Renters (Reform) Bill

Ben Everitt Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

This is without doubt a significant Bill, which shows that the Conservative Government are serious about delivering our manifesto commitments and delivering for the British people. In my constituency, tackling homelessness and rough sleeping is a key priority. To make in-roads, we must reform the private rental market. Many of my constituents and people across the country are trapped in high rental spirals, with little or no other viable options available to them. On that basis, the Bill’s proposal to enable tenants to appeal excessive market rents designed to force out tenants could be an important step, but we need to ensure we see more detail on how that would work in practice.

On top of that, and more broadly, we must go back to these proposals and make sure that they do not let up on the delivery of more affordable housing and social housing. The Housing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) has heard me say that time and again. I believe there is a consensus across the House on that point. As the Bill progresses, I will be keeping a strong look-out for the appropriate protections for renters, but we cannot forget that without landlords, we would not have a rental market at all. That is why we need to strike the right balance between assurances for landlords and protections for renters. The tendency to vilify landlords is not just unhelpful to our public discourse; it is unhelpful to how we are developing legislation. We must make sure that we look after landlords in this process; they form a critical part of the housing ecosystem, and scaring them off would set us back even further, so we must tread carefully.

Through my role as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for housing market and housing delivery, and from meeting landlords and tenants in my constituency, I have engaged with a huge range of stakeholders, including professional landlords such as Grainger and charities such as Shelter. Through those discussions, I am aware of the sticking points that we need to resolve as we progress this Bill through its remaining stages.

To get into just one of the details—I know we are pushed for time—Grainger and others in the industry favour the idea of introducing the ability for landlords to request a six-month minimum tenancy length. Once that period is over, renters could issue a two-month notice. Responsible landlords such as Grainger—and many others; in fact, the vast majority of them—want to build communities and have lasting bonds with the people they house, which is an often forgotten point in these debates. Conversely, charities that I have been talking to that fight for the side of tenants and renters, such as Shelter, want to see a longer protected period for tenants, with a focus on open-ended tendencies. They want to see the protected period lengthened from six months to two years to give renters more certainty and security. In the light of proposals to introduce comprehensive possession grounds for landlords, we need to be careful that we find a compromise between the two positions.

The reforms proposed in the Bill are promising, and I think we can all accept that they are a step in the right direction. However, there is more work to be done in finding the right balance between the needs of renters and landlords and successfully integrating the rental market with our levelling-up plans and the need to deliver more affordable housing across our country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Feryal Clark—not here. That is a shock.

High Street Heritage and Conservation Areas

Ben Everitt Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

It is incredibly good to serve under your chairship, Ms Fovargue. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) for securing this incredibly important debate. Heritage is the soul of a community—a point that we should remember when we build new communities and regenerate existing ones. It is so good to listen to the passion with which hon. Members have spoken about their communities, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), who I think is passionate about everything he does, but in particular about heritage in Stoke-on-Trent.

There has been so much to agree on in the debate. I was particularly struck by the support for the ceramics industry: that is pure heritage in Stoke-on-Trent, and it really comes through in Members’ contributions. Indeed, it is not possible to go to dinner anywhere with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North without him checking the plates, and if they are not made in Stoke-on-Trent he complains to the management of whichever restaurant or hotel we are in. It is that passion which drives the community, but that passion needs to be enabled by action and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South mentioned, the action has been slowed by the pandemic, the inflationary pressures we face and so on. The pandemic stole two years of everybody’s lives. The effect was especially felt here in Whitehall and Westminster, and that has translated down to frustration in our communities.

A huge opportunity remains. I am passionate about levelling up. We are dishing out billions of pounds to breathe life into left-behind communities through the levelling-up fund, the shared prosperity fund, the towns fund and the future high streets fund. Ultimately, levelling up is a cycle of skills and jobs, infrastructure, services and investment—pump priming from the Government, but corporate investment and foreign direct investment as well. All of that combined goes around to people, communities and the places in which we live. That is the lens through which we need to look, and it is where heritage comes in, because levelling up at its very core is about the opportunities that we create for people and that people can create for themselves. We need to reset the way that we look at this investment. It needs to be looked at through the lens of place-making, and that is where we bring in heritage. It is where, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South mentioned, we lack skills in councils and planning authorities. We also lack capacity and—dare I say it—political leadership in councils to look at the bigger picture. We need to look beyond the administrative, bureaucratic and statutory elements of planning and at what an area and a community need. What are the health outcomes we want to address? What are the policing priorities for that area? How do we make a place that is fit for the future, but has the memories and best of our past enhancing our heritage?

We have a huge opportunity. The all-party parliamentary group for ending homelessness recently produced a report on empty properties—on conversions from retail and office space into homes for people. The report identified up to 20,000 units in the possession of local authorities around the country that could be converted. That opportunity directly translates to action that we could be taking at a local level, and that could be supported by action from the Government through not just the high streets fund, the towns fund, the levelling-up fund or so on, but funds such as the heritage fund and various others. We need to put heritage at the heart of place-making, but we need to do it in a way that brings through the passion that we see in our local projects and local politicians.

