Architects Act 1997 (Swiss Qualifications) (amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 General Committees

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the Architects Act 1997 (Swiss Qualifications) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (S.I., 2019, No. 810).

The regulations were made on 5 April 2019. They are part of the Government’s programme of legislation to ensure that, should the United Kingdom leave the European Union without a deal or implementation period, there continues to be a functioning legislative and regulatory regime.

On 28 March, we—including some of us in this room—amended the Architects Act 1997 to continue to recognise European economic area-qualified architects in a no-deal scenario. This statutory instrument extends those provisions to Swiss-qualified architects. Leaving the EU with a deal remains the Government’s priority—that has not changed—but the responsible thing to do is to make the necessary no-deal preparations, to ensure that the country is prepared for every eventuality.

The regulations are made using powers under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 to fix legal deficiencies in retained EU law to reflect that the UK will no longer be an EU member state after exit day. The regulations also use powers in the European Communities Act 1972 to implement EU legislation in domestic legislation, which are available only as long as the UK remains a member state.

As stated previously, the architectural sector is a global leader and plays a significant role in the British economy, with an export surplus of £437 million in 2015 and involvement in key global projects such as Vessel in New York and Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg. That is a position that we want to protect and enhance over the coming years by ensuring that UK architect businesses continue to have access to the brightest and best talent available.

I will provide some context and background to the regulations, including a description of our earlier statutory instrument amending the Architects Act in a no-deal scenario. As I explained on 14 March, in the debate on the then draft Architects Act 1997 (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, the mutual recognition of professional qualifications directive enables the recognition of qualifications obtained in other member states. That applies to EEA and Swiss nationals, and includes the recognition of suitably qualified architects. The arrangement is reciprocal, allowing UK and other EEA or Swiss nationals the opportunity easily to register to practise across Europe and Switzerland, and allows UK practices to recruit the best European and Swiss talent.

The Architects Act 1997 sets out the specific procedures for registering as an architect in the UK. The registration of EEA and Swiss architects is carried out by the competent authority, the Architects Registration Board, which is an arm’s length body of my Department. There are three routes to recognition for EEA or Swiss architects wishing to register in this country. Their main route to recognition in the UK is through an automatic recognition system. To qualify for automatic recognition, an EEA or Swiss national needs to meet three tests: an approved qualification, which means one listed in annex V to the mutual recognition of professional qualifications directive; access to the profession of architect in an EEA member state or Switzerland; and a statement from their home competent authority to confirm that they are fit to practise.

A second route, known as “general systems”, provides for recognition for EEA and Swiss nationals who do not have an approved qualification. The applicant is offered compensation measures—that is, the opportunity to undertake additional training to make up any differences in qualification. It is a long and costly process, which on average only four people pursue annually. The third route facilitates the temporary or occasional provision of service. It allows EEA or Swiss professionals to work in the UK in a regulated profession on a temporary basis, while remaining established in their home state. Typically, fewer than 20 EEA or Swiss architects pursue that option at any one time.

If the UK leaves the EU without a deal, the mutual recognition of professional qualifications directive will no longer apply in the UK. The 2019 regulations made on 28 March ensure that UK architectural practices will continue to be able to recruit the best European talent and maintain their global reputation as world leaders in the field of architecture by preserving the main route to recognition.

The mutual recognition of professional qualifications directive was extended by what is commonly referred to as the agreement on the free movement of persons between the EU member states and Switzerland, which allowed Swiss nationals to benefit from the recognition routes described. Due to the requirement of the European Communities Act powers, which exist only as long as the UK is a member state, to include Swiss qualifications, we assessed that there was a substantial risk that all EEA-qualified architects who wish to register in the UK would be without legislative cover if the 2019 regulations were not made before 29 March. However, the extension to exit day has allowed us extra time to lay legislation to provide parity between EEA and Swiss-qualified architects, as currently exists, in a no-deal scenario.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for highlighting the various qualifications and regulations with regard to the Architects Act. Can he confirm whether there will be any watering down of the regulations in place between the UK and the EU post Brexit?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am coming to that. If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I will explain the effect of the instrument.

The policy intention is to provide the sector with confidence that almost all applicants can register in the same way after exit day as they do currently. That is the approach favoured by the sector, which recognises that the skills brought by EEA and Swiss architects contribute positively to the UK’s reputation as a world leader in architecture. The approach of continued recognition also received support in the debates on the 2019 regulations.

The instrument allows applications made before exit day to be concluded under the current system as far as possible. For future applications, it will freeze the list of approved qualifications in the EU’s mutual recognition of professional qualifications directive. As a result, after EU exit, in a no-deal scenario, an individual holding an approved EEA or Swiss qualification will be able to join the UK register of architects if they have access to the profession of architect in their home state. Through the legislation, that process will be open to anyone with a Swiss qualification and access to the profession in Switzerland, regardless of citizenship.

We will, however, remove general systems as a route to registration, as that is a long and costly process that is not often utilised. It places a significant and unnecessary burden on individuals and the Architects Registration Board. Therefore, applicants without an approved qualification will be able to register via the route currently utilised by third-country nationals.

The instrument does not change any part of the 2019 regulations, but simply extends the provisions to include Swiss qualifications. Although the number of Swiss architects registering in the UK is low—77 in the last 10 years—and accounts for less than 1% of the total recognition decisions via that route, we felt that it was imperative to preserve the rights that Swiss-qualified architects enjoy and provide parity between EEA and Swiss-qualified architects.

The regulations, alongside those made on 28 March, serve a specific purpose to prioritise stability and certainty if the UK leaves the EU without a deal or an implementation period by ensuring that EEA and Swiss-qualified architects can continue to register and practise in the UK. The regulations ensure that the UK will continue to have access to Swiss talent after we have left the EU, thereby helping to maintain the UK’s reputation as a global leader in architectural services. Thereafter, they provide a stable basis for Parliament to change the law, where it is in the UK’s best interest to do so.

To conclude, the instrument is necessary to ensure that the Architects Act continues to function appropriately if the UK leaves the EU without a deal or an implementation period. I hope that hon. Members will join me in supporting the regulations, which I commend to the Committee.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank the Minister for outlining what the statutory instrument contains. It is clear that it follows on from the SI that was made on 28 March and relates to a relatively small subset of that larger group of European architects that that SI referred to. On that basis, I will keep my remarks short, but I want to ensure that we have a complete understanding of what the Government seek to do.

Architects are one of the seven sectoral professions that benefit from automatic recognition under the current system, so if an EU, EEA or Swiss citizen meets the minimum harmonised standards, as set out in the directive, they are eligible to register and practise in the UK as an architect. The Architects Registration Board is responsible for the registration of all architects in the UK.

When, or if, we leave the EU, the directive will no longer apply. The SI ensures that the existing process for recognising EU and EEA-qualified applicants seeking to register as architects in the UK will operate effectively should we leave without a deal.

[Kit Malthouse]

indicated assent.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The Minister is nodding, so I assume that I have got that right. The current process will be frozen immediately before exit day, hence the need to plan ahead. The reason that Swiss architects were not considered last time is that neither the 2019 regulations nor the 1997 Act referred to the Swiss agreement. Is that correct?

[Kit Malthouse]

indicated assent.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Good—we can make progress. It is a pity that we have to put time in to preparing for a no-deal exit that the Government could clearly have taken off the table much earlier. Nevertheless, we are where we are and I prefer to focus my comments on the importance of supporting the architectural profession in the UK and ensuring that, post Brexit, it is able to draw on the expertise and creativity of architects right across Europe, including in Switzerland. That is especially important as the sector contributes about £4 billion—perhaps considerably more, even £5 billion—to the economy, and grows in importance all the time.

We need to maintain our position as a major global player in architecture. That has been recognised by the Royal Institute of British Architects, which has been clear that the sector is calling for access to the best talent and skills and common standards and compliance costs post Brexit. RIBA has made it clear that the architectural scene could be stricken by a shortage of talent should Brexit mean that free movement comes to an end and no mutual recognition of professional qualifications agreement is in place. Will the Minister comment on that? At the moment, it is not entirely clear that there will be an MRPQ agreement or that the Government are working on that.

I know from what the Minister said in a previous Delegated Legislation Committee that he is aware of the importance of the sector. Hansard notes that he recognised the sector’s exports surplus in particular, which was £437 million in 2015. As we recognise the importance of the sector, we need to ask a few questions. Such SIs put temporary solutions in place, but what additional resources can the Minister give to ensure that the long-term issue of registration and recognition of Swiss architects will be resolved?

I have asked the Minister about reciprocal agreements before but, in the light of this SI, I need to ask again. What reciprocal agreements have been put in place and are the Government working on them? The sector says that they are hugely important: 74% of architects believe that access to the EU is necessary and that without it, the industry’s future growth could be stymied. Sixty per cent. of architects surveyed by RIBA said that they have considered leaving Britain because of Brexit, which is 20% more than when the survey was first carried out in 2016. Brexit has already had an impact on the revenue stream of 68% of architects, and 43% of practices have had projects cancelled. We must ensure that no further damage is inflicted on the sector, and everybody seems to say that work on a detailed and inclusive MRPQ must happen as soon as possible.

Has the Minister made an estimate of the cost to businesses or architects’ practices of putting this new system in place? Also, what exactly will happen to the ARB after Brexit? Will it be given additional resources, or will the Government meet it to ensure that it is able to deal with this situation post Brexit?

In the last SI Committee related to the 1997 Act, questions were put to the Minister on how, if this does not work and there is not an MRPQ that everybody signs up to, we may end up in a situation where architects wishing to come and work in this country from across Europe, including Switzerland, will have to apply through the tier 2 visa process. The Minister did not answer questions about whether they will have to take that route or whether the Government will develop another route for them. Obviously, as this is a concern to the sector, I am very keen that he comments on that.

Clearly this SI is a tidying-up exercise. We do not wish to vote against it, because we want to support the architectural profession and ensure that, if UK architects want to employ architects from Switzerland, they are able to. However, I will be grateful if the Minister addresses the questions that have been raised.

[Kit Malthouse]

I thank the hon. Member for City of Durham for her constructive approach. She is quite right that this is a temporary fix for a situation in which mutual recognition falls away as part of our exit from the EU. We are committed to trying to find a permanent solution. We are jointly holding fruitful and ongoing conversations about mutual recognition with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and our professional partners across the world.

Obviously, as we move into a post-EU world, that work will accelerate, not least because it is in our interest, particularly for this sector. Our architects are world renowned and famed across the globe for their expertise, ingenuity and innovation. I think a British architect designed the new airport in Hong Kong. We are, of course, famous for our bridges; we build lots of them around the world. This is a great export industry that we wish to encourage, as well as being part of our armoury, if you like, of soft power around the world. We build the great buildings and edifices, from the Bundestag in Germany right through to that airport in Hong Kong. We are keen to support the industry.

Part of the reason for this SI was to maintain standards. By freezing the recognition of qualifications at the point of exit, we provide ourselves with a period of security in which we can be clear that those people coming in to practise architecture in this country do so on a stable basis. However, it is of course the job of the ARB to continually review qualifications from around the world to make sure that they are up to standard, because it has a general duty to ensure that anybody practising architecture in this country does so correctly and to the right standard.

As we discussed in the last SI Committee to deal with the subject, we believe that the cost of this is minimal. Fundamentally, this SI achieves the same thing by a slightly different route. It gives powers to the ARB to require information to be provided in different ways from how it is currently provided. Given that the general route towards qualification to practise in this country is being removed—as I said, that places a burden on the ARB as well as individuals—there may well be a reduction in overall costs through the removal of that rather cumbersome route to qualify.

As the hon. Lady says, this is essentially a tidying-up exercise for a very small number of architects; we are talking about an average of something like seven people registering a year. We felt it was better to be belt and braces than to leave it loose, not least because one of our greatest or most acclaimed architects, Norman Foster, is resident in Switzerland and may wish to move backwards and forwards. That is not to say that we are legislating specifically for him; we are also legislating for the many young, exciting and interesting architects from this country and Switzerland who may decide to practise in the other country. On that note, I thank the Committee for listening carefully to the information that has been provided, and I hope it will support the regulations.

Question put and agreed to.

New Town in Essex

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Thursday 2nd May 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) on securing this important debate on new towns in Essex. He is a particularly effective campaigner for his constituency and very persuasive and passionate in championing those he represents. We are fortunate also to have you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, as you are also an exemplary representative for that particularly beautiful part of the world, blessed or otherwise from the heavens—in my view, the whole country is so blessed.

As my hon. Friend and many others have highlighted in the House, we have not built enough homes over the last few decades, and we certainly do not build them quickly enough. It is our intention to fix that. As he rightly highlighted, there is much we can learn from the post-war new town programme about the importance of place-making, jobs and skills, infrastructure and the need for the long-term stewardship of place. The design of many of those new towns is often criticised—as he said, it was hit and miss—but it was largely successful, though challenges arose from the rapid development and centralised planning that underpinned them.

