British House Building Industry

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and I thank the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for securing this debate. I have spent much of my working life taking an interest in this core topic, and after becoming a Member of Parliament, housing has continued to be a passion of mine. I have been involved with the housing sector since I served on a planning committee for 12 years, and then as leader of Derbyshire County Council and director of a housing association. As an MP, I serve on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, and I chair the all-party group for SME house builders. In both roles, I have had the pleasure of working with people from across the private and social housing sectors. In particular, my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) has made fantastic progress in championing self-build homes, and I hope he has continued success in that area.

Another area of success can be seen in the excellent work of Northampton Partnership Homes. Its chairman, David Latham, and chief executive, Mike Kay, have laid out ambitious plans for the future of social housing and tackling homelessness in my constituency, but national support from the Government, and local support, will be required to get those plans advanced. I have been encouraged by the Government’s commitment of £1.2 billion funding to tackle homelessness through to 2020, and by the introduction of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. I know that has been hugely beneficial in Northampton, and I hope it can help to get people back on their feet and with a roof over their head. Is there more to do? Of course there is, and I look forward to hearing about that from the Minister.

I was pleased to meet Sir Edward Lister, in his then capacity of chairman of Homes England, at a recent meeting of my all-party group. I was thoroughly impressed by what he said and I was encouraged by the approach he had been taking. It felt like there has been a shift and a change of culture at Homes England, or at least the start of a shift. The change needs to be seen primarily in money allocated by Ministers going to where it is needed most and by SME housebuilders getting that access. The sector does not feel that it is anywhere near as straightforward yet as it should be for SMEs in particular.

I am encouraged by the steps and the commitments the Government have already taken in this area, but I hope my right hon. Friend will make reference to, and address how, money from Homes England will get not only to the private and the social sectors, but to the shared ownership housing sector, a sector with a lot more potential than it has yet been able to realise.

Local Government and Social Care Funding

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Select Committee. I agree with everything that he said in the last part of his speech. It is a shame that his Front-Bench team did not take a similar approach. The shadow Minister spoke for nearly 40 minutes and did not come up with one solution or proposal as to how we improve social care.

I am a great believer in the idea that it is not what you do but the way that you do it. In the same way, I believe that it is not how much you spend but how you spend it that makes the difference. As someone whose constituency falls in the county of East Sussex, which has the highest number of over-85 year olds in the country, I can speak with first-hand knowledge about the pressures on our social care system. I am not saying to the Minister that East Sussex does not need more funding, because it most definitely does. East Sussex has set up its Better Together system, working hand in hand with the NHS. Last winter, by working with the clinical commissioning groups and funnelling money into community care beds, it managed to reduce its delayed discharges by 33%, and that was despite an 11% increase in demand. The £2.5 million extra given to East Sussex by the Government this winter went into the system and, as a result, there were no delayed discharges or ambulances queuing up at the hospitals’ closed A&Es. The system was able to cope even with an increased number of norovirus and flu outbreaks.

Last year, we were subjected to urgent question after urgent question about the winter hospital crisis. Sadly, even with the system coping so well this winter, we have not had any acknowledgement of how hard NHS staff and local council staff have worked to ensure that, despite the extra pressure, there was no winter crisis this year. That success is because councils and the NHS are working much better together than they have ever done before.

We need to see what East Sussex is doing across the board. Although it is welcome that we now have a Health and Social Care Department, we are not seeing that joined-up working at a national level. I am concerned that if we do not see that joined-up work across the board, the £20 billion extra going into the NHS will be eaten up by the pressures on social care. If patients do not get the social care they need, their health will deteriorate, they will be admitted more often, they will be sicker when they are admitted and they will be in for longer periods of time. Their discharges will be delayed and their outcomes will be poorer. Not funding social care properly, or not using that money wisely, is a penny-wise and pound-foolish approach.

When this Session comes to an end and we have a new Queen’s speech, I hope that social care will be top of the agenda. I wish to see three things. First, there is the funding of social care. I am sad that the amendment to this Opposition day motion was not selected. I too have a copy of the report of the joint Select Committees, “The long-term funding of adult social care”. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East is right: instead of having a Green Paper, let us just get on with the recommendations in this report, because there is cross-party support for looking at a social care premium system, such as the one in Germany. We must be honest with the British public: there will need to be funding for social care. We need to have something, instead of people who have worked hard all their lives selling their homes to pay for social care—and not realising that that is what they will have to do—or refusing social care until they reach a crisis point and then have to pay for it.

