Rent Arrears: Covid-19

Lord Best Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My noble friend is quite right. I have asked my department to do that. My officials carefully studied the Scottish and Welsh schemes to support tenants with rent arrears. I understand that a relatively small number of loans have been made by these schemes. Indeed, the Government continue to believe that it is right to provide non-repayable financial support rather than encouraging further debt.

[Lord Best (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my housing interests as on the register. Has the noble Lord’s ministry been able to study the outcomes of the tenant loan scheme operating in Spain? Has this enabled tenants to pay off Covid-related arrears successfully and avoid the traumas and cost of widespread evictions? If the scheme is working well in Spain, why not here?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we continue to review other examples of support, including that in Spain, as well as those in the devolved Administrations in the United Kingdom. We will consider what impact they might have, but we will continue with the policy we have about not encouraging further debt.

Queen’s Speech

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Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my housing interests as on the register and will use my time today to address the housing issues raised in the gracious Speech. If we did not know it before, we certainly know after the Covid experience that the widest divisions, the greatest inequalities in our quality of life, are found in our housing circumstances. For those of us in a comfortable home, maybe with a nice garden, the pandemic has been infinitely more bearable than for our fellow citizens in cramped, overcrowded, insecure, poor conditions. We can appreciate more than ever the space indoors, the access to green space outside and the security that comes from owning our home. For so many others, life during Covid has been made utterly miserable by accommodation where there is no room to play, no room to work, and by the impossibility of home schooling and the insecurity that comes from the threat of losing even the poorest quality flat because earnings from an insecure job may be lost.

Covid has revealed the impact of acute shortages of affordable housing, not least in the huge numbers of children living in temporary accommodation, which has followed the halving of social housing—of housing association and council housing—from a third to just 17% of all homes, and the hazards of our dependency on a fragile private rented sector. Does the gracious Speech contain the ingredients to fix these problems, which are causing such damage to our physical and mental health while undermining the wider economy?

Government have provided excellent Covid-related emergency help by enabling local authorities and voluntary bodies to secure accommodation for those sleeping rough, by restoring part of the recent cuts in the benefits for housing help, and by requiring landlords to postpone evictions, but the nation’s underlying housing problems remain. The Queen’s Speech mentions forthcoming measures to enhance tenants’ rights and to support leaseholders. I look forward to the Bills introducing these helpful changes, but the Government’s main proposition for ending housing shortages—thereby stabilising prices and improving affordability, as well as reducing homelessness in its different forms—rests on reforms to the planning system to make it quicker and easier to gain planning consent. The downside of this would be the much-reduced opportunity for input by local communities and their local planning authorities. I understand the Government’s frustration that local opposition can delay new home building, but objectors fearing the worst have often been proved right.

The Government hope to prevent their new arrangements being abused, and instead to improve design and quality by strengthening the rules governing the behaviour of the notorious volume housebuilders. However, it seems unlikely that these planning reforms will achieve a big increase in housebuilding and, disastrously, they could mean fewer affordable homes. Planners have already been releasing land on an extensive scale, but house prices are still rising faster than incomes. The LGA estimates that enough land has been allocated to develop over 1 million homes that have not yet been built. We know from the seminal report from Sir Oliver Letwin that the main reason the housebuilders take their time is so that the speed of sales is slow enough to maintain high house prices.

Sir Oliver called for the nation to take back control of housing development from the oligopoly of major housebuilders to ensure that this country’s precious land resource fulfils society’s needs. He advocated local authorities setting up development corporations to acquire larger sites, paying landowners a reasonable price, underpinned by CPO powers, and then producing master plans that would meet local needs, with plots parcelled out to several housebuilders and to social housing providers, with green spaces, community facilities and so on. Coupled with a real increase in the grants that enable social landlords to make their homes truly affordable, the Letwin proposals for capturing land value for the public good could represent the fundamental change that is so badly needed.

Sadly, the Queen’s Speech suggests that the Government are not yet ready to take the really robust action needed to address the underlying causes of this most pressing national need. Any reassurance from the Minister that there is more to come would be greatly appreciated.

Planning: Net Zero Emissions Targets

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Monday 19th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we recognise the importance of encouraging retrofit. That is why, as part of the Planning for the Future reforms, we are looking at making it easier to support changes of use and improvements to existing buildings.

[Lord Best (CB) [V]]

My Lords, as the Minister knows, there are two ways of getting housebuilders and developers to achieve higher standards: the national building regulations and the local planning requirements. Is the noble Lord’s Ministry looking at how these sometimes conflicting approaches could be harmonised and how the weak enforcement of local planning requirements could be better resourced to prevent housebuilders evading their responsibilities?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we recognise the interdigitation between the national standards and other forms of regulation. That is why we started with the implementation of an interim 2021 Part L uplift for new homes as swiftly as possible, in advance of the 2025 new home standards. We are working closely with local government to ensure that consistency.