New towns were also hugely successful in providing homes and thriving communities for lots of people. Over 2.5 million people now live in a new town, including in lovely Basildon and Harlow. As my hon. Friend recommended, we want to learn those lessons from the past but apply them in a modem context. That is why we believe well-planned, well-designed and locally led garden communities should play a vital role in helping to meet this country’s housing need well into the future by providing a stable pipeline of homes.

This is not just about getting the numbers up; it is about building places that people are happy to call home and that have the potential to become vibrant, thriving communities where people can live and work for generations to come, as my hon. Friend pointed out. We are currently supporting 23 locally led garden communities across the country, from Cornwall to Cumbria, including North Essex Garden Communities, an ambitious proposal for three communities across north Essex with the potential to deliver up to 43,000 new homes.

In March, we announced a further five garden towns, including one in Essex. They include Easton Park garden community, North Uttlesford garden community and West of Braintree garden community. It is an opportunity to deliver up to 18,500 homes. We will make further announcements on more successful places in due course. Each place in the current programme is unique, but the expectations on quality and innovation are high. The council-owned Graven Hill site in Bicester garden town is providing the biggest opportunity for self and custom built homes in the country. Didcot garden town is promoting the innovative use of technology and partnership working between the public and private sector, to underpin a quality agenda.

Garden towns and villages are a key part of the solution to our housing crisis, and we want them to have every lever at their disposal. Last summer, building on the success of post-war new towns, we passed regulations that enabled the establishment of new town development corporations, to be overseen not by the Secretary of State as was previously the case, but by the local authorities that cover the area designated for the new town. Where there are complex delivery and co-ordination challenges, we consider that new town development corporations may be the right vehicle for driving forward high-quality new communities at scale. With a statutory objective to secure the laying out and development of the new town, and with their own suite of powers, those corporations should have the focus and heft to get things done.

Our Housing White Paper “Fixing our broken housing market” was published in February 2017 and committed the Government to allowing locally led new town development corporations to be set up. Section 16 of the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 enabled that to happen, and regulations passed in July last year brought those new powers into force—that was one of my first acts as Housing Minister. Some functions, such as the confirmation of compulsory purchase orders, remain with the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State will continue to lay any regulations that designate new towns, or that establish and dissolve new town development corporations. Those regulations do not change the powers of new town development corporations; they simply localise their oversight.

The regulations provide the mechanism to set up a locally led new town development corporation, but they do not enable the Government to do so simply at the behest of a local authority or group of local authorities. If—as we hope and expect—local authorities consider that a locally led new town development corporation is the right vehicle, we will need to undertake a public consultation. Only if we consider that designating a particular new town would be expedient and in the national interest will we lay the relevant statutory instrument. Parliament will have the opportunity to scrutinise each proposal for the designation of a new town, and a statutory instrument designating a new town must be debated in both Houses.

I emphasise that locally led new towns must be just that—locally led—and it will be for those local authorities interested in setting up such a body to make the case to the Government for why that would be expedient and in the national interest. That is a complicated way of saying that local and national bodies need to work together to produce the sort of communities that my hon. Friend refers to. We firmly believe that the success of those communities in future will be founded on local acceptability and control.

My hon. Friend mentioned the importance of delivering not just homes but the infrastructure to support them, and we wholeheartedly agree. That is why we have more than doubled the housing infrastructure fund, dedicating an additional £2.7 billion of funding, and bringing the total fund to £5.5 billion. We have given final approval to 94 marginal viability funding projects that will help to unlock a potential 104,000 new homes, bringing forward a pipeline of homes at pace and scale, and helping to solve the problems facing local communities today. That includes more than £11 million of funding to unlock up to 1,500 homes in Colchester and Chelmsford—not far from the area represented by my hon. Friend.

Following expressions of interest to the forward funding stream of the housing infrastructure fund, we have worked with Essex County Council to develop its bids. We have so far announced seven successful forward funding projects, totalling £1.2 billion of grant funding for infrastructure that will unlock up to 68,000 homes across the country.

As my hon. Friend said, housing and infrastructure are only part of the puzzle, and nowhere is that truer than in the Thames estuary, which encompasses the area from lovely Southend to Canary Wharf, as well as north Kent. Comparable in scale to the midlands engine, the northern powerhouse and Oxford-Cambridge arc, the Thames estuary has tremendous potential to power growth for the benefit of local communities, including those represented by my hon. Friend in Southend, and throughout our country.

In the autumn Budget 2016, we asked the Thames Estuary 2050 Growth Commission to come up with an ambitious vision and delivery plan for north Kent, south Essex and east London. In June last year, the commission, which was led originally by Lord Heseltine and concluded by Sir John Armitt, announced its vision for the estuary. In March this year, the Secretary of State welcomed the commission’s vision and backed its ambitious plans to create 1.3 million new jobs and generate an extra £190 billion for the local economy.

In the context of achieving that economic growth, we want more homes in the estuary, and the Government have announced further commitments to support the delivery of the commission’s vision for inclusive and well- balanced growth. Those commitments include £1 million to support a new Thames estuary growth board; launching a strategic communications campaign to promote the estuary as a great place to live, work and do business; funding for the creation of masterplans and feasibility studies on key sites in the estuary’s creative production corridor; exploring the potential for two locally led development corporations; and bringing together relevant authorities to collaborate on the Thames Estuary 2100 plan, to ensure that growth is sustainable and resilient.

Moreover, a Cabinet-level ministerial champion will be appointed to act as an advocate and critical friend for the region within the Government—it is not as if the area needs any additional advocacy, but this will be at ministerial level. Our response marks this Government’s commitment to the estuary, and we have a long-standing commitment to local growth in that area of the country. Indeed, the Government have invested a total of £590 million through growth deal funding since 2014 in the South East local enterprise partnership, which covers the constituency of Southend West. Some £22 million has been spent on 29 skills capital projects, designed to equip the resident workforce with the right skills to meet emerging employment opportunities. By 2021, that investment will deliver 15,000 additional qualifications and over 7,300 apprenticeship places.

In fact, within or close to the Southend West area, the South East local enterprise partnership’s investments include funding to develop the Southend and Rochford Growth Hub; help to develop the area around the Victoria Avenue gateway to Southend; and a package of transport projects comprising capacity enhancements to the A127, as well as a Thames Gateway South Essex local sustainable transport programme—snappily named. They also cover £6.4 million to improve broadband infrastructure in Essex, and a Southend and Rochford joint area action plan towards a new business park adjacent to Southend Airport.

I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the tireless work, on top of all that activity and investment, that my hon. Friend is doing on his long-standing campaign to turn Southend into a city, a campaign of legendary status now in this House. Although we are debating new towns, we should reflect that the Government are very much committed to supporting existing towns across England to harness their unique strengths to grow and prosper. That is why we have established a stronger towns fund, from which £37 million will be going to the south-east area. The funding will enable town deals across England, and the money will be used to deliver locally led projects creating new jobs, providing further training and boosting local growth.

In conclusion, we have covered a lot of ground in this short debate. I once again thank my hon. Friend for giving us the opportunity to do so, and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for supervising a debate about the area you represent so royally. We want to ensure that everybody who wants a home of their own can have access to one at a reasonable price in a place they want to live. Well planned, well designed, locally led garden communities have a crucial role in helping us to fix our broken housing market by providing the long-term pipeline of homes this country badly needs. But this must be about more than just numbers. We need to learn the lessons from the past—as my hon. Friend quite rightly pointed out—and make sure that we build places that people are happy to call home; places that can support vibrant, thriving communities where people can live and work for generations to come, and that may in the future be candidates to be conservation areas, as I hope Basildon will, in time, become.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Thank you. What an excellent short debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Private Tower Blocks: Removal of Cladding

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I commend the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) for securing this important debate. She has written to me on several occasions about this issue, and I congratulate her on her assiduous service to her constituents, as I do other hon. Members who have spoken in the debate.

I want to start by reassuring the House that I am well aware of the anxiety, fear and insecurity, as the hon. Lady put it, felt by many people living in blocks affected by this issue. Having met the UK Cladding Action Group, individuals and organisations from the Grenfell community and others, it is very clear to me that this event and its consequences have caused enormous distress—and there are also the practical issues that she rightly raised in relation to particular properties. I reassure her that much of my time, effort and commitment is spent trying to rectify this awful situation. Further to what the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) alleged about a possibly partial response, I gently point out that Grenfell Tower was in my London Assembly constituency. I served that community and the wider community for eight years. The idea that there would be any lack of commitment from my point of view is, frankly, for the birds.

Before addressing funding, I want to update the House on the wider remediation work under way. In the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, we established the building safety programme. A key objective of the programme has been to identify and remediate buildings with unsafe ACM cladding. We have collected data on over 6,000 private sector high-rise buildings, and we have identified 267 with unsafe cladding systems. There are plans and commitments in place to remediate 82% of those buildings. That includes buildings on which remediation has started or been completed. That progress is the result of action we have taken to put pressure on building owners and developers to reach a resolution.

In the private sector, we have been very clear that freeholders should do all they can to protect leaseholders from additional costs, by either funding remediation themselves or looking at alternative routes, such as insurance claims, warranties or legal action. The Secretary of State has written to all relevant building owners, setting out our strong expectation that leaseholders will be protected. He has asked them to find an acceptable solution urgently.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The Minister is doing much good work on this issue. He is always very responsive; he exchanged text messages with me on this issue early on Saturday morning. He says he takes nothing off the table, in terms of getting freeholders or developers to pay for this work. He also says that long leaseholders should not be responsible either. Where we cannot find a freeholder or a developer to hold accountable for this work, long leaseholders will be left in limbo; their apartments will be unsellable, and they will live under unacceptable stress. Is it not right for the Government to step in with a central fund to carry out the remediation work, and worry about whether they can find the freeholder or developer afterwards?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. If he will bear with me, I will come on to some of those issues in my speech. If I have not addressed them by the end, he can by all means intervene on me again.

Owing to our continued pressure, following the Secretary of State writing to all building owners, there is a growing list of owners and developers who are agreeing to fund remediation. Leaseholders are currently protected from remediation costs in 83 out of 176 residential buildings. The growing list of owners and developers who have stepped in includes Barratt Developments, Mace Group, Legal & General, Peabody, Aberdeen Asset Management and Frasers Property. I am pleased to say that following regular engagement from the Secretary of State, me and senior officials, the building owners at Green Quarter in Manchester have now written to leaseholders to confirm that a fund has been established. This will ensure that leaseholders will not have to pay for the cost of remediating the ACM. We are very pleased at this outcome. I know residents feel strong relief that the uncertainty and anxiety over costs has come to an end.

We remain concerned, however, that some leaseholders are not yet protected from costs. They have found themselves in this difficult and stressful situation through no fault of their own, having bought their properties in good faith. I would like to assure Members that the Secretary of State and I, as well as senior officials, continue to press owners and developers of all high-rise buildings with unsafe ACM cladding to protect leaseholders from paying for this essential remedial work. Further to that, we have been engaged across Government to consider additional interventions, so that progress can be made more swiftly.

We also want to make sure that leaseholders can access independent initial advice. We have provided funding to the Leasehold Advisory Service, which provides a free, initial service to affected leaseholders. Its dedicated advice line and outreach helps leaseholders to understand their rights and the terms of their leases. The Leasehold Advisory Service has supported a number of affected leaseholders to understand the terms of their leases and the legal process for challenging a building owner if they attempt to pass costs on.

On the subject of pace, we are working with all relevant parties, including local authorities and building owners, to ensure remediation happens without unnecessary delay. Remediation does take time and it is important to get it right. The time to complete work varies considerably depending on factors such as structure, extent of cladding and existing fire safety systems. For many buildings, this is a complex job involving major construction work. I am aware that the removal of cladding in a number of buildings has revealed other defects and issues that have complicated matters and needed rectification.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Before he moves off the point about discussions across Government of what further measures they might be able to take, is he able to articulate what they are tonight or will he lay them out in due course to the House?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right to press me, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake). I am not able to say tonight what specific measures are likely, but I am hopeful that we will be able to do so shortly.

We have worked closely with local authorities and fire and rescue services to ensure that interim safety measures are in place, so that residents are safe in their beds tonight. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow referred to my wanting reassurance that people are safe tonight. In fact, I have ordered a review of all those arrangements to take place as soon as possible, so that I can reassure myself that that is still the case.

Local authorities have the power to enforce these improvements if building owners do not take action. We are backing local authorities to take action where building owners refuse to remediate, including with financial support where it is necessary for the local authority to carry out emergency remedial work. Where financial support is made available, the relevant local authorities will attempt to recover the costs from the building owner.

