Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 23rd October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly, aware of the hour, to offer the Green group’s support for all the alternative amendments in this group and to reflect on how your Lordships’ House is still trying to fix some utterly extraordinary holes in this Bill. If you think of what the holes are that we are filling, they are related to climate but also to public health and the cost of living crisis—the issues that are of great concern to people all round this country, but particularly those in the areas that the levelling-up Bill is most supposed to be addressing.

I must note that at about the same time that we are speaking, in the other place there is a Statement on the impacts of Storm Babet. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, referred to this. We have had tragic deaths. Huge numbers of people have seen their lives torn apart by flooding. There are now 1.9 million people living in homes at significant risk of flooding. That figure will double by 2050. We have a huge problem with public health. We often hear in your Lordships’ House the concern about getting ill people back to work. We must get productivity up. These are issues that the Government are talking about all the time and issues that these amendments are trying to address.

So, once again, we are trying to help and we can only hope that the Government will listen.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Motion ZH, the government amendment in lieu of Lords Amendment 329. The intention of the earlier Lords amendment was to make local plans more specific in spelling out the housing needs of each locality and the ways in which those needs are to be met. This would identify how homelessness and temporary accommodation can be eliminated over a reasonable timescale. The amendment, devised by Shelter, detailed what the local plan should cover, including the needs of all those registered on the local housing authority’s allocation scheme. This would mean all local plans highlighting the need for, and the steps to provide, the homes sought by those now in increasing difficulty as opportunities to buy or to rent have become alarmingly scarce.

The government amendment seeks to take this on board in a somewhat condensed version. It requires the local plan to

“take account of an assessment of the amount, and type, of housing that is needed in the local planning authority’s area, including the amount of affordable housing that is needed”.

This takes us into the same territory as my amendment and would sharpen up local plans to provide more precision in identifying and addressing the need for housing for those who are homeless or in temporary accommodation or on the never-ending waiting list for a home that they can afford. What is on the face of the Bill will now need to be buttressed by guidance for local planning authorities, to put a bit more flesh on the bones of this legislative measure. It would be good if the Minister could provide an assurance that this ingredient will be incorporated in forthcoming planning guidance.

The government amendment in lieu also raises the thorny question of defining “affordable housing”, which has been debated in this House on numerous occasions and not resolved. The government amendment adds that “affordable housing” means social housing as it has been defined—very broadly and often misleadingly—since 2008. However, the amendment adds some new, encouraging words that “affordable housing” could mean housing of

“any other description of housing that may be prescribed”.

This is helpful. It opens the door for a new definition of affordable housing which, in the future, this or another Secretary of State may prescribe. It would be good to see whether agreement can be reached in the months ahead on a more satisfactory definition, to update the old one from 2008 in readiness for the first opportunity to substitute a better version.

With these comments, I say that I feel that the Government have made a serious effort to take on board the need to sharpen up the local plan in respect of meeting housing need. I am grateful to the Government, and to the Minister in particular, for this change that they are willing to make to the Bill.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I have one remark to make in support of Motion M1, put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. The noble Earl, with whom it is always so difficult to disagree, stated that the reason the Government are unhappy with the idea of climate change becoming more central is that it opens up a wide range of challenge. But climate change is going to be the central, existential issue of planning beyond our lifetimes. It is not an add-on; it is not planting a few trees in order to get planning permission. It is absolutely core, and dealing with that will make life very difficult for planning applications. I support this amendment so that climate change becomes central to the decision-making process, not an adjunct.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 20th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I think the spirit moved. It is good the right reverend Prelate spoke first in this case.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak particularly to my Amendment 438, but I will preface my remarks by saying how much I have appreciated this debate and the contributions from the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds. We have explored this issue in a comprehensive and useful way, and I greatly appreciate that.

I draw noble Lords’ attention to the Affordable Housing Commission report, which came out in the middle of Covid and was therefore buried and forgotten by everybody. The AHC report, which noble Lords can find via Google or their favourite search engine, was a pretty big effort, thankfully funded fully by the Nationwide Foundation—the Nationwide Building Society’s foundation—with a secretariat from the Smith Institute; I had the honour of chairing this. The report is a pretty meaty document and worth those who are interested in this subject following through, but that was a great debate on those amendments, and I support the essence of all of them.

My amendment 438, to which the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has kindly added his name, seeks to remove from the statute book an obnoxious, offensive legislative measure which has hung over local authorities since the passing of the Housing and Planning Act 2016. I reiterate my declaration of interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Back in 2016, I was the LGA president and along with allies from all parts of the House, including the noble Lord, Lord Porter, with his local government expertise, and the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, we fought—unsuccessfully—to remove these awful sections from the 2016 Act.

What does this part of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 say, and why is it so troublesome? The key section imposes obligations on local authorities to sell their most valuable council housing when tenants move out, rather than reletting the property. It does so by requiring local authorities to pay a levy to the Secretary of State equivalent to the market value of the best council housing when it becomes vacant, multiplied by the estimated number of vacancies for the next year. To raise the money to pay this levy, local authorities would obviously have no option but to sell their most valuable homes. Most of the proceeds from these compulsory sales go straight to the Secretary of State, who, in a convoluted twist, would use the money to compensate housing associations for selling properties at large discounts to their tenants under an extension of the right to buy.

The effect of this extraordinary measure, had it ever been implemented, would have been highly damaging both for local authorities trying to meet the acute need for social housing in their areas and for the families desperately waiting for a home. Council housing would be further stigmatised and labelled as only for those with no hope of anything better, and with fewer re-lets, pressure on the remaining council stock would be even more intense than it already is.

Buyers of the housing which councils would be forced to sell would very often be private landlords who would let to similar occupiers but would charge market rents, thereby imposing twice the burden on the Exchequer for tenants in receipt of benefits. I was glad to catch up with the latest statistic from the noble Lord, Lord Stunell: that 50% of properties sold under the right to buy have been moved into the hands of private landlords and, obviously, let at rents that are twice as much, if not more.

To add insult to injury, the 2016 Act also empowered the Secretary of State to top up this raid on council resources by requiring local authorities to raise the rents to market levels for any tenant foolish enough to increase their income above a fixed level. The extra rent would not go towards management and maintenance of council housing but instead would be remitted to the Secretary of State as a windfall for the Government.

I moved an amendment opposing the measure and it was carried by a huge majority in this House. I even featured on the BBC documentary on the work of the House of Lords. Although it remains in law, it is another ingredient in the 2016 Act that thankfully has not seen the light of day.

Returning to the compulsory sales of higher-value council housing, as is addressed by the amendment, we can now see what a disaster this would have been—but the offending measure remains on the statute book. In reality, this sword of Damocles hanging over councils is no longer a major threat since Government Ministers have made it clear that they have no intention of using these draconian asset-stripping powers. Indeed, I am confident that Ministers understand the imperative for more, not less, social housing provision.

It was, no doubt, the work of an enthusiastic but naive special adviser coming up with a cunning wheeze to extract the cost from local authorities of securing new right-to-buy sales by housing associations. Today there would be little appetite for such shenanigans which would reduce the stock of available social housing, following the right to buy’s removal of 2.8 million council homes and the subsequent higher costs of using the private rented sector instead. Indeed, the right to buy has now been abolished in Scotland, and Wales is following suit.

Councils have welcomed the Government’s recent move enabling them to retain 100% of right-to-buy receipts for 2022-23 and 2023-24. With long waiting lists for social housing and the private sector becoming more and more unfeasible for many households, that announcement should support councils trying to replace the homes sold through right to buy. It would be helpful if the Government completed this change and made it permanent rather than just for two years. On this theme, I hope that the Government will finally agree to councils having the ability to set right-to-buy discounts locally as part of the Bill’s emphasis on devolution.