Members might ask why I am passionate about the subject when I am not from the Black Country—I am literally the odd one out in the debate. It is because I have plenty of heritage in my constituency. I have Olney, which is a beautiful Georgian market town with huge amounts of heritage and listed buildings. Newport Pagnell is, again, a beautiful market town. Tickford bridge in Newport Pagnell is a grade-I listed iron bridge. Wolverton is a wonderful, proud railway town, home of the royal train. We have heritage in all our constituencies that we can pick up and run with when it comes to designing the future. I am incredibly proud that Milton Keynes got £3 million from the shared prosperity fund, which admittedly is not the £50 million that the collective MPs for Stoke-on-Trent got, to regenerate those high streets that I mentioned and to do more to take that heritage through.

There is lots to do, but through the lens of place-making, we can understand and make a tangible difference by bringing the best of the past into our future and designing a vision for our future that works. That vision should take the best out of things such as the community renewal fund and the community ownership fund to help acquire empty properties and to deliver value that reflects our heritage as well. We need to co-ordinate, plan and deliver. We need to breathe beauty into our high streets, understanding our past and embracing our future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Everitt Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

That was a flight of fantasy with several hundred questions. I am happy to engage with the hon. Lady on the detail of the clauses in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, but I am proud of the Government’s record in bringing forward levelling-up across the whole country, with house building backed by billions of pounds of public funding and taxpayers’ money. As I said in answer to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), our house building record is greater than that of her party for the entire time they were in government.

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

17. What steps his Department is taking to end rough sleeping.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Felicity Buchan)]

The Government are committed to ending rough sleeping. Last year we published our cross-Government strategy “Ending Rough Sleeping For Good”, which set out how we are investing a huge £2 billion over three years to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. In 2022 there was 25% less rough sleeping than the 2017 peak, and 28% less than in 2019, before the pandemic.

[Ben Everitt]

The best way to tackle rough sleeping and homelessness is to increase the supply of houses for people to live in. A joint report has been released today by the all-party parliamentary group for housing market and housing delivery, which I chair, and the all-party parliamentary group for ending homelessness, which is chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi). The report found that we could bring 20,000 houses on to the market through conversions. Will the Minister meet me and a local charity that is very keen to do that, to discuss how we can take that forward?

[Felicity Buchan]

I would be delighted to come to Milton Keynes to meet my hon. Friend and his local charity. I want to reassure him that this Government are committed to increasing the supply of affordable housing and to ensuring that all houses are safe and of a decent standard. I look forward to reading in detail the APPGs’ recommendations.

New Housing Supply

Ben Everitt Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

It is a genuine pleasure to be involved in this debate and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who is not currently in his place, on bringing the debate to Parliament. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) said, this is something that needs cross-party consensus, and I think that broadly we have achieved some degree of consensus over the course of the debate. That is important because successive Governments over the past four or five decades—perhaps even longer—of every colour and political persuasion, have tried to resolve the housing issue. Unfortunately, the interventions they have made have been probably no more than tweaks, which have further distorted the complex feedback system that is what we call the housing market. It is not really a market in the traditional sense. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) noted, it could at best be described as a series of local markets, distributed pretty randomly around the country.

Most of the interventions that Governments have made over the last half century or so have been demand-side. We have had far too many demand-side interventions, which have just driven up prices and driven away affordability. We are simply not building enough houses in the right places and the shortage of housing supply has a direct impact on house prices. The cost of home ownership and renting has been rising steadily, outpacing wages and inflation. In the UK, the gap between house prices in high demand areas such as London and the rest of the country has doubled over recent years. So our market is broken. Land prices follow economic activity and drive up house prices.

[Bob Seely]

I apologise for intervening yet again. Developers restrict build-out in order to keep land prices high. Is not the answer a “use it or lose it” rule, or to put pressure on developers, or to find a market mechanism that makes developers build more quickly? There are 1 million outstanding permissions, 500,000 of which are on brownfield sites.

[Ben Everitt]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. I think he might be zeroing in on a particular aspect of the picture that I have painted of the broken market. The behaviour—or perceived behaviour, in some cases—of developers and builders is not necessarily the cause of issues that I have been discussing; it is more a symptom.

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend is making a very good speech. On the numbers given by my county colleague, my hon. Friend from the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), at the current rate of building, which is 200,000-odd homes a year, outstanding permissions would account for four or five years’ supply. That is in an uncertain planning environment, where seeking planning permission, as I illustrated earlier, is a huge gamble. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) agree that it is more likely that land prices are driven by the existence of the viability test, which means that you cannot overpay for land, rather than land prices being driven by the value of the property—that is, downwards? That means that land is at an unrealistic value.

[Ben Everitt]

Absolutely. I could not agree more. In any regulated environment, the market players require, and are incredibly hungry for, clarity, consistency and certainty. The system is so complex, and subject to so many historical and, to be frank, future changes; there is not the clarity, consistency and certainty needed by the market players—the people who will provide the houses. They do not have the confidence to put bricks and mortar on the ground. We are calling for massive reform, but we need certainty, which we will put to good use. It should be massive reform first, and then some certainty. I am grateful for the interventions.

The market is broken. Land prices follow economic activity. This is the critical point: what was once a symptom of the need to level up is now a cause. When we have gone through all the pain of getting through the planning process and getting houses built, very often we end up with identikit estates of massive, four-bedroom houses that look exactly like the suite ofb estates in our existing stock. That does nothing for mobility between our existing sector, which is of course about 99% of our stock, and the new build sector. It does not make moving out a viable option for people who are under-occupying former family homes in the existing sector. New build homes are not genuinely affordable and attainable for young, local, first-time buyers, and they are not appropriate for elderly people who are looking to downsize and live in retirement living. There are multiple issues, but fundamentally we are building the wrong kind of houses in the wrong places.