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

I invite my hon. Friend to agree that, notwithstanding her radical suggestion, which was also made by the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, about not bothering with the Green Paper, it would nevertheless be helpful if the publication of the Green Paper was now actually announced as a date—not as a month, a season or even a festival, which is the latest estimation we have had, but actually as a date.

[Maria Caulfield]

My hon. Friend is quite right. I am being slightly facetious in saying that we do not need to bring out the Green Paper. However, it would be very welcome indeed if the Green Paper contained some of the Select Committee’s recommendations.

We need a long-term funding solution, and I have discussed this with the Minister previously. The four-year settlement for local government was really helpful. If local authorities could have a 10-year settlement like the NHS has just had, they could do far more with their money, even if they were not seeing the significant increases that they would particularly like.

My third request is to look at the better use of our healthcare and social care professionals. We have grown up with a historical medical model that has depended on doctors and GPs, but people often need a diverse range of professionals to help them. The East Sussex Better Together model has just announced its community pharmacy programme, which is improving communications for patients discharged from hospital and helping them with their medication. The transfers of care around medicine project, or TCAM, is enabling those patients at risk of delayed discharges or readmission to hospital to have a dedicated pharmacist to help them, because we know that having problems with medication is one of the core reasons that people fail when they are discharged from hospital.

Under the community pharmacy programme, pharmacists would have access to patients’ medications, and would be able to answer their questions, monitor side effects and issue repeat prescriptions—things that often do not happen when someone is discharged home. The research and evidence base show that following such a model will reduce admissions and length of stay, and give patients a better experience and better outcomes. Some 112 pharmacies in East Sussex are going to take part in the project, which is a joint working venture between the county council and the clinical commissioning groups. I encourage the Minister to look at rolling this scheme out across the country, so that we can move away from being so dependent on GPs and doctors. I am conscious that there are a number of doctors in the House this afternoon. Doctors do valuable work, but there are other healthcare professionals that we should also be using.

This is not just about funding. Although the Government have given £20 billion extra for the health service, funding for local councils has increased by £1.3 billion this year—an increase of 2.8% compared to last year—and we have given extra money for winter funding, it is what authorities do with that money that makes the biggest difference. We need a long-term solution and a specific funding supplement, as recorded and recommended by the Select Committee. We also need to make better use of some of the fantastic resources that we sometimes fail to recognise. We can do a lot more, even with the existing resources. I am disappointed that the Labour Front-Bench spokesperson did not take the same tone as the Chair of the Select Committee, because we can do more to improve the lives of our constituents.

Local Government Finance

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

I welcome most of the local government settlement for 2019-20 and its recognition of the work done by councils to provide hundreds of services to local residents. Given the rapidly expanding council funding gap, which the LGA reports will rise to £8 billion by the middle of the next decade, I urge the Government to use the 2019 spending review to begin clarifying their plans for sustainable funding for local government after March 2020.

Part of the way to achieve that sustainable funding would be to move to unitary councils across England, a change estimated to generate savings of nearly £3 billion, as revealed in a County Councils Network report. Based on an assessment of data across 27 two-tier local authorities in England, replacing them with unitary authorities could save between £2.4 billion and £2.9 billion nationally. Colleagues will know that process is already under way in Northamptonshire.

After 12 years as a district councillor and 10 years as a county councillor, including time as a county council leader, I know the great work that both tiers can do, but my experience has convinced me that unitary is the way forward to promote localism and democratic accountability, as well as efficiency. I take this opportunity to praise many colleagues at both Northampton Borough Council and Northamptonshire County Council.

Northamptonshire County Council has, to my dismay, become a shorthand for things going wrong, rivalling Venezuela in that regard. The current leadership who have taken on that profound challenge, such as county council leader Matt Golby, deserve our thanks for their efforts to turn things around ahead of the move to unitary. The Secretary of State’s announcement today on Northamptonshire County Council will, I am sure, be welcomed by council colleagues.

