Housing (Built Environment Committee Report)

Lord Haselhurst Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, an error on my part has led me to speak in the gap in a truncated contribution and I apologise. This report is a comprehensive canter round the course of housing demand. The committee is to be congratulated. I want to speak narrowly. Paragraph 180 states:

“The Local Government Association set out proposals to help councils encourage faster build out rates”,


including

“a streamlined compulsory purchase process to acquire (at pre-uplift value)”.

The words “pre-uplift value” need interpretation if the public are to understand this report.

I have previously argued that some development land valuation should not be based on planning decisions but on agricultural value, with an uplift for administrative and infrastructural redevelopment costs, which means CPO. I see no reason why huge profits to landowners at the cost of house buyers should turn on the granting of planning permissions. I further argue that while Section 106 agreements are helpful, they are a complex alternative: even where they sit alongside community infrastructural levies, they often cannot deliver.

According to the report, at paragraph 54, the Affordable Housing Commission reports a substantial increase in the private rental sector and a contraction in social housing. Due to the timing, the committee was unable to comment on the recent explosion in interest rates and the consequent increased demand for cheaper public sector rental property. The problem here is that pressure on housing availability is being used not only by heavily indebted landlords but also by others carrying little debt to take advantage of housing shortage and force up rents. We have reports of 25% to 30% increases at a time when working families are under heavy pressure due to wider cost of living increases. The truth is that the table in paragraph 53 of the report on average monthly housing costs is now totally out of date as the impact of inflation feeds through into increased rent levels.

Finally, I have just a few words on the taxation of rental income. In a debate in 2017, I drew on work by the London Borough of Newham, which has established a licensing system not only to protect tenants but to ensure that tax is paid on landlord rental incomes. The IPPR had recently estimated that the Revenue lost £183 million in a single year in London alone. In Newham, only 13,000 out of 26,000 landlords had registered with HMRC for self-assessment. I wish the Revenue well as it follows this up—I hope it does so.

This is a brilliant report providing an abundance of research material to be used in the year to come. I will certainly use it again in further debates.

[Lord Haselhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I too am on restricted time. Nevertheless, I record my thanks to my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe and the staff of the committee—

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I am very sorry, but I am afraid the noble Lord is not down to speak in this debate, and we already have two other speakers in the gap.

I am told that the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, is welcome to speak in the gap, but perhaps he could wait for the other two speakers who already have their names down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Haselhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak and I apologise that I was not able to get my name in at the proper point before the debate began.

Building 300,000 new homes a year was once a matter for rejoicing, if achieved, but now there is more likely to be a hail of protest when the schemes to meet that target are brought forward. Demand continues to exceed supply, prices rise and the dream of homeownership fades. It is amazing that the ferocity of opposition to many of these schemes comes from a belief about not wanting to see the loss of green fields, yet the people who feel like that do not seem to recognise that, as of April 2018, 91.5% of land in England is classified as non-developed.

A roof over your head is a contributory step towards a caring society. We should remember that this is a strong ambition for many people and, if they can fulfil that wish, perhaps in the same village or town where their parents have lived, they are helping to build a society with a strong social structure.

What can be done? We need more planners, as my noble friend Lord Moylan said, and this needs to be an enhanced profession. The building industry ought to try to shed its image which, though it may not like it, is of people wading around in mud and lugging piles of bricks. The building industry has far more about it now, much of which should attract bright young people.

On local authorities, we picked up some signs in the course of our hearings that large unitary authorities and combined authorities are making rather more progress in building houses, maybe because their packages are better and more attractive due to the greater scope they have for place and space.

Wider public consultation is the real difficulty, as has been brought out. In collective form, with representatives of all the different interests in the effect of plans, there are signs that people will come to recognise how a well-thought-out development can help keep schools not short of pupils, strengthen the viability of neighbourhood shops, maintain local transport, produce more insulated homes and boost care of the elderly. This is the better side of development and what we must create and promulgate.