My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) touched on the subject of small and medium-sized enterprise builders, labour and material shortages, build cost, inflation, and access to finance, so I will not go on about those, but one of the key barriers to mobility between existing stock and new build stock is stamp duty. Stamp duty is a tax on social mobility. It is crippling mobility in the sectors that we need to drive economic activity. We need to set people free in terms of their labour mobility as well.

I will skip the bits of my speech about the planning system and resourcing planning departments, for reasons of time. I want to end with a reason to be optimistic and hopeful. We have a huge opportunity. We are pouring billions of pounds into left-behind communities through the levelling-up fund, the high streets fund, the shared prosperity fund and the towns fund. All of that is based on the concept of levelling being about opportunities for people who need somewhere to live. So we need to revisit the algorithm and recast the targets. We need to put much more emphasis on where we create and stimulate demand through the billions of pounds the Government are investing through levelling up and make it sustainable, so that communities can benefit from the economic growth from the levelling-up agenda but be sustainable, because people are living and building families and communities in the places near where they work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Everitt Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

House prices are all over the headlines yet again, but affordability is the key issue. Does my hon. Friend the Housing Minister agree that when we do get new houses built, often taking years and years to go through planning, they all look like identikit estates, just like the estates we have already? We need affordable homes that local people can aspire to and retirement homes for later living. Does she agree that we need to build the right houses in the right places?

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Rachel Maclean)]

I thank my hon. Friend very much. He represents a new town, as I do—I am very proud to represent the new town of Redditch. We are absolutely committed to building the right houses in the right places, and that includes enabling local communities to have more say over the design and type of housing. We are doing that through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: through design codes, street votes and reforming the planning system. I am pleased to report to my hon. Friend that I have also launched a taskforce for older people’s housing to address the housing needs of older people.

Future of Social Housing

Ben Everitt Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) on securing the debate and enabling us to have this vital discussion about social housing.

I am sure we will cover a broad range of issues relating to social housing; therefore, given the time limit, I will limit my comments to speaking about conversions and incentives to build social housing, where I know we need to be making much more ground than we already are. As of now, 145,000 new affordable homes need to be supplied in England each year to meet current demand, including 90,000 homes at social rent levels. However, Government figures show that just 59,000 new affordable homes were delivered in 2021-22, with only a small proportion for social rent, so we know that we need to do more.

I will cut to the chase: some 1 million households are currently on the social housing waiting list in England, and private sector rents are increasing at their fastest rate in 16 years. It is harder for younger people to afford social housing, and it is harder for anybody to find affordable housing. It is well documented that a lack of affordable housing options contributes to homelessness, which unfortunately remains a significant problem in my constituency of Milton North. It is vital that we deliver more affordable and social housing to keep people off the streets. Therefore, we must incentivise building more affordable social housing.

I have been looking at getting that done through conversions. The all-party parliamentary group for housing market and housing delivery, which I chair, is doing a joint inquiry with the all-party parliamentary group for ending homelessness, which is spearheaded by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), who I am delighted to be stood opposite.

We must find a way to make it easier for council housing associations, individuals and organisations to build. Permitted development could be an opportunity for that. Between 2015-16 and 2019-20, a total of 72,980 new dwellings were added to our housing stock through permitted development rights, 89% of which were the result of office-to-residential conversions. We have all heard the horror stories about PDRs, so we must ensure quality and standards. In addition to boosting affordable supply through conversions, another crucial element to consider is the infrastructure levy itself. I welcomed the Minister’s commitment at the Dispatch Box last year to look into exempting affordable accommodation from the infrastructure levy, following an amendment I tabled that would have done exactly that. Social housing should be included in that.

We must incentivise SME house builders to play a more significant role in the social housing sector. SMEs bring innovation, flexibility and local knowledge to the table and are often better equipped to take on small, bespoke projects than large firms. Therefore, we must make it much easier for them to enter the market.

The future of social housing in the UK requires a comprehensive and co-ordinated approach from both the Government and private sector. We must increase the supply of affordable housing, including social housing, by incentivising conversions and supporting SME builders. Consequently, we can realise our shared ambition, which is for everyone to have access to safe, secure, and affordable housing that meets the needs of our local communities.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Ben Everitt Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I rise to speak to new clauses 20 and 40 and amendment 5, in my name. We all recognise that the UK has a housing crisis, with shortages of social, private rented and affordable housing, leaving many people in an insecure position. One problem is that that need often conflicts with concerns that local residents have about their own stretched public services. Amendment 5 would help to address local concerns by ensuring that the infrastructure levy is paid upfront before the point of occupation. Councils would be able to ensure that a local community could cope with the additional people moving in before they were there taking up school places and nursery places, rather than trying to solve the problem of service provision once it is too late.

The amendment would also enable councils to require financial bonds from developers to complete the basic infrastructure—roads, street lights and drainage—that is meant to be adopted, but often seems to be left undone. North Shropshire is plagued with unfinished road developments, and the amendment would allow those financial bonds to be put in place, which would avoid such situations.

I fear that the Bill misses the opportunity to ensure that, when we build new homes, we protect the environment. The Conservatives have allowed around 1 million new homes to be built since 2015, which are not as efficient as they would have been had the standards put in place under the coalition Government been retained. This is a missed environmental opportunity, and it means that homeowners are paying far more to heat their homes than they might otherwise have done. New clause 20 would bring forward the date of the future homes standard to January, which may be unrealistic in the circumstances, but I hope that the Minister will consider bringing it forward to save homebuyers money and to work towards our climate objectives.

