Housebuilding
Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts(5 months ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
To ask His Majesty’s Government what is their response to the final report of the Competition and Markets Authority’s housebuilding market study, published on 26 February.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)
We welcome the CMA’s final report, following its full market study into housebuilding. In 2022, the Secretary of State wrote to the CMA, supporting the suggestion of a full market study, the first since 2008. The Government will now take away and carefully consider these findings and recommendations, and formally respond within 90 days. The CMA’s recommendations can help industry, the Government and regulators to make sure that the market is operating effectively, and working well for consumers.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
I appreciate that the report was published only two days ago, but it was published after the Government made significant changes to housing and planning policy. On those changes, the CMA report is very clear. It says that “significant interventions” and “further actions” are required by government if we are to address what it describes as the “complex and unpredictable” planning system, with its underresourced planning departments. The report also makes it clear that local authorities should have clear housing targets if we are to meet the demand in housing that we have just heard about. Will the Government be looking very sympathetically at these recommendations?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
As I have said, we will carefully consider all the recommendations and findings from the report. Our National Planning Policy Framework means that councils must have local plans in place to deliver more homes in the right places and of the right type that are required in that particular community. As part of the recent consultation on changes to the National Planning Policy Framework, we have committed to review our approach to assessing housing need, once the new housing projections data based on the 2021 census is released next year.
Housing: Section 21 Evictions
Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts(5 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, we have always set out our intention, in the White Paper that preceded the Bill and in the guidance that goes alongside the Bill, that we will need to give six months’ notice for implementing Section 21 for new tenancies. That is to give time for a number of things to happen. The noble Baroness is right that we need to allow time for the courts to prepare for this, to allow evictions, court rules, forms and administrative systems to be updated. It is also to allow for secondary legislation that flows from the primary legislation to be laid, and for guidance to be put in place. But we are working hard, and we have already provided upfront money to the court system to kick-start that process, so that we can move towards implementation as soon as possible.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
Could the Minister clarify that? On the Laura Kuenssberg programme, Michael Gove said that Section 21 would be “outlawed” before the general election. Does that mean that, by the time of the general election, a landlord will not be able to serve a Section 21 notice on a tenant?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I looked very carefully at what my right honourable friend said, and he said that we will have outlawed it by the next general election—we will have passed the Bill and put money into the courts to ensure that we can enforce it. We are already putting money into the courts—£1.2 million this year.
Leasehold: Property Management Companies
Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts(5 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
I am afraid I have to disagree with the noble Lord’s assessment of the Bill. I can set out a number of ways in which the Bill will improve the position of leaseholders regarding service charges. It will require greater transparency of service charges, so that leaseholders receive key information regularly; we will rebalance the legal costs regime, giving leaseholders greater confidence to challenge their service charges; it will replace the buildings insurance commissions system for managing agents, so that transparent admission fees are in place; and it will increase the non-residential limit from 25% to 50% for buying the freehold or exercising the right to manage, giving leaseholders greater rights in respect of taking over the freehold of their property or managing it themselves.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend will know that the law of forfeiture allows a managing agent to take possession of a flat worth, say, £500,000 if there is a debt of more than £350 outstanding. In those circumstances, the freeholder pockets the difference between the value of the flat and the debt. Surely the leasehold Bill should put a stop to that.
Local Authorities: Financial Difficulties
Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, for many years we have had a cap on council tax increases. It remains at 2.99% for the general fund, with 2% extra for councils that want more money for social care funding. However, the department is establishing an expert panel to advise local government and the department on local government financial sustainability into the future. The panel will include the LGA and the Office for Local Government, and we look forward to its findings.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, the local authorities that have so far gone bankrupt and applied for Section 114 have, by and large, been the authors of their own misfortune. Is my noble friend the Minister aware that many well-run upper-tier authorities—controlled by all parties—are now running out of road? Will not whoever wins the next election have to undertake a major review of local government finance? The current regime of overreliance on government grants, rate capping and an out-of-date council tax is simply unsustainable.
Local Authority Finances
Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, we recognise the pressures that local government is facing. That is why we have announced such a substantive increase into the funding for councils this year. We recognise that the voluntary sector is often an important delivery partner for local authorities in the work that they do. They will benefit from the settlement that we have announced. My department also works carefully with, for example, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which leads on the voluntary sector, to ensure that we understand the impact on the voluntary sector and the interplay with local government.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, local authorities are no longer run by Derek Hatton, Ken Livingstone and Ted Knight, the bogeymen of 40 years ago, but the legislation which they provoked is still with us—rate capping. As a result, many well-run upper-tier local authorities struggle to provide good-quality adult and children’s services despite the increase and are looking at Section 114 notices. Against a background of devolution and promotion of local accountability, has the time not come to review the rate-capping policy?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, we are committed to broader reform of local government finance, but we have said, in recognition of the disruption and uncertainty caused by the pandemic, that this will be something for the next Parliament. We have also set out ambitious proposals when it comes to devolution of greater powers and greater financial decision-making to local government. That starts with the trail-blazer authorities in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands but will be on offer more widely across the country.
Housing: Accessibility Standards
Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, further to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Best, I too welcome the decision to make these new accessibility standards mandatory, but the M4(2) standards have been around since 2015 and the building industry is already familiar with them. Surely, any consultation should be quite quick and the regulations should come into effect during the lifetime of this Parliament.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My noble friend makes a good case. As he will know, the Government have already consulted on the principle of this. A technical consultation would be needed to take forward the mandating of the standard.