The time has surely come to be rid of this 2016 misguided measure to strip local authorities of their best housing assets. The LGA and others have been waiting for a legislative opportunity for the Government to enact their clear intention to have nothing to do with this defunct legislative device. The Bill provides that opportunity, and I think everyone in local government and in the world of social housing will breathe a sigh of relief to see this expunged from the statute book. I commend this amendment.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to intervene briefly to put this debate in an important context. Before I do so, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Best, on eventually achieving the victory which he sought when the 2016 Act was going through; it was not the best piece of legislation on housing that Parliament has seen. I agree with what the right reverend Prelate said—that we should unfreeze the local housing allowance or, if we cannot, increase the discretionary housing grant, to enable those who find that they cannot meet the rent to have more support.

I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that “affordable” is a misnomer, but there is a fundamental choice that we have to make, which is: the higher the rents, the more social houses you can build; and the lower the rents, the fewer social houses you can build. That is simply because of the way that social landlords are funded. A Government decide to have a capital fund available for new builds. A Government of a different persuasion may have a higher figure than the current one but, whatever that figure, the number of houses that can be built is dependent on the rent levels which the social landlords can charge.

A Housing Minister has a choice: you can have lower rents, social rents or genuinely affordable rents, but you will get less output. When I had responsibility and was faced with this spectrum, I went for slightly more output but slightly higher rents, to meet the demand for new houses and to build more houses that would last 60 years. I recognise that others may choose to go the other way on the spectrum, but you cannot get away from the fact that this is the choice. If you want to have affordable rents reduced to social rents, the consequence is that you will have fewer houses. I make this intervention at the end of this debate just to put it in a slightly broader context.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th April 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Best]

207: Schedule 7, page 290, line 3, at end insert—
“(ha) the assessments of need for older people’s housing carried out in respect of the authority’s area, and”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that local authorities consider the needs for housing for older people when preparing local development plans.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for adding their names to Amendment 207. Indeed, when this House had a dress rehearsal for this amendment, discussing the related Amendment 221 last month, the noble Lord, Lord Young, expertly outlined the case for the planning system to do more to reflect our ageing population, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester—in place of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford—gave invaluable support to this theme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I want to clarify just one thing. I understand the balancing act between not wanting to impose on local communities and, as the Minister has indicated, the one-size-fits-all approach. However, what is confusing about the issue of targets versus localism is that the national housing targets were set by the Government, who then backed off in the other place. At one point, they thought it worth having national housing targets, so it cannot always have been some sort of communist plot to impose a national plan. The Government thought that this was a good idea and then backed off.

There is a second important point that people have made. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, used a quotation I had also wanted to use—he used it the other evening as well—from Theresa Villiers MP, when she boasted that the success of the amendments in the other place was leading to less housing being built locally. We have seen recent figures on the front page of the Times indicating that fewer homes are being built—that there is a hold-up. What do the Government suggest one does in a situation where local councils, for whatever reason, are not building the homes and there are no targets to hold them to account? These amendments at least try to rectify that situation.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for joining in and for nearly everyone commending the amendments that would lead to more housing for older people. I am extremely grateful for all those contributions. This has been twinned with a separate, and in some ways rather bigger, debate on the whole question of whether we should have national targets for the number of homes that we build, or whether that should be left to local authorities to determine. That huge question of the balance between those two things will run and run, and there will be more to follow.

I want to pick up one or two of the points which relate more to the needs of older people. I was delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, championed that cause too, and I liked his statistic that there will be another 500,000 more people aged over 75 in the next five years. It is an extraordinary phenomenon that we are getting older in such numbers. He advocated tax breaks to stimulate the production of new homes to meet this need. My all-party parliamentary group has advocated stamp duty relief for those who downsize because of the impact in terms of those homes that are left behind and then occupied by families. In fact, although the Treasury has resisted any attempts to reduce stamp duty—one can understand that—the net figure for the Treasury would rise, because once an older person has moved out of their home, a chain reaction follows. Two and a half or just under three sales would flow from that, from which the Treasury picks up stamp duty, so this would be a very sensible contribution to the national coffers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, raised one or two points. In relation to housing for older people, she made the point that there are cases where those managing these properties are not behaving well—for example, service charges are being abused in some way. I am afraid that I have had to repeat this many a time, but this is where we need the regulation of property agents, estate agents, letting agents and managing agents of leasehold property. The report on RoPA—the regulation of property agents—was delivered to the Government in 2019 and acclaimed as the way forward, but we are yet to see progress. We may see some progress in either the renters’ reform Bill or the leasehold reform Bill; I certainly hope so.

The noble Lord, Lord Bradley, mentioned the problems facing students. In a way, you can list almost every category of need and discover that the overall shortages we are suffering from as a country are hurting the people in that category, and students are no exception. They need to be taken fully into account.

The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, talked about slow buildout. I am a great fan of Oliver Letwin’s report, which addressed a lot of those issues. I think the noble Earl knows this, but water neutrality, nutrient neutrality and biodiversity net gain—all these issues which are affecting the housebuilders’ willingness to build—are being explored at present by the Built Environment Committee of your Lordships’ House. The committee is having a good look at the impact of this accumulation of different environmental requirements and how best we can handle that, so your Lordships should watch that space.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich reminded us of Professor Mayhew’s recent review of housing for older people. Professor Mayhew got to a figure of 50,000 homes being required every year, which is further than others have taken this. That was a seminal and very important report, and he made the fundamental point—which is in my original amendment that started this debate—that the local plan needs to incorporate a requirement for a proportion of housing for older people.

The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, really got us going on the government retreat from the requirement on local authorities to deliver the 300,000 homes that the Government still stand by, quite properly, as a national target. He also reiterated his support for housing for older people, which I much appreciated.

The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, raised an issue which he has raised before—and rightly so—that we can boost housing supply in various ways, one of which would be to give a lot more money to housing associations and social housing providers in grants. However, another would be to have more emphasis on neighbourhood plans, because when people get around and talk about these things, some of the resistance we have been hearing about evaporates. I must admit that I am one of the people who have been surprised by this, but neighbourhood plans are producing more homes for development, not fewer, in the end, when they have decided what is needed for their neighbourhood.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, made the point—and reiterated it—that these were all wise and helpful words, but the developers will find a way—they have done so far—to evade responsibilities and plead feasibility and other excuses for not doing the things that everyone knows that they should. This means having a very clear requirement in a local plan, sticking by it and ensuring that there is no retreat from what is in it on those various spurious grounds.

I was delighted that the Minister was able to say soothing words that the NPPF will take further the Government’s commitment to achieving more diversity of provision for older people, and indeed will be about boosting supply. I hope the taskforce that the Government have now established will help promote that and put some flesh on the bones of it, and that guidance—which will be statutory—will be helpful in pressing the case. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 207 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support all four amendments in my colleagues’ names, because it is very important to follow up the housing issue of “small is beautiful”. It comes when we have small builders doing rather more interesting things than some of the big ones. Living in Cornwall, I was particularly surprised by some statistics I got from the county council recently, showing that 6,000 affordable houses had received planning permission but only 600 were being built. I know that it is a timescale thing, and we can go on about that, but it is another example of what many noble Lords have talked about: builders holding things back and going for the properties that make the most money. In my little village of Polruan, there is nowhere for someone who wants to retire from running the shop to go to live. What do they do? They cannot afford to buy, the county council does not really help them very much, but they do not want to leave. So it is very important that we encourage small builders to develop small sites. It might cost a bit more, but it is something that councils must do.