[Rushanara Ali]

The Minister referred to “tonight”. Is he saying that every time we manage to get him into this Chamber he can reassure our constituents that they are safe for a night, or does he mean indefinitely, until the work is done? Will he explain how people can be protected against having to pay thousands of pounds towards the fire wardens, because that is happening to my constituents?

[Kit Malthouse]

As I have explained on numerous occasions, my primary concern, while waiting for the work to be undertaken, is to make sure that interim measures are in place in every affected building, so that people can be reassured that they are safe this evening and until that work is done. It is obviously the responsibility of building owners to make sure that their buildings are safe, but local fire and rescue services have been working closely alongside local authorities to make sure that that certification is in place. I have asked for a review, I guess to satisfy myself that the measures taken over the last few months—whether waking watch or others—are still in place and are still assiduously adhered to.

I met someone recently who outlined that one measure that has been very reassuring for her has been the heat detectors in the rubbish chutes—often flashpoints for the start of fires—that alert the building control system that a fire may well be starting. We want to reassure ourselves that, across those buildings that have not yet been remediated, those interim measures are in place, to reassure people for the moment, while we wait for remediation. I acknowledge that this is not an ideal situation. We want to get the remediation done as quickly as possible.

However, whatever solution is found for these buildings, we have to recognise that these are often complex and difficult construction jobs involving enormous amounts of scaffolding, the procurement of alternative methods of cladding and finding the workforce and contractors to do the work. All of that may well necessarily take some time. However, as I said, local authorities have the power to enforce these improvements, and we have included a package of financial support where it is necessary and local authorities feel the need to step in. We intend to recover those costs from building owners if that is the case.

We established a joint inspection team to provide support to local authorities in ensuring, and where necessary enforcing, that remediation. We have strengthened the housing health and safety rating system and its operating guidance to provide specific guidance on the assessment of high-rise residential buildings with unsafe cladding. That should help local authorities to take action.

The Secretary of State and I also regularly chair a remediation taskforce to oversee progress. I take this opportunity to remind the House of the strong progress we have made in social sector remediation. The Government made £400 million available to social sector landlords to fund the remediation of unsafe aluminium composite material cladding on residential social housing buildings taller than 18 metres. We have so far allocated £259 million, and we are still accepting applications. Remediation has started or been completed in 85% of social sector buildings, and there are plans and commitments in place to remediate all remaining buildings.

I would also like to tell hon. Members about the work we are doing following the Hackitt review. Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, we asked Dame Judith Hackitt to carry out an independent review of building regulations and fire safety. Dame Judith’s review found that the system was not fit for purpose. The review made 53 recommendations to establish a new regulatory framework and achieve a culture change to build and maintain safe buildings. The Government accepted the diagnosis of the independent review and published our implementation plan last December, which set out how we intend to take forward the review’s recommendations.

We committed in the implementation plan to consult on our proposals for a fundamental reform of the building safety system this spring, and we will publish our proposals shortly. Our aim is to put residents at the heart of a more effective system, with clear and more demanding accountability and responsibility for those who design, construct and manage buildings, alongside effective penalties for those who flout the system. We have not waited for legislation to begin to reform the system; we have already made progress. This includes launching consultations to make sure that standards and guidance are clear, banning combustible cladding on new buildings taller than 18 metres and further restricting desktop studies. We are also launching calls for evidence around approved document B and the role that residents can play in keeping buildings safe. Much of the work to reform the building safety system will require primary legislation, which we have committed to introducing at the earliest opportunity.

We are also making sure that change begins on the ground as soon as possible through our joint regulators group, which is helping us to develop and pilot new approaches and to transition to a new, safer system. An industry early adopters group is trialling aspects of the proposed new regulatory framework in advance of legislation. Industry must also drive culture change by adopting a safety-first mindset and taking greater responsibility for building safety, and we will champion those that do the right thing.

The Grenfell Tower fire represents the greatest loss of life in a residential fire in a century. We must rebuild public trust in the system in tribute to those who lost their lives, the bereaved and the survivors.

[Rushanara Ali]

This update is helpful, but I bring the Minister back to the points made about resources for privately owned blocks, because that is where the big loophole is. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) mentioned the Government fronting the cost and then going after the people who are liable—the freeholders—to pay. So far the Government have not shown themselves to be on the side of residents caught in this trap, but that is what is needed; the Government need to fight for ordinary people stuck in this position. I would be grateful if the Minister could give me a substantive answer. To do otherwise would suggest the use of a delaying tactic, which is really unhelpful. Frankly, our constituents will not sleep comfortably tonight or any night if it carries on like this.

[Kit Malthouse]

I do not seek to use any kind of delaying tactic. I cannot give the hon. Lady a specific answer tonight, but I can say, as I said earlier, that conversations are ongoing across Government about what further interventions we can make, because we recognise that the issue needs to be resolved as urgently as possible. In the social sector we are making good progress. In the private sector, progress is slower; I absolutely admit that. We need to do something to speed that up, and we hope to increase the pace quite soon. Discussions are ongoing.

However, I point out that we have said to local authorities that, where they go into a building and assess there to be a category 1 hazard, we will support them to step in and do the work themselves. We have said specifically that we will provide financial support for that to happen. We have amended the HHSRS tool to take into account and appreciate the envelope of a building, not just houses that are internal. The tools are there for local authorities to step in and take action where they believe there to be an imminent threat to life.

Alongside that, as I say, we have commissioned a wider review to make sure that the measures required to keep people safe on an interim basis are assiduously applied and monitored while we try to sort out the remainder—the tail end—of this unfortunate problem. It has been a difficult and complex landscape —both legally and practically—with which we have had to wrestle, and I hope that we will reach a resolution soon. Pleasingly, as I say, the vast majority of large developers in the industry are stepping forward to play their part, which we should welcome.

[Rushanara Ali]

rose—

[Kit Malthouse]

Given the seriousness of the debate, I will give way again.

[Rushanara Ali]

Can I ask the Minister once again about the timeframe he has in mind to get a grip on the outstanding issues, particularly with those companies that are not co-operating? Would he consider legislative action—or whatever action the Government can apply—to make them comply? Without the forcefulness of his Department and the entire Government, we are at risk of creating further danger to people’s lives.

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady should be under no illusion as to the amount of effort, time and commitment we are putting in to resolve this issue. There are meetings, both individual and collective, with companies and residents, and we are very close to the local authority and the community, who are also working hard, alongside us, to reach a resolution. I cannot give her a specific timeframe, but my desire is to get this finished and done as quickly as possible. I have seen the pain and anguish on the faces of people affected—it is very affecting to meet them and to understand what they are living with—and while I fortunately do not live in one of those buildings, it is not hard to put oneself in the position, in particular, of people whose home was their pride and joy and who had made a huge financial commitment. As I say, we are working as hard as we can to get that sorted out.

On that note, I thank hon. Members who have participated in the debate and reassure the House that we take this matter extremely seriously and are applying enormous resources to reach a resolution for all affected residents. Critically, we are determined to learn the lessons of the Grenfell tragedy and to ensure that nothing like it can ever happen again.

Question put and agreed to.

Housing

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered housing.

As we forge a new relationship with the European Union, building the homes our country needs is a mission more important than ever, because a home is so much more than a roof over your head; it speaks directly to your hopes and dreams—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The Minister is speaking about an important subject, and we must hear what he is saying.

[Kit Malthouse]

As I was saying, a home speaks directly to your hopes and dreams and gives your children a good start in life. It is about moving to take up a better job and anchoring yourself in a strong and confident community. However, for too many, particularly young people, a decent, affordable and secure place to live can feel out of reach. We remain determined that that must change.

Housing is this Government’s chief domestic priority, and our progress is already clear. For the first time in 10 years, home ownership among 35 to 44-year-olds is up. We have helped over 500,000 people into home ownership since 2010 through Government schemes such as Help to Buy and right to buy. Last year, we built more homes than in all but one of the last 31 years, bringing us closer to our ambitious target of 300,000 new homes a year. However, there is much more to do if we are to meet people’s aspirations.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Will the Minister apologise to all those sat waiting and languishing on homelessness waiting lists across the country?

[Kit Malthouse]

I have many times, at this Dispatch Box and elsewhere, accepted the fact that Governments of all stripes over the past three or four decades have failed to build the houses that the country needs, and we all share some culpability in the housing crisis we are now facing. The question is not how it came about, but what we are doing to address it.

When I took on this role last year, I made my task a simple one: more, better, faster homes. I will begin with “more”, because we are taking bold action on a number of fronts to increase supply. We are putting billions into housing and infrastructure—at least £44 billion over five years. We are reforming planning and we have empowered Homes England, our new national housing agency, to take a more strategic and assertive approach to increasing supply. We have recently announced the award of £1.2 billion of grant funding from our £5.5 billion housing infrastructure fund. The seven successful schemes have the potential to unlock up to 68,000 new homes, and we look forward to announcing further awards in the coming months.

We are not looking only to the market to deliver; we have paved the way for a new generation of social housing by removing the Government cap on how much councils can borrow, so that they can start to build a new generation of community homes.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the Minister on staying in post for as long as he has, which I should say is quite unusual for Conservative Housing Ministers. What, however, can he say to Greater Manchester, which has apparently been told that the Government are withdrawing their offer of £68 million to remediate brownfield sites?

[Kit Malthouse]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are in ongoing discussions with Manchester about its housing ambition, but one of the frustrations in that conversation is the unwillingness of the Mayor of Manchester to take responsibility for housing figures in that city. As I say, if he is willing to be ambitious, we would be willing to support him as well.

[Jim McMahon]

On that point, will the Minister give way?

[Kit Malthouse]

No.

In addition to our affordable homes guarantee scheme, which gives £3 billion of guaranteed support, making it cheaper and easier for housing associations to raise funds and get building, we are increasing supply as the means to make the most of the space we already have, including land that has already been built on. With that in mind, the planning proposals and consultations announced in the autumn statement aim to give people more flexibility to build upwards on existing buildings and in converting commercial properties. This is a positive step that ensures we conserve precious land, accelerate supply and help to revive our high streets.

We are also looking at how we can close the gap between planning permissions and homes built, and we will be taking action on the back of the review by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) to do just that.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I want to take my hon. Friend to one particular issue. One of the big problems we have had is that the building regulations are set against a new type of homes—prefab homes made of wood or steel—which can be built throughout the year, which would accelerate the whole building programme and which are ecologically far better than brick-built houses. Yet people always tell me that they have to make all sorts of adjustments just to meet the building regulations. Will my hon. Friend undertake to look at that, because these homes would accelerate the whole process of house building and make it much more affordable too?

[Kit Malthouse]

My right hon. Friend, with his usual wisdom, has prefaced the part of my speech I am moving on to. He is quite right: we believe that modern methods of construction hold enormous potential not only to produce more homes but to produce them faster and better. I recently visited a factory in Walsall, in the west midlands, where Accord is building 1,000 homes a year using modern methods of construction. So good are the environmental standards that those homes for social rent have lower arrears, because people can afford to heat them.

That is something we are backing through our £4.5 billion home building fund, £2.5 billion of which is to champion small and medium-sized enterprises, custom builders and more diverse builders to get modern methods of construction and other cutting-edge tech into the mainstream. The fund has already allocated all of the original £1 billion of short-term funding. Over 94% of the funding contracted to date has gone to SME builders. We expect the fund to deliver more than 30,000 homes—around 5,000 more than the original target.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

The Minister is quite right that we are going to need a whole variety of different types of houses and tenures to hit the 300,000 target. How many homes does he think will be built for social housing—not affordable housing—in the rest of this Parliament? What is his plan?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am constantly asked what targets might be for particular types of housing.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

12,500.

[Kit Malthouse]

Well, 12,500 is the minimum amount that is due to come out of the affordable homes programme. We hope and believe that the aspiration may be more, not least because we have taken the cap off the housing revenue account. It is therefore up to the ambition of councils whether they do this. As the Chairman of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), knows, I would love to sit in my office in Whitehall and plan the country—the Malthouse period of planning. I could plan in his constituency, as I could in mine, and decree what all these targets might be. However, as he knows, there are numerous housing markets in the UK —there are probably 30 or 40 in the capital alone—and they all operate in a different way, with lots of variable sites that all have their own issues and problems that need to be dealt with, so we are setting a standard target across the country as an aspiration. However, by setting councils free to build a new generation of social homes and investing enormous amounts of money in the affordable homes programme, which can also be for social homes, we hope and believe that that tenure will advance and increase to play its part in the 300,000 homes that are, we hope, coming in the years ahead.

I am mindful that, with such a dramatic increase in supply, the more we build, the more important it is that we get it right. That is why we are focused on building better. A key part of that is communities having a bigger role in shaping the future of the places they call home. We are making changes to our planning system, and in particular the planning rule book, so that they can do this. We are providing greater clarity and certainty for developers and communities alike, by giving local areas more options and the freedom and flexibility to make effective use of the land they have. That is crucial if we are to reassure communities that promises made on the provision of affordable housing and infrastructure will be promises kept. Keeping promises is the only way to ensure that communities will continue to have faith in new developments.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

In March last year, the Secretary of State wrote to 15 local authorities that had not submitted local plans. I understand that, as of now—a year later—10 of those have done so. Should the Government not be doing more to pressurise all local authorities to make sure they submit local plans to plan housing for their areas?

