Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Porter of Spalding

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord True, and, once again, I find myself supporting him strongly on this issue. We went through the Housing and Planning Bill together, usually extremely late at night—I recall being worried about whether I would get away in time to catch my last train. It worried me at the time that Conservative Richmond and Liberal Democrat Sutton, which are almost neighbouring boroughs, were so much in agreement. Now, when I hear that tonight we might be keeping the noble Lord, Lord True, from his budget-making council meeting, I feel that I almost owe it to my Liberal Democrat colleagues in Richmond to speak for at least another three hours on this extremely important amendment. Maybe we will do that.

I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord True, on this issue. I was, for 13 years, leader of a council in an almost neighbouring south London borough—Sutton. As I have said many times in this Chamber, I was a town-centre councillor in that borough for 40 years. I should perhaps add that it is still Liberal Democrat run after more than 30 years, so we are clearly doing something right there. This is a serious issue. It has affected Sutton and many London boroughs, and no doubt other parts of the country but particularly London, where residential property values are much higher and property owners and developers can make much more money from residential development than from office development.

Like the noble Lord, Lord True, in spite of the temptation he offered me, I will not go through all that I have said in previous debates, both on the Housing and Planning Bill and in Committee on this Bill. This matter was discussed in Grand Committee. I know that the noble Lord, Lord True, was unable to be there but I raised the issue there as well. I repeat that, in the time it took us to get an Article 4 direction into the town centre in Sutton—in a little over a year, but I will come back to that in a minute—the town centre lost 28% of its office space in about 18 months. The noble Lord, Lord True, talked about the figures for Richmond. Similarly, the percentage of office space in Sutton that was occupied or partly occupied was 62%. So we are not talking about empty and redundant offices which are past their sell-by date or are in areas where they are no longer needed; we are talking about active employment zones where people have jobs or go to shop or eat in their lunch hours, and which are a very important part of the local community.

I mentioned the Article 4 direction, which eventually we got for the town-centre area. Initially, my council proposed to get an Article 4 direction for the borough as a whole. I see the noble Lord, Lord True, nodding in agreement. Perhaps that was also the case in Richmond—I know that it was in a number of other London boroughs. It was made very clear to us by the Government at the time that that was a non-starter—it would not happen. So in Sutton we attempted to get an Article 4 direction in rather more targeted areas. Again, it was made clear to us that that would not succeed, so we targeted solely the town-centre area, to which I have referred on a number of occasions.

If you introduce Article 4 immediately, you are liable for considerable compensation payments to potential owners. It is simply not a viable option, particularly in a valuable town-centre area, so it needs 12 months’ notice. That was probably a significant contributor to why we lost 28% of our office space in the notice period for the Article 4 direction. As I said in Grand Committee, since Article 4 has applied in the town centre, that process has slowed down considerably for a number of reasons, but what has happened now is that the same developments are happening in a number of the district centres, where Article 4 does not apply and where, frankly, to go through the lengthy and expensive process of introducing Article 4, even if it were likely to be successful, would be time-consuming, expensive and possibly not so effective.

Minister after Minister, including the noble Lord on the Front Bench today, has quoted Article 4 as the answer to this problem. Clearly, attitudes have changed, and perhaps the understanding of the problem is greater than it was. Are the Government any more minded now than they were 12 or 24 months ago to accept Article 4 directions for the whole of a local authority area, as distinct from a very targeted approach? If that were the case, it would be very useful to know that from the Minister and would at least be of some help—and a very refreshing and welcome change.

I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord True, that the proper answer to this issue is to allow local authorities to decide for themselves, knowing and recognising the local situations. Like the noble Lord, Lord True, and as I have said on other occasions, I have no problem with the issue in principle. I understand and entirely accept that in other parts of the country it has proved very successful. However, in our part of south London, and in other parts of London, exactly the opposite has been the effect; it has been disastrous.

