Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Best and Earl Attlee

Monday 17th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for moving his amendment again as the matter has moved on a little. Amendment 232 would provide regulation-making powers to allow commons registration authorities to decline new greens applications if there was insufficient evidence that they could meet the necessary criteria, or if they were frivolous or vexatious, and to award costs. It would also prevent applications for the registration of land on which use for sports and pastimes ceased before 6 April 2007 if the land was subject to planning permission.

The Government share the concerns lying behind the amendment about the way in which the new greens registration system is being used in some cases to hinder legitimate development. I said in Committee on 14 July that the Government hoped to make an announcement on town and village greens shortly. On 25 July, we published a consultation document proposing reforms to the new town and village greens registration system. Coincidentally, that consultation closes this evening.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, asked what can be done through regulation. Through regulation, we can consider streamlining the process for registering greens and setting the fees. The consultation includes a proposal to rule out applications for land which is subject to a planning application or planning permission. This would address the purpose of subsection (5) of the amendment. It also includes a proposal to rule out applications for land which has been identified for development or protected by the local green spaces designation in a local or neighbourhood plan. There is also a proposal to introduce fees for applications.

Commons registration authorities already have the power to reject new town and village green applications that are incomplete or lack the requisite evidence for registration. However, a specific power to deal expeditiously with such matters will provide an increased level of confidence to authorities. For that reason, we have proposed to streamline the sifting process. My noble friend Lady Byford and the noble Lord know that we are still consulting on our proposed reforms, though the deadline fast approaches—in fact, it is tonight. I am sure that they will appreciate how those who have responded to the consultation would feel if we were to legislate now in the manner suggested, without, it would seem, hearing their views on the options we have set out.

I have made it clear that the Government share the concerns of my noble friend and the noble Lord. As the Minister for the Natural Environment and Fisheries said in his introduction to the Government’s consultation, we plan to announce our conclusions early in the new year. We will want to work with my noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Best, and with others with an interest in taking these conclusions forward. In the mean time, I would prefer not to second-guess what those conclusions will be without having first carefully digested the response to the consultation.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I think there is some helpful material within that. There are still 58 minutes in which people can give their responses to the consultation document. I am grateful for that response. We will be able to look at it at our leisure. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Best and Earl Attlee

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best]

Amendment 54 is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy and myself. Currently, the Secretary of State is able to direct the regulator to set standards for social housing in certain areas. In a strictly limited number of cases, he is able to direct the content of these standards. Clause 163 of the Localism Bill seeks to strengthen his powers in this area, allowing him to shape the contents of standards regarding tenancy exchanges in which tenants can swap properties. The view within the housing world is that this is giving the Minister too many powers to direct the behaviour of social landlords. The danger of accumulating more and more powers in the hands of the Secretary of State is that eventually, as one Minister after another brings their own fresh and no doubt good ideas to bear, you are effectively nationalising the housing associations; they are becoming creatures of government. They then run the risk of being regarded by the EU and others as public sector bodies. If the housing associations are no longer independent bodies and are regarded as public sector agencies, then all their borrowing becomes public sector debt and we have lost one of the key elements in having a social housing sector that is outside of public sector control.

So I am very sympathetic to standards about exchanges and the mobility of labour, and to the Minister’s hopes that housing associations will behave in a particular way, but laying this down, through direction to the regulator over these standards, does seem a step too far. I beg to move.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, Clause 163 is important in increasing mobility for social housing tenants who may wish to move for work, or to give care to or receive care from family or friends. We want to increase opportunities for tenants to move through mutual exchange. We have been working with the existing main providers of home-swap services to develop a technical solution that will put in place a national scheme that enables tenants to receive information on all possible matches across all providers in a scheme. Alongside this, we want all landlords to be required to provide their tenants with access to good internet-based home-swap services. Indeed, the majority of landlords who responded to our consultation on housing reform also agreed with this approach and said they could see no good reason why landlords should not subscribe to such a scheme. We therefore propose, through using the powers in this clause, that the social housing regulator should set a mutual exchange standard to make sure that social landlords sign up to good-quality services.

The noble Lord also raised the issue of public sector debt. While I am not undertaking to reflect on that and come back at a later stage, I will undertake to satisfy myself, through discussions with my officials, that the problem which the noble Lord alludes to does not exist. While I accept that some noble Lords view this as an overly bureaucratic approach, we believe that the benefits of increasing choice and mobility for social tenants must be the priority and that we should seek to deliver this better service for them.

[Lord Best]

I am grateful to the noble Earl for that response. I agree entirely that improving mobility and exchange schemes is a thoroughly commendable line to pursue. I think that I am now on my 23rd housing Minister since I started in this world. They have all had important ideas to add to the things that housing associations ought to do; it is just that in the end, if one is not careful, the cumulative effect is the creation of an agency that is simply a government bureaucracy. I am grateful for the noble Earl’s reassurances and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I would imagine that a committee could have very free and frank discussions, perhaps lasting all afternoon, without falling foul of the test of unsuitability. On the other hand, if a member of the committee regularly interfered with the operation of the committee so that it could not function, the Secretary of State would have to step in.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I will certainly not press the matter further. However, it is important for the Government to know that the housing sector is very concerned that this regulation committee is independent and that the people on it feel able to say things that are contrary to what the Government might wish to hear. That independence is paramount. I hope that that point has been taken. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Best]

Amendment 67 stands in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. It concerns the appointments made by the regulator. It is important to note that this amendment relates only to appointments made by the regulator where the housing association has not failed in any way. It is not a disciplinary measure but constitutes a voluntary helping hand for the organisation. In a number of cases that I know well additional members have been appointed by the regulator as new members of the board and have been very helpful. However, there are limits to the number of appointments that the regulator ought to make to the board. We suggest that these be limited in future to a maximum of four. In my experience three new people are usually appointed to strengthen a board that has become weak—four is quite enough. We are trying to protect the independence and sovereignty of these organisations.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, as regards the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Shipley, I recognise the strength of local feeling in the case that he highlighted. We have looked at his proposal extremely carefully and have discussed it with the social housing regulator, the Charity Commission, the National Almshouse Association and the National Housing Federation. We have also received helpful representations from the United St Saviour’s Charity and from residents of the Hopton’s Almshouses in Southwark.