[Kit Malthouse]

Yet again, my hon. Friend shows his legendary impatience to build the homes that the next generation needs. He is quite right that we are urging, cajoling and pushing councils across the country to get their plans in place. We hope and believe that a plan-led system will produce more and better homes across the country, and also that, when a local authority puts its weight behind a plan and starts to think in decadal terms, perhaps, about how its area should look and how it should plan for homes, we will be able to help it with infrastructure. We have seen that in parts of the country from Carlisle, to Exeter, to Oxfordshire, where forward-thinking civic leaders are able to think 10, 15 or 20 years ahead. They are then able to come alongside us for big infrastructure asks, assistance, and, frankly, large cheques to assist them with that sort of ambition.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

On neglected areas of housing that do not get much ministerial airtime, can I first ask the Minister about new homes for people who are elderly? What further funding does his Department intend to allocate? Also, housing co-operatives rarely get any attention in this House. Does he—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. That intervention is too long. Before the Minister answers the hon. Gentleman, I must point out to the House that, for obvious reasons, this is a very short debate. We have to finish in an hour and 20 minutes. Fifteen people have indicated to me that they want to speak. At present, that gives each Backbencher three minutes. If people who do not intend to stay for the whole debate and do not intend to speak make interventions of more than one minute, there will be people at the end of the list who will not get to speak at all. It is not up to me; it is up to the House as a whole to decide how we will conduct this debate.

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Gentleman raises a pertinent point. As I tour the country, I go to lots of places in all parts of the country with significant brownfield land. One of the cries I hear from people in meetings is, “Where have all the bungalows gone?” That is a proxy for: where is the move-on space for older people whose children have left home and feel they need to downsize? We are keen to try to stimulate and encourage an, if you like, less than prime market that provides the kind of homes that older people would like to occupy. Key to that will be encouraging more participants in the house building market, as well as giving local authorities, as we have in the National Planning Policy Framework, the power to devise in their plans the type of housing that they need. It is perfectly possible for the hon. Gentleman’s local authority to signal in its plan that that is the kind of housing it requires.

We have also seen how community support increases when we build homes that grow a sense of place, rather than undermine it. It is why we are championing design and quality through the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. We reinforced that in February when we hosted a second national design conference. It is increasingly important as we create new settlements across the country, such as garden communities. Last month, we announced support for a further five garden towns with the potential to deliver up to 65,000 homes, in addition to the 23 locally led garden communities we are already supporting.

It is not just about getting numbers up, however. We are determined to put fairness back at the heart of the housing market. Our commitment to restore the dream of home ownership remains as strong as ever. That is why we have committed to a new Help to Buy scheme, which will run from April 2021 to 2023. We have cut stamp duty for first-time buyers and put a call out for evidence on innovation in shared ownership. We believe that the private rental market can be a stronger platform for those aspiring to home ownership, turning “generation rent” into “generation own”.

[Mr Ivan Lewis (Bury South) (Ind)]

When I met the Minister recently, he assured me that Government housing estimates were not a target. Yet within hours of that meeting his own Department informed the Greater Manchester Combined Authority that its housing deal was being scrapped because the new housing estimates were not sufficient. How does the Minister justify that contradictory statement?

[Kit Malthouse]

I think the hon. Gentleman is confusing two things. He is quite right that the standard assessment of housing need is meant to be a starting point from which councils assess, plus or minus, what they think they can address, subject to constraints and their other duties in the planning system. That, however, is separate from the Government’s housing deal. We are using the money available for those deals to stimulate ambition. Local authorities should deliver more than would otherwise be delivered in their plan and can justify the need for infrastructure on that basis. We have done successful deals, for example with Oxfordshire, and we are having a number of conversations. Critical to that is stimulating and encouraging every part of the country to play its part in building the homes the next generation needs by being ambitious about their targets.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

The Minister talks about being ambitious and setting targets. Does he accept the figure, published by the Shelter commission in January, that we need to build 155,000 social homes a year for the next 20 years?

[Kit Malthouse]

I accept that we need to build a hell of a lot more homes of all types and that is exactly what we are trying to do. We are in the process of creating a situation where everyone who wants to build can build and can seek assistance from the Government to do so, if they are willing to be ambitious—from the private sector to housing associations, councils or anybody who wants to build. We think that this problem is so acute that we cannot be partial about who gets to build the homes.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I am sorry that I came into the debate a bit late; I was held up. On encouraging local authorities to build, exactly what help can the Government give local authorities to build social housing? I have had a number of people who are homeless—I have had families—coming to my surgeries desperate for accommodation. The local authorities do not have the resources. How is the Minister going to provide them?

[Kit Malthouse]

As I hope the hon. Gentleman knows, we lifted the borrowing cap on local councils so they can now borrow to build a generation of new homes. We have opened up the affordable homes programme to councils to bid in for Government money—grant funding—so that they can seek to build social homes. I am more than happy to write to him with details of how his council can access that.

Turning back to ownership, as I said, I wanted to turn “generation rent” into “generation own”, but we also believe that fairness should not stop once people get the keys. That is why the Secretary of State unveiled a new industry pledge last month to bring an end to onerous lease terms, such as the doubling of ground rents. More than 40 leading developers and freeholders have signed that pledge and I encourage others to follow the lead. We are bringing forward legislation to require developers to belong to a new homes ombudsman to champion the rights of home buyers and to ensure that they get the quality build that they rightly expect. We will soon consult on how this will work so that we can ensure that consumers’ problems are resolved faster and more effectively.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

On behalf of Members on both sides of the House, I welcome what my hon. Friend has said, and I thank the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend for their work on this. Will he or one of his colleagues make a statement as soon as Homes England approves commonhold houses for the Help to Buy scheme, and will he make a statement on when the Land Registry can easily register commonhold associations? At present, there is one development on the way, but it is being blocked because the Land Registry has forgotten how to do it.

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend, in his customary manner, has raised an important but detailed point. I will go away and ascertain what the timetable might be and keep him posted about where things might go next.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Ind)]

Does the Minister accept that “generation own” is particularly challenging in areas such as South Hams in my constituency? It has the highest property price to earnings ratio in the south-west—11.7—and part of that is driven by second home ownership. Will he touch on what can be done where the impact of second home ownership is particularly high to make this an affordable dream for young families?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady raises an issue that, in certain parts of the country—including in my constituency —can have an impact, albeit that I think it is sometimes overstated. Having said that, the Government have taken steps, such as giving councils the power to charge premium council tax on empty homes and second homes, which should help with that issue. In the end, however, in areas such as the hon. Lady’s, most of the problem will be solved by increasing supply. I recently attended a meeting with the Campaign to Protect Rural England down in her part of the world, where I tried to explain to 240 people who were not best pleased at the idea of having a significant number of homes in their area that this was their moral duty to the next generation and that they needed to accept the homes, control them, design them well, and make them fit in and enhance their local communities. We have a growing population and in popular areas where people want to live and from which young people are often driven out, the solution will be to build more homes.

Happily, the picture is also improving for renters. We are cracking down on rogue landlords and from 1 June, the Tenant Fees Act 2019 will come into force, banning unfair letting fees and capping deposits. These vital steps will protect tenants and save them millions. We will also set out our position shortly on longer-term tenancies, because those in the private rented sector can face a high degree of insecurity. It is time that we put that right. Indeed, landlords could also benefit from more stability. As well as feeling more secure, nothing is more important than people being safe in their homes, so we will also be implementing a new regulatory framework for building safety. It is no small task but it is the debt we owe to those who suffered so terribly from the Grenfell fire, because everyone must be safe and feel safe in their home, no matter where they live.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

The Minister knows that I have residents in New Providence Wharf who are being pressured by Ballymore to pay for the removal and replacement of defective cladding. He has kindly looked at that issue. Will he assure us that the Government will continue to press companies to accept their responsibility and the cost? Can he tell us anything about progress, particularly in New Providence Wharf?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Gentleman has met me to press his constituents’ case. In turn, I have raised the matter face to face with the representative of Ballymore. We continue to put pressure on the industry generally to do its duty to leaseholders and critically, to remediate to ensure that everybody is safe in their homes. However, I am more than happy to write to the hon. Gentleman in the next few days about the progress we are making generally on the issue.

[Catherine West]

I thank the Minister for taking a further intervention on Grenfell. Can he confirm that every single tenant who was made homeless as a result of the terrible fire in the Grenfell block has been housed?

[Kit Malthouse]

Sadly, I cannot quite confirm that. We are very close to completing the rehousing of everybody who was involved in the Grenfell Tower fire. At the moment, the numbers remaining are small and the cases are often complex, and we are making significant progress.

I am also mindful of those without a place to call home. When I reflect on what we can do better, I am clear that we must do everything possible to confront rough sleeping and the broader challenges of homelessness. Our cross-Government, £100 million rough sleeping strategy is helping our rough sleeping initiative reach more parts of the country—now more than 75% of local authorities in England. As part of that, we announced £46 million to support people off the streets and into accommodation in 2019-20, because we have already seen how that can work and make a real difference. Recent figures have shown the first fall in the number of people sleeping rough in eight years. However, we should make no mistake: one person sleeping rough is one person too many and we remain more determined than ever to end rough sleeping for good. That means combating homelessness, and our ambitious £1.2 billion package of support will help tackle it in all its forms, giving some of the most vulnerable people in our society the security and dignity they deserve.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

While the Minister is on the subject of homelessness, will he urgently review permitted development, which allows some homeless families, including those who live in Terminus House in Harlow, to be housed in wholly inappropriate accommodation and bring up their children in a new slum? The permitted development regulations need to be looked at urgently.

[Kit Malthouse]

We have made a commitment to review the implementation of the permitted development rights policy. However, alongside that, I urge local authorities to use the maximum power available to them through their building regulation powers and other forms of inspection to ensure that the homes people inhabit are suitable. I also urge local authorities that place people in those homes to reassure themselves that they are suitable for occupation. We have often found that people in unsuitable homes are placed there by councils that frankly should know better and should seek higher quality accommodation for their residents.

As I hope I have shown, we are making every effort to get everyone on board to deliver not just more homes but stronger communities. My triple challenge—more, better, faster—is the key to the country’s happiness, health and prosperity and the work is starting to pay off. The number of homes built is up, rough sleeping is on the turn, there is greater fairness in the rented sector and more beautiful and innovative places to call home should start to appear. We have every reason to be confident and optimistic as we look forward to our future outside the European Union. A stronger, fairer, more diverse housing market can be the bedrock of our future success—a way to spread opportunity and ensure that no one is left behind. We remain focused on delivering that and fulfilling the basic promise that each generation must make to the next: that their life will be better than ours.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman has a very short memory. In 2009 we were in the direct aftermath of a global financial crisis and recession. It was the action that the Government took then that kept house building going and helped to pull the country out of the crisis. More than a decade on, under this Government, the level of house building has still not reached the pre-crisis peak. We have seen a pitiful performance over the past nine years. The public have lost patience with a Government who, nine years on, try to blame their Labour predecessors.

The Government’s record is now very clear. The rate of home ownership is lower, with almost 900,000 fewer under-45s owning a home now than in 2010. The level of homelessness is higher: the number of people sleeping rough on our streets has more than doubled since 2010. Private rents are higher, with the average tenant paying £1,900 more than in 2010. The rate of social house building is lower, and in the last two years it has been the lowest since the second world war. Let me say this to the Minister. If the Government had only continued to build homes for social rent at the same rate as Labour did in 2009, there would be 180,000 more of those homes—more than enough to house every family in temporary accommodation, every person sleeping rough on our streets, and every resident in every hostel for the homeless.

The Minister said, in response to an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), “We are very close to completing the rehousing of everybody who was involved in the Grenfell Tower fire”. I have to say that, nearly two years on from that shocking national tragedy, the Government’s action is still on go-slow. He would not give the House the figures, but one in 10 of the residents from the tower and one in three of the residents from the wider estate who were involved in the fire still do not have a permanent new home. Eight in 10 residents of other high-rise blocks across the country that are covered in Grenfell-style cladding have still not had it removed and replaced. Those are residents in 354 high-rise blocks across the country, nearly two years on from the fire.