Coming back to the local government finance settlement, I welcome the additional £240 million allocated for adult social care, and £410 million for both adult and children’s social care, announced in the Budget. Although that is helpful in the short term, adult social care faces a funding gap of £1 billion in 2019-2020. I appreciate the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care giving us April to look forward to by announcing that month—instead of a season, which is progress—for the launch of the much anticipated social care Green Paper, but I need to say to him and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government team, through you, Mr Speaker, that after all these delays it had better be good. It had better be radical, open to fresh and non-statist ideas, and cognisant of not only just how big a challenge but what an opportunity getting adult care right could be. Nothing is more central to effective local government funding, and thereby to MHCLG, than getting this right.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point with considerable force and clarity, and it will have been heard by those on the Treasury Bench.

Beauty and the Built Environment

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hayes]

I am delighted to say that I agree with every word that the hon. Gentleman said. I think of where I was brought up in south-east London. It was a council estate built, as so many were, in that period during the war and just after. Houses were not only well built—they were attractive. Care was taken about the design of the house. There were a variety of house styles across the estate. There were houses of different sizes to accommodate different kinds of people; there were smaller properties, suitable for elderly people, and large homes suitable for families. The variety of houses, the look and feel of the development, the street layout, the presence of a widely used parade of shops, the church, the school, the community hall, and so on, were the component parts of a functioning community, of which everyone felt part. I am not sure that can be said of many developments now.

The hon. Gentleman is right that privately owned, but also rented properties, are often soulless, ubiquitous and indistinguishable from one another, looking the same from Penzance to Perth, with no sense of the vernacular, no sense of local personality and thereby, incapable of inspiring the local and particular sense of place necessary to build communal feeling. That is where we have got to. It is extraordinary that we have, given the opportunity that existed in the post-war years after the bombing of many of our cities. The redevelopment could have been not only regenerative, but inspiring. I have to say that we, as a nation, failed. Now, this Minister in his time in this job has the opportunity to put that right.

In my roles in the various offices of state, I have tried to influence the quality of development and what we build. As Energy Minister, I acted to ensure that wind turbines were constructed in appropriate locations after proper consultation with local communities, which is critical. Consideration about the impact on landscape became a vital part of the approval process. Some then simply dismissed the argument I made as irrelevant, on the basis of the easily grasped but utterly crass notion that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The notion that beauty is relative has been used to justify much of the ugliness imposed on our towns and cities by architects, planners and developers since the war. Such developments have succeeded only in undermining public confidence in new housing. What is often not appreciated is how the public’s perception of development has changed.

I think what I have already described would be agreed by Members across the House of Commons, and certainly beyond it, but the sad fact is that planners by and large still have not learned their lesson. Even today, for example, some still laud the idea of streets in the sky. Plans are apparently afoot to extend the misconceived network of elevated walkways constructed in the City of London after the war. Streets in the sky were never a substitute for real streets—for architecture on a human scale, in proportion and in harmony with its environment. As anyone who has ever attempted to walk to the Barbican Centre knows, urban walkways are alienating, confusing and a poor substitute for design that puts people first. The Barbican is far from the worst example. There were any number of large developments, mainly of social housing, with walkways and gantries that not only became havens for criminals but often isolated rather than united blocks of flats.

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

This is not a whimsical issue for my right hon. Friend, but a long-standing issue of concern, as it is for me. My postgraduate thesis was on the Gothic revival in domestic architecture in the mid-18th century. That brings me to my question. How do we reconcile space for innovation, as the Gothic revival was in some respects, with respect for the vernacular in our very different counties and neighbourhoods?

[Mr Hayes]

As a direct result of that intervention, let me make my first demand of the Minister. I have more demands to make at the end, so I will get this one out of the way now—I see the Minister glancing at his civil servants nervously.

It is critical that every local authority has a design guide that is not only particular to its locale, but that has site-specific design appraisals for those most important regenerative opportunities. It is not enough for a local authority to rely on some county-wide or area-wide design guide or very broad general motherhood-and-apple-pie design principles. There have to be specific requirements for developers, which allow places to continue to change in a way that is in keeping with what has been done before. That is about materials, scale and sometimes eclecticism; there are particular places that look a particular way. We do not want every high street and every housing development, every town and every city to be indistinguishable one from another, but that will happen only if we are very demanding of what we expect of developers.