Inclusive Society

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Wednesday 14th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Best (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for initiating this important debate and for her powerful opening speech. I draw attention to my housing interests on the register.

Perhaps I could preface my comments with a word of appreciation for the little-known but invaluable housing role played by His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh. As patron and then the very active president of the National Housing Federation throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he gave the housing association sector much needed credibility and status. He chaired our AGMs, opened innumerable housing developments and chaired our rural housing inquiry in 1976 and then the influential inquiry into British housing from 1984 to 1992. His unsung support for better housing deserves widespread recognition.

Covid has certainly exposed the housing divide. Those of us in secure homes with space for home working and home schooling, with gardens, or at least balconies, and some green space outside, can hardly imagine life during the pandemic in insecure, overcrowded, claustrophobic flats, month after month.

Covid has also identified how housing circumstances cause poverty and increased inequalities. In particular, the pandemic has magnified the problems of the much-enlarged private rented sector—its lack of security, its higher levels of unhealthy conditions and overcrowding and its rent levels that can drive families into poverty.

Unsurprisingly, with so many PRS tenants paying over 40% of their pre-pandemic income in rent, several hundred thousand have now fallen into debt and rent arrears. A national homelessness disaster created by Covid has been only temporarily averted by the Government regularly extending the ban on evictions, not least because of the huge backlog of repossession cases in the courts.

In recognition that the PRS is simply not suited to housing all those who must now turn to it, the Affordable Housing Commission has called for a rebalancing of rented housing to enable social landlords, councils and housing associations to buy the properties of private landlords now wanting to exit the market and to pursue a programme of new, truly affordable homes of around a third of the Government’s overall target of 300,000 homes a year. Sadly, the £2.5 billion per annum in direct grants for more affordable homes cannot achieve the scale needed.

This may seem the worst time ever to be seeking a major increase in government investment in affordable housing. Government has never been deeper in debt. The decarbonisation of existing properties and the rectification of cladding and other defects are both requiring billions more from housing budgets. But this may also be the best time. Long-term government borrowing has never been cheaper. Investing in the rebalancing of rented housing pays back handsomely in health and social care savings, in an end to housing benefit costs rising exponentially, in improved productivity and economic revival and, most of all, in redressing the inequalities and miseries that Covid has so starkly laid bare. This is the way literally to build a more inclusive society.

Housing Strategy

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Wednesday 24th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Best (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my relevant interests as in the register, including as chair of the Affordable Housing Commission and as a Church Commissioner for the Church of England. I congratulate the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury on establishing this housing commission and thank him for his inspiring presentation of its findings today, and I thank its chair, Charlie Arbuthnot, and the commissioners, for bringing together an excellent analysis of this country’s severe housing problems and their potential solutions. My comments are in two parts: first, a ringing endorsement of the commission’s main conclusions, and then a commentary on the specific recommendations to the Church of England on the use of its land assets.

I greatly welcome the commission’s housing policy recommendations. Its core conclusion is that

“the primary issue with the housing sector is not just a lack of housing”—

the lack of housing to which the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, rightly refers—

“but instead a lack of truly affordable housing, particularly for those on low incomes.”

This chimes with the theme of the Affordable Housing Commission, organised by the Smith Institute and funded by the Nationwide Foundation, which reported last year. We showed that, in large parts of the country, even if a landlord is willing to offer you a place, the rent is likely to absorb so much of your income—40% or even 50%—that you will end up in poverty, in debt, in arrears or, at worst, homeless.

I cite as an example the official statistics for poverty from Brent Council’s Poverty Commission, which I had the privilege to chair last year: before housing costs, 17% of households and 22% of children in the borough were classified as living in poverty; after housing costs were taken into account the figure rose to 32% of households and 43% of children. So the housing costs doubled the numbers living in poverty, to say nothing of so many being in the overcrowded, insecure and unhealthy conditions that have been shown up by the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on these communities.

Our Affordable Housing Commission noted that so many more households are struggling with housing costs because of the switch to the private rented sector, with its market rents, which has doubled in size in less than 20 years, to 20% of the nation’s housing, while the social housing sector—housing association and council housing—with its much more affordable rents, has halved to just 17% of our homes. The solution is for the Government to support councils and housing associations to increase their output of so-called social rented housing to around a third of the Government’s target of 300,000 new homes per annum.

I turn to the special ingredient in the commission’s recommendations which relates to the Church of England itself in addressing the housing crisis. The report highlights the wonderful work done at the local level by members of faith groups in social action that helps homeless people and engages with housing support of different kinds. The commission sees a special opportunity for practical assistance to extend this commitment through the use of land and buildings in the Church of England’s ownership. This is enormously important because the price and availability of land is perhaps the greatest stumbling block to producing the affordable housing we need. However, this is by no means a straightforward matter, as my three years as a Church Commissioner, under the skilful and sensitive chairmanship of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, have taught me.

