Housing: Permitted Development Rights

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord and apologise for misleading him yesterday: it is not in the NPPF but in the accompanying notes. There are powers that local government can use, including completion orders and so on, to encourage developers to build out when necessary. I will provide him with a detailed written response about all the powers that are available to local government to do that.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, can the Minister tell us what steps her department is taking to ensure that enough of the homes being built under the PDR are affordable for local people in rural areas?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question. PDR tends to apply where there are brownfield sites to be developed because they are conversions, usually, from existing buildings. There has been a change to introduce that principle for agricultural buildings as well. I will try to get back to him with a specific answer on whether the department knows how much take-up there has been of that provision. We have made provision in the new national planning policy framework for ensuring that planning policies and decisions are responsive to local circumstances in rural areas and support housing developments that reflect local needs. That is a more general requirement. I will get back to him on whether the agricultural permitted development has had any traction.

Housebuilding Targets

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand that the Church Commissioners are keen to have discussions, and that will be the case. All land within a local plan area is ready for consideration, but I understand the point the noble Baroness is making. I know that the most reverend Primate who was on the Benches previously was very keen to encourage those discussions, and we will continue those. I hope the Church will continue to be keen to support us in our aim to deliver the housing that the country needs.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, if the potential of rural exception sites were to be fully realised, it would make a transformative change for small rural communities, not least in providing the additional affordable housing that is desperately needed. It is frustrating because just before I came in I was trying to read the NPPF response to the consultation but I could not find it. Are His Majesty’s Government committed to introducing a national development management policy for rural exception sites?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Right Reverend Prelate for that question. We understand the need for particular consideration of rural sites and rural exception sites. I apologise that he was not able to access the NPPF on the GOV.UK website. I hope it is there now and that he will be able to look at it later on today. In the spring, we will produce a long-term housing strategy that will contain detail of how we think rural sites should be considered. In order to give him a specific answer on the NDMP, I will go back and make sure he has a written answer.

Planning Committees: Reform

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My noble friend is quite right to mention that. The Government have a stated intention of making sure that all local authorities have an up-to-date local plan in place. That was not the case when we came into government. A great deal of work has gone on with local authorities to ensure that they are making progress on their local plans. In the National Planning Policy Framework publication today, we see more enforcement steps that we intend to take if local authorities have not produced their local plans. The Secretary of State has been quite clear that, if encouragement does not work, we will use our powers to step in and do it for people. I hope local authorities will realise that the best way to make their local plans is with their councillors and their local communities.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I welcome many of the announcements from the Government today in the NPPF, especially on flooding-risk policy. However, I am concerned about the protection of agricultural land, not least around the vital need to keep the highest levels of food security in this country. Therefore, why was the decision made not to include in the NPPF explicit protection of the best and most versatile land?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

When authorities do their housing needs assessment, they will have the opportunity to state why they think that the housing numbers they have been given are too high. If one of those reasons is that they have high-grade agricultural land for food production then they can put that forward as part of their mitigation for having some reduction in the housing numbers. The process is in place to allow authorities to do that; in the same way as would be done for large areas of national landscape in an area, they will be able to put that forward as a mitigation.

Housing Supply and Homelessness

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, for securing this important debate. I declare my interests as president of the Rural Coalition and vice-president of the LGA. I offer my thanks to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for his valedictory speech. During his tenure, he has been a champion of housing, and we have already referred to the Coming Home report, which is pertinent both to today’s debate and to His Majesty’s Government, with their very good and ambitious targets to build more housing. I hope we can assist the Government in achieving that.

Homelessness and rough sleeping are on the rise. Government statutory homelessness figures, released last week, reveal that 159,380 children are now homeless and living in temporary accommodation, a 15% increase in a year and the highest figure since records began in 2004. More particularly, the November 2023 CPRE report on the state of rural housing showed that rural homelessness has increased by 20% since 2021 and 40% since 2018-19.