As you know, Ms Dorries, I have been Minister or shadow Minister for virtually everything, and I was once shadow Housing Minister. I met many big developers, big names that we could reel off if we wanted to, and they all said to me, “John, if you are clear about the requirements, we will build our business plans to meet them. We understand that you want to build lovelier places, and we know that that is what people want anyway. We are quite happy to build things that people will like and want to buy, or places they will want to rent. Be very clear about your requirements and we will work to them.” It is not about taking on developers; it is about working with them, but being demanding of them.

Housing and Home Ownership

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Neil O'Brien]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I agree in the strongest possible terms, and will come to that point in a second.

Where there have been good new planned settlements, such as Poundbury or Nansledan, they have often been because of a visionary landowner in the area, but we cannot always rely on that. Sometimes, other good ideas have gone wrong because developers have wiggled out of their commitments or planners have failed to get control over the land. How do we make sure that we always build good new places? I would love to see Homes England become a supporting masterplanner for local authorities. I would love us to build on the housing infrastructure fund, which is a brilliant initiative. I would love more central encouragement, which is already coming from the Minister, for good vernacular design.

As ever, the other thing we need is money. That brings me to the third of the reasons why people oppose development—because there is not enough benefit for existing residents. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) mentioned, when planning permission is granted, there is typically a big increase in the value of land, but too little of that flows to existing residents. The Centre for Progressive Policy estimates only about a quarter of the value goes to the local community.

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

My hon. Friend mentioned money. Many of the councillors in Northampton welcomed the lifting of the borrowing cap on the housing revenue account. Does he share my hope—this reflects the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel)—that that will be used for shared ownership or owned properties, as well as just for social housing?

[Neil O'Brien]

I do. That is perhaps for the Minister to answer rather than me, but I absolutely agree that it would be a good thing to do with the extra borrowing power.

How do we capture more of the benefit for the community? We could reform section 106 and the community infrastructure levy and take off the various limits that apply. We could create transparency by creating a register of all land options so that we know what people are paying for land and we stop viability being used as an excuse not to pay for vital infrastructure. We could change the national planning policy framework so that sites do not get put through the strategic housing land availability assessment unless they can pay for their own infrastructure. We could give local authorities the fiscal firepower to assemble land and be their own developers and masterplanners. We could reform land compensation and the Land Compensation Act 1961 to reverse the changes made by unelected judges in the 1970s. A group of organisations, including Shelter, Onward and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, recently came together to call for just that.

As well as more benefits for the local community generally, we also need to see more specific benefit for those most affected by development—those who are right next to it. What about offering cheap homes for sale to the neighbours of new construction sites? At the moment, there is too little other than disruption for the neighbours. In Farndon Fields in my constituency, a developer refused to route construction traffic through neighbouring fields and has instead insisted, using the viability argument, on forcing them down tiny suburban streets. My constituents now have to put up with huge HGVs going down these tiny streets where their children are playing, for several years. No wonder we oppose so much development, when it happens like that. No wonder we do not build enough homes. We have a system that seems geared to maximise opposition.

The only way to build more homes is to deal with the underlying reasons why we oppose so much development today. Those problems can be fixed, and I know our new, energetic Minister is setting about fixing them with aplomb, but we need to think radically about the way we build and start a new conversation about the balance of renting and owning.

Gypsies and Travellers

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, because as I said earlier and will say again—it needs to be said many times in this debate—there are many decent, law-abiding Travellers who want to do the right thing and pay their way, who clean up, and who are respectful of the local community and, indeed, contribute hugely to it. The sadness is that that is not the case with all Travellers. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for making that important point.

I will provide the Minister with a written list of requests from both Central Bedfordshire Council and Bedfordshire police, as I do not have time to go into them all tonight. I am strongly encouraging Central Bedfordshire Council to adopt the policy of Sandwell Council in having a temporary stopping site. The provision of that site has led to a significant decrease in unauthorised encampments and the associated clear-up costs and environmental degradation that sadly so often accompany them.

Central Bedfordshire Council wants the power to seize vehicles associated with unlawful or illegal activity, whoever the owner is. It wants the Environment Agency to prosecute or close non-compliant sites, where living conditions are often atrocious. It wants all land on Traveller sites to have an owner who is properly registered with the Land Registry, without which proper enforcement cannot take place.