I am particularly keen, as a member of the Built Environment Committee, along with several noble Lords who have been speaking today, to think about the issue in Amendment 504GJA—I think that is right—of a database of rogue landlords. It is a serious problem, and it goes back to the reason why, 30 or 40 years ago, Margaret Thatcher and others wanted everybody to be part of the property-owning democracy—because the rental market was so awful. Now people cannot afford to buy, and the rental market may have got better, but it has not got very much better. We have compared it with the situation in cities in France, Belgium, Germany and other places, where many more people rent, because they are professional people who think it is the right thing to do and do not have to worry about the landlords. Here, there are many too many cases of rogue landlords. I hope the amendment will deliver what it needs to—perhaps it needs a bit more detail before Report, but it is time we put the whole thing on a proper, reputable financial basis so that people feel happy to rent and the renters feel happy to let them. I support all the amendments.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 274A on small sites in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. Mine is slightly qualified support, but I am supportive. The amendment has been devised by the innovative people at Pocket Living, a company that specialises in imaginative developments on small sites, which are always difficult to develop. The amendment proposes a fast track through the planning system for smaller operators of this kind working on smaller sites—a quarter of a hectare and smaller—in return for delivering 50% affordable housing in every case.

It is a tempting proposition. We certainly need a boost for SME builders. In their evidence to your Lordships’ Built Environment Committee last year, the Federation of Master Builders explained that the output of SME firms had declined from about 40% of all new homes in the 1980s to around 10% today. One clear reason for this loss of their input has been the time and expense of trying to secure planning consents. My reservation is that the 50% affordable housing offer is not quite so tempting if all the homes are for shared ownership or the 80% of market rents of the so-called affordable rent variety. I would want to see half these new properties being for truly affordable social renting. Then we would have a really exciting proposition from the sector. With that reservation, I support Amendment 274A.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

First, I will respond to the first remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. Yes, I think everybody in this Chamber who has taken part wants the same thing: we want more of the right type of housing across our country. The difference is on how we deliver that, and that is what we are taking many hours and days to deliberate on—but it is important that we do that, because it is a really important issue for the country well into the future. The way the Government see it is that we need to give clear guidance on the big issues that need to be taken into account, but that we must ensure that local planning authorities start producing local plans that no longer need to take into account the national guidance, because that will be there anyway, but that work with all the data in their local area to ensure that what is in their local plan is what is required. That is not just numbers; it relates also to the view of the noble Lord, Lord Best, and others that we need to look at demography and the types of houses that we want to deliver.

If a local plan has strong evidence, I think it is then up to local leadership to stick to that plan. There may be some government work that needs to be done on the Planning Inspectorate, but we must stick up for what the evidence shows is required in our local area, reflected in our local plan. That is the way I see it; I wanted to get that off my chest.

I turn to the amendments in this group, which relate to planning and housing, starting with Amendment 208, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, and Amendment 274A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. These amendments both relate to the provision of small housing sites and are therefore considered here together.

The National Planning Policy Framework already sets out that local planning authorities should identify land to accommodate at least 10% of their housing requirement on sites no larger than one hectare, unless it can be shown, through the preparation of relevant plan policies, that there are strong reasons why this 10% target cannot be achieved.

The framework sets out that local planning authorities should use tools such as area-wide design assessments and local development orders to help bring small and medium-sized sites forward; and to support the development of windfall sites through the policies and decisions in the local plan, giving great weight to the benefits of using suitable sites within existing settlements for homes. Local planning authorities are asked to work with developers to encourage the subdivision of large sites where this could help to speed up the delivery of homes—we heard about that earlier.

The framework also sets out that neighbourhood planning groups should give particular consideration to the opportunities for allocating small and medium-sized housing sites. However, we have heard views that we could strengthen these policies to further support the Government’s housing objectives. This is why we invited views, as part of our recent consultation on reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework, on how national planning policies can further support developments on small sites, especially those that will deliver high levels of affordable housing and, particularly in urban areas, to speed up the delivery of housing, giving greater confidence and certainty to smaller and medium-sized builders, and to diversify the housebuilding market. The consultation ended on 2 March and responses received will help to inform our policy thinking on this important issue, as will this debate. We will look at the ideas that have been put forward, together with the responses. This is something on which there will be further consideration.

Amendment 213 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, seeks to create a legal requirement for local authorities to set policies in their local plans which ensure that housing needs are met in a way that secures the long-term health, safety and well-being of local people and ensures that such housing is affordable to those on average and lower incomes. We have, as she rightly said, debated this quite a lot. While I entirely understand the sentiment behind this, as I have said on previous groups, and consider the goal to be laudable, the Government are already committed to ensuring that new development, both market and affordable, meets high standards of quality. The National Planning Policy Framework is clear that planning policies in local plans should aim to achieve healthy, inclusive and safe places, and local authorities should ensure that they properly assess the needs of different groups when planning for new housing.

Ensuring that a sufficient number and range of homes can be provided to meet the needs of present and future generations is part of achieving sustainable development. Local planning authorities should set out an overall strategy for the pattern, scale and design quality of places, and make sufficient provision for housing. Furthermore, the framework is clear that planning policies and decisions should promote an effective use of land in meeting the need for homes, while ensuring safe and healthy living conditions. Local authorities are empowered to ensure that developers deliver a defined amount of affordable housing, including social housing, on market housing sites, unless exceptions apply. Our initial consultation on revisions to the NPPF seeks views on whether the role of social rent should be strengthened and whether we could go further to promote the delivery of housing for older people, as we discussed earlier.

Finally, under the community infrastructure levy, we will introduce a new “right to require” through regulations, in which local authorities can require that a certain amount of affordable housing is delivered in kind as a levy contribution. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, asked why the Government are not doing more to deliver this affordable housing. The Government are totally committed to increasing the supply of affordable housing. That is why, through our £11.5 billion affordable homes programme, we will deliver tens of thousands of affordable homes, both for sale and for rent, right across the country. The levelling up White Paper made a commitment to increase the supply of social rented homes. The affordable homes programme will respond to that commitment by increasing the share of social rent homes that will be delivered through the programme, helping those most in need. Since 2010 we have delivered over 632,000 new affordable homes, including 441,000 affordable homes for rent, of which 162,000 are homes for social rent.

Although there is a comprehensive legislative code within which local plans and decisions are made, the content of local plans is produced on the basis of national policy, which is flexible to allow updates to be made without new laws being passed. I hope this provides the noble Baroness with the clarification and assurances she needs to not press this amendment.

Amendment 504GJA tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would require all local housing authorities in England to publish the contents of the database of rogue landlords and property agents. The Government have stated their commitment to improving standards in rented accommodation and driving out rogue landlords. We will legislate to amend the Housing and Planning Act 2016 and make certain landlord offence information public as part of the forthcoming renters reform Bill. Opening up this information will ensure that tenants can make informed rental decisions, leading to a better rental experience, as was asked for by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 441, 443, 444 and 446 on the theme of short-term lettings, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, the esteemed chair of your Lordships’ Built Environment Committee, on which I am honoured to serve. I also support the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, on data sharing and safety.

