Housing: Young People

Baroness Valentine Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Valentine (CB)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord for introducing this debate. I have been aware of housing challenges, particularly in London and Blackpool, for a long time, but the subject of this debate has encouraged me to look more intensely at the challenges facing the young and at the associated need for wraparound support for our most vulnerable. I work part-time for Business in the Community, focusing on regenerating forgotten places, and have served on the Peabody board.

Let me begin with the problem. There is a crisis in the provision of temporary accommodation. This adds to the financial woes of our local authorities, which are unfairly bearing the brunt of cost of living and post-Covid mental health challenges, with too little money. I have been conscious for a long time of the need to build more houses and bring costs down in London, and I am more newly aware of the shocking state of the housing available to poorer people in Blackpool. This failure to achieve both quantity and quality, as ever, hits the poorest in our societies worst. The latest data from Demos shows that 130,000 children are living in temporary accommodation, double the number in 2011. Councils in London are spending £90 million per month on temporary accommodation as a result of increased numbers and inflation, up 40% from last year. Of these London homeless people, roughly half are children—equivalent to at least one child in every classroom. A particular concern are care leavers, of whom around one-third become homeless in their first three years.

What does this mean for children living in substandard or temporary accommodation? These young people will have disrupted school lives and lower educational attainment, as around half of homeless children have to move school. Young homeless will then be significantly less likely to have a job—around half of Centrepoint users are NEET. Life expectancy will be drastically reduced, given the prevalence of mental and physical health problems. According to Shelter, over half of parents report that temporary accommodation is harming their children’s health. Research has shown that nearly half of the young homeless have mental health challenges.

In Claremont ward in Blackpool, the concentration of families in HMOs converted from old B&Bs gives rise to a subculture where, for instance, many youngsters will not leave their bedrooms post-Covid. There are shocking health statistics, partly caused by the quality of accommodation. In a ward of just 9,000 people, 2,500 have mental health problems, 1,400 have respiratory issues, 900 have diabetes and 600 have asthma. Blackpool hospital reserves 19 beds every single day for unplanned admissions from Claremont, costing £11 million a year.

At this point, I would like to call out the Department for Work and Pensions. I have a great deal of respect for much of its work; for example, I have worked jointly with the department on careers fairs. In Blackpool, however, two things are wrong. First, housing benefit is paid to landlords whose housing is slum standard, with some failing category 1 standards, which means risk of death. Secondly, the help given to jobseekers is given in person, but these youngsters will only engage online at the moment and the DWP does not offer an online interview option for them.

So where are the glimmers of hope? First, there needs to be an urgent focus on providing long-term funding to local authorities to deal with the temporary accommodation crisis in a way that is cheaper, better quality and better suited to the inhabitants. Part of this needs to be linked to wraparound services for these youngsters, who will otherwise end up costing the public purse a great deal more—quite apart from the moral case for doing so. Too often, the housing crisis and challenges in public services are spoken about as separate policy issues, but vulnerable young people and families are in such a difficult housing situation that it has a negative impact on their quality of life and increases their need for other services. We have gained a lot from specialisation of our public services; practice has become more professional and more evidence led. Bradford, in particular, has an impressive research project called Born in Bradford, which follows 13,500 families over 10 years. We know, however, that a failure to join up public services is costing the Government between £1.5 billion and £5 billion a year, according to Demos.

Right to Succeed works in left-behind communities to support the transformation of children and family services, bringing together services to focus on the most vulnerable families. In the process, it becomes clear that different services have different addresses for the same family, but Right to Succeed now has an evidence base for the success of this approach.

In this vein, I would like to mention Element, the social enterprise founded in London by my daughter, and Positive Transitions Pathway in Blackpool. Both these approaches involve focusing on the needs of the care leaver, providing life coaching and being available for support for as long as it takes. Blackpool Council also provides tailored tenancy management. The Element experience of care-leaver accommodation is that it comes in all shapes and sizes; some is public sector, some third and some private, and the quality differs between different providers across all sectors. The lack of regulation of private landlords tends to provide less good accommodation and weaker support. I am aware that some supported accommodation in Blackpool provides feeble support, despite being paid to provide support. In both places, there is an urgent need to introduce decent home standards in the private sector, especially if they are being paid by the public sector for that accommodation.