[Kit Malthouse]

I want to correct the right hon. Gentleman on the rehousing numbers for Grenfell, not least because I hope he would never seek to use it as a political football. We are putting enormous efforts into rehousing residents. Of the 202 households from Grenfell Tower and Grenfell Walk that required rehousing, every one has accepted an offer of either high-quality temporary accommodation or permanent accommodation, 196 have moved in, 181 have moved into their permanent home, and 15 remain in temporary accommodation. Six house- holds remain in emergency accommodation—two in hotels, three in serviced apartments, and one living with family or friends. There is a constant and ongoing conversation with those people about their needs and requirements. We are taking this very slowly and sensitively. We cannot compel anyone to do anything. We are working closely with them to try to ensure that they get the homes they need. It is unfair of the right hon. Gentleman to try to make out that we are being dilatory in that effort.

[John Healey]

The Minister does himself, the Government and the Grenfell survivors a disservice when the story he tries to tell with those figures is so at odds with the experience of the people affected by the fire.

--- Later in debate ---

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

The residents of the Witham constituency are concerned about a wide range of housing matters. Ministers might be familiar with some of them, but I want to pick on three examples.

First, the issue of how the five-year land supply is calculated affects communities across the country. In planning applications and appeals, we see developers trying to pick apart the declared pipelines in councils’ local plans. To be frank, highly paid consultants and advisers are producing lengthy reports for applications and appeals, and the public struggle to contest them because they do not have the resources. I have seen many cases in my constituency of developers trying to pick apart the council’s supply pipeline and go against local community planning and the council’s planning objectives. That is not good enough.

We all recognise that the delivery of land and housing can sometimes be beyond councils’ framework and mandate. I urge the Government to look again at how much weight is applied to the five-year supply. We must ensure that councils and communities have more protection. Developers think that by ripping apart five-year supply calculations, they can develop almost anywhere. That is a major issue across the board.

[Kit Malthouse]

I hear what my right hon. Friend is saying. She is making a strong point. I hope she agrees that part of the solution is to encourage neighbourhood plans, particularly in her constituency.

[Priti Patel]

I thank the Minister for that point. I will come on to that. Like all Members of Parliament, I want to see my communities empowered in planning decision making. In Witham town, there was recently an application for Gimsons—a site at River View in Witham—which is deemed a visually important site and is highly regarded by everyone in the community. The current local plan protects it from development. The draft local plan, which could be two years away from adoption, recommends approximately 40 dwellings, but an application for 78 came along and was granted permission. The residents were appalled that their views were ignored.

I am a great believer in neighbourhood plans and I encourage all my parishes to develop them. We want much more support for community-based planning and neighbourhood plans, particularly with parish councils. I urge the Minister and his team to give more resource to parishes and communities so we can ensure that they are protected from developers, who sometimes come along wanting to rip up the five-year land supply and to challenge councils and communities. Importantly, we must ensure that there are resources and that place-shaping can happen. The Minister has already spoken about that.

My final point is about the ways in which we can support housing and development. The Minister spoke about garden settlements. We have had many conversations and I urge him to ask the Secretary of State to reply to me—we have some outstanding correspondence. There is a huge opportunity for all Departments to work together to ensure we have integrated planning. That means that we have the right infrastructure, including road and rail, health, schools, and public amenities and services. That is a great programme that our Government could take forward. I urge the Minister and his colleagues across Government to work in an integrated way so we can drive the right kind of local community outcomes on housing and planning.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak after my Select Committee Chair; we agree on much, although I am not sure about selective licensing, which is too often a licence to print money for some local authorities. It is also a pleasure to speak with the Housing Minister on the Treasury Bench. I feel, from my short time in Parliament, that he has got at least as good a handle on these issues as anyone I have seen.

We need to build more truly affordable housing, both to rent and to buy. We cannot simply do what Labour would do—put more pressure on an overburdened taxpayer. We must do it in different ways. The best way to do it is to cut out the middlemen or middlewomen; I speak as a middleman who has been involved in the property market for 30 years. There are a couple of simple ways we could do that that are simply too good to miss. The Housing Minister is familiar with some of my ideas on this, particularly on delivering more affordable homes to purchase through the section 106 system.

Every year, we deliver around 25,000 affordable homes through section 106 requirements. They are typically sold to housing associations at 50% of market value. The housing association then rents them out at 80% of market value and puts them on their balance sheet at 100% of market value; nice work if you can get it. Why, instead of doing that, do we not simply sell those properties—or half those properties—to first-time buyers on low incomes, at 50% of market value? That would be in perpetuity and those first-time buyers could pass the properties on to the next person. There is no cost to the taxpayer whatsoever. It is good for them. It is good for the developers, who are dealing direct with their customers. The only people who probably will not be too keen on it are the housing associations, but that is not who we are here for; we are here for real people.

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend has raised this issue with me a number of times. I am keen to promote it with him. Will he meet me to discuss how we might promote it to councils?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I certainly will.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Faisal Rashid (Warrington South) (Lab)]

4. What recent assessment he has made of trends in the level of new homes for social rent since 2010.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

Since 2010 we have delivered more than 407,000 new affordable homes. That includes more than 293,000 affordable homes for rent, of which 135,000 are for social rent. There is always more to do and I look forward to hearing from the hon. Gentleman what that might be.

[Faisal Rashid]

Between 2016 and 2017 a total of 138 two- bedroom properties were let in my Warrington South constituency through the social rent scheme, and about 1,100 families bid for them. What is the Minister doing to meet those unsustainable levels of demand in my constituency?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right to raise the fact that demand in all parts of the housing market outstrips supply—social, affordable and, indeed, all ownership models that we put out there. We are putting significant resources behind all parts of the country to build the homes that the next generation needs. We have managed to get net output up from 124,000 after the crash, to 222,000. Indicators for next year are looking pretty good, too, but as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, significant resources are being applied to this problem and we will do our best to try to address it.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

The Minister will agree that every opportunity should be taken to increase the stock of social houses for rent, so will he acknowledge the great work of Rugby Borough Council, which is currently arranging for the replacement of old high-rise blocks with a greater number of houses on a conventional streetscape?

[Kit Malthouse]

I applaud any local authority that is putting its shoulder to the wheel of solving the housing crisis. A great sadness of my time as a borough councillor—I was a councillor for eight years—was the fact that the then Labour Government put an end to council house building. We were all induced, effectively, out of that business with decent homes money. We had to get rid of our housing and transfer it to housing associations or other formats. Fortunately, some councils did manage to hang on and I am very pleased that they are now doing their bit.

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

Some 66,000 council homes have been sold through right to buy since 2012, and just shy of 18,000 have been started—that is one replacement home started for every four sold, and they are not like for like, either. Are the Government ditching their promise for one-to-one replacement, and when are they going to come clean about that?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady is quite right to point out that we have not hit our one-to-one target. That is correct—it would be foolish to deny it—but at the same time those 66,000 homes that have been sold have satisfied a legitimate aspiration among all those people to own their own home, and we are committed to that. The lifting of the housing revenue account cap was specifically designed to set councils free to build a new generation of council houses, so that in time a further generation of council house occupants can also experience home ownership.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

5. What recent progress his Department has made on the allocation of funding to coastal communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

7. What steps his Department is taking to support the building of social housing.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

On top of our £9 billion affordable homes programme, we have reintroduced social rent, removed the housing revenue account borrowing cap and announced £2 billion of long-term funding, and we are setting a long-term rent deal for councils and housing associations.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

There is currently a prohibition on the inclusion of residential properties in personal pensions such as self-invested personal pensions, which leaves potential accommodation over shops empty or unconverted. Will my hon. Friend work with his colleagues in the Treasury to reform these rules, provided that the properties are let out at a social rent?

[Kit Malthouse]

No one, but no one, works as hard as my hon. Friend on housing policy. There is not a time when I appear at the Dispatch Box that he does not badger me with some new idea. He obviously takes his moral duty to the next generation to build the housing they need very seriously, and I would be more than happy to walk arm in arm with him down Downing Street to No. 11 to propose exactly that idea.

[Graham P. Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

It is disappointing that the Government have scrapped their one-for-one target. My local Labour-run council, Hyndburn Borough Council, wants to build some social houses on the Clayton triangle. What support can the Minister guarantee to make sure that those social homes are built on the Clayton triangle?

[Kit Malthouse]

Of course, one change we have made is to allow local authorities to bid into the affordable homes programme, specifically to support their house building aspirations. We have lifted the HRA borrowing cap, so the hon. Gentleman’s local authority is free, in a way that it was not before, to borrow that money. I point out to Opposition Members that one of the most debilitating parts of the debate about housing is their inability to accept that this Government and the coalition Government before us were faced with a catastrophic financial framework within which to build the homes that the next generation needs. It has taken time to recover capacity in the house building industry and in local authorities to achieve the kind of aspiration he wants to see.

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I congratulate the Government on their ambitious targets, but is the Minister aware that on the Isle of Wight there is deep concern about the housing targets and the lack of affordable housing? Fewer than 100 units were built between 2015 and 2018. I hope that my council will apply for exceptional circumstances to lower its targets in the interests of our tourism economy and quality of life, but to ensure that a much higher proportion of that is built for social housing. Will he meet me to discuss this issue further?

[Kit Malthouse]

I think a feeling that everybody shares across the House is the desire to address what is undoubtedly a housing crisis. Governments of all stripes over the past 30 or 40 years have failed to build the houses that the country needs. We are applying significant resources to try to correct that problem.

My hon. Friend raises an important issue, in that local authorities also have a duty to put their shoulder to the wheel to deal with the housing problem. Through the national planning policy framework, we have put the power to do so in their hands. It is perfectly possible for his local authority to produce an authoritative and ambitious local plan that both satisfies the aspirations of local residents for the kind of housing they want and sends a signal to the development community about what it should be doing on the Isle of Wight.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee has advised the Government that they need to do more to support neighbourhood planning in deprived areas. Does the Minister agree that he should give additional powers to town and parish councils to facilitate that and to ensure that all areas, especially those with acute need, are able to plan for and deliver the homes, including the social housing, that they desperately need, while also improving their wider built and natural environment?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady identifies a significant intention of ours on planning policy, which is to put local communities of all types and in all parts of the country in control of planning. It is the case, unfortunately, that over the past 30 or 40 years many neighbourhoods have felt that they are victims of the planning system rather than its masters. We are keen to promote the use of neighbourhood plans in all sorts of areas—urban, rural or wherever it might be—so that local people are in control of the disposition, size, place and type of housing they want, subject to their joining us in the general mission to satisfy what is undoubtedly a huge desire in the next generation for new homes.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

8. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the death rate among homeless people.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

13. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of the (a) build quality, (b) leasehold practices and (c) other elements of the performance of the housing sector.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I hope that everybody in the House wants to see new build quality improve, and we will soon consult on the details of a new homes ombudsman to make it so. We are also cracking down on unfair leasehold practices. Most recently, on 28 March, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State unveiled an industry pledge to end the doubling of ground rents, and there have been more than 40 signatures from the sector so far.

[John Spellar]

But the Minister surely recognises that every week there are continuing reports of shoddy workmanship, long delays in putting them right, extortionate leases, which he mentioned, and unfinished roads, lights and pavements. On top of that, we have seen unaffordable housing and eye-watering profits and bonuses. He should not just hive this off to an ombudsman; we need direct action from his Department. This scandal has been going on for far too long.

[Kit Malthouse]

As a constituency MP with a large amount of house building in my patch, I regularly deal with exactly the sort of problems that the right hon. Gentleman raises, and I make my views known to the house building industry about its duty to produce a high-quality product for its customers, notwithstanding whatever the Government may do. He is quite right that other tools may well be available to us, and we are looking, for example, at what we could do with the Help to Buy scheme to encourage house builders to produce greater quality. I am pleased to note, however, that the recent Home Builders Federation star rating system has shown a general improvement, particularly among the larger house builders, with three now in the five-star zone.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I chaired the all-party group on excellence in the built environment, which recommended a new homes ombudsman, but it was October when the Government agreed to introduce one. Five months on, can I press the Minister to get a move on before he gets promoted to the Cabinet?

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend is quite right to point out that Housing Ministers do not last that long, and I am certainly pushing the envelope at nine months, but I will do my best in the time that remains to me to fulfil his desire, because it is an important one. If we are going to get to building 300,000 homes a year for the next generation—I know this is of particular importance to him given his background—these houses have to be fantastic, of great quality and of brilliant design, so that communities will continue to accept them in significant numbers.

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

14. What steps the Government are taking to deliver economic growth through the midlands engine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

15. What steps he is taking to increase the provision of housing in Newcastle.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

Since 2010, over 21,850 new homes have been delivered in Tyne and Wear. In March, we announced over £16 million from the housing infrastructure fund, which will help to unlock a further 5,000 homes.

[Chi Onwurah]

I publish my constituency casework on my website, and every month since I was first elected in 2010, housing has been one of the top three issues constituents bring to me. Does the Minister agree that to deliver choice and affordability for my constituents, the right resources and powers need to be devolved to the region as part of the North of Tyne deal? We know what our housing need is.