I share the worries relayed very forcefully in submissions to our Built Environment Committee over the loss of long-term rented homes because of landlords switching to short-term lettings—propelled not least, it seems, by a tax and regulatory regime that favours the latter. As the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has said, our debate last Monday covered a lot of the issues that have been debated in our committee and are now the subject of these probing amendments. Noble Lords gave much support on Monday to earlier amendments that advocated a registration or licensing scheme—the two could look very similar. The Built Environment Committee favoured local discretion in introducing a national scheme locally, since some places have virtually no short-term lettings. It would be very bureaucratic to have a scheme applied there. The Government are also committed, as well as to a registration scheme, to taking a regulatory arrangement forward, and I hope that we can hear news from the Minister of a timetable in this regard.

In addition, there was support on Monday for the proposition from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the noble Earl, Lord Devon, endorsed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, for new use classes, which would enable planning powers to be used to control numbers of short-term lets in each local authority. The Government are consulting on that proposition, which personally I would favour; it deserves attention, alongside some tweaks to remove perceived incentives in the tax and regulatory frameworks, which currently appear to encourage landlords to end longer-term lets and switch to Airbnb-style short-term rentals.

I add to the debate one extra ingredient: the international dimension. In this digital age, the Airbnb phenomenon for accommodation, like Uber for transport and Amazon for retail, is ubiquitous and has caused concern in sectors in most other advanced economies. Many different regulations have been applied in other countries, particularly in tourist hotspots. A report from the Property Research Trust last year, Regulating Short-Term Rentals: Platform-based Property Rentals in European Cities, describes numerous efforts to face this challenge. Amsterdam has a strict permit system, with fines of about £20,000 for failure to comply. Barcelona has banned all short-term rentals, even in private homes. In Ireland, those areas of the country designated as rent-pressure zones have tough restrictions. In parts of the United States, such as San Francisco and Boston, only properties with the host living there during the stay are allowed to be operated as short-term lets. This international perspective demonstrates that we are not alone in facing this problem. We have a greater problem of scarcity of rented housing than most of our neighbours, which suggests that an effort to get to grips with the downside of short-term lets may be overdue here.

I have one final point. Amendment 444 reflects the Built Environment Committee’s firmly held view that new arrangements should not deter any home owners from letting spare rooms on a short-term basis. The current tax-free position, allowing up to £7,500 per annum, encourages the use of underutilised assets and brings extra income that can help with rising mortgage costs. The amendment emphasises the value of continuing that favourable tax regime for owner-occupiers in underoccupied homes.

I hope that the Government will be bold in following the lead of many other countries. We need to address the pain and disruption being caused in particular locations by the growth of short-term lets that replace badly needed longer-term rented homes. I support the amendments.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, I too support these amendments, particularly the lead amendment in this group, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, about the gathering of better data. I will try not to repeat what I said last time, other than that I have some skin in the game here in the sense that I jointly own properties that are let on assured shorthold tenancies, as well as short-term holiday let properties.

This is a multifaceted issue. Second homes may, at other times, be part-time holiday lets. Holiday lets may be for leisure trips one minute and for business purposes another, and they may alter from season to season. They may be for a couple of days at one point, or a couple of weeks or three months at another point. It is very difficult to make a one-size-fits-all assumption when you are dealing with short-term lets, holiday lets or even assured shorthold tenancies.

The platforms are also equally variable: it could be booking.com—a very common one—Airbnb, an owner’s own website, word of mouth, a card in the window of the local convenience store, or a repeat booking. They are all means of people getting in contact. I know this for a fact, because the only one that does not affect the properties that I am involved with is Airbnb as we do not use that platform, but I know lots of people who do. In respect of what the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, the thing about a platform such as Airbnb is its slickness and convenience for users—both lessors and prospective occupiers. That has really made it a benchmark worldwide phenomenon and has driven its operation and popularity as much as any wish to shift from one to the other.

I contacted a local estate agent down in the West Country—not one I use but I knew somebody in the place—and asked them what was happening with short-term lets as against assured shorthold tenancies, for example. They deal with a lot of such tenancies; they are one of the main agents in that area. I was told that, while there is considerable demand for assured shorthold tenancies—often 20 or 30 applicants for each—there were very few cases of an AST being terminated for the purpose of moving the property to a short-term letting. There was nearly always some other reason for ending the AST: it was a pot of money that the owner wanted to put into some other investment, such as extending another house or helping a child with a house purchase in another part of the country.

I do not know, therefore, how frequent this supposed transfer is. Organisations such as Shelter say that they have lots of people coming along saying that they have been kicked out because the owner wanted to do an Airbnb-type letting, but I do not know whether that is an essentially urban phenomenon—it may be—or more general. I just do not think that we have the data. That goes back to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Foster, made: we need better data.

I would worry about attempts to jump to conclusions about what we do here. I follow the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, the chairman of the wonderful committee of which I am a former member, but I worry about attempts to jump to conclusions, particularly because we have not had the results of the Government’s own thinking on this, and particularly when applying these user types to a range of properties that equally has a very considerable breadth—from a shepherd’s hut at one end through to a static caravan and to a permanent dwelling. Some may be suitable only for seasonal use: I think of the very large caravan parks that—“decorate” is the wrong word—“appear” in places such as the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. I cannot say that I regard them as beautiful or a benefit to the environment, but they clearly fulfil a seasonal requirement.

There are some settlements—some seaside places and holiday hotspots—that are built on tourism. That is what they are there for, almost, and the fact that they empty themselves for parts of the year is not a particularly modern phenomenon. I remember when as children we used to go on holiday to a part of Cornwall on an annual basis, and just about every other house was advertising bed and breakfast. Those bed and breakfasts may have morphed into Airbnb, or a short-term let on some other platform. Noble Lords have mentioned that there are clearly problems associated with an imbalance of property uses, but as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, confirmed—I raised this point on Monday —these are not consistent, geographically or by type. They tend to be associated with hotspots of one sort or another. We need to understand the dynamic.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, picked up on the point I made that we need to flesh out a great deal more what is happening here. If we do not know the purposes and drivers behind what is happening in any given instance then we are not going to get near to creating viable policies for the purpose. Let us make no mistake: this phenomenon is undoubtedly causing problems in certain areas. We had evidence of that in the Built Environment Select Committee when I was privileged to serve on it. What is required here is a degree of localised assessment, but based on consistent, nationally accepted data-gathering principles and analysis, so that we get a proper basis for dealing with this, and can look at and compare like with like and not be comparing apples with pears.

I entirely endorse Amendments 445B and 447, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, because I know for a fact how very important safety is within a property, particularly where there is short-term turnover of occupancy and people are not particularly familiar with the property. It is absolutely important that they are safe, and that things such as batteries in smoke detectors are checked annually and that combustion appliances have proper tests and are serviced. They should be safe and safety checked at regular intervals.

The noble Lord, Lord Foster, referred to the business of trying to get at the data on this through council tax records. He is absolutely right that this is a pretty deficient way of dealing with it. I am going to tell a tale out of school here. My wife has written on numerous occasions to the billing authority in relation to a property that has been used for holiday letting for many years, saying, “Look, this is being used pretty much year-round as a holiday unit. Should it continue to be in council tax?” To which answer there came none, and why would there? Why would any clever finance officer of a local authority decide that he was going to forgo council tax—which he collects and keeps in his kitty, thank you very much—and be the collecting agency for business rates for central government, to be redistributed according to whatever the normal formula is? The noble Lord, Lord Foster, mentioned one area where the thing is skewed; that is a second area where there is a perverse incentive not to get things in the right slot.

It gets worse. Under the “check, challenge, appeal” process that business rates operators have to deal with when dealing with the Valuation Office Agency, someone has to formally claim the property for the purposes of being its agent before they can even get the process in train to change the assessment. That is not a sensible way of doing it either. We are completely at sea on this and really need to sort it out.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Worcester]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford has added her name. She regrets that she is unable to be in her place today; I wish to make some points that undoubtedly she would have contributed had she been here.