New clause 40 would create a requirement to hold local referendums on fracking applications—to be paid for by the applicant—to protect communities from unwanted fossil fuel extraction. My constituents are unconvinced by the current moratorium given the flip-flopping this summer and the disastrous decision to give the go-ahead to a new coalmine last week.

Finally, I wish to mention the critical importance of the affordability of housing. We know, as many Members have discussed, that it is worse in some parts of the country than in others. The building of executive homes in the countryside will not help us deal with the problem of affordable housing. New clause 20 also enables local authorities to require new housing to be affordable and to define affordability in their area. It would also allow them to provide additional bus services so that people did not become reliant on cars.

In summary, I am worried about the things that are missing in the Bill, which we have discussed today, and I hope that the Minister will consider them. In my final few seconds, I apologise to the House for coughing and spluttering all the way through the debate.

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the cougher and splutterer from North Shropshire. She did it very well; I did not notice her coughing and spluttering.

It is my pleasure to speak to amendment 3, which is in my name. The Bill is a landmark piece of legislation, which will go a long way to pushing the Government’s ambition to level up our country.

One area of particular significance to Milton Keynes North is affordable housing. I have long campaigned and advocated for the need to build more affordable homes, as that is the best way to bring down house prices and to help families get on the housing ladder. As of now, developers are incentivised to build the highest-value properties they can when they get the chance, and this only serves to exacerbate the problem, as the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) illustrated in her speech just now. It is an issue in my constituency. Sprawling estates of executive homes have been built with no intention to meet the needs of my constituents. The housing crisis that we face in this country is unprecedented and requires vital intervention from the Government to address. Too few homes are being built, and the homes that are being built are becoming increasingly unaffordable. As a result, people never get on to the housing ladder. Affordable housing developers can provide beautiful homes for those who want to remain in their communities, and we need to work with them to ensure that they are supported in doing so.

On affordable housing, we could be doing much more right now to ensure that as many new homes are brought forward as possible. If we want to address the housing crisis directly, we must tackle the issue at source. That is why I tabled amendment 3, which would provide an exemption from the infrastructure levy for affordable housing as defined in annex 2 of the NPPF. We want to see more affordable housing built throughout the country, and I see the amendment as a simple, straightforward way of achieving that. It is a massive bit of legislation with a massive amendment paper, yet my amendment is just one and a half lines long, so I implore colleagues to add it to the Bill.

The Bill currently has no automatic exemption for housing from the infrastructure levy. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has indicated that such an exemption will apply in the regulations, but I think that it really should be in the Bill. This small tweak to the levy would make a great difference in the short term and pay real dividends in the long term.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I rise to speak to new clause 6, in my name, which seeks to ensure that publicly owned assets can be more easily retained for the public good when sold off. I thank the Minister for her time meeting me before today to discuss this. The new clause has been born out of a local campaign in my constituency but is of relevance to the whole country. Thousands of residents are calling for the former Teddington police station site to be sold to a local housing association and a GP surgery, which have put in a joint bid backed by the local council, The bid, if successful, would prioritise the needs of the local community by providing a much-needed new state-of-the-art facility for Park Road GP surgery and a number of social and affordable homes above it. Sadly, in this highly desirable location they cannot outbid private developers who will deliver yet more unneeded luxury flats with the bare minimum number of affordable units that they can get away with.

Having lobbied the Mayor of London and his deputy for policing and crime, I was told that their hands are tied by statute whereby they have to secure best value, which is defined as the best price available on the open market. The new clause has a simple aim to make the law clear and unequivocal, with a single schedule covering all relevant public bodies, from the NHS to police and fire services on the same terms, granting them permission to sell publicly owned land and buildings for below market value, up to a certain level, to bids that put the environmental, economic or social infrastructure needs of the community first.

Carbon Emissions (Buildings) Bill

Ben Everitt Excerpts

Friday 25th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dehenna Davison]

I completely echo the shadow Minister’s sentiments.

As hon. Members will know, the Government considered closely the Environmental Audit Committee’s report, “Building to net zero: costing carbon in construction”, and its recommendations. In our response, we were pleased to set out details of our work in this area, including our plan to consult next year on our approach to measuring and reducing embodied carbon. As we made clear in that response, reducing embodied carbon in construction is critical to meeting our net zero target. I think that all of us across the House can agree on that, but we disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland about the exact mechanisms and timings for achieving that. That is why, I am sorry to say, the Government cannot support the Bill today. It is not because we disagree with the Bill’s aims, but because ambitious work is already well under way in this area. Passing the Bill ahead of that work would risk adverse effects on our housing supply, on small and medium-sized enterprises and, given the reach of our construction industry and supply chains, on other sectors of the economy.

That said, although we are not supporting this Bill, I am incredibly grateful for my hon. Friend’s enthusiasm, and for keeping this topic at the forefront of our minds. The Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), who is responsible for local government and building safety, and officials in my Department are keen to work collaboratively on this vital agenda with my hon. Friend. I know that the Minister is happy to meet my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland to talk through the detail of his work.

On embodied carbon and the work being undertaken, my hon. Friend has already outlined the process for calculating whole-life carbon, so I will not go into that in too much detail, but we do know that the focus until now has been on reductions in operational carbon. As that process happens and we reduce the amount of operational carbon in construction, embodied carbon emissions will start accounting for more of a building’s whole-life carbon emissions. He is therefore absolutely right that we must act with the construction industry to address the issue now. Equally, we cannot be naive about the scale of the challenge ahead of us.