The first obstacle to attempts to dispose of a piece of church land or buildings on favourable terms—for example, to a community land trust or a voluntary body working for the homeless—is the confusing legal obligation on any charity to reject all but

“the best terms reasonably obtainable”.

In reality, the definition of “best value” should not be such a problem. Indeed, the price a housing association or other voluntary body can pay will often not be appreciably lower than that obtainable from a speculative development and other benefits will more than compensate for any difference—benefits not just to society but in the wider work of the Church itself, sometimes even with the provision of a nomination right to a rented flat for a church worker, curate or a retired vicar. I hope that ongoing discussions with the Charity Commission will resolve this long-standing valuation issue. However, it is possible that your Lordships’ help will be needed for legislative change to remove this irritating obstacle.

Then there is the anxiety that disposing of church land or buildings at anything less than full open market price will diminish resources for the Church’s core ministry. Land is a highly significant part of the Church’s historic assets. In addition to the commissioners’ land holdings of over 90,000 acres, there are hundreds more sites and buildings with development potential within the Church’s 41 dioceses, with initiatives in Gloucester and Newham, for example, already showing the way.

The Church Commissioners have been highly successful in promoting ethical investment for their stocks and shares, most prominently in exerting pressure on oil companies to decarbonise and meet sustainability goals. This sets the precedent for the commissioners to be a pace setter also in respect of the Church’s investments in land. The commission calls for generous, “sacrificial” action but I see a number of good reasons why ensuring that land assets serve a social purpose need not be in conflict with the need to achieve proper returns from this source.

First, it is the obtaining of planning consent that makes a development possible and unlocks its hidden value. This requires the backing of the local planning authority. There is widespread disenchantment with the volume housebuilders because, despite making substantial profits, so often they have demonstrated poor quality, poor design, lack of space and community facilities, leasehold scams, unjustified bonuses and, prominently, an antipathy to including affordable housing in their developments. Local authorities are likely to be far keener to deal with Church bodies that exercise responsible stewardship in the use of their land assets. Similarly, the locals who protest—often with much justification—at low-quality developments with no green spaces or community components, and with few, if any, homes affordable to local people, can be brought on side when a responsible stance is taken for Church-owned sites.

If the Church nationally and at the diocesan level has the reputation of insisting on high standards and achieving public good, those vital planning consents can and should be more easily secured. I am delighted that the Church Commissioners have signed up to adopting the good behaviour of the 2020 stewardship code when selling land. This is a step in the right direction and translating this into specific outcomes, with a stewardship kitemark, is the important next move.

Secondly, doing the right thing in utilising land holdings can also be a way of improving the return from this asset for years to come. By following the example of a growing number of other major landowners—including the Duchy of Cornwall with its successful Poundbury urban extension and its new scheme at Nansledan—and being a patient investor, long-term gains can be obtained. Simply selling to one of the oligopoly of housebuilders only enriches those companies. Instead, retaining land ownership and organising high-quality, community-enhancing developments, often in partnership with smaller building firms and housing associations, can keep the development profits in the Church’s hands.

It is good to note that investigations are now being undertaken by the Church Commissioners, with top-level property experts, to explore these opportunities. I commend the Citizens UK initiative, with which the Church of England is closely associated, alongside the Methodist Church and others, for a partnership with the Government that offers land release for social housing in return for funding to cover all the initial feasibility work. The Secretary of State, Robert Jenrick, has agreed to discuss this proposition further and I hope that the Minister will also engage.

In these ways, I am hopeful that, without weakening its financial position, the Church of England, and perhaps other denominations if they see fit, will maximise its direct contribution to easing the nation’s housing shortages. By encouraging responsible action by other landowners, from Oxbridge colleges to the Ministry of Defence to academy trusts and charitable foundations, it can magnify its influence for good, just as it has done so well with its ethical equity investment policies.

I conclude by reiterating my thanks to the most reverend Primate and I hugely welcome the appointment of the new bishop for housing, Bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani, who can take forward the Church’s renewal of its historic engagement with the housing scene. I wish her every success in helping all of us to up our game in tackling this most fundamental of our society’s problems.

Rough Sleeping

Lord Best Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, it is a fairly consistent national picture. I went through the data with a team as preparation for this; in every region in England we are seeing a very significant drop in rough sleeping, and they are very large in the south-east and London. It is only in the north-east, which has relatively low numbers of rough sleepers and where the figure is up by five rough sleepers according to the data, that we have some concern around not seeing a reduction. But we will continue to push the policies that are working in those areas and ensure that we encourage local authorities and others to adopt those in areas where it is proving harder to do so.