There are a number of particular challenges around the housing crisis in rural areas which are often overlooked in national policy, and that is where I want to focus my remarks. There is an acute shortage of affordable housing, particularly in smaller rural communities. Only 9% of the housing stock in parishes with a population of under 300 is social housing, compared with 17% of the housing stock in urban areas. Between 2019 and 2022, rural local authority affordable housing waiting lists were up by 31%, compared with an increase of 3% in urban areas. There are still not enough affordable housing developments being delivered on rural exception sites. Very few affordable houses are being provided in settlements with a population of under 3,000. The impact on rural communities is immense and often overlooked.

I turn to the difficulties in planning policy that are holding back the development of rural affordable housing. In 66% of smaller rural communities, the National Planning Policy Framework prevents local authorities taking an affordable housing contribution from small sites. Will His Majesty’s Government respond favourably to the calls from many rural organisations to allow local planning authorities to seek affordable housing contributions from sites of fewer than 10 dwellings in communities with a population of 3,000 or fewer?

There is also the untapped potential of rural exception sites. The rural exception site policy, as it stands, is poorly implemented. There is a lack of consistency in its application and a number of risks and costs associated with its development. Between 2021 and 2022, only 17% of local planning authorities used the rural exception site policy. In 2023-24, 56% of rural exception site completions were in only two local authorities. There is a really great opportunity here, and we need to work out how we can develop it. Can the Minister say whether the Government will introduce a national development management policy for rural exception sites, as well as a bespoke planning passport, so we can speed up delivery?

Defra’s evaluation of the Rural Housing Enablers programme has allowed people to return to their communities, maintain support networks, provide care and support for the elderly and vulnerable, and help with childcare. RHE programmes have been supporting community engagement on housing developments, funded by Defra, for the past two years at a cost of just over £2 million annually. This was a great initiative by the previous Government, and I commend them for the work that was done. Such work has led to an increase in schemes in the pipeline, with the potential to deliver over 2,000 new affordable homes, but this is in jeopardy as the funding is due to end in March 2025. Can the Minister update us on whether there are any plans to renew that funding?

I have just one more request of the Minister. Developing rural affordable housing involves a number of challenges specific to the rural context. Will she therefore commit to ensuring that the housing strategy contains a positive rural element—rural proofing—so that we can include delivering more affordable rural housing in order to increase the level of sustainability in the countryside?

Religious Hate Crime

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

To ask His Majesty’s Government, further to reports that religious hate crime has increased, what steps they are taking to tackle religious hate crime and strengthen community cohesion in the UK.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Khan of Burnley) (Lab)]

My Lords, religious hatred is a stain on our society. Recent events, such as the domestic impact of tensions in the Middle East and the appalling violence we saw on our streets over the summer, have exposed weaknesses and divisions in our society. This Government are developing an integrated, cohesive approach to tackling these challenges, which will address racial and religious hatred and strengthen cohesion across all communities. We will say more soon.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

I thank the Minister for his reply. Many of us are deeply worried; post the 7 October attacks, the dramatic rise in religious-motivated hate crime and the strain on social cohesion have been deeply worrying. Of course, at the same time they have spurred a whole range of grass-roots initiatives. I am thinking, for example, of the work that our local MP in St Albans has undertaken with local imams and rabbis, who have produced a document—five reasons for dialogue; why Jews and Muslims refuse to hate one another—which they are taking around our schools. It is making quite an impact. I wonder whether the Minister and his officials are aware of this and other initiatives and whether they are being integrated into a national strategy so that we can try to address this at the youngest age possible.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate and ask him to pass on my appreciation for the work that has gone on in different faiths to bring the community together in St Albans. I made community visits on Thursday, Friday and Saturday to discuss these issues, and tomorrow I will be in Cambridge visiting the Woolf Institute to hear from Jewish, Muslim and Christian community voices. These important initiatives are all part of a package to make sure that our country rejects hate, has unity and works together to deal with these challenges.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I rise with a certain reticence to speak, partly because of my own lack of experience of family members or others being involved in the Holocaust. I am aware that many Members of this House will have personal reasons why this is so raw and important. I underline that I am not trying to speak on behalf of the Church of England or the Lords spiritual. We hold a number of differing views on the Bill.