Let me end on some high points. Following what is known as a “seeing is believing” visit to Sheffield last year, led by Business in the Community, IKEA has offered to provide beds for the hundreds of local children who do not even have a bed to sleep in. Here are two quotes from the youngsters themselves. Fatima, a care leaver, says:

“Before going into Element, things were very difficult. I was struggling with idea of socialising with other people. However, from the beginning, I felt at ease and loved spending time with some amazing staff and young people. Element really helped build my confidence in speaking in front of people. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them”.


Finally, a young Blackpool homeless person said:

“My Positive Transitions officer has helped with loads of different things, and also encouraged and supported me to apply for an internship. I got the job, which has made a massive difference to my finances. I have been able to pass a training course and get a small motorbike. They really helped my transition to adulthood and made living alone a lot less overwhelming”.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to participate in this debate, and I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, whom I have known for over 30 years, for his persistent and indefatigable approach to campaigning on housing.

I will talk about two specific macroeconomic societal issues, and then focus on planning and some possible solutions. I will talk first about quantitative easing—I draw noble Lords’ attention to an excellent article in the New Statesman of 1 March—and how it impacts young people. Essentially, the policy of quantitative easing, developed by the coalition Government in 2013 and euphemistically described by George Osborne as “active monetary policy”, actually created an asset price boom and had very significant distributional implications, making asset owners richer, as my noble friend Earl Attlee said, and leaving many young people locked out and relatively poorer. There is a reason, of course, why the polls show that only 8% of 18 to 24 year-olds intend to vote Conservative at the election. You cannot extol the virtues of capitalism if your target market cannot eventually own capital.

In 1979, the right-to-buy policy of the Conservative Party gave ordinary working people a real stake in their future and those of their families and communities. Over the last 10 to 14 years, we have failed to develop policies which similarly deliver for working people. We have seen a collapse in home ownership over the period of the last two or three Parliaments.

On the second issue, immigration, we absolutely have to look at demand. I am afraid that I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Best. Of course, I pay tribute to his expertise. If we are going to have a debate based on empirical evidence and honesty, and in good faith, we cannot ignore the implications of, and the massive changes wrought by, uncontrolled, unfettered immigration, whether it is illegal or, more likely, legal.

Last year, we built 204,000 homes against a target of 300,000. The French regularly build 400,000 to 500,000 homes. The Migration Advisory Committee says that a 1% rise in population generates a 1% rise in house prices. Uncontrolled immigration has a big effect on the rental market too. Net migration of 672,000 is something that cannot just be dismissed from the housing debate. In 15 years, that trend—

[Baroness Valentine (CB)]

On the subject of migration, as far as I recall, a very large number of migrants are students. I wonder whether the noble Lord would like to comment on student housing in that context?

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am going to develop my argument in terms of numbers. We are looking at an increase to the population of 6.6 million people, to 74 million by 2036. The indicative figures are that in 15 years, we are going to have to build another 5.7 million homes, or 550,000 homes per annum.

In London, 20 people are chasing every flat. Some 40% of foreign-born individuals are in the private rented sector, as are 75% of new migrants, and 48% of all social housing in London is headed by someone who was not born in the UK. That is an issue that goes to the heart of fairness. I do not think it is defensible, and it is certainly not sustainable. It is about equity and community cohesion.

I want to talk about planning. I believe that the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, although very much lauded, was a missed opportunity. The promise contained in the consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework of 2022 did not come to fruition; it was a missed opportunity. As my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham said, the Government capitulated, regrettably, to the nimby, short-termist tendency in the Conservative Party. Robert Colville of the Centre for Policy Studies was quite right when he described that decision, or the decision to reject any housing targets, as “selfish and wicked”.