Bedfordshire police say that the current legislation on aggravated trespass is inadequate, as the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) said, because there are difficulties in proving the offence. They would also like section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to be extended to include highway land and significant impact on local communities, as that would replicate the legislation in Northern Ireland.

In the past 12 months, Central Bedfordshire Council has issued 335 parking enforcement notices to foreign vehicles. So far, 250 of those have been cancelled because the owners could not be traced. It is a criminal offence for the owners of foreign vehicles not to register their vehicles if they have been in the UK for more than six months, but the police have no record of foreign vehicles that have been in the UK for more than six months, and I do not believe that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency has either. The result is that those with foreign number plates—including quite a large number of Irish-registered vehicles in my area—can park with impunity, while drivers with British-registered vehicles have to pay penalty charge notices. Again, this just leads to fair-minded people coming to the conclusion that there is no equality under the law.

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

My hon. Friend’s point about equality under the law is particularly important. The residents of Far Cotton in Northampton have had encampments this year in particular. They have seen people driving and behaving in their cars in ways that, should the local residents attempt to drive like that, they would be visited by the police straightaway. I welcome my hon. Friend’s emphasis on equality and ask him to reflect on the fact that local residents often feel that they are not treated equally when it comes to the behaviour of those on illegal encampments, compared with their behaviour as local residents.

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. I am afraid I have horror stories from some of my constituents who are regularly driven at by people coming out of some of the Traveller sites. Bedfordshire police do their very best to help with a limited and severely stretched budget, but they cannot always get there to assist people in some of these rural communities.

As it is for many Members, this is a significant issue for my constituency, and it is one that I am keen to get right. I am angry that so little has been done by the Government. My challenge to the Minister tonight is that he does a serious job of addressing the issue that I and all other Members have raised here at pace and with urgency, or, if the Government are happy with the way things are, he should come to explain why he thinks the current law is adequate to my constituents and to other Members who share the concerns that I have raised. We really can and must do better. My commitment to my constituents is to keep on campaigning for the improvements that we need for everyone until they are delivered.

Tenant Fees Bill

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

Although it is true that some renters pay many hundreds of pounds in fees to letting agents, I want to point out that the solution proposed by the Government may merely shift the cost of the burden, not to landlords and lettings agents, but back to tenants in a different way. Banning letting agency fees means that the money will have to come from somewhere else, at least as far as legitimate services from respectable letting agents are concerned. Landlords may well be forced to, or at least will, increase rents across the tenancy to cover the costs anyway.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that however appropriate this legislation is—and it is appropriate—it is at least in part because of the unscrupulous actions of some letting agents, and not all letting agents should be tarred with the same brush? CGT Lettings and Morgan Associates in my constituency do a good job by their tenants and can be expected to continue to do so.

[Andrew Lewer]

I entirely agree.

These new rules are quite complex and there will be a bureaucratic cost to councils, letting agents, landlords and therefore tenants. The rules trigger the new burdens doctrine, and I hope that this will be accounted for in the legislation. I still think that a simple rule allowing letting agents to impose a maximum fee of 100% or 150% of monthly rent might have solved this more straightforwardly, as long as there were additional safeguards for those receiving housing-related benefits and others.

As I said last week on housing and, before that, on the energy price cap, I am a critical friend and a supporter, rather than a member, of this Conservative Government. Although I accept the need to intervene at times to ensure that fairness is maintained in the market, we also have a strong commitment to providing more houses and making people’s lives easier. The focus needs to be the key objective of having new homes in which the private rented sector will have a role, rather than just the “ban and regulate” type of legislation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) has just said, let us remember that there are hard-working people in the sector. We should not draft legislation purely to punish those who behave unscrupulously at the expense of the far more numerous examples in the former category.

I would like to acknowledge the work of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, on which I sit. Over the past few months, it has held evidence sessions with stakeholders and done significant work to improve this Bill so as to avoid more costly and inefficient enforcement. Indeed, that work has been sufficient, notwithstanding my reservations, to secure my support in the Lobby, because there is a problem to be tackled, even if this proposal has some Jim Hacker in it as well as some King Solomon.