Reducing embodied carbon is exceptionally difficult across the built environment—not just in buildings—which is why the Government have been planning ahead to tackle those emissions head-on. The industrial decarbonisation strategy and the transport decarbonisation plan, for example, set out how large sectors of the economy will decarbonise, and the England trees action plan looks to increase the production of timber, which can be used to replace higher-carbon materials in construction when safe to do so. As those policies take effect and industries that supply construction decarbonise, we expect that in turn the embodied carbon emissions of buildings will fall.

We recognise that those efforts alone will not be enough. As pointed out by both the Climate Change Committee and the Environmental Audit Committee, our choice of materials and how we design and construct buildings will also need to change dramatically.

[Ben Everitt]

I hope the Minister agrees that we are already taking steps in that direction, and that the future homes standard and the future buildings standard will be a great leap forward in how we set standards for new buildings to be constructed and ensure that new buildings are zero carbon-ready and efficient.

[Dehenna Davison]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who I know is incredibly passionate about construction, building and all things planning and will continue to help champion the agenda in the coming months and years.

I think many in industry would agree that, as hon. Members across the House have highlighted, one of the biggest challenges in tackling embodied carbon right now is a lack of data, because consideration of embodied carbon is relatively new compared with operational carbon for both industry and Government. Without enough information at product and building level, industry cannot make decisions about design and construction, and the Government cannot establish the right benchmarks or targets, either.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Minister. This is the first time I have spoken in a debate with her at the Dispatch Box.

I am sure the whole House agrees that the need to tackle climate change and reduce carbon emissions is of critical importance. In 2019, I was proud to stand on a manifesto that committed to reaching net zero by 2050. I strongly believe in the need to invest in green energy and infrastructure while finding new and innovative ways to cut carbon emissions.

The Government’s 10-point plan to bring about a green industrial revolution is a critical part of the plan to decarbonise our economy. Part of this plan involves carbon capture, usage and storage, and I welcome the Government’s £200 million investment to become a global leader in this new technology. Moreover, the Government’s net zero strategy has set the UK on a path towards lowering our reliance on fossil fuels. We are investing in green energy, helping businesses transition to green energy and, most importantly, helping to secure our energy security long into the future. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this is now vital.

More locally, in my beautiful Milton Keynes North constituency, we are proud of our decarbonisation efforts, particularly in transport. Over the past year, Milton Keynes City Council has received more than £800,000 of Government funding to install public electric vehicle charging points. I am especially proud that Milton Keynes is one of the best places to drive an electric car, but there is more work to be done.

We need to explore all avenues for reducing carbon emissions as we take this country forward. As of now, buildings are responsible for approximately 30% of our national emissions, so this is an area in which we can make great strides. However, I welcome the fact that the Government have already made an important commitment to reduce emissions from public sector buildings by 75% by 2037.

We need to find more ways to ensure that our infrastructure is fit for the future. As we embark on levelling up the country, we need to ensure that the buildings we construct allow us to achieve the ambitious targets we have set ourselves. This Bill rightly addresses the issue of embodied carbon—the emissions produced by a building’s materials. As of now, the UK’s built environment contributes a quarter of our total greenhouse gas emissions, and that raises important questions about how we construct our buildings. I welcome the intention of this Bill. By establishing limits on embodied carbon emissions in building construction, we are taking steps towards a more sustainable construction sector.

Research has shown that among common building materials, timber has the lowest embodied carbon, as my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) pointed out. Where appropriate, using more timber in building construction is certainly an option, but it needs to be part of a well-rounded approach. That way, we can make positive strides towards a low-carbon economy.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Rebecca Harris.)

Debate to be resumed on Friday 9 December.

Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Bill

Ben Everitt Excerpts

Friday 18th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am normally called last!

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore), who made a thoughtful and insightful speech, and it is a pleasure to speak in this debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) mentioned in his introduction, he once promoted another private Member’s Bill that dealt with a very similar issue. I pay tribute to the work that he put into that first Bill, which made it all the way to becoming law—the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. It is tremendously satisfying for a Back Bencher to be involved in making laws in this way, especially when it is for such good reasons. Let me also welcome the Minister to her place: it is wonderful to be working with her, and I look forward to getting stuck in on multiple issues, not just this one.

Many people have been involved in getting my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East to this point, but I can say from the perspective of the Select Committee, of which I am a member, that a considerable debt is owed to the whistleblowers who have shone a light on the terrible conditions in which some people are living. As we have heard, some of the conditions to which they are subjected amount to what is effectively a gang environment, so those who come forward are doing something that is incredibly brave as well as incredibly useful. I also appreciate the work of the charities Shelter and Crisis and that of the all-party parliamentary group for ending homelessness, co-chaired by the my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East.

The work that has already been done is fantastic, but this debate is about the work going forward. The Bill is primarily aimed at dealing with rogue landlords and the regulation of supported exempt accommodation, and it will strengthen the enforcement powers that are available to local authorities, as was pointed out earlier by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood). If passed, it will become the first piece of legislation to regulate directly the standard of support provided to residents of this kind of accommodation in England, which is no mean feat.

