King’s Speech
Lord Bishop of Chelmsford Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, as the Church of England’s lead bishop for housing, I commend the measures in the gracious Speech that will improve different parts of our housing system.
The housing affordability crisis threatens to unravel the unwritten social contract: that if you get a decent education and then work hard, you should be able to earn enough to save for a deposit, buy a home, get married, start a family and provide stability for your children until they can do likewise. While these proposed Bills are important and worth while, I urge the Government to use this forthcoming legislation to address the most acute part of the housing crisis: the affordability of homes, whether for rent or for purchase.
The social housing renewal Bill represents an opportunity to build more decent, affordable homes. Will the Minister consider allowing councils access to low-interest, long-term development finance on the same favourable terms as those given to housing associations?
It is important to complete the legislation in the leasehold reform Bill and to get it right, so that it delivers a fairer system and justice to those leaseholders who have suffered gravely at the hands of unscrupulous freeholders. At the same time, we need to recognise that legislative nuance may yet be required to preserve the heritage value of certain historical estates.
There is a fundamental moral case for correcting the imbalances, distortions and injustices in our housing system. First, there is the growing inequality between those with housing equity and those without. The former have seen their unearned housing wealth grow inexorably, whereas those whose income is derived solely from their labour watch the bottom rung of the housing ladder slowly receding from their grasp. Secondly, there is the lack of labour mobility. People struggle to relocate to where new jobs are emerging, which puts a drag on economic growth, productivity and incomes. Lastly, long-term damage is even more insidious. Prolonged high housing costs delay family formation and fewer children are born. Would-be parents cannot afford to stop work to raise a family unless one of them is a high earner. The consequences of demographic decline can be severe, including a shrinking workforce, a growing old-age dependency ratio and severe pressures on health and social care provision for an ageing population.
My second point is that there is a real danger that vital qualitative aspects of the housing that we need will be sacrificed in pursuit of arbitrary numerical targets. I encourage the Government to promote the language of building homes, not units, and creating communities, not developments, and places, not housing estates. We also need to ensure that the foundational infrastructure is delivered in a timely way. Good design also creates the shared green spaces where both nature and residents can thrive. The report of the New Towns Taskforce underscored this priority. Can the Minister provide assurance that the new towns unit is putting as much emphasis on the qualitative aspects of delivering new towns as the quantitative?
The Church of England is ready to support the soft relational side of place-making as we strive to offer a Christian presence in every community. We can provide schools, social housing and management of community centres. Our network of volunteers can offer a welcome and attend to the spiritual and social welfare of the residents. Together with other grass-roots charities and faith organisations, we can help build the relational networks that shape the character of any new community. I hope that we will not allow the pressure for action, acute though it is, to deter us from creating a housing system that our children and grandchildren will thank us for.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Bishop of Chelmsford Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, I am delighted to follow my right reverend friend the Bishop of Guildford and I congratulate him on his excellent maiden speech. I warmly welcome him to the House and to these Benches, and I have no doubt that he will have a significant contribution to make, drawing not only on his long ordained ministry in a diverse range of social settings, as we have already heard a little about, but from his wider life experiences. It may well be that he has been a loss to the world of law and music but definitely a gain to the world of the Church. I very much look forward to working with him here in the future.
Last year I was appointed to be the Church of England’s lead bishop on housing, so I was especially pleased to see the references in Her Majesty’s gracious Speech to the needs of our social housing sector. I welcome the opportunities that the social housing regulation Bill will provide in this Session to make some valuable progress.
Social housing plays an incredibly important role in providing security and stability; this has been brought into increasingly stark relief as the cost of living rises. Measures previously set out in the Government’s social housing White Paper to help ensure that social housing is safe and of good quality, and to bring about greater transparency and accountability, were a step in the right direction. The removal of the serious detriment test and the cap on fines for landlords’ non-compliance, the emphasis on having safety as a fundamental objective of the Regulator of Social Housing, and the setting up of an advisory panel to amplify tenants’ voices will be significant, positive developments. I also commend the principles set out in the Together with Tenants work of the National Housing Federation.
Research by the charity Shelter has found that
“250,000 people are homeless, stuck in temporary accommodation”
and that in total 17.5 million people are
“living in overcrowded, dangerous, unstable or unaffordable housing.”
I urge Her Majesty’s Government to be ambitious in their response to this crisis. The strengthening of tenants’ voices is welcome, but it must be coupled with significant investment in new social housing. As recommended by the Commission of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York on Housing, Church and Community in last year’s report, Coming Home, for there to be adequate housing support for low-income households, there needs to be a review of how the social security system operates here.
The Coming Home report, which I commend to all noble Lords, describes our housing crisis as “neither accidental, nor inevitable”. It sets out recommendations for action and change, for the Church as well as for the Government—all of which it would be good to discuss with the Minister. At the centre of these is the critical need for a long-term, cross-party housing strategy to bring about more truly affordable housing and healthy communities, and to ensure that no one has to live in unacceptable housing conditions. It is essential that all key stakeholders are part of that process, including central and local government, landowners, developers, landlords, homeowners, housing associations and faith organisations, including the Church of England. We all have a valuable part to play and we in the Church are eager to play ours.
We need more housing, but that on its own is not enough to address the housing crisis. Good housing needs to be
“sustainable, safe, stable, sociable and satisfying”.
Houses are not simply buildings; they are homes built to enable flourishing lives in thriving communities. As the prophet Isaiah affirms, “People will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places”.
Public land should be used in such a way as to maximise long-term social, environmental and economic value, not simply sold to the highest bidder. I urge Her Majesty’s Government to apply that lens to their housing policy.
I applaud the work taken forward across this House and the other place, in debates in previous parliamentary Sessions on the Fire Safety and Building Safety Acts, to address the cladding crisis. I hope and trust that the Government will act with urgency to remove all unsafe cladding on residential blocks.
I could say much more, but I will conclude by saying two things briefly. First, the ongoing energy crisis brings home once again the importance of improving the quality and sustainability of housing stock, including meeting decarbonisation targets for existing and new homes. Fitting adequate insulation and heat pumps to replace gas boilers will be key here. Secondly, and more generally, so many of the social problems that we encounter in this country, from poor mental health to high crime rates, from school exclusion to domestic abuse, and many more, have their roots in or are exacerbated by poor housing. If we can find a way of addressing the housing crisis, I believe that we will see an easing of pressure on the NHS, prisons and other social services. I look forward to working with noble Lords across the House on all these matters.