It hardly needs repeating, but I personally know of nobody who opposes the Bill because they are against the concept of having a prominent Holocaust memorial in this nation’s capital. As someone who has visited a significant number of Holocaust memorials in other parts of the world and other capital cities, I am well aware of their importance and how moving they can be.

I agree with much of what the Minister said in his assessment of remembering the horrors of what happened and the need to do everything we can to make sure that a holocaust can never happen again, not least because so few Holocaust survivors are still with us and because of the strategic importance of learning about the Holocaust—especially now, given the ongoing scourge of anti-Semitism. It has been deeply saddening and distressing to read of the increase in anti-Semitic incidents this year, and of some of the hate-filled violence in riots across the country this summer. So it is even more urgent for us to find a way to address the division and prejudices that are damaging our communities, and we need to do all we can to highlight the great evil of these things when they happen.

It is of course deeply regrettable that the establishment of a new Holocaust memorial in London has been so long delayed, but I do not believe that rushing things through without proper public consultation is the right answer. Having said that, I do not support the proposed site of the memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens and the removal of the protections conferred by the 1900 Act that the Bill seeks to enact. Surely it is unnecessary to disrupt and decimate one of the few peaceful public green spaces in Westminster, particularly for residents for whom this is their main neighbourhood park and who have a right to access green space. I have been contacted by more than one member of the Buxton family—a very old Hertfordshire family whose forebear is commemorated in the Buxton memorial—who is deeply concerned about this.

I underline what the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, said about the need for His Majesty’s Government to be absolutely clear about how much of this space will be taken up by the new memorial. We are told it is 7.5%, but this has been contested by the London Historic Parks & Gardens Trust, which claims that it is 20.7% of the total area of the gardens. I cannot see how this cannot be resolved, and we ought to be clear about what it involves.

There are further concerns, which I am sure my noble colleagues will outline in more detail and more persuasively than I could possibly hope to. There are security issues and increased costs, as well as the abandonment of many of the original recommendations for an educational centre, which came from the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission in 2015, simply due to space constraints. I note that 18 petitions have been submitted to the Lords Select Committee for the Bill, and I will follow the consideration of these closely after today’s debate. It is for the reason I have outlined here that I am minded to support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Deech.

It seems to me that the values guiding both sides of this debate are in fact rather closely aligned—an interest in the public good; public education and access for all; and a belief in the value of preservation of, on the one hand, our collective memory and, on the other, a vital shared green space at the heart of this city.

Local Authority Finances

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the state of the finances of local authorities.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name and declare my interest, as set out in the register, as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

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

We have listened carefully to local authorities about the pressure that they are facing. That is why we have announced that the final local government finance settlement for 2024-25 will now make available £64.7 billion, an increase of 7.5% in cash terms on last year and above inflation. The department continually monitors the local government sector through data and direct engagement with individual councils. This includes considering the impact of inflation and wider economic circumstances.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on that 7.5% increase for the local financial settlement for the coming year. However, council leaders also say that what makes planning very difficult is that they do not get much warning of these final settlements and increasingly spend more and more of their budgets on the statutory obligations. They are spending a much-reduced amount on the preventive measures, despite the evidence of the social and financial benefits of prevention. Can His Majesty’s Government commit to producing a medium-term financial strategy to help local authorities to plan the effectiveness and impact of their spending much more effectively?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, in recent years we have tried to give more clarity around elements of the settlement on a multi-year basis. We will continue to do this for the next spending review and beyond.