Currently, unscrupulous housing agencies are allowed to profit from the housing benefit system, and that is simply not right. There has been an increase in demand for supported housing—in fact, there has been an increase in demand for housing across the board—but at the same time, the exempt accommodation sector is in need of huge and urgent reform. Rogue landlords have been exploiting loopholes in the regulation, making obscenely huge profits while not ensuring that the accommodation they provide meets the standards that occupants deserve. Throughout the Select Committee’s inquiry, we encountered many cases in which rogue landlords are using exempt accommodation simply as a cash machine, and, as I mentioned in an intervention earlier, that can involve property deals that are international.

The scale of this problem is disgraceful. Landlords drive the rent high while pushing standards down, forcing marginalised, vulnerable people to live in unsafe, unfit housing. The system is so warped that—in my view—it aids organised crime. Indeed, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood used the word “gangsters”, and I agree with her. The Committee’s report describes the conditions in exempt accommodation as “beyond disgraceful”, and says that there has been a “complete breakdown” of the systems that should protect residents. The Bill will tackle these issues head-on. It will bar rogue operators from entering the market, while ensuring that action is taken against bad-faith actors. We should be clear, of course, that even though there are gangsters out there getting away with this, the vast majority of the operators in this sector are good people who are in it for good reasons: supporting the most vulnerable of our society. We need to be mindful of that and ensure that, in putting this legislation together, we do not get in their way. I will come later to how we can use this legislation to drive up standards in the sector as a whole and focus on sharing good practice.

However, we need to focus on driving out the bad behaviour, so this is about growing the quality of the provision and ensuring that those examples we have heard about today—of residents in cramped, inappropriate accommodation, often grouped with exactly the wrong type of person—can be resolved. We want to ensure that the growth of exempt accommodation in certain areas is managed, because of the impact on local communities. Again, that comes back to data; we need to understand where the exempt accommodation is and who is in it, which in turn will solve the problem of the lack of regulation, so that we can get a grip of the governance of the providers and stamp out the exploitation of the system by those unscrupulous landlords.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt), who is sadly no longer in his place, paid fulsome tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East, but it is not just him who is full of admiration for our hon. Friend. Crisis has worked closely with him in the development of the Bill and it, too, is fulsome in its praise:

“Overall, this is about changing the national narrative and discourse around supported housing. Crisis knows how key exempt accommodation sector can be to helping people rebuild the lives so they don’t have to go back to rough sleeping.

When the system works well, people receive the support they need in accommodation that is suitable for them. This Bill will be vital toward ensuring that this can be achieved.”

I wholeheartedly agree.

Let us look at a few of the key measures in the Bill. It introduces a supported housing advisory panel, to be drawn from across the sector. That is important, because it is not just about the housing; it is about recognising the complex multiple needs of the people in the housing. They come from all areas of society—they can be refugees, care leavers, people with disabilities, people who have been previously homeless or sleeping rough, recovering drug addicts, victims of domestic abuse and, as the shadow Minister rightly pointed out, people recently released from prison. We know that in the critical 12-week period after release those people really need support and structure around them, helping them to turn their lives around and get on the straight and narrow.

So this is mostly about the needs of the people within the supported accommodation, but it is also about looking toward the demand. The local supported housing strategies would therefore place a duty on the local housing authorities in England to review the exempt accommodation in their districts and then publish those findings. That will help us to highlight the future needs and feed in that data, which we simply do not have at the moment and which will be so crucial to managing that issue as we go forward. Again, it will help us to identify and root out rogue operators.

Then we come to the national supported housing standards, which are the critical bit about identifying good practices, which are across the whole sector. Let me be clear again that there are some good people doing good things for good reasons and getting good outputs for the most vulnerable in our society in this sector.

[Dr Hudson]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful contribution. Something that has been highlighted today is that there is good practice in this sector. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr raised the point that people who are in the right place in this sector doing the right thing will engage with this legislation and then we can shine a spotlight on this best practice, which will really raise standards and drive out bad practice.

[Ben Everitt]

I could not agree more. The entire point is to identify those national standards and ensure that they are met, and the Bill does that in two ways. First, it legislates for the power to introduce the licensing scheme to support exempted accommodation. That is optional between districts, but it is an additional power. Further, it supports exempted accommodation that falls outside the definition in subsection 12(2), and includes a power to introduce licensing for that accommodation as well.

In the Select Committee, when we were scrutinising that question, I wondered whether that was perhaps regulatory overkill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) said:

“The law should be a scalpel, not a machete.”

However, the scale and complexity of the issue we are trying to deal with is so vast that we need a variety of tools within our locker. That is not to say that they will all be used at every point. Therefore, there is a good reason for putting in these licensing schemes and potentially following up with some form of compulsory registration, although I am sure we will come on to that in later stages of the Bill—sort it out in the Lords, as I have heard before.

We know that we will have the powers to put that scheme together and that the licensing scheme can work with a system of compulsory registration, but the most important and critical factor in what could potentially be a bureaucratic Frankenstein of a piece of legislation is that it works with other Acts. It works together with the Housing Act and the forthcoming Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, so there is a neat legislative fit, filling in those cracks in the legislation that are being used as loopholes by unscrupulous landlords to scam their way into making a fortune from the most vulnerable in our society.

Rural Communities: Housing and Planning

Ben Everitt Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for granting this Adjournment debate on such an important topic—one that is close to my heart and to many of my constituents’ hearts.

I want to get straight to the point: community-led planning needs to be right at the core of the levelling-up agenda. When we empower local communities by involving them in planning, better results are achieved for everyone. That is especially important in rural areas, where a balance must be struck between building more houses and protecting our countryside. I know that my constituents in Milton Keynes North feel the effects when the process goes wrong. It is not hard; it just requires thought, ambition and vision.