[Lord Best (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the excellent work done in response to Covid in housing those living on the streets followed the implementation from 2018 of the Homelessness Reduction Act, a Private Member’s Bill from Bob Blackman MP which I had the honour of piloting through your Lordships’ House. This was beginning to work well in preventing homelessness and rough sleeping. In congratulating the Minister on the several new initiatives to assist those sleeping rough, can I ask whether he is satisfied that sufficient resources are now available to all local authorities to fully implement the Homelessness Reduction Act to prevent people becoming homeless in the first place?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on supporting my honourable friend Bob Blackman in the other place. It is an important piece of legislation, and prevention is an incredibly important priority to ensure that we do not see more people sleeping rough on our streets. I remind noble Lords that we are seeing an increase in the budget for next year to £750 million, and £310 million is for the Homelessness Prevention Grant to do precisely what the noble Lord encourages local authorities to focus on: preventing homelessness.

Building Safety

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Monday 22nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I pointed out that height is a marker for risk. Those buildings greater than 18 metres are four times more likely to result in a fire-related fatality or someone needing to go to hospital for treatment. Above 30 metres, that rises to 35 times more likely. So the focus needs to be on removing the material that accelerates the spread of fire in buildings that in and of themselves, through height and being of residential use, are at greater risk of causing fatalities.

[Lord Best (CB) [V]]

My Lords, following the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, I understand that housing associations can apply for support from the extra £3.5 billion of additional funding for the rectification of these appalling building defects in high-rise blocks, but that help will be available only for flats sold to leaseholders for defects in housing association flats that are retained for letting. All the costs will fall on the housing association itself, requiring the diversion of funds intended for other purposes, particularly building new homes. Can the Minister give an estimate of how many new, desperately-needed social rented homes will be lost because of this?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I am not in a position to give an estimate of that kind, but I recognise that social landlords have significant resources that they can put into making sure that their buildings are safe, and many are proceeding to do precisely that. I do not think we can easily estimate the impact on new build, but we can say that the funds support those leaseholders who would face costs without access to grant funding or the financing scheme.

No-fault Evictions

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Wednesday 27th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, it is very important that, when we remove the ability to evict someone through no-fault evictions and Section 21, we also strengthen the rights where there are specific grounds for eviction. That is the nature of the tenancy reform and the Bill that we will bring before the House.

[Lord Best (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the Government are definitely doing the right thing in giving renters greater security. But is there a problem that a rogue landlord could simply double the rent, thereby forcing the tenant to leave despite the extra security? Would the Minister agree that the forthcoming renters’ reform Bill will need to introduce not clumsy rent controls but a straightforward time period—perhaps four years—during which a tenant’s rent cannot be increased by more than inflation?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I will look at what it will take to ensure that there are proper securities for renters, while recognising that we also need a healthy private rental sector and the role that good landlords play in that process.

Housebuilding

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Tuesday 26th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, the gross figure for additional dwellings was 252,790. That figure was obtained by adding 243,770 net additional dwellings to 9,000 demolitions. Some 26,930 gains were made through change of use.

[Lord Best (CB) (V)]

I congratulate the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury on his appointment of a Church of England bishop for housing; that is a most helpful move. Does the Minister agree that now is the time to accept the excellent recommendations made by Sir Oliver Letwin to get more homes built by ending our dependence on the oligopoly of major housebuilders who corner the land market and build out at a speed that suits themselves? Instead, we should capture the land value through local authorities and thus ensure the building simultaneously of a variety of new homes, including social housing and retirement housing and so on, for every major site.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, there is a great deal of sense in that question. I would point out that the proposals to revise the National Planning Policy Framework make it clear that sites for substantial development should seek to include a variety of development types from different builders.

Leaseholders: Properties with Cladding

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Thursday 7th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I think the solution will include a levy on the development community, but I also want to talk about construction products. Look at the margins made by those who sold some of the construction materials used on high-rises such as Grenfell Tower. They made astronomical profits. Profits have been made and the result was products that are not fit for purpose. We have seen total regulatory system failure and construction practices that require significant regulatory change. As Buildings Safety Minister, I am committed to that.

[Lord Best (CB) [V]]

My Lords, many leaseholders are shared owners who own perhaps only 25% of their homes, because they could not afford to buy more. However, they are liable for 100% of their flat’s share of the cost—maybe £40,000 or more—to rectify defects, such as cladding replacement. Would the Minister give special consideration to rescuing these shared owners, who are disproportionately affected, with many facing bankruptcy if they are not helped?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments on shared ownership. This tenure can be particularly unfair, if you own a proportion of your property and rent the rest, but are hit with 100% with the liability, when the problem was not of your own making. I take these points on board and we will do everything we can to ensure that people in shared ownership, on the pathway to home ownership, are protected as best they can be.