Temporary Accommodation Costs
Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts(5 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I think I have already answered most of that. We have increased the amount of money going to the base budgets of local authorities across the country this year. We are giving money to prevent homelessness—which is as important as dealing with the issue. As I have said, we are giving money to councils so that they can build better properties and access better temporary accommodation. We are doing all we can in what has been quite a difficult economic climate. However, we are coming out of it, things are beginning to look better, and houses are being built.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend will not be surprised to hear that I think we should be building a lot more houses. In the meantime, should we not consider amending the Renters (Reform) Bill, now in another place, to increase substantially the amount of long-term institutional investment in private renting and relieve some of the pressures on the market that we have been hearing about?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My noble friend is absolutely right. The Government will support institutional investment in the private sector as well as in the social rented sector, provided, of course, that they stick to the rules and we can regulate them. That includes Build to Rent homes, which can boost supply and drive up standards. We are offering support through the £1.5 billion levelling up home building fund being delivered through Homes England to provide loans, equity investment and joint ventures to encourage such institutional investment companies and to support new Build to Rent developments. I think they will be a growing part of the market.
Private Rented Sector Ombudsman
Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts(6 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
The noble Baroness asked a number of questions. First, we have sought extensive procurement and legal advice on this, and we are confident that the approach we are taking is in line with procurement regulations. I can only reiterate that this work is still in its very early stages, and no decisions have been made. Of course, we will talk to stakeholders throughout the whole of the process. If the noble Baroness or any other noble Lord would like to meet me and my team, I am happy to do so as we go forward.
Secondly, the question on the interaction between schemes is very interesting. We envisage that, where a complaint covers both landlords and letting agents, the separate schemes will work together to triage the complaint effectively and, if necessary, have a joint investigation. Importantly, we want to make sure that, where it is not clear which scheme a tenant should complain to, there is no wrong access point. We will work together to make sure that the tenant gets the service that they require.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I too welcome the Bill’s proposal to establish a private rented sector ombudsman service. There will be an opportunity when the Bill reaches your Lordships’ House to discuss the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, as to where this service should best be provided. What powers will the ombudsman have to enforce his or her findings? Who will bear the cost?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I thank my noble friend. He is absolutely right: the Bill will come to this House shortly and I am sure we will have many more debates on this issue. As far as powers are concerned, the Bill says that the ombudsman’s enforcement powers will be to expel the landlord from membership of the organisation unless they deal with their obligations and then rejoin, and they will be liable for civil and, in the worst cases, legal penalties if they continue to operate without that membership. Those are quite strong powers that will back up local authorities’ powers. On the scheme’s funding, it will be a landlord membership scheme, as is the Housing Ombudsman scheme. Membership of that scheme is at £5.75 per unit.
Long-term Plan for Housing
Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, there is much to welcome in the Statement—namely, the increase in planning resources—but it represents a major change in government housing policy, which was not there when the levelling-up Bill was introduced. As the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, said, this was introduced to head off a rebellion in the other place. As a result, the targets are advisory, not mandatory, and we are already seeing a result—not just in plans being withdrawn but in South Oxfordshire doing something unheard of in planning by deleting from its plan for development sites that had already been included. We may end up with more up-to-date plans eventually, but they will have fewer homes in them than the country needs. How will a democratically elected Government, committed to building 300,000 new homes a year, deliver that if they are totally dependent on the good will of local authorities that do not share that commitment?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, we announced a number of different changes at the end of last year. However, as I said to both the noble Baronesses, the standard method for assessing housing need remains the starting point for local authorities. It is only in exceptional circumstances that we would expect them to move away from that, and that must be well evidenced. In such circumstances, where it is not appropriate for that area, there is a way and method for those local authorities to put forward a well-considered and well-thought-out local plan, which would have a much better chance of being delivered than something that does not command local support and does not suit the needs of the local area.
We have made other changes that may result in the changes that my noble friend talked about—for example, by removing the buffers needed on land supply set out in local plans. They go over and above the amount of land needed to deliver against the assessed housing need for an area. Where local authorities have done the right thing, put a plan in place and identified the land they need to deliver against the local housing need in their area, it is not the right way forward to require those local authorities to hold a 5% or 10% buffer on top.
Leasehold Reform
Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I will not apologise; the measures in the Bill will benefit owners of flats and houses alike. The majority of houses have always been provided as freehold, and there are few justifications for building new leasehold houses, so the Government will ban them, other than in exceptional circumstances. However, flats have shared fabric and infrastructure and therefore require some form of arrangement to facilitate management. This has been facilitated by a lease. None the less, the Government recognise the issues in the leasehold system and remain committed to reinvigorating the commonhold system so that developers and home owners have an alternative to leasehold ownership.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, further to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, the Secretary of State made his views absolutely clear when he said:
“I don’t believe leasehold is fair in any way. It is an outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
But the Bill does not do that—it does not even mention commonholds. When I asked about this in the previous exchange, I was told by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn:
“When it comes to reforms to commonhold, we continue to consider the Law Commission’s report in detail to find the best way forward”.—[Official Report, 30/11/2023; col. 1180.]
The commission reported in 2020. When will we learn the Government’s conclusion?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I assure my noble friend that we remain committed to continuing our leasehold and commonhold reforms, and the Bill is a major step forward. The Government remain committed to a widespread take-up of commonhold for flats, and we have been reviewing the Law Commission’s recommendations to reinvigorate commonhold as a workable alternative to leasehold, alongside working with the Commonhold Council to consider practical steps to prepare consumers and the markets.