Milton Keynes is proud to be a new city—so new, we are still building it! It worked because it was planned: a bold vision from the 1960s, with grid roads, planned infrastructure and green spaces. Urbanism, modernism and functionalism blended with nature and created strong thriving communities. We all love planning when it is done right, but reckless over-expansion in rural areas is a real and pressing danger. My constituents who live in rural communities and market towns such as Olney and Newport Pagnell, do not want, and do not deserve, to be swamped by poorly planned, sprawling housing developments. We need to make planning work better for people and their communities. We need to get back to pure principles, just as the visionaries who built Milton Keynes did.

This is not a case for nimbyism. Of course, rural communities face their own distinct housing challenges, and we must cater for them. The issues include an ageing population and higher house prices due to second home ownership. Although there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach, we must take heed of the issues and adapt planning policy to help, rather than hinder, rural areas.

I am clear that housing must be sustainable, appropriate, affordable and proportionate. It is on those four pillars that I make my case to the Minister. What is a sustainable approach to housing? How can it be achieved? When I talk about sustainability, I mean two equally important things: first, community involvement, because a development without a community at its heart is, by very definition, unsustainable; secondly, protecting the environment. Those two factors, successfully combined, are a sure-fire way of achieving sustainability.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman certainly has a reputation for looking after his constituents and I commend him for bringing the issue to the House; well done. Before the debate, I spoke to him about the natural environment. Does he agree that the current planning regime, which involves costly applications for farm buildings, needs to be overhauled to ensure that farmers are not paying to carry out work that is essential to their business and will ultimately be approved as a matter of course, and that more support could be given to the isolated rural communities to which he is referring to enhance the community while at the same time protecting the natural environment?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Everitt]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. Of course more can be done. Too often, rural communities and farmers feel that the planning system is stacked against them and that they have to jump through so many hoops—often, as he mentions, at great expense—to continue doing the job they have done for thousands of years. Farmers are the custodians of our countryside and the people who look after our food production, but the planning system in its current form does not support some of the things they need to be able to do to adapt to the modern world. We need a sustainable approach, which includes nature, as the hon. Gentleman says, and productive farmland.

A sustainable approach to planning is akin to growing a family. Rural villages and towns should expand just as a family expands: slowly, carefully and at a sustainable rate. In fact, we often forget that at the heart of planning are people, their loved ones and of course, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned, their livelihoods. However, as of now, the current planning system favours larger-scale developments, which are often unfit and unsustainable in rural villages.

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. He is outlining some problems in Milton Keynes that we are experiencing in Eastleigh. He knows that the Liberal Democrat council in Eastleigh are proposing a new town in Fair Oak of 2,500 homes, which is in their budgets going forward and being built by them. While I do not think that is a problem, we are seeing a lack of democratic accountability when it comes to the composition of the council. He knows that I brought forward a ten-minute rule motion several months ago about independent oversight on these planning issues. Does he agree with me, and can he outline how he sees democratic oversight going forward in the planning system, which needs desperate reform?

[Ben Everitt]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I totally agree; in fact, I was happy to co-sponsor his ten-minute rule Bill, so I am very familiar with the situation. I found it frustrating and amusing in equal measure that in a recent by-election in Chesham and Amersham, the Liberal Democrats campaigned against development, and yet in Eastleigh, as we have seen, they are acting as both a mega-developer and the planning authority. This is the point at which democratic oversight has clearly failed, because there is no superior power. The council is both the developer and the planner. So we need to get local leadership into the planning system that fits with the local vision, but ultimately loops round to engagement with local communities so that people can have their say in what they want, and not experience the like of the situation that my hon. Friend has described, where they feel like they are being built around and villages become suburbanised as part of sprawling developments.

I have long believed that town planning should strengthen family bonds. We need sustainable planning policies that keep families together, so children can live near their parents, and grandparents can live near their children—think of the childcare benefits. Ultimately, that is better for society and better for our local economies, and would demonstrate genuine learning from the pandemic.

Sustainable planning is also about understanding the people who live in rural communities, their needs and their livelihoods, and how those differ from those of more built-up urban environments. Sustainable planning keeps communities together, rather than pulling them apart.

Not only do we need to make housing and planning more sustainable, but it needs to be appropriate. In my experience both as a councillor and now as a Member of Parliament, the worst way to do developments is to put up huge sites that swamp villages and suburbanise market towns. Why? Because it is bad for nature and biodiversity, worse for farmland and food production, and worse still for rural communities. Small and medium enterprise builders tend to come off badly as well, getting locked out of the market, which reduces competition. As a Conservative, this contradicts the political values that I stand for. And this simply cannot continue.

The data backs that up. Rural areas are 18% less productive than the national average. But where there is a large gap, there is opportunity. If we can make a concerted effort to close that gap with appropriate growth, it could add £43 billion to the national economy alone.

When we talk about levelling up, we often talk about increasing economic growth in ways that we have not yet imagined. But one area that we know would promote that is the link between good planning and economic growth in rural areas. Planning policy is a multiplier. It influences housing allocation, socioeconomic conditions and the wider environment. If we view planning as just being about houses and physical infrastructure, we ignore those wider impacts and the potential for structural policy change.

If we can truly realise the appropriate planning policies that we need, we can start to build sensitive yet beautiful smaller housing for young people, their families, and older people. That not only supports housing targets with appropriate housing, but could also free up the logjam within the existing housing stock.