I fully understand the reasoning behind the proposed amendment. However, we are concerned that the amendment seems to require an increase in bureaucracy and potential state interference in the proper exercise of charity trustees' discretion. Currently, the identification of a new trustee is a matter for the existing trustee to decide and we are not convinced that new regulatory controls should be applied. The proposed amendment would apply only where the corporate trustee of an almshouse happens to be a registered provider of social housing. It is not clear that there is a strong rationale for requiring that these almshouse trustees, but not others, seek consent.

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[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, in Committee, the noble Lords, Lord Best, Lord Patel, Lord McKenzie and Lord Beecham, tabled an amendment designed to liberalise Section 122 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, which restricts the payments that housing associations may make to their members, and a similar amendment has been tabled again by the noble Lord, Lord Best.

The Government agree with the aim of the amendment and have put down our own amendments to achieve it. The amendments we have tabled would give the Secretary of State the power, by affirmative order, to add to the classes of permitted payments that housing associations may make to their members. Taking this matter out of the Bill will give us sufficient time to explore a new exemption that delivers greater flexibility while protecting public investment. Any order would be made only following consultation with the Charity Commission, the regulator and the housing association sector. I beg to move.

[Lord Best]

I am very grateful to the Minister for what he has just said. There has been a problem here, but it sounds as though it is well on the way to resolution. I am very happy not to move Amendment 64.

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[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am confident that my department has properly considered those matters. It is obviously a very important issue and I have already undertaken to write to the noble Lord, Lord Best. Other noble Lords will of course get a copy, and there will be a copy in the Library.

[Lord Best]

In the light of these comments I am delighted to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Best]

My Lords, Amendment 81 is about the exclusion of some rural dwellings from the preserved right to buy. Quite a few tenants who were previously in the public sector have become tenants of a housing association, through large-scale voluntary transfers. Those tenants, and indeed others in social housing, have the preserved right to buy: the opportunity, if they move around, to buy the place to which they move if it is another social housing home. However, if they wish to move into a home that falls under a Section 106 planning agreement, which provides that the property must be retained in perpetuity as a rented social housing home—that is; it is a condition of planning that a certain number of homes are for renting—they will be unable to do so because the landlord would be in breach of the Section 106 agreement. The preserved right to buy is rather paradoxically preventing people moving out of the council house that they are in at the time and into a new property that has been built under a Section 106 agreement.

This amendment excludes certain rural dwellings from the preserved right to buy, allowing the people to move in and not then be able to exercise the right to buy that property because of the Section 106 agreement and the restrictions on that property. This amendment would be helpful to people moving around—to tenants. It is unfair at the moment that they have to be turned away, even though the case is good, because the properties are restricted and cannot be sold into home ownership on a permanent basis.

During the summer, I received a lot of helpful correspondence from Ministers and the civil servants have been very helpful. On this matter, I had a reply which I think indicated that the point had not been fully understood by the civil servants. They have been marvellous in every other respect, but with this one aberration I did not get a satisfactory response. I am not entirely sure that the point was fully understood, which must have been my fault when making it in the first place. If this small, unintended consequence of legislation could be cleared up in the Bill, it would be helpful to the mobility of people in rural areas and in places where there are restrictions in the properties that have been built, thus helping mobility. I beg to move.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords—

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Best, in moving his amendment suggested that his point was not fully understood. He alarmed me somewhat because he talked about Section 106 and its consequences. Unfortunately, my notes do not refer to Section 106 and nor do the Q and As. If my response does not fully answer his question, I will of course write to him with further details.

Tenants who have been involved in a stock transfer from a local authority to a registered provider would have agreed to this transfer on the basis that they would retain their right to buy. We do not think that it would be proper to remove this right from the tenant. Equally, we do not think that it is right that secure tenants who are part of a future stock transfer should have their longstanding right to buy taken away simply because they live in rural areas and their homes have been transferred to a new landlord.

However, while we wish to ensure that transferred tenants are not denied their existing rights, there is statutory provision to ensure that the new tenants of these properties do not get the right to purchase their homes in order that the properties remain available to those in need of social housing. There are existing measures in place to ensure that homes in rural areas, which are sold under the preserved right to buy, remain available to people at affordable prices.

Landlords can already impose restrictions requiring owners who wish to sell to either resell only to people who have lived or worked locally for at least three years, or first offer their home to the landlord, giving them the opportunity to return the property to their existing housing stock if they wish to do so. These restrictions on reselling are already in place in a very significant proportion of our countryside and remain in place in perpetuity. In our view, this is sufficient.

I hope that I have met the noble Lord’s points. If I have not, I will urgently have a meeting with him and officials in order to further examine the issues.

[Lord Best]

I am very grateful to the noble Earl for that. A meeting will be necessary and I am grateful to him for agreeing to that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.