[Kit Malthouse]

Given that Newcastle is one of the two mighty northern cities that made me the person I am, the hon. Lady will understand that I am keen to see that wonderful city, where I spent three fantastic years at university, achieve its aspirations. I know that the local authority has constituted a housing delivery board, and we are doing our best to give it the resources it needs to deliver housing from Ousemouth to Kenton Bank Foot to the Helix development in central Newcastle. I am certainly more than happy to help her in chivvying it on to fulfil the aspirations of the Geordies who need homes.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

16. What steps the Government are taking to reduce the number of former armed services personnel who are homeless.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

22. What assessment he has made of trends in the level of home ownership among under-45-year-olds since 2010.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

The proportion of under-45-year-olds owning their own home was 50% in 2010-11. That fell to 42% in 2016-17, in the aftermath of the crash, but happily it has since risen to 45% in 2017-18. Supported by Government schemes including Help to Buy and right to buy, the number of first-time buyers rose to more than 370,000 in 2018, an 86% increase since 2010.

[Rosie Duffield]

Many of my constituents are simply priced out of the housing market. Rental properties and mortgages are out of reach to all but the wealthiest, meaning that families who have lived for generations in villages such as Bridge, Chartham and Sturry, where their parents and grandparents grew up, are now simply unable to afford a property. Will the Minister acknowledge that we urgently need realistically priced affordable homes for the next generation, especially in rural areas?

[Kit Malthouse]

Yes.

[Mr Speaker]

Well done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

T4. New homes need new infrastructure. The housing infrastructure fund bid for Chelmsford’s second railway station and bypass will unlock over 10,000 new homes, so may I urge my right hon. Friend to back the bid? Otherwise I will keep on nagging him until he does.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

We have already invested £10 million in the Chelmer Waterside development in my hon. Friend’s constituency, but she is still insatiable for more Government funding for her fast-growing constituency. As she knows, HIF bids are a competitive process, but I will look carefully at the proposals put in by Chelmsford; and, given her support, let us be hopeful of success.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

New figures today show that 40,000 people are still trapped in privately owned blocks wrapped in Grenfell-style aluminium composite material cladding. That is 40,000 lives on hold—weddings cancelled, mental ill-health rife—because people are trapped in properties that cannot be sold. The Prime Minister repeatedly said that she rules nothing out, so when will the Government finally say, “Enough is enough,” set up a loan fund for private blocks and get the job done?

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

T2. What steps will the Secretary of State take to support housing renewal in older industrial areas, particularly coalfields?

[Kit Malthouse]

As I hope the hon. Gentleman knows, we are putting enormous emphasis on the regeneration of brownfield land. It should be a first call for all local authorities trying to deliver new homes. As I recall, 56% of all new homes last year were delivered on brownfield land. Through Homes England, we are putting significant money behind remediation required in areas such as coalfields and other sites that might be contaminated. I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with details of how his area could access that funding.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

T6. May I urge the Government to support local authorities in getting tough on littering and making sure that more fines are levied for this antisocial habit?

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

The Housing Minister has a make-it-so attitude. Will he therefore meet with me, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the timber industries, and the group to discuss timber’s role in hitting the future carbon target as well as the housing target?

[Kit Malthouse]

Given the emphasis the Government are putting on new and innovative construction techniques in building the homes that the next generation needs, I am more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. Notwithstanding the problems we had with timber-framed buildings back in the 1980s, there is significant potential for its use in future house building.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

rose—

Permitted Development and Shale Gas Exploration

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on securing this debate, which I will call “shale 2”, as it is a repeat of the Westminster Hall debate promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley). It is clear from today’s debate that passions remain as high on this subject as on that heady afternoon.

I know the hon. Lady was not trying to position herself as the sole custodian of our precious countryside. My party overwhelmingly represents the British countryside and recognises the precious nature of our green and pleasant land. As an unapologetic environmentalist myself, I share that view. Being genetically from Yorkshire—although I was brought up in the north-west and educated in the north-east—I also have the interests of the northern half of this country at heart. I now happily represent a part of the same bulge of chalk as my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) —I also have oil production that goes on unnoticed and uncomplained about by my constituents—so this is a matter of extreme importance to me.

I emphasise that no final decision has been made on whether to bring these proposals forward. The consultations have now closed and the Government are currently considering the representations made and will issue a response in due course. These consultations are part of a range of measures to make planning decisions faster and fairer for all those affected by new shale gas development and to ensure that local communities are fully involved in the planning decisions that affect them.

As right hon. and hon. Members will know, my remit as Housing Minister in relation to shale gas development is focused on planning policy and delivering the related manifesto commitments. Given that hon. Members have raised matters beyond my remit, including energy policy and reported seismic events, I will refer those matters to the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth, my right hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), for a response.

[Mr Betts]

The Minister has talked about having faster applications. Can he explain how precisely that would be done in a way that allows communities to be fully consulted? Furthermore, as I understand it, the Government have done no impact assessment on their proposals. Does he intend to do one at any stage?

[Kit Malthouse]

I will come to those exact issues, if the esteemed Chair of the Select Committee will give me a moment.

In summer 2018, we consulted on whether permitted development rights should be expanded to include shale gas exploration development, including the circumstances in which this might be appropriate. I would like to make it clear that any potential permitted development right granted for shale gas exploration would not apply to hydraulic-fracturing operations or the production stage of shale gas extraction.

I should also emphasise that any permitted development right would cover only the planning aspects of the development and would not remove requirements under other regulatory regimes from the three regulators: the Environment Agency, the Health and Safety Executive and the Oil and Gas Authority. It is important to note that all permitted development rights contain specific exemptions, conditions and restrictions to control and mitigate the impact of the development and to protect local amenity, and any potential permitted development right for shale gas exploration would be no exception.

A right could include things such as limits on the height of any structure, areas where a permitted development right would not apply and noise and operation controls. The consultation sought views on this.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Would permitted development rights allow a producer to construct a well pad pretty much wherever they wanted to put it?

[Kit Malthouse]

The consultation asked exactly that question of whether there should be a restriction. I know my hon. Friend suggested—in the last debate and in this one—having density restrictions on well pads in particular areas. We will answer that question when we respond to the consultation.

The permitted development consultation and the NSIP consultation mentioned by my hon. Friend and the shadow Minister ran for 14 weeks and closed on 25 October. The Government are currently analysing the representations to the consultations and will publish a response in due course.

All hon. Members have highlighted the importance of community engagement in the planning process. I reassure the House that we remain profoundly committed to ensuring that local communities are fully involved in the planning decisions that affect them and to making planning decisions faster and fairer. These are long-standing principles that I am adamant we will stick to. However, we understand that communities feel that they are often not consulted closely enough before planning applications are submitted by developers to the local planning authority. That can lead to opposition to developments and a longer application process.

Engagement with communities at the pre-application stage gives local people an earlier say in the planning process and makes developers aware of issues of importance to the community that may need to be resolved. The planning system in the UK already provides an extensive legislative framework for community involvement. However, there is scope to do more. That is why we published a separate consultation—sadly, unmentioned this afternoon —on whether applicants should be required to conduct a pre-application consultation with the local community prior to submitting a planning application for shale gas development, which could further strengthen the role that local people play in the planning process. The consultation closed on 7 January. We are currently analysing the representations that we have received and will publish a response in due course.

We also welcome the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee’s report of its inquiry on planning guidance relating to hydraulic fracturing and shale exploration. The report was published on 5 July 2018. We are considering its conclusions and recommendations, and will respond—to use a well-utilised word in this House—shortly.

I thank all hon. Members who have participated in this interesting and fascinating debate. Domestic onshore gas production, including shale gas, has the potential to play a major role in further securing our energy supplies. The UK must have safe, secure and affordable supplies of energy with carbon emission levels that are consistent with the carbon budgets defined in the Climate Change Act 2008 and our international obligations. The written ministerial statements on energy and planning policy made by the Secretaries of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and for Housing, Communities and Local Government on 17 May 2018 reiterated the Government’s view that there could be substantial benefits from the safe and sustainable exploration and development of our onshore shale gas resources.

We remain expressly committed to ensuring that local communities are fully involved in planning decisions that affect them and to making planning decisions faster and fairer at the same time. We have now delivered on our promise to consult on how best to develop our planning processes for both the exploration and production of shale gas development, while ensuring that communities remain fully involved. We are currently considering the responses from those consultations and will respond in due course.

Housing

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

That was a remarkable example of a combination of encyclopaedic knowledge and conviction about what my hon. Friend rightly says should be not only the Government’s top domestic priority but the entire country’s primary moral mission: to build the homes that the next generation need and which are currently denied to them.

It is unusual for me to hear strains of my own speeches read back to me. I know that my hon. Friend has not been to listen to many of my speeches, but what he said resonates strongly with me: many of the themes he laid out in his preamble and diagnosis I am myself going around the country promoting—not least the dysfunctionality of the house building market. The one element that he omitted, but that I am sure he is aware of, is that the situation is not helped by the fact that in the crash of 2007-08, 50% of all small house builders were wiped out—removed from the market—having produced, as my hon. Friend said, more than half of all new homes. That proportion has now dropped to about a third, I think.

Both in coalition and since, the Government have done their best to try to push output up from a low of 124,000 in 2012 to 222,000 last year. The forward indicators for next year are looking pretty good as well.

[Anna McMorrin]

Why did the Government scrap the requirement for homes to be carbon neutral, when that would go a long way towards helping with living costs and budgets, as well as meeting climate targets?

[Kit Malthouse]

I totally acknowledge the role that high environmental standards have to play in a sense of social justice about housing. I went to a factory run by Accord Housing, which produces 1,000 modular homes a year. So good are the environmental standards in those homes that they have lower arrears because people can afford to heat them. That is definitely something on which I want to focus.

I want to address some of the questions that my hon. Friend raised. He is right that we need to do something about the way in which the house building market functions at the moment, and my job is to wander around being disruptive, supporting new entrants and players to create the competitive landscape that he is looking for—competing on quality and type; being disruptive on technology and encouraging modern methods of construction, including off-site manufacture and new techniques, so that new entrants find it easier to overcome the barriers to entry that he mentioned; and being disruptive on finance.

My hon. Friend is a little negative about Help to Buy, but I ask him to take care. Many tens of thousands of young people have accessed homes for the first time when the market was denied to them before, because of a Government-backed effective bank of mum and dad. While there will be assessments of that scheme, there is no indication at the moment that it has pushed up prices.

[Mr Bacon]

Of course people who are given cash will be grateful, but if there is a subsidy for demand rather than supply, we will not fundamentally solve the problem. Would it not be a good idea to wean people off Help to Buy and towards Help to Build, so that we subsidised supply? If we subsidise something we get more of it, and what we need more of is supply.

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend is right. It is possible—although I know it is strange—for Government to do two things at the same time. Help to Buy affects a very small percentage of housing transactions—about 4%—and the indications are that it has not had a particular impact on prices. We continue to review the policy in the light of its success—some 160,000 people have now accessed homes who otherwise would not have done so.

In the last minute or so I want to return to my hon. Friend’s questions. He asked five specific questions. First, will we look at a review for the taskforce? Given that we are going into a spending round, with what may be small amounts of money in the scale of the spending that I have available, I would be more than happy to do so. I am of course also more than happy to look at planning guidance review and particularly land allocation. In particular, we could perhaps think about communicating more widely to local authorities. I would be happy to help him by sponsoring some kind of event to promote the idea and to help local authorities to learn.

On viability, when I was on the Treasury Committee we did a housing inquiry in which I posed the question to Kate Barker and David Orr whether we should do away with the viability test as part of the planning system, and both of them thought that that was a good idea. In the meantime we have standardised the viability test to see where we get to.

On the Planning Inspectorate, my hon. Friend is right. We are trying to talk to staff about how they can be more consistent in their decision making and apply it more regularly across the country.

Finally I would be more than happy to join my hon. Friend in raising consumer awareness, and I congratulate him on what was a tour de force of knowledge of housing policy.

Question put and agreed to.

Housing Need: Shropshire, and Telford and Wrekin

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

It is a great pleasure to appear before you for the first time, Mr Owen. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) on securing the debate. Having felt the breeze on my face and heard the skylarks atop the Wrekin, and sung in Ludlow church as a boy chorister, I can appreciate why my hon. Friend and his county colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), are quite so assiduous in seeking to curate that beautiful part of the country as carefully as possible.

As Members will know, the Secretary of State has a quasi-judicial role in the planning system, so I am sure they understand that it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the detail of individual decisions or plans. However, I can talk more broadly about the issues raised by my hon. Friend. Like him, the Government fully recognise the need to plan for and build more homes. We are committed to enabling the housing market to deliver at least 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s. We need to make sure that homes are supplied that meet the diverse needs of our communities, such as homes for first-time buyers, homes suitable and accessible for older people, high-quality rental properties and well-designed social housing.