However, appropriate housing planning is conditional to affordability. Affordability in rural communities is of critical importance. Data from 2019 shows that only 9% of rural homes were affordable, compared with 19% of homes in urban areas. Lack of affordable homes in rural communities is a huge problem, as young people and young families find it harder to get on the housing ladder. I am very clear that the Government must commit to a single definition for affordable housing. That way, we can start building homes that are genuinely affordable in the areas where they need to be built. Without that, young people and young families will continue to be locked out of the housing market. The lack of affordable housing is as much to do with land supply, material availability and labour supply as it is to do with the type of housing that gets built. Those issues also need to be tackled.

On a positive note, affordable homes can unlock underutilised economic potential in rural areas. I know how crucial that could be for many other Members whose constituencies are also home to rural communities. For every 10 affordable homes built, research shows that the economy can be boosted by £1.4 million, creating 26 jobs and generating a quarter of a million pounds in Government revenue. It does not take a maths degree to know what happens if we can implement this strategy at scale. That is why I keep banging on about this. If we set manageable localised targets and work co-operatively with town planners and developers, we can turn up the gears on economic growth, while providing a future for the younger generations in areas where we previously thought it might be difficult to do so. I am optimistic that we can achieve that.

The fourth and final pillar is a proportionate approach. We all know that Rome was not built in a day—and, of course, neither was Milton Keynes. Now a city, it is 55 years old. It has taken 55 years to get to where we are and we are still building it. Up to this point, it has taken considered, careful planning, because—this is really important—communities do not grow overnight. Communities are nurtured. Taking a proportionate approach means scaling housing developments to the areas they are built for. For rural areas, it is much more efficient to have smaller scale development, where as few as 10 homes or a similar sized development in each village would solve the existing rural housing crisis.

By taking a proportionate approach, the identities of market towns and villages can be protected, while ensuring there are enough homes for everyone, including young families. Gentle, beautiful density can work in villages as much as towns, so long as we build the right kind of houses in the right place, at the right time and at the right rate. We all know that more houses are needed, but a tailored approach must be taken in rural areas. It should not be as hard as we are making it for ourselves.

What is abundantly clear is that our planning system also requires radical reform. While not a technical term in the world of planning, we need to make the planning profession sexy again. We can achieve that by implementing a series of changes and innovations to level up planning in the UK. First, we need to modernise the planning system and existing methods of construction. In practice, that means we need to be more digital, more codified and more transparent. Bringing the planning system into the 21st century should be a priority in any successful levelling up agenda. Let us be honest: a digitised planning system would represent a more desirable industry for young, talented people to begin their careers. The benefits would be twofold: far more efficient planning and a higher influx of talent into the sector.

Backing that up, we need to invest in degree apprenticeships for planning. We need to work with degree apprenticeships providers to build up to date curriculums that reflect a modern approach to planning. If we can get more people into those types of programmes, we can put the brakes on the brain drain in the private sector. We can also make structural changes to attract more talent into the sector. Local authorities need to be supported in providing appropriate resources to planning departments.

Better resource allocation equals more efficient planning departments, which in turn will make planning more desirable. Even smaller changes, such as making the role of a senior planner akin to that of a deputy chief executive, could change that narrative. Levelling up our planning system will be for nothing if we do not stop the brain drain, so I am strongly in favour of an integrated approach. With the modern reforms I have mentioned, I truly believe we can build beautiful houses that are not just identikit cut-and-paste estates. This is about taking pride in planning again and taking pride in the homes that we build.

But I want to offer a word of caution: while we rightly move at speed to achieve these changes, we must rely on local leadership within the levelling-up agenda. We know that there is an important cycle in levelling up: education, skills, jobs, inward investment, business growth and infrastructure growth all lead to local economic growth and more jobs, and we do not even know yet the skills needed for those jobs, so that loops back into education. Some or all of these themes could require some form of Government intervention at some point, depending on the local circumstances. That means local leadership is key, as is remembering that levelling up is about opportunities and that people and their homes and communities are at the heart of this cycle.

The Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill will be vital in catalysing this cycle, but, first, housing development planning must change, and fast. It is the hardest, most expensive, most time-consuming bit to do, but it is the most important. When we do not focus on sustainable, affordable, appropriate and proportionate housing, the results are detrimental to many and the environment.

I have seen this in my own constituency, where the MK East development encapsulates what can go wrong. This development does not respect the character of local villages—a factor I know my constituents care deeply about. Secondly, it takes farmland out of production during a time when the world is facing a food crisis, when instead we need all our farms to be at full pelt. How can this be considered sustainable, appropriate, affordable and proportionate?

When local leadership lacks clear policy direction, it fails, and we end up with poor planning. I argue that local leadership needs to be informed of new policy and, critically, the four pillars that I have put forward today. Of course, there are reasons to be positive and I welcome the recent White Paper on the private rented sector. However, there is always more to do if we are to truly look forward to levelling up housing quality across the country.

Whether as MP for Milton Keynes North or through my role as chair of the all-party group on housing market and housing delivery, I will continue to bang the drum on this issue. We must integrate planning with the needs of rural communities and the villages and towns within which they live, making housing more sustainable, appropriate, affordable and proportionate. Only then will we be able to protect our bustling high streets and thriving local businesses, which provide so much of our great country’s unique and enduring character.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call Minister Marcus Jones.