As already indicated by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, the Government’s tabled Amendment 165 is very welcome. The review of Section 123 of the Local Government Act 1972, and the correction of the omission of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime—and of police and crime commissioners generally—are necessary and positive steps. However, there remain ways in which the general disposal consent 2003 could be improved to better allow public bodies to dispose of assets for less than market value for social, economic or environmental benefit. We believe that such measures would be very much in line with the Bill’s desired outcome: levelling up communities across the country.

Noble Lords will be well aware of the significant variation in land value across the nation’s regions. The introduction of a percentage value discount would help ensure that local authorities, no matter where they are in the country, could offer the same level of discretion when selling sites for community good. I hope that the Minister will therefore accept the proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for an adjacent percentage value to take into account varying land prices in different regions.

I also echo calls for the Minister to confirm today that the Government commit to launching a consultation on a new directive to update the current consent order on the disposal of public land. I am aware that Munira Wilson MP, who has been active in these matters in the other place, has received a letter from the new Housing and Planning Minister in which Mrs Maclean confirmed that the Government will take forward a consultation on a new direction with higher thresholds after the passage of the Bill. Is the Minister able to reiterate this commitment on the Floor of the House?

I also hope the Minister will accept the call by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for a new disposal consent order increasing the cash value amount in line with inflation in land prices. In her letter to Munira Wilson MP, the Housing and Planning Minister recognised that the current threshold of £2 million was provided in 2003 and that land values have increased over the last two decades. Amendment 174 would increase the cash value amount that public authorities can give a discount on to £3 million. It should be noted that this is in fact a conservative estimate of the inflation in land prices over the past 20 years.

To conclude, I repeat my welcome for the government Amendment 165 and urge the Minister to reiterate the Government’s commitment to consult on a new directive, create such a directive and accept Amendment 174’s provisions for an adjacent percentage value. I hope that we can continue in this spirit of co-operation truly to level up our country.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 312A in this group, which would insert a new clause with the heading:

“Duty to optimise the use of public land”.


As this implies, the amendment attempts to ensure that the precious asset of land owned by public bodies is put to “optimal use”. The amendment tries to do two things. First, it would place a duty on local authorities to have a land use management plan for sites in their ownership to ensure that developments are brought forward for the public good. Secondly, since the duty to optimise the use of public land would very often be exercised by disposal of the land to others, the amendment also seeks to define the meaning of the phrase “best consideration reasonably obtainable”, which governs sale of publicly owned land at present.

Earlier amendments in this group would extend the current disposal regime to cover police and crime commissioners, the NHS, importantly, and all other public bodies. This amendment seeks to resolve long-standing complexities and arguments over the treatment of landholdings by public bodies. I pay tribute to the land economist Stephen Hill, who has studied this question for many years, for his preparation of the amendment. He has been aided by Keith Jenkins, the property lawyer, alongside distinguished real estate experts, academics and leading practitioners who all have my thanks for their work on this subject.

An essential feature of the levelling-up agenda is the need to improve the built environment to create better places to live and work. Securing the land for improved conditions—for affordable homes, green spaces, local amenities, et cetera—is the key to this. The amendment’s first objective, therefore, is simply to bring more public land into play. It would do so by requiring local authorities to prepare a land use management plan, demonstrating how use of their land will be optimised.

This approach was advocated by your Lordships’ Land Use in England Committee, chaired by my noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington. Several local authorities are showing the way with land use plans. For example, the West Midlands Combined Authority has set out what is expected of public landowners; its public land charter requires those landowners to

“apply a consistent, joined-up approach to best consideration”

that aims to achieve “sustainable long-term” value for their land. Amendment 312A would spread this good practice everywhere.

However, securing the best economic, social and environmental uses when public land is sold has been constantly thwarted by public bodies’ acceptance of a higher price offered for the land by other bidders for what is often a less than optimal use. We all have stories of hard-pressed providers of public services understandably wanting to secure as much hard cash as they can from disposing of their land assets, even though doing so conflicts with efforts to improve the quality of life for local citizens.

I will use NHS land to illustrate this point. I have been involved in negotiations to acquire a redundant hospital building for an extra care housing development for older people. This use of the old building and surrounding land would lead to substantial annual savings for the NHS and care services, keeping people out of hospital and residential care as well as reducing loneliness and care needs. But the NHS trust was adamant that the sale must be to the highest bidder— in this case, a developer of luxury flats for overseas buyers—irrespective of the benefits to the NHS and care services that our extra care housing project would achieve. Very often, the reason cited by the public body for taking this line is that there is an obligation on it to secure the highest price, which gets equated with the “best consideration reasonably obtainable”. This is likely to mean the land is valued so highly that it prohibits a development that would achieve important social objectives.

Amendment 312A addresses this issue by creating the duty to go for the optimal use of the land, not the highest price offered, defining “optimal use” and interpreting “best consideration” by reference to constraints on the use of the land from predetermined local and national requirements. It spells out that this means fulfilling four imperatives: first, the requirements of the local development plan and the neighbourhood plan, if there is one; secondly, any national development management policies that will follow from the Bill; thirdly, the environmental principles in the Environment Act 2021; and fourthly, any other objectives or requirements determined by the Secretary of State.

In other words, securing the optimal use of publicly owned land must simply but definitively accord with national and local government requirements. The value of the land is thereby constrained and moderated by the need to comply with these legislative and administrative requirements. In this way, the value of the land is captured by the planning system for economic, social and environmental uses.

Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body (Abolition) Regulations 2022

Lord Best Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Grand Committee

[The Lord Privy Seal (Lord True) (Con)]

My Lords, these regulations were laid before the House on 22 November and, if agreed, will give legal effect to the decision of both Houses, taken in July of this year, to pass Motions endorsing the House commissions’ report for a revised mandate for the restoration and renewal programme.

Since the sponsor body was established by the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019, concerns have been raised about the conclusions reached in the initial assessment of the emerging costs and timescales. The House of Lords Commission, alongside the House of Commons Commission, expressed concern about the costs and timescales presented by the sponsor body, and I shared some of these concerns. That is why the Government, with the commissions in both Houses, have supported the development of a revised mandate. I am grateful for the collaborative way in which Speaker’s Counsel in the House of Commons has worked with officials in both Houses, including the deputy counsel to the Chairman of Committees, to draft these regulations and for the ongoing advice we have received from the R&R directors.

The new approach to the parliamentary building works will continue to ensure that, as provided for in the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019, Members of both Houses will be consulted. Peers and all those who work in this place will have a chance to express their views on the works. When making critical strategic choices relating to restoration and renewal, the R&R client board will keep in mind the principles agreed by both Houses to deliver a new value-for-money approach that prioritises safety.

The commissions, in a March 2022 meeting, agreed a new approach to the restoration and renewal programme, guided by the principles of prioritising health and safety, ensuring maximum value for money and integration with other critical works on the estate. It is important that all members of the parliamentary community feel that they are engaged on the parliamentary building works, and I am confident that these new arrangements will deliver the required step change in engagement.

In 2018, both Houses agreed that major works to the Palace of Westminster would be essential in order to ensure that this historic and iconic building remains for generations to come. It was decided that the project should be undertaken by a delivery authority and overseen by a sponsor body. The Parliamentary Building Works (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019 set out the governance arrangements for the project by creating these bodies and conferring particular functions on them. However, earlier this year, the two House commissions recommended a new approach to the programme whereby a new two-tier in-house governance structure would be established.