Each and every part of the country has its role to play in ensuring that these homes are delivered. The vital first step in the process is to bring forward local plans that give communities certainty about where development will take place. The planning system should be genuinely plan-led, with up-to-date plans providing a framework for addressing environmental, social and economic priorities for every area, as my hon. Friend mentioned. Local plans should be prepared in consultation with communities. I hear exactly what my hon. Friend says about consultation and I urge all local authorities to ensure the public are fully involved in the planning process at every level. Local authorities play a key role in delivering the development and infrastructure that is needed in the right places, and community participation is a vital part of that.

The best plans are those that have been developed through effective engagement with communities throughout the process. Having an up-to-date plan in place is essential to planning for housing, providing clarity to communities and developers about where homes and supporting development should be built—and where it should not—so that development is planned for, rather than the result of speculative planning applications. The two local authority areas over which my hon. Friend’s constituency spans should have regard to that. I am aware that Telford and Wrekin Council adopted its local plan last year, for which it should be congratulated. I understand that Shropshire Council is undertaking a partial review of its site allocations and management of development plan at present—I emphasise how important that is for the communities those councils serve.

Through the revised national planning policy framework, we have made significant reforms to make it easier and quicker to get a plan in place. We have introduced flexibility in how plan-making happens, with a new, more flexible plan-making framework and an expectation that plans are kept up to date and reviewed at least once every five years. We have also introduced a standardised approach to assessing housing need locally. When it was published last year, the revised NPPF introduced a standard method for assessing local housing need. After extensive consultation, it was introduced to speed up and reduce the cost of the plan-making process and to make the process more transparent and accessible. It was introduced to help ensure that we meet our commitment to deliver more homes, which have been better designed, faster.

In practice, all councils should make a realistic assessment of the number of homes their communities need, and they should use the standard method as the starting point, not the end point, in the process. The starting point is used to identify the minimum number of homes needed every year. What the standard method does not do, however, is provide a maximum number of homes needed, nor does it provide a target that must be planned for. It would be wrong to think that this is just a numbers game; we need to make sure that communities are fully on board through local plans. We need to make sure that constraints, such as green belt, are considered and that we find the right places for homes, within those constraints. We also need to ensure that the right infrastructure is in place and that we underpin all development with good design principles.

Development should not be progressed at any cost and local circumstances should be taken into account. Local authorities are best placed to do that and should plan how to meet the housing needs of their communities, considering land availability and relevant constraints, including green belt and areas of outstanding natural beauty, and whether need is more appropriately met in neighbouring areas.

[Mark Pritchard]

Does the Minister agree that the relationship first between the West Midlands combined authority and Shropshire Council, and secondly between Shropshire Council and Telford and Wrekin Council, whether it be commercial and/or financial, should be transparent? It is in the public interest that documentation relating to those relationships should be published.

[Kit Malthouse]

I agree with my hon. Friend. As he will know, under the plan-making process, all local authorities have a duty to co-operate with their neighbours in seeking to allocate housing need most appropriately in their region or area. Where those plans are put in place and there is co-operation about the allocation of housing, of course it should be completely transparent for local communities to see how their democratically elected representatives are disposing of the required housing need in their area.

I want to talk about environmental protection. The NPPF carries forward into planning the basic principle of the 25-year environment plan that we must leave our environment in a better condition than when we inherited it, and plan and design developments accordingly. The area which both my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow represent is particularly sensitive in environmental terms, and should be protected as much as possible.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, the green belt is a key feature of our natural heritage and fundamentally aims to prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently open. It is a national policy, but applied locally with green-belt land defined and protected by local planning authorities. By providing strong protection for the openness of green-belt land the NPPF prevents inappropriate development. He is right that local authorities have a duty to look at brownfield land first before they consider green-belt sites.

[Mark Pritchard]

Does the Minister share my surprise that my constituents were informed in the last few weeks by Shropshire Council that the west midlands appears to have run out of employment land?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

I cannot comment on specific dispositions towards plans, but it sounds surprising to me that the west midlands, which is such a large area, might be short of employment land. Nevertheless, dispersed employment, even in my hon. Friend’s constituency, should be welcomed. As he says, it is for local authorities to decide exactly which area is right to use for their employment and housing land. He is right that there should be a close relationship between Homes England and local authorities. That relationship should be transparent, with plans and decisions on display, subject to commercial confidentiality, giving local communities confidence that what is being done in their name and in their area has both involved them in its production and can be justified.

On transparency, I want to say a word about section 106 agreements, which my hon. Friend raised. To improve the section 106 process, we have recently mandated local authorities to publish viability assessments of particular developments. Local people can now see what the section 106 gain for their area will be, and can compare it against their neighbours, because we see different patterns of performance on section 106 agreements. All of that, allied with other changes we have made in the planning process, such as producing neighbourhood plans and pushing neighbourhood plans forward, is designed to make local people, including my hon. Friend’s constituents, feel that they are more the masters of the planning system and less its victims.

If we are going to raise acceptability for vital housing so that young people are able to live in beautiful areas of the country such as the one my hon. Friend represents, we need to ensure local people are in charge of where housing goes, what it looks like, how it is disposed and what kind of housing it is. Local people need to be an integral part of the process of producing new homes, having accepted that a significant number of homes need to be built for the next generation, as a moral obligation to be passed from one generation to the next. I will work closely with my hon. Friend and his county colleagues to make that happen sensitively in his constituency, as I will across the rest of the country.

Question put and agreed to.

Clyde House and A2Dominion

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening) on securing this important debate. I understand her concerns and those of her constituents about the terrible situation at Clyde House, the state of their homes and how this has been addressed by the landlord, A2Dominion. I also congratulate her on the obviously pivotal role she played in resolving the situation. It is obvious from events that her intervention has brought A2Dominion up short and made them acknowledge its mistakes and errors. Indeed, I read in The Guardian that the director of property services had issued an apology saying:

“We recognise that things are not right and we’re going to put them right. We haven’t performed well, and you have my personal apology.”

She no doubt has the gratitude of her constituents and my congratulations as the Minister and those of the many Members who deal with these sorts of issues on a daily basis, as I do in my constituency.

Let me first make it clear that everyone has the right to be safe and to feel safe in their home, and they should expect their complaints to be dealt with promptly and effectively. The Government have taken steps to ensure that happens. Last year we published our social housing Green Paper, which sought views on how to improve redress for social housing residents in particular, and on a number of other issues that my right hon. Friend has raised this evening.

We engaged extensively with residents to inform and shape the Green Paper. We heard that residents want redress quickly when things go wrong, and for processes to be clearer and simpler. The Green Paper asked a range of questions on how we could deliver that, including a question on the future of the democratic filter, which is the process whereby a complaint is referred to the ombudsman via a designated person, or the complainant must wait eight weeks, which can further delay the complaints process.

The Green Paper also set out proposals to hold landlords to account more. To that end, we are reviewing the regulatory system for social housing so that the regulator can take action when a landlord consistently fails its residents. We want to rebalance the relationship between landlords and residents, and we will underpin that with a robust regulatory framework. We will publish our response to the Green Paper and the outcome of the review of regulation in due course.

I held roadshows across the country with hundreds of residents, particularly in social and affordable housing. I made a pledge that at some point before the summer we will publish that action plan. It will have a clear sense of direction and a clear timetable, because I was asked repeatedly by residents whether it was worth attending the roadshows, and whether they will actually see some change. I have made that pledge. How long I will be in this job, I am not sure—Housing Ministers do not often last that long—but I will try.

I also want to mention the other actions that the Government are taking to help all tenants. The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 will strengthen all tenants’ rights and protect them from poor practice. The Act, which comes into force on 20 March, will empower all tenants, both private tenants and those in social housing, to take their landlord to court if their property is unfit for human habitation. Under the Act, landlords must ensure that their properties are fit from the start and throughout the tenancy. If they do not do so, the tenant has the right to take legal action. We have published guidance for tenants to help them understand their rights and responsibilities under the Act, and guidance for landlords and local authorities on how the Act might affect them.

[Seema Malhotra]

Can the Minister clarify whether, under the new arrangements, which I think we are all pleased to see coming into force, if a resident takes a landlord to court and wins, there are any circumstances in which they might be required to pay the landlord’s legal fees?

[Kit Malthouse]

That is a very good question, to which I do not actually have the answer, but I will make inquires and write to the hon. Lady. In most cases, as I am sure she knows, it is at the judge’s discretion where costs fall, and often it is decided on the merits of the case.

The 2018 Act does not place any additional responsibilities on social landlords, as they are already required to maintain their homes to a decent standard; it will act only as a backstop. We expect any problems with properties to be resolved far before they reach that stage.

The first step for residents with a complaint is to report problems to their landlord. The regulator expects all social landlords to have in place a complaints process that deals with issues promptly, politely and fairly. The onus is on individual landlords, working with residents, to set their approach and timescales for handling their residents’ complaints. I want to stress that if any hon. Member, acting on a constituent’s behalf, is unhappy with the response provided by a registered provider once their internal complaints process has been exhausted, that hon. Member may take the matter further.

Social housing residents can also approach the Housing Ombudsman Service at any time to seek advice. However, in order to refer a complaint formally to the ombudsman, a resident’s complaint must pass through the democratic filter. That involves referring a complaint to a designated person—a local councillor, a Member of Parliament or a tenant panel—for them either to deal with the complaint or to refer it to the ombudsman, or waiting eight weeks after their landlord’s complaints process has been exhausted. If the ombudsman determines that a complaint falls within its jurisdiction, it will investigate the complaint to determine whether there has been maladministration by the landlord. It will then issue a determination letter, which may include orders and recommendations to resolve the dispute. The landlord is expected to follow any orders within a specific timeframe.

[Ruth Cadbury]

A2Dominion is one of a number of large housing associations that, by definition, are charities, and yes, it is a registered social landlord. Almost all of its residents, certainly in my constituency, are either social rent tenants or leaseholders under the shared ownership scheme, many of whom are on fixed incomes. I see again and again seriously poor management practices and lack of repairs, such as those the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) has described. These residents do not have the time or energy to go through the process that the Minister has just set out. What they want is a decent-quality housing service that is at least as good as the local authority, and it should be as good as anyone would expect.

[Kit Malthouse]

I completely agree. I have a large number of housing association properties in my constituency, too, and my postbag as a constituency MP is filled with similar complaints. When I first became a Member of Parliament, I was astonished and dismayed to find I was effectively the postbox for local housing association’s complaints service. Were I the chief executive of such an organisation, I would be mortified if local Members of Parliament were receiving the level of correspondence that some of us do, and I would be taking action.

We have recently seen some large housing associations acknowledge their failures: A2Dominion has acknowledged its particular failure in Clyde House, and L&Q, one of the G15, has come out very publicly and acknowledged its failure. Action has been taken—for example, in the past couple of years on Circle Property, which also failed on service—but there is more we can do, particularly on regulation, about which the Green Paper will say more. We can swing the pendulum of regulation toward a sense of customer service and away from purely financial regulation. As I say, there is more to come.

Sometimes things go wrong, and where that happens it is of the utmost importance that any safety concerns are resolved as soon as practicable. All registered providers of social housing must comply with the regulatory standards set by the Regulator of Social Housing. That includes ensuring that all their properties meet and are maintained at the decent homes standard, which means that homes should be free of any category 1 hazards, in a reasonable state of repair, have reasonably modern facilities, and provide a reasonable degree of thermal comfort. The regulator’s standards also require landlords to provide a repairs and maintenance service that responds to the need of tenants and offers them choices. The objective is to get repairs and improvements right the first time.

[Justine Greening]

It would be helpful if my hon. Friend covered the question of compensation. Often there are very serious problems with people’s properties, and they may even need to be moved out. Those are extremely disruptive times for families with young children, and they end up living in hotels. Will the new framework provide more redress to compensate people who are affected by bad performance, as my constituents have been?

[Kit Malthouse]

My right hon. Friend poses a good question. I do not want to front-run the publication of the plan document, but she can be assured that one of the critical issues for the Government is to make sure that tenants are dealt with professionally and quickly, and that their problems are sorted out the first time. We are considering devising a performance framework for housing associations and other registered social landlords, making performance transparent to tenants, which might be useful to them when comparing landlords.

Where landlords do not provide a proper repairs and maintenance service, tenants should complain and have the right to expect that something is done. If my right hon. Friend’s constituents consider that their property has serious hazards that present a risk to health and safety, they can report that to their local council, which can inspect and assess the property using the housing health and safety rating system. If the local council becomes aware of a serious category 1 hazard, it has a duty to take appropriate action to address it. Hazards can include, among other things, damp, excess cold or heat, poor sanitation and fire risks. Councils have a range of powers to ensure that landlords take appropriate action to rectify the problem; in extreme cases, the council can take emergency remedial action itself and charge the landlord to do the work.