Levelling Up

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important point about learning as we go and understanding what is effective in delivering our mission to level up. We have put in place comprehensive plans and published how we will approach evaluating the success of some of these projects. Of course, as part of that we want to publicise those projects that have had the biggest impact so that not only do they get the recognition that they deserve but others can learn from them.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I declare my interests as president of the Rural Coalition and a vice-president of the LGA. The 9.6 million people living in rural areas are glad that there is a mention of rural in the opening paragraph, but we cannot quite see how that rolls out. I wonder whether the Minister can help us a little. One of the crucial things about rural sustainability, improving levels of employment and offering healthcare in rural areas is digital connectivity, yet 17% of rural houses are not on superfast broadband, and nor are 30% of rural commercial premises. How does this relate to the need across the country to roll out a much higher level of rural connectivity? It has been done with a fantastic project in Cornwall and a lot was done in Shropshire at one stage, so it can be done. How do we get that sort of rural levelling up in digital connectivity?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate makes a really important point. I know that the Government have significant ambitions in rolling out access to superfast broadband and making sure we cover off the last mile, as it were, to the harder-to-reach places. I am not familiar with the detail of that programme as it lies in another department, but I will of course write to the right reverend Prelate about how we are doing on delivering that digital connectivity, in particular in rural areas.

Local Government Finance

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, my department is working closely with the Home Office and local councils to ensure that the process for moving people on from hotel accommodation is as smooth as possible. As I also said, we recognise that the work that we are doing successfully to reduce the backlog in asylum claims puts pressure on other parts of the system, which is why we have increased resources there too.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

Both the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, have raised the really troubling issue of asylum seekers leaving accommodation and being made homeless. In the Government’s strategy, Ending Rough Sleeping for Good, there was talk about having a transparent and joined-up system. What plans do His Majesty’s Government have to ensure that homelessness policy and asylum policy are working together so that we can minimise this dreadful problem?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, as I have said, my department is working closely with the Home Office and local authorities on this issue. Local authorities have already moved thousands of families out of bridging accommodation and into long-term accommodation. We are also providing £750 million to the local authority housing fund, which is being used to buy or create new housing stock to accommodate, for example, Ukrainian and Afghan refugees who have been offered refuge here and now need somewhere to move on to. But it will also help to improve temporary accommodation for families owed a homelessness duty. That is an example of some of the longer-term action that we are seeking to take to alleviate some of these pressures.

Building Safety (Leaseholder Protections) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, the regret Motion standing in my name is critical of the Government’s response to those leaseholders who have been adversely impacted by a government error, which the Building Safety (Leaseholder Protections) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 have recognised. The regret Motion puts the spotlight once again on the plight of leaseholders. Since the awful Grenfell Tower tragedy nearly six years ago, leaseholders and tenants have been at the very heart of the policy response to the crisis in building safety that was so cruelly exposed that night.

The Grenfell Tower inquiry has meticulously gathered evidence of years of malpractice by developers and materials manufacturers. It is clear where responsibility lies for the very significant number of building safety defects. Those not responsible in any way are the innocent leaseholders, who have done everything right and nothing wrong. The Building Safety Act set out the ways for the building industry to rectify past building defects. Those related not just to the removal of dangerous flammable cladding but to the lack of fire breaks, for instance, that were required at the time of construction. The Act also established how the very large costs of remediation were to be funded. In the case of non-cladding defects, there was a cascade of responsible entities. At the bottom of the cascade were leaseholders, who may be required to pay a capped contribution, which was limited to £10,000 outside London and £15,000 in London. These alone are significant sums—for first-time buyers, for instance.

There are still questions to be asked about whether the Government’s attempt to ensure that cladding is fully removed and safety defects are put right is effective in practice. However, the focus of the regret Motion is an error that inadvertently crept into the regulations, which determined how much developers would be required to pay, if at all. It was the intention that a family of associated companies of the developer would be included in the assessment of the value of the companies and, therefore, the ability of the developer to fund the remediation works. The regulations, unfortunately, excluded what have been described as parent and sister companies. This led to one very large developer being able to demonstrate that the special purpose vehicle that had been set up for the development did not of itself have the funds to pay for the remediation of safety defects. If the family of associated companies had been included with that special purpose vehicle, as was the intention of the regulations and of the Act, the developer would have been funding the costs of remediation. As a result of the error, this company was able to avoid paying for the defects and, via the cascade system, was able to pass on part of the costs to the leaseholders.