These regulations, which are made under Section 10 of the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019, will abolish the sponsor body, which will be replaced with an in-house governance structure. The statutory responsibilities and other functions of the sponsor body will transfer to the corporate officers of the House of Commons and the House of Lords—in other words, the clerks of each House.

The Leader of the House of Commons and I have consulted the corporate officers and the commissions of both Houses, in accordance with Section 10(8)(a) of the Act, and both corporate officers have consented to the transfers to them effected by this instrument, in accordance with Section 10(3) of the Act. Ultimately, both corporate officers will have joint responsibility for the parliamentary building works and will, at least once a year, prepare and lay a report before Parliament about the carrying out of the parliamentary building works and the progress that has been made towards completion of those works.

I am aware that Peers have previously raised concerns that without the sponsor body in place, the project may not have sufficient expertise. First, the Houses will not lose the expertise gained by the sponsor body, and the team of staff with that expertise will be brought in-house, as a joint department, and be accountable to the corporate officers. I also emphasise that the delivery authority will not be affected by the regulations; its role is unchanged, although it will now be closer to the Houses. This ensures that the programme retains its valuable experience and expertise. These regulations will allow for greater co-ordination and engagement between the Houses and the delivery authority, which could in turn allow for the delivery of restoration works much sooner. Similarly, the regulations will not alter the role of the Parliamentary Works Estimates Commission; it will remain in place and will scrutinise the delivery authority’s estimates.

This statutory instrument is vital to ensuring that this historic building is restored, while making sure that we deliver for the British taxpayer. Our commitment to ensuring good value for money is reflected in Section 2(5) of the restoration and renewal Act, and it is an approach that I will prioritise.

I would like to reassure colleagues that the House’s important role in this project is not diminished by the regulations. Under Section 7 of the 2019 Act, no restoration works, other than preparatory works, can be carried out until Parliament has approved the delivery authority proposals for those works. In addition, further approval is required for any proposals that would significantly affect the design, timing or duration of the parliamentary building works. Bringing this project in-house is an opportunity, as an in-house governance structure should improve accountability and engagement with Parliament by allowing a close interaction with and accountability to the commissions of the two Houses. I beg to move.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Lord Privy Seal for his opening remarks. Alongside the noble Lords, Lord Carter and Lord Deighton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, I am a member of the board of the restoration and renewal sponsor body, which is now to be abolished under the terms of this statutory instrument. We were charged with implementing the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019, and I have been acting as the spokesperson responsible for reporting to your Lordships’ House on behalf of the board.

Before we go, the board has bequeathed to its successors a synopsis of the lessons we have learned from our experience over the last two and a half years. Our letter to the chairs of the new client board and new programme board will be publicly available on Monday. Perhaps I can draw out that letter’s three interconnected conclusions. First, the governance structure devised by the R&R Act was flawed. The theory was that creating an autonomous arm’s-length sponsor body would mean freedom from political interference and would expedite swift progress after years of delay. This was naive. The reality was that the relevant parliamentarians retained a controlling role. The work of the sponsor body was constantly held back and confused by the views of parliamentarians, particularly those on the House of Commons Commission who were not committed to the large-scale R&R programme envisaged by the 2019 Act.

In particular, there was antipathy towards a full decant of the Palace. We believed this to be necessary if the essential works, most notably to sort out the horrendous underground labyrinth of pipes and cables in the basement, were to be carried out expeditiously and safely. Indeed, a decant was part of the legislative framework we were obliged to follow. Lack of agreement on this fundamental part of the R&R process high- lighted the inherent conflict built into the governance arrangements for a supposedly independent sponsor body.

Under the new arrangements, the work of the sponsor body, with its oversight of the delivery authority, is to be taken in-house, with its functions transferred to the corporate officers: the clerks of the two Houses. Hopefully, this means that an in-built source of disagreement and crossed wires will now be removed. Our successors will be able to act as a single, united client speaking with one voice in championing the programme and progressing the works—I hope.

However, this leads to a second conclusion. There has never been clarity on the budget, timescale or scope of the R&R exercise. That clarity is now needed if our successors are to avoid endless delays and a waste of public funds, with the delivery authority instructed to undertake unnecessary work. If there are maximum or minimum levels, for example of accessibility in the Palace or of its energy efficiency and sustainability, these need to be stipulated. If Parliament is never going to accept a total cost for the whole project of more than X pounds or a decant period of more than Y years, that needs to be crystal clear up front and as soon as possible.

Thirdly, and finally, the outgoing board accepts with the wisdom of hindsight that we should have recognised that the sudden changes to the country’s fortunes meant a course correction was inevitable. It is obvious in retrospect that when the Covid pandemic struck, followed by turmoil in the economy, a retreat from the measures envisaged by the 2019 Act was going to be called for. Our successors and our colleagues in the delivery authority need to be ready for changes of direction and be prepared for fresh thinking as external circumstances alter.

At the end of this frustrating experience, I remain of the view that, although it will cost a fortune and will need everyone to move out of the building for a prolonged period sooner or later, none the less, the restoration and renewal of Parliament is an incredibly worthwhile initiative. Research shows that the wider public hope for and expect a full refurbishment of this much-loved building. Investment in this great endeavour will support skills, crafts and businesses throughout the UK. A proper R&R programme would not only render the building safe from fire, asbestos, the breakdown of services, falling masonry and the rest but actually save money, and possibly save lives, over the years ahead.

However, I recognise the constraints for elected Members of Parliament. I do not face constituents who may well say, “While we’re struggling through a cost of living crisis, Parliament is spending billions on its own comfort”. Also, the dark cloud of moving out for several years to a less amenable base elsewhere colours everybody’s judgment. Nevertheless, although the process may have lost two or three years, I hope that our successors will have the courage and determination to see it through.

What has been achieved will provide a solid basis for the next stages. Most of the excellent staff in the sponsor body and the development authority will carry on, and their work to date, despite operating throughout the Covid pandemic and through times of political and economic turmoil, has produced a vast quantity of data and physical survey work that will now make possible a clear plan. This plan may mean a succession of more modest mini-programmes stretching into the indefinite future, rather than the single major programme that we pursued, but, if the big issue of the basement renewal can be sorted, all is not lost.

In concluding our work today, we all wish our successors well. We hope that, despite the failure of the 2019 Act, progress will now be made in restoring this internationally recognised and iconic Palace for which the nation is right to feel huge pride and affection.

Restoration and Renewal

Lord Best Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, alongside the noble Lords, Lord Carter and Lord Deighton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, I am a board member of the restoration and renewal sponsor body charged with implementing the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019. I act as the spokesperson responsible for reporting to your Lordships’ House on behalf of the board. I am grateful to the Chief Whip and the usual channels for allowing me to speak for a couple of extra minutes. However, the opinions I express today are my own.

I have to say that the whole exercise, since the creation of the sponsor body and the attached delivery authority in 2020, has been deeply frustrating. There is a straightforward reason for this: our client, for whom we were required to deliver a full scale R&R programme, including the decanting of both Houses while major works were undertaken, has not been committed to the project. The client role has been represented by a House of Commons Commission that has not accepted the brief.

The approach of the House of Lords Commission, with leadership from the two Lord Speakers over this period, has been entirely positive. The Lords side agreed the mandate set out in the 2018 resolutions and the Act, and accepted, albeit reluctantly, that a move, probably to the QEII conference centre, would be necessary. But from the Commons, it has seemed that there has been a constant effort to kick the can down the road, specifically to resist all proposals for temporarily decanting the Commons from the Palace. This tension came to a head in March with the decision from the House of Commons Commission that the comprehensive programme should be halted, and the sponsor body dismissed. In essence, the new position—now incorporated into the Motion before us—comprises two significant changes.