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend has reminded me that it was remiss of me not to give thanks to Wandsworth Council for the work it did when issues of safety in Clyde House were raised. I put on record my thanks to the inspectors who went and made sure that health and safety measures were in place.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s intervention. I am pleased to hear that the system is working and that Wandsworth Council has played its part in resolving what was obviously a difficult and trying time for the residents of Clyde House. I hope the work we are doing on the social housing Green Paper and on shifting regulation generally more towards consumer standards and away from financial regulation will mean that the time in question will become a piece of history that we can all forget.

I thank my right hon. Friend again for securing this valuable debate. I have tried to set out the arrangements that are already in place to protect tenants, and I hope I have also made clear my commitment to improving things further. Nevertheless, there are valuable lessons to be learned from the issues at Clyde House, and I will be asking A2Dominion to come into the Department to explain what happened, what went wrong and where things might be improved. I would be more than happy to sit down with my right hon. Friend to discuss her ideas so that we can feed them into our work on the social housing Green Paper. As I have said, I am committed to ensuring that everyone can seek timely and effective solutions when they have a housing problem and can live in a home of which they can be proud.

Question put and agreed to.

Draft Architects Act 1997 (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 General Committees

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Architects Act 1997 (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.

The regulations were laid before both Houses of Parliament on 18 February 2019. They are part of the Government’s programme of legislation to ensure that if the UK leaves the EU without a deal and implementation period, there will continue to be a functioning legislative and regulatory regime. Leaving the EU with a deal remains the Government’s top priority. That has not changed. However, the responsible thing to do is to accelerate no-deal preparations to ensure that the country is prepared for every eventuality. These regulations are made using powers in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 to fix legal deficiencies in retained EU law, to reflect the fact that the UK will no longer be an EU member state after exit day.

Our architectural sector is a global leader and plays a significant role in the British economy, with an export surplus of £437 million in 2015 and involvement in key global projects such as the transformation of the Reichstag building in Berlin and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC. We want to protect and enhance that position over the coming years.

Let me provide some context for and background to the regulations. The EU’s mutual recognition of professional qualifications directive enables European economic area nationals to have certain qualifications recognised in another member state. That includes the recognition of suitably qualified architects. It is a reciprocal arrangement, allowing UK and other EEA nationals the opportunity easily to register to practise across Europe and allowing UK practices to recruit the best European talent. The Architects Act 1997 sets out the specific procedures for registering architects in the UK. The recognition of qualifications of EEA applicants is carried out by the competent authority, the Architects Registration Board, which is an arm’s length body of my Department.

There are currently three routes to recognition for an EEA architect wishing to register in the UK. The main route to recognition for an EEA national architect is through an automatic recognition system. To qualify for automatic recognition, an EEA national needs to meet three tests. They must have an approved qualification, which means one listed in annex V to the mutual recognition of professional qualifications directive, and they need access to the profession of architect in an EEA member state and a statement from their home competent authority confirming that they are fit to practise.

The second route, known as general systems, provides for recognition for EEA nationals who do not have an approved qualification. The general systems route allows them to map their qualifications and experience against UK standards with the Architects Registration Board. The applicant is offered compensation measures—that is, the opportunity to undertake additional training to make up any differences in qualification. It is a long and costly process, which on average only four people pursue annually.

The third route facilitates the temporary or occasional provision of service. It allows EEA professionals to work in the UK in a regulated profession on a temporary basis, while remaining established in their home state. Typically, fewer than 20 EEA architects pursue that option at any one time.

If the UK leaves the EU without a deal, the mutual recognition of professional qualifications directive will no longer apply in the UK. The regulations will ensure that UK architectural practices can continue to recruit the best European talent and maintain their global reputation as world leaders in the field of architecture. The policy intention is to provide the sector with confidence that almost all applicants will be able to register in the same way after exit day as they do currently. That is the approach favoured by the sector, which recognises the skills brought by these architects as contributing positively to the UK’s reputation as a world leader.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

I am glad that the Minister recognises the UK’s world-leading status in this field, but in saying how much he recognises the contribution that the sector makes, he seems to be failing to recognise the concerns of the Royal Institute of British Architects, which has pointed out that one in five architects working in the UK is from another EU member state. RIBA is asking for a more permanent basis for a new system of mutual recognition of professional qualifications. Why are the Government not providing that?

[Kit Malthouse]

It is certainly our intention that, once this has landed, the system of recognition will be reviewed. One thing that the regulations do is to freeze the qualifications at a particular date, so that we can buy ourselves some time to have exactly those discussions. I will come to this later, but in relation to other countries, such as Switzerland, that cannot be accommodated in these regulations, there have been very productive conversations, which will allow mutual recognition in the future.

The regulations allow applications made before exit day to be concluded under the current system as far as possible. For future applications, the regulations will freeze the current list of approved qualifications under the EU’s mutual recognition of professional qualifications directive. As a result, after EU exit in a no-deal scenario, an individual holding an approved qualification will be able to join the UK register of architects if they have access to the profession of architect in their home state. That approach will preserve access for UK practices to EEA-qualified architects. The process will be open to anyone with an EEA qualification and access to the profession in the corresponding state, regardless of their citizenship.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

The Minister is not addressing the fact that although the qualification requirements are frozen during the review period, however long it may last, at the end of the period new qualifications may be required. How long does he expect the review period to last before we get a settled position? Does he think there will be a detriment to people if new qualifications come in during the review period?

[Kit Malthouse]

Those are perfectly reasonable questions. We do not anticipate significant movement in the number of qualifications. Initially, the risk is low, but we would like to get the system under review as much as possible. If it becomes clear that a qualification needs to be accommodated, it is perfectly possible for us to take steps to do that on a one-off basis. The intention behind the system is that we maintain the ability of UK architect practices to access talent from across the world. Let us not forget that quite a lot of architects who come from non-EEA countries work in UK practices. They are accommodated in the UK perfectly happily.

[Neil Coyle]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Kit Malthouse]

Let me make some progress. We will remove general systems as a route to registration, because it is a long and costly process that is not utilised often and it places a significant unnecessary burden on individuals and the Architects Registration Board. Therefore, applicants without an approved qualification, including applicants who would have previously qualified for acquired rights, will be able to pursue the prescribed exam route and undertake further examinations and periods of study to allow for registration. That is the route currently utilised by third-country nationals.

The regulations provide a legal basis for the Architects Registration Board to continue to communicate with other EEA competent authorities to facilitate recognition decisions, ensuring that the Architects Registration Board can verify that the applicant meets the UK’s high standards of competence. Currently, the ARB facilitates information sharing through the EU internal market information system. Without a deal, we cannot be confident that the ARB will continue to have access to that important information-sharing system; therefore, the regulations place a requirement on the applicant to obtain the relevant information from their home competent authority, should the ARB not be able to secure it correctly.

The regulations will remove the rights to temporary and occasional provision of services, because without guaranteed access to information systems and an agreed process for reciprocation, that route will become unwieldy and of less value. That will have a minimal impact on the sector, because only 12 people are practising on this basis. Historically, fewer than 20 people have practised as architects in the UK on a temporary and occasional basis at any one time.

Our overall approach to these changes is in line with both the policy and the legal intent of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and it enacts the policy that the Government set out in the guidance document in January. The draft regulations serve a specific purpose: to prioritise stability and certainty if the UK leaves the EU without a deal or an implementation period. The draft regulations will ensure that the UK continues to have access to top European talent after we leave the EU, thereby helping to maintain our reputation as a global leader in architectural services. Thereafter, the regulations provide a stable basis for Parliament to change the law when it is in the UK’s best interests to do so.

The draft regulations are necessary to ensure that the Architects Act 1997 continues to function appropriately if the UK leaves the EU without a deal or an implementation period. I hope colleagues will join me in supporting the regulations, which I commend to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

I thank Committee members for reviewing these regulations. I will attempt to answer some of the questions that have been raised.

First, we acknowledge that the regulations are a temporary fix. Having consulted the industry, we have designed the regulations specifically to provide some immediate security and stability to architects who are operating at the moment and to those who might come in the near future. It is our intention to review the situation pretty quickly, but unfortunately I cannot give the Committee a date. Given that such professions are of high standing and that it takes quite a long time to qualify, one would hope that the level of movement in them will not be swift. Nevertheless, we are committed to reviewing the regulations. From conversations with European counterparts, I know that there is a recognition of the steps we are taking with the policy to recognise qualifications, and possibly a desire to reciprocate.

Part of my job is the discovery of all sorts of strange organisations across the world, and there is one, believe it or not, called the European Network of Architects’ Competent Authorities—the ENACA. At a recent meeting, although I gather that no formal decisions were made, a number of other competent authorities in EEA countries recognised what we were doing and were keen to reciprocate, and to continue to recognise UK-qualified architects where feasibly possible. There are moves already—it would be desirable, as in a number of other professional areas—to seek some kind of mutual recognition. We will review the matter, but unfortunately I cannot give hon. Members a date.

We are very mindful of the fact that architecture is a significant industry of great international repute. It builds buildings and designs other structures not just in Europe, but across the world. The Hong Kong floating airport on an island was designed by a British architect, and we seem to specialise in remarkable bridges across the world. There is a lot of stuff that we can do, and we are very keen to preserve that ability. In order to do so, we have been engaging significantly with the industry.

There have been roadshows and roundtables across the country—London, Birmingham, Newcastle and Cambridge, with more planned for Scotland and Northern Ireland—to understand the impact on the industry, and the industry’s readiness for a no-deal situation. Those discussions go beyond the scope of the regulations. We have met specifically with Foster and Partners, Allies and Morrison, and David Chipperfield Architects—three internationally renowned practices that produce work across the world—to discuss the implications for them.

One thing under consideration is the cost to business, which the hon. Gentleman from Scotland raised. There has not been a review of the cost, because we believe that it falls below the £5 million threshold, but the only imposition that we can foresee is a possible slight delay to the recognition of qualifications. However, we do not think that that will be significant, as long as the Architects Registration Board has access to the appropriate paperwork. Given that the regulations place the obligation on the applicant to produce the paperwork from their home country, the speed of approval is fundamentally in their own hands.

[Brendan O'Hara]

Given that I appear to be the Member for the whole of Scotland, I ask the Minister for the whole of England whether any assessment has been done on the impact on microbusinesses—very small businesses and one or two-person companies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

There might be a misunderstanding here. Fundamentally, the regulations set out that the recognition of the person’s qualification to practise stays exactly the same. The only thing that changes is that, instead of the Architects Registration Board being able to get the information required to prove that the person has the qualification, the person has to get that information in the event that we do not have access to it. Fundamentally, the ARB will operate in the same way, but the route of access to the information will become the obligation of the individual. It will not be within the ability of the ARB, because of the lack of access to that information.

Competent authorities in the EU may decide to continue to provide the flow of information, in which case nothing will change. We are very keen, in introducing the regulations, to ensure that there is some stability for EEA nationals. We hope that the EU and the competent authorities will reciprocate, but Committee members will understand that that is not under our control. However, we are seeing movement in Europe suggesting that they are keen to do so. In theory, the cost to business should be minimal, because it is just about the flow of paperwork to prove that the qualification is valid.

We are in conversation with the industry, through our general engagement, about the impact of immigration. A discussion is going on, brokered by us, between industry and the Home Office about the impact of the immigration policy that the UK might put in place. We will continue to keep that conversation up and running.

[Melanie Onn]

I want to take the Minister back to the question of IMI documentation. It can sometimes be difficult for individuals to secure that paperwork, so there may be delays. Will he encourage reciprocity of arrangements to ensure that there are no delays if the IMI information is not available to the ARB?

[Kit Malthouse]

Absolutely. Nobody wants there to be any delay in the provision of information, and the ARB will seek to obtain that information itself informally and on an ad hoc basis. There is no intention on either side of the channel to hold up the approval of architects’ registration. We want to find a way to co-operate on that process. There is a technical, legal basis, because the IMI may not be available.

Having said that, I have a professional qualification myself—I am a chartered accountant—and if I wanted to practise chartered accountancy in an EEA country, I would expect to have all the documentation in my briefcase when I went to do so. It is not that difficult. If I am paying 450 quid a year for my registration at the Institute of Chartered Accountants, the least it can do is to provide me with my practising certificate, if I am a practising chartered accountant. Sadly, as a moderate accountant, I have not practised for many years.

Do not forget that people with a professional qualification have a requirement to do what is called CPD—continuing professional development—to maintain their suite of skills. That applies just as much to architects, and of course the CPD process is approved by the various competent authorities. The idea that architects qualify, never communicate again with their approving body during their professional life and then cannot find the paperwork when they need it is not a true reflection of the situation, but I understand what the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute was saying.

I hope that that has covered most of the questions. I am grateful to Committee members for considering the regulations. We recognise that the industry is an important one for the UK. Many of the industry’s comments that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby referred to were probably made before we released our policy, which the industry broadly approves of, albeit on a temporary basis. I hope that the Committee will join me in supporting the regulations.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Architects Act 1997 (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.