landlords: Long-term Rentals
Debate between Baroness Thornhill and Baroness Taylor of Stevenage(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Baroness Thornhill (LD)
I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my interest as a vice president of the Local Government Association.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her Question. The Government value the contribution made by responsible landlords who provide quality homes for tenants. They form a vital part of our housing market. Our Renters’ Rights Bill ensures that landlords have the confidence and support they need to continue to invest in the sector and we do not expect it to have a destabilising effect on the market. We have included provisions in the Bill to make sure that landlords cannot evict tenants simply to turn the property into a short-term let. Landlords and tenants are equally important. Landlords want good tenants. Tenants want good landlords. We hope that the Bill will make things better.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
I did ask what the noble Baroness felt could be done about it. I asked my Question first, but my question is: surely this is bonkers and can we not work out some protocol so that councils and government offices are not outbidding each other?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, of course the noble Baroness is quite right to flag up the issue of the terrible shortage of housing. The answer in the medium to longer term is just to get more housing built, and we are straining every sinew to do just that. In terms of the way that short-term lets work, we know that they can benefit economies through visitor spend and creating employment opportunities for local people. However, we appreciate that excessive concentrations of that in some parts of the country impact availability and affordability. I know that this competition between local authorities and government departments for housing is causing a real problem. We are introducing a registration scheme for short-term lets to protect our communities, abolishing things such as the furnished holiday let tax regime, to remove the tax incentive that short-term let owners have over long-term landlords. We recognise that more needs to be done to level the playing field between short and long-term tenures. Long-term tenures are important, and they need to be affordable long-term tenures.
Lease Extension Policies for Residential Properties
Debate between Baroness Thornhill and Baroness Taylor of Stevenage(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, as the noble Lord says, when property becomes ownerless, the land and buildings escheat to the Crown. That includes the Crown Estate and the royal duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall. If a purchaser is interested, the Crown can sell it so it goes back into private ownership, or the leaseholders are able to collectively purchase the freehold from the Crown. The Government recognise very much that when a freehold becomes ownerless it causes significant problems for leaseholders, but ownerless goods and escheat are complex areas of law, as I have discovered since I heard the noble Lord’s original discussion on this, and need to be considered very carefully. The Law Commission has flagged ownerless land as a possible project for inclusion in its 14th programme of law reform; I think we will be very interested to see what comes out of that review.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, can I segue a little from Crown Estate tenants, if the noble Baroness will forgive me? We have 5 million leaseholders in limbo land waiting for the enactment of the 2024 Act. Indeed, we were promised in the recent King’s Speech a new leasehold and commonhold Bill—I see a big smile from the Government Chief Whip there. Therefore, could the noble Baroness urge the Government to set out a timetable as soon as possible for both these things, as limbo land is not a good place to be? Leaseholders have already waited long enough for this much-needed reform.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The noble Baroness will know that I agree with her sentiments. I have certainly already had the Chief Whip speak about this. As outlined in the King’s Speech, the Government will provide home owners with greater rights, powers and protections over their homes by, first, implementing the provisions of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. Some of that has already been enacted, but there will be a need for some secondary legislation to do the rest. We will then further reform the leasehold system by enacting remaining Law Commission recommendations —which we tried to do with amendments but were not successful—relating to leasehold enfranchisement and the right to manage; tackling unregulated and unaffordable ground rents; and removing the disproportionate and draconian threat of forfeiture as a means of ensuring compliance with the lease agreement. We will take steps to bring the feudal leasehold system to an end, reinvigorating commonhold through a comprehensive new legal framework.
Building Homes
Debate between Baroness Thornhill and Baroness Taylor of Stevenage(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, we too are shocked by the appalling incident in Southport and feel very deeply for all the families concerned, and the knock-on effect in the community.
What a pleasure it is to listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott; now that she is no longer opposite me on the Benches I will have to get used to seeing her in profile. She always engages constructively and generously with her time, and I am sure that will continue. I agree with a lot of what she said, but I have a slightly different emphasis because I passionately want this housing agenda to succeed. We all know and understand the problems and the bigger picture, and it is indeed dire. There is so much to commend in what has been said today that it is almost too difficult to decide which bits to pick.
I start by saying that I welcome the link between economic growth and housing. Of all the things to get UK plc going, housing has always been there as a solution to a lot of our economic woes, so I sincerely hope that it works. The challenge will be in turning the Deputy Prime Minister’s passionate rhetoric into reality. It is a wicked issue, and it has been caused by decades of failure to build enough homes. I do not think we should be always apportioning blame; this is a long-term systemic problem. I look forward to working on the forthcoming legislation, but I feel that there is going to be a lot of it. The devil will be in the detail, and that will come later. Within the rhetoric, there are a lot of conflicts, as the noble Baroness to the side of me hinted at. The Statement said that the Government want to bring stability into the planning system—I doubt very much that this will bring much stability.