Housing and Homes

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I acknowledge the Government’s commitment to bettering the housing market, to which end a total of £44 billion of capital funding, loans and guarantees has been pledged, up to 2022-23.

As we have said, more than 1.1 million homes have been delivered since 2010—217,000 last year—and a target is in place to deliver 300,000 net additional homes per year on average by the mid-2020s. House building needs to be tailored to each region and met with the appropriate infrastructure, and I am pleased to say that the Government have taken measures to address that, with the £866 million fund specifically designed for housing-related infrastructure. It has already funded 133 projects.

However, it is time to consider how those incentives can be more effectively unlocked and rendered less bureaucratic—a source of concern for those who are in the industry and those facilitating developments more generally. National development plans need to both make way and create incentives for local authorities to engage in house building and infrastructure building. The “development control” mentality has not served everyone well for the past 50-plus years. In my view, real localism—not just the lip-service variety—will work more effectively with a network of unitary authorities with realistic tax bases relative to their cost bases that do not excessively hem in their urban or even suburban core with significant council tax implications.

I am pleased that that is now policy at Northampton Borough Council. It has endorsed that vision, which will assist the town’s prosperity in all sorts of ways. In the context of today’s debate, it will allow expansion without the risk of conflicting local plans, allow better highways and housing integrated working and promote joined-up thinking between housing, social care and health.

I want to mention compulsory purchase orders, which I have reservations about. Although they can boost success in the short term—notably, with some of the developments in the 1950s and 1960s—they have to be used sparingly where compelling national or local key interests are at stake and not just for convenience.

[Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of those local pressures could be the need for a local authority to deliver brownfield regeneration? That might be in multiple ownership and otherwise would not be brought forward for good use—new homes and new commercial premises.

[Andrew Lewer]

I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. I have been careful in saying that the power has to be used sparingly in identifying a key interest and not that it should not be used. However, private property rights are, after all, the basis on which there is democracy in a free market economy and they should, generally speaking, be the default. Forcing people out of their homes or off their land for a common good can get out of hand, and we need to be aware of that.

Northampton, the town I represent, is extremely ambitious and focused on delivering the growth agenda. It has bold plans for private and council housing. Building the new north-west link will give the town a much needed full ring road to cope with the projected new housing being built around its edge. That need is an especially good example and an opportunity for me to urge that, as we advance the Government’s good work, we must guard against the “houses first but support infrastructure later” image that housing growth has among many existing and aspiring residents. That is a common, justified and long-standing grievance in Northampton. Northampton MPs have made speeches referring to the problem going back to the 1970s.

Like me, the local authority in Northampton is a supporter, not a member, of the Government—a critical friend—and its ideas include the lifting of the housing revenue account borrowing cap further than already intended and allowing mechanisms to encourage builders, such as charging fees when undischarged planning approvals become a year or two or more old. Northampton and the borough council have the plans and the vision. They are ready to translate that on to a broader and more unified—indeed, unitary—canvas, if the good actions the Government have taken to date to support them and our house builders can be improved and, yes, built upon.

Northamptonshire County Council

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I am not aware that any local authority has contacted me, and I am certainly not aware of an impending financial crisis. That is not to say that local authorities do not contact the Department all the time, with all sorts of issues and concerns, as they should, because that is why the Department is there.

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

As a former leader of Derbyshire County Council, it was particularly disappointing to read in the report of the local mismanagement, which the report indicates is obviously the cause of the crisis in Northamptonshire County Council. Notwithstanding that, does the Secretary of State accept that the pressures on adult care nationwide are such that both fairer funding and the tackling of health and social care integration need to be Government priorities in the years ahead?

[Sajid Javid]

I thank my hon. Friend for the work that he has done and continues to do for the people of Northamptonshire. He is right to raise the pressures being felt by Northamptonshire County Council and many other councils, particularly on adult social care and children’s social care. He will know that at last year’s spring Budget there was a record settlement, with an additional £2 billion going into adult social are. Looking to the long term, that is exactly why we have the Green Paper, and I hope that he will provide input into that process.