First, instead of a full-scale R&R programme, as originally envisaged by the Act, the delivery authority is being asked to bring forward a selection of more modest propositions for works that could be undertaken end to end. This avoids committing to a very large sum, which is hard to face up to when public funds are tight. It is also implied that this will make possible the continued presence of the Commons in the Palace throughout the restoration, even if the Lords must move out. The details of this changed approach need clarity urgently, otherwise the delivery authority—which is continuing its extensive preparatory investigations with intrusive surveys during the forthcoming recess—will face a prolonged hiatus, with all the dangers of losing more staff and of substantial nugatory expenditure.

An extended sequence of major repair projects will probably cost far more in total and take far longer—and, of course, risk a major disaster in the meantime. All that aside, the approach will simply not work when it comes to the extraordinary challenge of the basement beneath our feet. Last week, I paid another visit to the basement’s frightening scene: the tangle of intertwined sewerage pipes; miles of electric cables internet wiring, gas pipes, steam pipes and chilled water pipes; the newly installed fan to suck out smoke from the frequent small fires which stands idle because it stirred up the asbestos; and the inaccessibility of key infrastructure now behind layers of more recent installations. This part of R&R represents well over half the total cost and does not lend itself to being one of a series of smaller projects. Sooner rather than later, the complete upgrade of all the services in the basement must be faced. It is very hard to believe this can possibly be done sensibly, safely and economically with the Commons staying in situ.

The second change from the position prior to March 2022 concerns the governance structures for our R&R. This is the real focus of the Motion before us. Despite its governance performance being deemed exemplary by the relevant external bodies, the sponsor body is to be disbanded as soon as possible, with new in-house board arrangements as outlined by the Lord Privy Seal.

Should we accept or reject this Motion? I see three reasons why we should not oppose the proposed changes. First, the abolition of the sponsor body is a fait accompli. The process of dismantling the current structure has already gone ahead. Our excellent chief executive, Sarah Johnson, is leaving imminently and senior staff have already gone. Progress towards bringing the planned business case for Parliament to consider in 2023 has been discontinued and work on the QEII decant ceased months ago. It would not make sense to try to return to the position before the abrupt stop to our work back in March.

Secondly, I recognise the case for stopping the programme’s progress now because, if matters were to proceed as planned for a parliamentary decision this time next year, the House of Commons might well simply reject the sponsor body’s propositions and the whole of R&R would be set back indefinitely. It may therefore be best to stop now rather than continuing to spend money for another year before crashing into the buffers in 2023.

Thirdly, even though proposals for new arrangements for R&R sound very much like the can being kicked further down the road, I think they are worth a try. What they could do is remove the ongoing hazard of a client that does not really want the project to progress. If the new arrangements engage Parliament’s representatives more closely, with genuinely joint working between the two Houses, creating a greater sense of ownership of the brief and putting the deliverer and the client on the same side, it might at last resolve this inherent problem.

I feel sure that those of us who have served on the sponsor body will happily move on, and I am delighted that the majority of our highly capable and committed staff will form the team for the new in-house body, but a serious change of approach is required from the leadership of the Commons commission. The aversion to a decant has to go and I am encouraged by the view widely expressed in the Commons yesterday that a decant of several years should be accepted.

The client role must now be exercised with absolute clarity and there must be a proper recognition that the restoration and renewal of the Palace as a safe, sustainable and accessible building, fully in accord with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, will be enormously costly but incredibly worth while. The total cost may be around £10 billion, spread over 15 years or so, although the rising annual spend of £150 million on maintenance will be saved.

Those in the Commons who are apprehensive about their electorate’s disapproval of such spending may draw comfort from the sponsor body’s consumer research, published last week, which shows that the wider public are hugely proud of this internationally recognised and iconic Palace and desperately want it fully restored. We should remember that all this spending supports businesses throughout the UK with contracts, jobs, apprenticeships and skills.

Because the new arrangements are a fait accompli, because they spare us a doomed outcome next year and because there is a chance that the new governance will at last achieve the commitment to the project that has been lacking, I accept the Motion before us. Let us get on with it.

Civil Procedure (Amendment No. 4) (Coronavirus) Rules 2020

Lord Best Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for giving us this chance to consider how a Covid-related rise in homelessness can be avoided. I declare my interests as on the register.

The pandemic has revealed how insecure and vulnerable is the private rented sector. Tenants, who can be paying over 40% of their income on rents, can lose their homes if they lose their jobs. Landlords, and there are over 2 million of them, can lose much of their income if they lose their rent. Therefore, the problems now faced by tenants and landlords call into question whether halving the size of the social housing sector—councils and housing associations—and doubling the size of the private rented sector, has been a sensible switch. We can now see the necessity not only of promised renters’ reforms but of rebalancing the two rental sectors, so that more households once again have the greater affordability and security of council and housing association accommodation.

The immediate necessity, however, is to avoid thousands of households with rent arrears losing their homes, not least because temporary accommodation for homeless families is already costing £1 billion a year. The annulment Motion by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, seeks to do this by addressing one unfair anomaly in the current arrangements. The Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, points to the lack of discretion for the courts in England—unlike their equivalents in Scotland —to refuse or delay a possession order where this is clearly justified.

I recommend that the Government also top up councils’ Covid hardship funds and reconsider the Spanish tenants’ loan scheme: a government-guaranteed, interest-free bank loan, repayable over six years or more, that pays off the arrears so the tenant is not evicted. The landlord is happy, the cost to government is very modest and to the tenant, bearable; and a rise in homelessness and misery is avoided.

Business and Planning Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB) [V]]

My Lords, my comments relate to planning. I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association and of the Local Government Association. I fully support the planning elements in the Bill, which are sensible and should minimise potential delays in the planning process caused by the pandemic.

However, as the Minister mentioned, the Prime Minister has spoken of more radical changes to planning to speed up the drive to “build, build, build”. I commend the PM’s emphasis on building back better, with more beautiful, greener homes, but there has also been talk of extending the controversial permitted development rights of housebuilders and developers so that they can bypass planning requirements and, indeed, avoid providing any affordable housing in their developments.

It is true that underresourced planning departments are sometimes slow, outwitted by well-resourced developers or overwhelmed by public hostility to a development. However, the answer is not to diminish the powers of the elected local planning authorities in the hope that the developers and housebuilders who have let us down in the past will do better if left to do as they please. Effective local planning requires adequate funding, which can be properly paid for by the developers which stand to gain so much from planning decisions.

Specifically on increasing the speed of development, we fortunately have some clear insights from the review that the Government commissioned from Sir Oliver Letwin. This explains why it takes so long for developers to actually build their developments: they only build more when they have sold what they have already built. Sir Oliver spells out that if we want much faster progress on big sites, we need to organise simultaneous development of a variety of types and tenures on these sites: homes that are affordable and for market renting, homes for older people and students, as well as plots for custom building by small builders.

Sir Oliver explains that councils could achieve this by buying sites through their own development corporations, capturing uplift in land values, and parcelling out the plots within a master plan—stronger, not weaker, planning; taking back control of development from the oligopoly of the volume housebuilders. Does the Minister agree that this positive, proactive approach should represent the direction of travel for our planning system?

Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Lords Chamber

For this reason, I signal my intention to accept the Government’s welcome offer and will not press my amendment. In doing that, I emphasise the importance of what comes forward at Third Reading, particularly the need for it to address both the one-for-one and the like-for-like issues—both must be part of the response. I look forward to working with the Minister on this matter between now and Third Reading.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support, briefly, the double-headed Amendment 64A and to comment on the late news delivered by the Minister, of which more may follow, to the effect that the Government have broadly accepted the amendment in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Kerslake and Lord Kennedy, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell.