I turn now to the reason for which this measure was introduced. The current Minister, Gavin Barwell, a former Croydon councillor—another south London councillor—has said that housing need and the need to meet the Government’s housing targets override any concerns about permitted development rights. As I said before, it is not just about housing numbers. It is about housing need and about actually getting the right sorts of homes—not necessarily houses—in the right places. It is about the homes that are needed in areas where there are jobs for people to work in and where they support the local economy and do not detract from it.

Above all, this should contribute towards affordable homes. I leave aside for the moment what is the definition of an “affordable home” in south London, but south London needs affordable homes, and this process is providing very few, if any, affordable homes at all. Indeed, London Councils gives some figures, stating that:

“Between May 2013 and April 2015 at least 16,000 new dwellings have avoided the full planning process through office-to-residential PDRs. Had these developments been required to seek full planning permission for their conversion, many of them could have been required to contribute to affordable housing provisions”,


and, indeed, to contribute in many other ways to the local infrastructure—all of which is avoided by permitted development rights. It is questionable to what extent these really contribute to housing need in parts of London, as distinct from housing numbers. We should remember that there is an important distinction there sometimes.

A final point, which I raised very late at night during the Housing and Planning Bill, is that I would understand this a bit better if it was felt that the councils concerned were failing to meet their housing targets. Almost a year ago, I quoted the figures from my own council, and no doubt the noble Lord, Lord True, could do the same for his council. For each of the previous 10 years, my council—of which I am no longer a member—has more than met its housing target. Taken over the 10 years as a whole, housing completions in our borough were 130% above target. What is the justification for imposing the permitted development rights when it means losing all other planning gain that comes from such developments and, most importantly, losing the opportunity to get more much-needed affordable housing?

For all those reasons, I am more than happy to support, once again, the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord True. Like him, I do not know whether they are precisely right or necessarily the right answer. For me, the right answer is to trust the local authorities to do what is best for their area. But if we still do not have a Government willing to do that—I accept that the coalition Government were no better; indeed, they were arguably worse—then at least let them allow some leeway in those areas where it is an extremely important and pressing issue. What is happening in London today will happen in other parts of the country very soon, if it has not happened already.

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

My Lords, I support the amendment and declare my interests in the register as chairman of the Local Government Association and leader of a small rural district council, which, thankfully, is not affected by this issue and I do not think will, at any point soon, be directly affected by this issue.

I apologise to the House because, having tabled a similar amendment for Grand Committee, I was unable to attend to move it because I had an important diary clash and was speaking elsewhere at a conference. I thank my noble friend Lady Cumberlege for moving the amendment, which by all accounts she did much more eloquently than I would have done, so noble Lords had the bonus of having a better speaker delivering it.

I will not say too much because I need my noble friend to get back to make sure his budget is safe. This is a problem in very few areas around the country. It would not take much to shift from the Government’s point to be able to meet at least some of the concerns that are being raised. I do not think that anybody has a problem where redundant office accommodation has been lost that then becomes a benefit and an asset to the community by being turned into residential. But when this policy is driving viable businesses out of their homes, it has probably gone a step too far. Having listened to the debate on the previous amendment, I wonder whether it would help the Minister if we started to refer to these offices as white-collar cathedrals.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Porter of Spalding

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

My Lords, perhaps the Committee will indulge me for a few minutes. I benefited from the right to buy in the 1980s, so unusually I have to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Best, because I think that that was one of the mistakes this House has made in the past 30-odd years. The number of people who could have had access to home ownership was reduced, and as a country that is something we should be ashamed of. Why should the tenants of a registered social landlord have been precluded from an offer that had been made to the tenants of a council? There can be no justification for people living in two identical houses in the same street and in exactly the same personal circumstances where one has the right to buy and the other has not. If we had wanted to fight the battle on right to buy, that should have been done as a point of principle, full stop, not according to who the landlord was. Tonight’s debate is really a pretty poor show for the 1.3 million people who will be expecting the Government to deliver on their commitment to give them the right to buy.

