Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, this amendment in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Kennedy deals with an issue which is close to home for the Minister, whose daughter—she told me the other day—lives in a student house just opposite friends of mine in a residential part of Newcastle. It is a fact that in Newcastle and many other cities there are very large numbers of students. In Newcastle, I believe that the two universities have between them some 45,000 students. Some of them of course will be local and others will not necessarily be living in the city. Nevertheless, substantial areas of the city are now given over to rented-out student accommodation, which not infrequently is jammed full of students living in not particularly attractive conditions and also somewhat changes the character of the area. Increasingly, we find areas virtually totally dominated by students. Recently I had the misfortune to canvass not far from where the Minister’s daughter lives, and I encountered house after house occupied by students, many of whom, I am sorry to say, expressed the intention of voting Conservative, because on the whole Newcastle attracts large numbers of better-off students. They are not quite mature enough to realise that they are taking the wrong course politically, although they may come to realise that in due course.

However, what we are now seeing in the city—and, I suspect, elsewhere—is rather different and in some ways rather better: large purpose-built places for students to live in, not in residential streets but in purpose-built complexes. That is a good thing in a way because, one hopes, it will free up family-sized accommodation and perhaps bring back more permanent occupation of residential areas, which is desirable. On the other hand, sometimes these buildings are thrown up in close proximity to residential areas and the behaviour of those in the residential blocks is not always appealing to the local community. However, perhaps that is another issue that needs to be looked at.

Amendment 102A simply raises the issue and seeks to get the Secretary of State involved in ensuring that the National Planning Forum takes an interest in what is a growing concern in many areas. The amendment would ensure that it offered some guidance and, in collaboration with local authorities and indeed with universities and student bodies, sought a way of balancing the needs of universities and their population with the local population. On the whole, this works tolerably well. In the area where the noble Baroness’s daughter lives—not necessarily in the same street, although there have been some difficulties there—things are not always satisfactory. There is a good deal of late-night carousing and the like, which some noble Lords may be young enough to recall from their earlier days but is not at all appealing to local communities.

This is a matter that has not really played much of a part so far in national policy formulation, and I hope the amendment will begin a process through which it can be properly developed. I beg to move.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 102C. With the emphasis on affordable housing, there is a danger that the infrastructure and support to make developments into communities will be sidelined. Many people have talked about what constitutes affordable housing. A £450,000 home after discount in London may be a good buy but you have to be able to afford the deposit and the mortgage payments. Putting aside my concerns about what constitutes affordable housing, this amendment makes the assumption that we can have a building bonanza but we need to ensure—this is my reason for tabling the amendment—that the funds are not diverted from libraries, schools, community culture, public transport and indeed the multiplicity of activities that make a community. This has historically been effected by Section 106 planning gain money, to which many noble Lords have referred, but the position has been further complicated by the new community infrastructure levy, which no one seems to have mentioned. This levy, which has not been welcomed by some local authorities, can be imposed by local authorities on new developments in their area.

The levy is said to be designed to be fairer, faster and more transparent than the well-tried Section 106 system of agreeing planning obligations between local councils and developers—that is what it says. I therefore ask the Minister, when responding to this amendment, to report on how she sees the community infrastructure levy and/or the Section 106 planning gain funds being protected and enhanced. Can she reassure the Committee that the other provisions in this complicated and convoluted Bill will not militate against the local services that maintain housing developments as communities and not purely, as my old favourite Pete Seeger said in 1963, little boxes of different colours which are all made out of ticky-tacky and all look just the same?

[Lord Greaves]

Does my noble friend agree that Pete Seeger did not say that at all? He sang it.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

I would be happy to do that, but I have tried to let the Committee off that treat.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I think the main concern that many of us had was that the noble Lord was going to sing it.

I want to intervene briefly on this group because quite an important set of principles is involved here. Making communities work in the context of new developments is quite a skill, which local authorities develop over time. For example, there is a difference in nature between student accommodation and other types of what would no doubt be considered to be affordable accommodation. You are usually talking about one-bedroomed units designed for young people. It is a very different sort of accommodation. However, planning for that and for all the other facilities and so on in the local area can be determined only at a local level by people who know the areas concerned and know how it is going to work.

It is right that there is recognition of the importance of student accommodation and that it is taken into account, but it has to be acknowledged that often those in the local area will be best able to determine how to make it work so that the different communities in a particular area will be able to co-exist and complement each other. I am conscious of a number of developments where the arrival of student accommodation has been very important for the regeneration of that area and has benefited other communities. As opposed to hostility to the noisy nocturnal dwellers that students often are, these developments have been a catalyst for enabling other things to be placed in that area, to be viable, and to work extremely well.

Having listened to the exchange between my noble friend and the Minister about her daughter, I recall a discussion I once had with somebody about my son. He was strip-searched in the airport, which was news to me—as a parent you do not hear about that—and I was worried that, in terms of what goes on in the back streets of a no doubt very comfortable part of Newcastle, my noble friend was going to stray into that territory.

It is important to understand the value of student accommodation in many local communities and the fact that what will work is best planned locally. At the same time the different nature of student accommodation should be recognised in the planning process.