The key underlying theme of the Bill has been the desire to build more homes and to see a reversal in the decline of owner-occupation, to be accomplished, principally, by building starter homes sold at discounted prices and by enabling housing association tenants to exercise a new right to buy under this part of the Bill. The key underlying objection to both these measures has been that the very substantial cost involved—some £8.6 billion for discounts for those buying starter homes and probably a rather higher sum over the next five years for the discounts to housing association tenants who buy—is all to come through taking away resources from social housing for poorer households, including by selling the most valuable council houses. This cunning plan to spend billions promoting home ownership without the Government needing to find any new money sadly has unfortunate consequences: ultimately, someone has to bear the cost and that someone is the family in overcrowded accommodation, the elderly person, the household in desperate circumstances who would have got an affordable home to rent but will not now do.

However, damage limitation is possible. This amendment seeks to ensure that where vacant council houses must be sold, before the proceeds are dispatched to central government to pay for discounts elsewhere, funds from the sold homes are used to replace those lost on a one-for-one basis—one new home for every old one sold. The amendment adds that, where appropriate, the replacement should be like for like—a rented family home replaced by a rented family home, not a one-bed starter home. The Minister, thanks to the Secretary of State approaching this issue in a very open and helpful manner, has I think been able, first, to accept that one-for-one replacement should be in the Bill and, secondly, to go a long way to accepting that like-for-like replacement can be agreed wherever the local authority makes a convincing case for it. We need to see the actual wording of the Government’s alternative amendment but I hope that, if not tonight then at Third Reading, we will all be sufficiently satisfied with this. If so, I am grateful to the Minister and to Greg Clark, the Secretary of State, for listening to your Lordships and—I think and I hope—for acting accordingly.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, the amendments in this group are concerned with the payments to the Secretary of State and the deductions from those payments of sums of money to build replacement properties on a one-for-one basis. I am supportive of both the amendments in this group. As I said in Committee, the clauses concerning the high-value levy and the sale of high-value council properties are a very damaging mechanism to deliver government policy. They make local councils foot the bill and risk having a devastating effect on council housing stocks. Both these amendments seek to put in the Bill that the payments to government must be made after the deduction of the costs of replacement on a one-for-one basis.

Amendment 64A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, to which I and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, signed up, would add a further clause giving the local authority the ability to set out to government what specific types of local housing are needed in their area. Again, this seems to be within the principle of localism and should not really cause the Government any problems at all. I understand we will hear from the Minister that they understand the issue and are sympathetic to the points raised by the amendments. I am very pleased to hear that: it is very positive news and very welcome. I will not say much more than that, but I am delighted that the Minister and other colleagues have listened. Until we see the text of the amendment concerned, we of course reserve our position, and may bring our amendment back at Third Reading, but from what I have heard I am very pleased and I thank her very much.

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As I have said before, we have so few affordable houses in rural England and such overwhelming need that it is only right that there should be an exemption for rural communities. I am pleased that, in our discussions, the Government have recognised our case. Although we will obviously be carefully scrutinising the exact wording of their amendment before Third Reading, I am very grateful to and thank the Minister and, in particular, the Secretary of State, for their willingness to negotiate on this and for their recognition of the exceptional case we have made. I beg to move.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, my name is attached to both Amendment 62, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, which is concerned with the sale of vacant council houses in rural areas and Amendment 63 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, which is concerned with the sale of vacant council houses where a tenant transfers from one social housing tenancy to another.

The amendments do not wipe out the Government’s intention that more expensive council homes be sold when they become vacant to pay, principally, for discounts to housing association tenants given the right to buy. Although a large number of us in this Chamber remain unhappy about that approach, the amendments are simply about moderating the effects of this policy.

First, in respect of rural areas, it seems that the Government recognise that the remaining, much-depleted stock of council houses in villages deserves special attention in those many localities where it will simply not be possible to replace properties that are sold. Sales of council housing under the right to buy have been roughly twice as high, proportionately, in rural settings than in urban areas. The trouble is that these rural properties in due course are sold on to commuters and retirees, for second homes and holiday cottages. So although it is harder for local people to buy a home in their village than it is for their urban counterparts, because prices are higher and earnings are lower, the amount of affordable housing for rent from councils or housing associations is roughly half the level in rural communities than the national average. It is really important, therefore, to hang on to the precious resource of the remaining council housing in rural areas. Instead of selling the council house that becomes vacant, it is really important that it can be let to a household with a local claim.

I was very pleased that Ministers agreed, on the first day of this Bill’s Report stage, to exclude rural exception sites—land for developments specifically to help local people—from the requirement to build starter homes, which would so often be much too expensive for local families. I am equally delighted that Ministers are agreeable in principle to enabling councils to hold on to their remaining housing stock in rural areas when this is clearly essential to meet local needs. Of course, we need to study the small print of the Government’s approach to achieving this outcome, but we know—or we believe at any rate, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, noted—that housing in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty is to be automatically excluded from the pressures to sell council houses, and the Secretary of State will be willing to exclude homes in any rural community when the council can make a case that sold homes cannot be replaced. Accepting these reassurances, I appreciate, involves trusting the Department for Communities and Local Government to use its discretion wisely to act in accordance with this promise. But I guess that we have gone as far as we can reasonably expect in protecting much-needed council housing in our rural communities.

Secondly, on Amendment 63, I think the Minister will be able to put our minds to rest in respect of the requirements on councils to sell vacant homes where tenants are transferring within the stock of council and housing association properties. The problem that we identified earlier was that there are very good reasons to encourage existing tenants to transfer from their current home to another property—for example, for an elderly person to downsize from a family house to a bungalow or sheltered housing flat, making way for a young family; or for a widow to downsize to escape having to pay the dreadful bedroom tax, because she is deemed to have a spare room at present; or for a family to move out of overcrowded premises to somewhere bigger. But since these moves could be said to create a vacancy, it could trigger the requirement to sell a higher-value home to raise funds principally, of course, for the discounts to housing association tenants. What is needed is for vacancies created by transfers to be excluded from the pressures on councils to sell their higher-value vacant homes.

The Minister explained to us in Committee that mutual exchanges will not fall within the scope of the policy. Even though theoretically two vacancies are created when two households swap homes, in reality there are no properties becoming vacant, so this is entirely right. I pressed the Minister, however, also to exclude vacancies created by someone transferring to another home in the social rented sector. I said that I thought that the Minister had indicated that transfers would probably be treated in the same way as exchanges and she responded:

“I think that the noble Lord is right”.—[Official Report, 10/3/16; col. 1518.]

We just need confirmation that this is indeed so or we would have the unfortunate, unintended consequence of greatly inhibiting opportunities for tenants to transfer to more suitable accommodation in future.

[Lord Beecham]

I endorse the noble Lord’s last plea, and I think that it is one that the Minister will feel able to agree—or I hope that she will, because it would certainly make a great deal of sense. I very much welcome the Government’s more flexible approach to these matters, and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, who is doing rather better than his namesake in many respects at the moment, on achieving two substantial concessions from the Government. They are not perfect, perhaps, but go a long way towards meeting the particular requirements of communities that are in many ways very hard-pressed and would undoubtedly have suffered significant difficulties if the Government had stuck to their original proposals. In that spirit of collaboration, I look forward to the Minister dotting the last “i” and crossing the last “t” in relation to the transfer from one property to another not requiring a sale.