We have a situation in which scores of local planning authorities have paused, reviewed or abandoned their local plans. That has rendered obsolete previous commitments to local housing targets. It has given a green light to planning committees to block development across the country. The five-year land supply test was dumped, green-belt reviews stopped, and the housing delivery test watered down. This has exacerbated the problems of capacity: many principal authority planning departments have a shortage of well-qualified, experienced and commercially savvy planners in particular, and of properly resourced planning departments.

Reference has been made to the CMA report into the state of the housebuilding industry, published on 28 February. I am glad to say that it put to rest the persistent accusation that major housebuilders are land banking; there was no empirical evidence to support that. But even if they were, surely the broken planning system is logically inherently to blame. The CMA actually said that

“the planning system is exerting a significant downward pressure on the overall number of planning permissions being granted across Great Britain … insufficient to support housebuilding at the level required to meet government targets and … assessed need”.

It made particular reference to the impact on small and medium-sized builders.

I share with the House the observations of the former Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, James Palmer, who was also formerly the leader of East Cambridgeshire District Council. He says, quite rightly:

“Over the past 50 years the Local Plan system (or derivations of it) has failed to deliver the number of homes needed in England, yet we steadfastly refuse to change the way we plan for growth. Local Plans can create the illusion of promoting growth while simultaneously restricting housing development. A carefully drawn line in a town hall can turn landowners into lottery winners. Where developers don’t bring forward housing, landbanks arise. When landowners decide not to sell, new lines need to be drawn. What’s more, local authorities need only throw a cursory glance at what their neighbours are doing, which leads to disjointed and incoherent planning across wider geographies”.


That is a very important point.

The construction industry is still suffering a very difficult hangover from Covid, the Ukraine war, the rising costs of materials and energy, higher interest rates, and skills shortages. In my own area of the east of England, 17% of all business is construction-related—with £18 billion of output, according to the Construction Industry Training Board. Policy changes, especially in planning, have slowed down the construction of new houses, and this was predicted by the Home Builders Federation in March 2022. Professor Noble Francis, the economics director at the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, commented:

“There was a sharp fall in house building in December 2023 as house builders continued to focus on cost minimisation and completions for the subdued level of demand rather than starting new developments after the rise in mortgage rates in 2023 that priced out many new buyers, especially first-time buyers”.


Another issue, which we have discussed in your Lordships’ House on a number of occasions, is quango overreach. As your Lordships will know, in August 2023, the Government announced that they would legislate on the impact of defective EU laws intrinsic in the nutrient neutrality regulations. Despite a promise of a £280 million investment over seven years to ameliorate these issues, protect precious habitats, tackle the issue of run-off from agriculture and upgrade wastewater works, your Lordships’ House decided to kibosh that legislation and force the Government to abandon it. We are now in a position where 120,000 homes, according to the Home Builders Federation, have been subject to a moratorium on new builds. That means an unelected and unaccountable quango, Natural England, has stopped 41,000 new houses being built in Norfolk and 18,000 in Somerset, just as an example. In what other advanced, liberal democracy would such a ridiculous and incoherent policy be tolerated?

I welcome some of the things the Government have done in the long-term plan for housing announced last month around SME builders; refocusing on repurposing public sector land and brownfield development; giving greater weight in the NPPF to the benefits of housing delivery in areas of residential housing shortages; and other areas, such as permitted development. But I am not convinced that it is radical enough.

We need to look again at residential estates’ investment trusts. We need tax breaks for supported living for older people. We need to repurpose planning fees to sufficiently resource planning departments. We need to bring back local plans that are up to date to deliver housing. We need to introduce a presumption in favour of development in small sites. We need to abolish stamp duty for all purchases of homes with an EPC rating of B or above. Housing is a national emergency. We also need a Cabinet Minister specifically focusing on housing, as well as a housing ministry. This and previous Governments have, regrettably, failed young people, but it is not too late to begin to develop a vision and an ambition to deliver both for them and for our country more widely.