Let us go to the big issues. I start with targets. At the election, all the parties tried to outbid each other with the numbers game. Targets do not build homes, but they send a very powerful message to local planning authorities. However, there have to be consequences. Can the Minister outline what they might be? Councillors are not going to change their behaviour overnight, so what are we going to do to change the public narrative and turn our nimbys into yimbys? How do the Government intend to engage the public and the councillors in the need for more homes? What is the future of the housing delivery test? What about the two-thirds of councils that do not have an up-to-date plan? I would like to ban the phrase, “Build the right homes in the right places”, as it is a fig leaf for anybody to say anything. You hear it said by protestors who are for and against building. I want to know what it actually means. My big question to the Minister is, in short: what is going to change to change the narrative and the culture around housebuilding?
That brings us to the standard method to allocate the targets. I welcome a more balanced approach; I felt that the previous approach pitted urban authorities against rural authorities, which is never good. The Statement talked about an uplift where house prices are more out of step with local incomes. What does that mean in practice? Do the Government really believe that we can build enough homes to affect market prices? Is that even desirable? Both Barker and Letwin and several academics have said that that just is not possible, and if it were that it would take decades. I feel we should be concentrating on affordability as an issue. In those areas where there is that discrepancy, it is all about the need for social housing. I hope that the Government will stop saying “affordable” and use the terms appropriately. In high-cost housing areas we need social housing to keep balanced communities and keep people cleaning our streets, working in our care homes, et cetera. I hope that funding from Homes England reflects a real shift towards social housing.
In effect, all the Government’s ambitions will come to nothing if we do not tackle the skills shortage and the issues within the workforce. What are the plans to reverse this current trend, especially as we know that a considerable number of the current workforce are due to retire? What are we doing differently from what was already in position to reverse that trend? How will SME builders be incentivised to build more and join this council house revolution? As the noble Baroness asked, what is happening in the areas that have been in an effective moratorium due to biodiversity net gain—where some of them are clapping their hands and saying, “Whoopee-do! This is the best thing that has happened”?
With regard to the green belt, in my authority I used to talk about bronze, silver and gold. We all knew what our gold was, and there was some debate about what was bronze and therefore able to be built on, but doing that is not going to be as easy as it would appear. Take the petrol station example. I know of a petrol station near where my daughter lives; it is derelict and an eyesore, but it is right next to a dual carriageway, miles away from any other homes, and it has no facilities. I hope there is a little more local flexibility on that.
As for building the infrastructure upfront and aligned to the development, that is ideal but very challenging. It is perhaps slightly easier in larger-scale developments, but in my area a lot of the development is smaller sites and infill. The impact on infrastructure is cumulative and lags behind the building of houses. I will be interested in how the Government intend to reverse that.
On right to buy, I hope that there is some local flexibility to suspend right to buy if a local authority can prove that that is in its interests within its community.
There is loads more in this Statement. I expect we will have plenty of time over forthcoming years to discuss much of this, because, as the Minister said, there are no quick fixes. However, it is important to send out messages different from some of the messages we have had hitherto.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Thornhill, for their contributions on this topic which were thoughtful, as usual. We have had many discussions in this House on these subjects, and it is interesting to be on the other side of the Chamber doing so.
Without immediate bold action, the number of homes will continue to decrease, falling even further behind the needs of the people of this country. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, mentioned targets. I have already commented on the dramatic fall off the cliff in housebuilding since the removal of targets. It is clear that we need to set targets. The measures announced today are ambitious, but they are measures we must take if we are going to improve housing affordability and turbocharge the growth we need.
The scale of the response must match the scale of the challenge—and it is a challenge; I am not making light of that in any way. This is the worst housing crisis we have had in living memory. There are not enough homes. This matters for all the reasons we have discussed so often, such as skyrocketing rents, record homelessness, falling home ownership and the setting of unreachable housing targets that have repeatedly not been met. The previous Government failed every year to meet that 300,000 homes target and presided over this drop-off in very recent times.
I turn to the specific questions. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, spoke about the local voice and asked how it is going to be heard. The local voice is always important in the planning process, and it will remain so. There are no plans to change the process of deep and wide consultation on local plans, as I said when I repeated the Statement, but it will not be about whether or not housing is built, because we need to deliver the targets. It might be about how it is built and where, but it will not be about whether it is built. That is the difference that we are setting out in this Statement today.
On the simplification of plans, it is not the intention to make plans more complicated; this is just a change to the way plans will take housing targets into consideration.
On future funding, there definitely will be a new affordable homes programme after the current programme ends. The announcement is clear. We will bring forward details of future government investment in social and affordable housing at the spending review, enabling providers to plan for the future as they develop to deliver the biggest increase in affordable housing in a generation. We will also work with our mayors in local areas to consider how funding can be used in their areas to support devolution. In fact, I will be having a conversation later this afternoon with our mayors and leaders around the country to discuss some of the issues in this consultation with them.