There are issues with the right to buy that I strongly disagree with, as well as ones that noble Lords on the other side would not want me to disagree with on the basis that it should not have been a voluntary deal. I do not think that RSLs should have been able to do a voluntary deal; they should have been compelled to do the same deal as councils. Given that it is a voluntary deal, all of the amendments that noble Lords are talking about this evening are a waste of time because we have to trust our RSL friends—there are a number of them in this Chamber—to deliver what we expect them to deliver. If we put it on the face of the Bill, we will scupper the voluntary deal and the Government will have to make it a mandatory one. RSLs will then be treated the same as councils.

From my point of view that is a good thing because I do not see why my members should have to pay for the failure of RSLs to deliver the policy properly—which this is. If RSLs were forced to do what councils have done, we would get more homes and home owners and it would cost us less money. We all know that the only difference between a home owner and a home renter is access to capital. Why does it matter to us if a house is sold in five, 10 or however many years after it has been bought? The house does not disappear; it is still there and someone is living in it. If a person has managed to get capital out of it, they have not disappeared with that capital; they have bought another property somewhere else that someone else was paid to build, so it has created more jobs.

I do not understand what the fetish is around expecting someone to exercise the right to buy and then die in the same house. I was 24 when I bought my registered social landlord house. My father is 96. Do we really think that it would have been a good thing for the country if I and my family had lived in the same property for 72 years? Where would the benefit of that have been for anybody? The capital I put back into the system was freed up so that another home could be built and future generations were able to live somewhere. As my life moved on into better circumstances, I was able to move out of that home with my family to a better area where my children’s life chances increased no end. Who lost out on that? Nobody. What we will do by restricting access to the right to buy is prevent other generations getting the same thing.

With all respect—I know that noble Lords have good reasons for doing this—the exceptions needed to be built in at the start to reduce the cost to councils. Now that we have a voluntary scheme, councils are going to end up having to pay for it anyway, and that is what is wrong with this. I think that the money should come from central taxation, and that central taxation should be taken, probably, from the hidden profits that RSLs generate. They do generate them but they will not admit to it. Their business model could be reshaped and that would get us out of this, in particular on things like borrowing—£800 million a year too much on their borrowing requirements. That should be restructured and the money put into the pot before any councils are forced to pass over money. I will talk about this later when we reach the amendments dealing with the sale of high-value assets. Again, I do not disagree with the principle of selling them but I do disagree with the money being taken away from councils to be given to inefficient RSLs.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, we have been going for nearly two hours, so I will resist the temptation to reply to the noble Lord, Lord Porter—but it does take a bit of willpower to resist. Forty years as a London borough councillor does not obviously qualify me to speak in a debate that has been largely about rural housing, but I have added my name to Amendments 56A and 57C in the name of my noble friend Lady Bakewell about community land trusts. I did that because much of the debate has been about the role of CLTs in rural areas, but of course they are present in urban areas as well. Indeed, the London part on Sunday’s “Politics” show devoted considerable time to a community land trust in the East End of London which is doing a very good job of enabling people in the area to acquire properties that are genuinely affordable at the level of income they have. In London that is a rare achievement and certainly one that is worth taking note of. As CLTs burgeon at a rapid rate, let us hope they also burgeon in London and other urban areas. That is why I support the amendments.

I rise at what I hope is towards the end of the debate to remind the Minister of the point made by my noble friend some time ago about community land trusts. They have a discretion not to sell CLT homes, but having spoken at their conference a couple of weeks ago and in fact the day after it was announced in the other place, I know that they still feel rather vulnerable about something which is simply a voluntary agreement. They fear for their longer-term future as regards homes that have been provided on a long-term lease to a registered provider because their needs may change. I hope that the Minister can address this point and try to give some further reassurance to CLTs because I do not think we want to see them going down this road.

Finally, I will simply point out that Amendments 56A and 57C are two separate amendments rather than part of a whole. If the Minister can find the time, I hope that she will address them as separate points, although I do not envy her the task of replying to a debate that has now lasted almost two hours.