This is grossly unfair to the leaseholder, and a major company, which had already bypassed building regulations unlawfully in constructing the property, was now avoiding the responsibility of paying for this dangerous and deliberate practice that put profit first and people’s lives in jeopardy. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities was made aware—and only made aware—when a leaseholder contacted the department to query why they had been asked to pay remediation costs when they knew that the developer in question was a very large one and likely to be within the limits to be able to pay. I am pleased that the department quickly remedied the error, passed these amended regulations and brought them into force the following day, just to make sure that no other developer tried to bypass paying for remediation because of the error. However, there is currently no remedy for those leaseholders who have unwittingly paid towards remediation costs when they should not have done.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee asked the department to quantify the numbers of leaseholders who have been forced to pay when they should not have been. Unfortunately, the department was unable to provide a figure and does not seem to have made any attempt to do so.

There is a route for any leaseholder caught out by the Government’s error, and that is to appeal to the First-tier Tribunal—but who knows about that? Leaseholders have been trapped all through this saga by the unscrupulous, immoral and unlawful behaviour of developers and others. The very least the Government can do is to seek out those leaseholders, provide them with the necessary information about how they can recover their costs and support them in doing so. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee asked whether protection for affected leaseholders could be introduced retrospectively, via primary legislation if necessary, and I too ask that question of the Minister.

This is injustice heaped on injustice. It was a government error, and the Government should do all in their considerable power to put it right. I will listen carefully to the response from the Minister. I hope she will be able to provide all the information that I and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee are asking for, including the ways in which leaseholders can find retribution. Meanwhile, I beg to move.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I shall add a few words of support for the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I stand with a weary sense of déjà vu, looking around at a number of people with whom I have sat as we have worked through building safety and fire safety measures.

What is interesting is that the Government fundamentally tried to grasp this problem. I pay tribute to the right honourable Michael Gove, who has been quite exceptional in taking hold of it and trying to solve it. I say well done to the Government for shifting the main problem in this very troubling area.

Like many noble Lords, I am still finding that people contact me because they are in a dreadful situation. Some of them are going bankrupt because they are simply unable to pay for the remediation work on their properties. This does not just affect big tower blocks; it happens to quite modest blocks of flats in places like St Albans, Stevenage and Bedford, in my diocese.

On the particular problem that the noble Baroness has mentioned, it is extraordinary, when the Government have already committed themselves to doing so many things on this—not least reforming the leaseholder system, which we will watch with great interest—and troubling that this unintentional problem, which is having a devastating effect on some people, is seemingly not being addressed. It would be a huge help if we could simply get the figures published to find out how many people are being affected by what seems to be an error and then try to help those people to find a remedy.

This is a terrible scar on the whole industry. We need to find ways to work with those who have unintentionally found themselves caught up in this and are quite desperate. That is supported by, as the noble Baroness has mentioned, the point made by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee that we need that data. I add my weight to the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has made today, and I hope we will see some movement.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, clearly what we are talking about today is building safety and the importance of leaseholder protections. That is at the core of everything.

We have discussed, on a number of occasions now, the terrible events that happened at Grenfell Tower along with similar incidents that brought to light the significant issues surrounding building safety and the appalling impact that it can have on the lives of those who have lived, and continue to live, in affected properties. The safety of the homes that we live in has to be of the utmost importance to all of us, and it is the responsibility of the Government to ensure that buildings are safe and secure for those who live in them. So the Government’s Building Safety Act, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans said, is an important step towards improving building safety and ensuring that incidents such as Grenfell cannot happen again. However, we still need to ensure that leaseholders who have been bearing the brunt of the cost of remediation works are properly protected and can continue to make their homes safe.