The noble Baroness asked about nutrient neutrality, and it is important that I answer that question specifically. In order to secure the win-win situation for the economy and for nature that we know we can achieve, it is important carefully to consider the way forward, with the help of nature delivery organisations and stakeholders in the sector. That work has already started, and we will continue it over the summer. In the meantime, we will continue to boost the supply of mitigation. We will announce the successful recipients of round two of the local nutrient mitigation fund in the coming weeks. We are also exploring the potential for greater use of strategic approaches to mitigation, whereby, rather than individual developers having to secure their own mitigation for each new project, they are able instead to pay into high-level mitigation projects that are co-ordinated strategically, so they can deliver more effectively and efficiently.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, talked about stability in the planning system. The intention of this process is to introduce these changes and have a settled system going forward. There have been a lot of changes—we had 16 Housing Ministers in the last two Parliaments—which has created all sorts of turbulence in the system. This has caused local authorities a great deal of concern and has not allowed the system to settle down. I hope that, once the changes are brought in, it will settle down once and for all. The noble Baroness also asked if we can build enough homes to affect house prices. It is an issue, and we will keep that under review, but what is certain is that prices are going up and are unaffordable, as are rents. We have to increase the housing supply in order to have some impact on both the level and the cost of the housing available to our communities.
The noble Baroness also spoke about affordability and social housing. She will know, because she has heard me speak about this issue many times in this Chamber, of my determination not to conflate the two things. There is a difference between affordable housing and social housing, and we must deliver both. There will be funding and incentives to deliver more social housing, but both are necessary. I hope we can move that forward as quickly as possible.
The noble Baroness also asked about right to buy. It is not currently the intention to suspend right to buy, but some significant changes to that regime are coming, particularly to the way we allow local authorities to use the funding from right to buy. The problem has been not right to buy itself, but the failure to replace the houses sold through it. We have seen a very significant drop in the availability of social housing because the houses sold under right to buy have not been replaced. We need to address that issue, and the measures put in place today will, I hope, help.
The method for calculating housing need was not fit for purpose. It relied on 10 year-old data and arbitrary uplifts to that data, which is why it has been being changed. We will make all the targets that result from this mandatory. All local planning authorities without an up-to-date local plan for housing will be held to account for their new housing target once the revised framework is published.
The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, asked about intervention. We want a system that allows for future intervention action to be swift, proportionate and justified by local circumstances. That does not mean there are no circumstances in which local authorities will not be allowed to build to their targets. If there is a very specific set of circumstances, such as flood plains and national parks, they will be taken into account; but otherwise there will be intervention, and we want that to be quick and straightforward to achieve.
It is not about forcing homes on local places. We believe that planning is fundamentally a local activity, and new homes should be built for communities with communities, but less than one-third of places have an up-to-date plan, and that has to change. This has to be about ensuring that local plans are ambitious enough to support the Government’s commitment—and that is the point about numbers—to get to 1.5 million homes in this Parliament. I am not saying that that is not an ambitious target; we are clear-eyed about that, but we cannot shirk the responsibility to all these thousands of homeless families and future generations locked out of home ownership. That is not just for the sake of those who are homeless, although it is very important for them; it is about the cost to the economy of this country. Some local councils are spending one-third of their revenue budgets on homelessness, and the DWP cost has gone up and is now extremely high. So we have to tackle it from an economic as well as a housing point of view. That is why, a matter of weeks into this Government, we are making the bold changes that we need to get us where we need to be.
We have taken decisive and bold action to deal with the housing crisis we are facing. This is just the start: we will set out our long-term strategy shortly, and I am sure that that will be music to the ears of those who produced the recent report calling for a long-term housing strategy. There is a plan to deliver 1.5 million homes that are affordable, high-quality and sustainable, and we will bring forward details of future government investment in housing at the point of the spending review.
Spending Commitments to Local Councils
Debate between Baroness Thornhill and Baroness Taylor of Stevenage(4 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Baroness Thornhill (LD)
In asking the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I declare my interest as the vice-president of the Local Government Association.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, mayors, leaders, councillors and officers around the country have done an amazing job of supporting their communities, but too often in recent years that has been in spite of the Government and not with them. This Government are committed to ensuring that councils have the resources they need to provide public services to their communities in this Parliament. Of course, spending commitments beyond 2024-25 are a matter for the next spending review, but the work of engagement has already begun.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
I thank the Minister for her Answer and warmly welcome her to her new role, for which she is most ably qualified. I am pleased to hear what she has to say, but this money is crucial. Can she be specific about a timeframe as to when councils will hear whether they have got the money? We are talking about many millions of pounds, in certain cases. More importantly, can she reassure the sector that, when decisions are made, they will involve looking at how advanced those projects already are, how much money has already been spent and, in particular, the impact on the financial sustainability of the council if it does not get the promised money? As she knows, for some councils that is critical.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her kind comments. We worked together often in Hertfordshire, and I hope that that relationship continues. Local places will rightly seek clarity on existing funding commitments, but as all noble Lords would expect, the Government are fully considering funding arrangements, including the very hard work that has been undertaken on projects to date. We will confirm as quickly as possible how we are going to take those projects forward.