Houses in Multiple Occupation: Combined Planning Applications

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Pound]

I have never knowingly disagreed with my hon. Friend ever since I took part in his by-election campaign, which was a success—that probably had nothing to do with my involvement. I absolutely agree with him. Let us get one thing straight: the Mayor of London and most strategic planning authorities recognise that there is a place and a role for HMOs, and London councils are quite keen on the idea. There is a recognition that HMOs can provide low-cost housing for people, particularly as starter homes. I have no problem with that. The issue is the fact that there is no lateral linkage. At the very least, the law should require companies that are linked—circuitously or laterally—to declare that they are the same company, and we should consider the cumulative impact of applications.

Mr Hanson, if you were building a block that would accommodate 40 or 50 people, you would have to go through an entirely different planning regime. There would have to be section 106 provision, a community infrastructure levy, an impact assessment and consideration of sewerage, light, water, education, health—all the surrounding issues—and rightly so, because they would have an impact on the local community. You would have to look at the local school provision and health provision. But with multiple HMOs that is not the case. They can spring up like toadstools after a spring rain. They can come up all over Perivale and there is no consideration of what will happen to Selborne Primary School, Perivale Primary School or St John Fisher Primary School. There is no consideration of what will happen to the Hillview surgery, the medical centre. That cannot be right—

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

rose—

[Stephen Pound]

And I am sure the hon. Gentleman will tell me why it cannot be right.

[Andrew Lewer]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene. The relocation of the University of Northampton has caused a surge in planning applications for HMOs and a lot of unease among the residents of Far Cotton. Although Northampton Borough Council has a policy of restricting HMO density to 15% within any given area, that has been complicated by planning appeal decisions and a rise in unlicensed HMOs in the area. The community accepts that some change will take place; it is the scale that has caused the problem, as he has explained. How would his proposal assist this problem?

[Stephen Pound]

I seem to have struck a nerve. This issue is not unique to Perivale. Perivale may be unique, but in this matter it is not, quite clearly. The point is that at the moment local residents are profoundly disturbed because they see the character of their area changing and there is nothing that the planning officers can do. Last Sunday week, Councillor Tariq Mahmood, a local councillor, and I met the residents in the street, in Wyresdale Crescent, and to my horror I discovered that three local residents—families I have known for years—were selling up and moving out because they could not stand the character of their street changing from a quiet residential backwater into a row of houses in multiple occupation, and of course that then accelerates the process. Those three sell up, and before we know where we are we have a constant row of them.

I am not implying for a moment that the people who live in HMOs have riotous parties all night. This is about the number of people. There are issues of parking and refuse collection, as well as the drain and demand on local services. When Councillor Mahmood and I and the other two Perivale ward councillors, Councillors Charan Sharma and Munir Ahmed, went to see the chief planning officer at Ealing, David Scourfield, he said in effect, “My hands are tied; there is very little I can do,” and he referred to an article 4 direction, which I will come on to in a moment. Despite the fact that it is a total and utter waste of time and a complete irrelevance, it happens to be statute law and therefore I shall refer to it.

In the situation that I have described, what recourse is left for local residents? One of the residents has done an enormous amount of investigation and discovered that five of the properties, each one registered with a different company, are in fact all related to the same company. They all come back to the same addresses, in two cases outside the United Kingdom, and even outside the continent of Europe. Why could it not be a legal requirement for people to say that when making these multiple applications? If one company—David Hanson plc of north Wales, for example—decided to build 50 HMOs in Perivale, it would have to declare it. You would also have to declare it to the House authorities, Mr Hanson, but that is neither here nor there. However, at the moment companies do not have to declare that, because each application is considered individually.

The draft London plan, to which I referred earlier, does recognise the importance. It says in “(H12) 4.12.7”:

“Houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) are an important part of London’s housing offer, reducing pressure on other elements of the housing stock. Their quality can, however, give rise to concern.”

Here is the issue: quality. Quality is not an issue, because building enforcement can apply in these cases, but more importantly, the fire brigade has to certify. Therefore, there is the certification process and the licensing process, but that does not solve the problem. Why does it not solve the problem? It is partly because planning permission is not required in order to be a licensed HMO. Even worse, in London there is actually a numerical limit on the number of HMO licences that a local authority can give—I cannot speak for Reading, Stoke or Northampton. That means that once that ceiling is reached, the pressure of withholding a licence cannot be used by a council to make a difference. That seems to be an anomalous situation. I can understand why and how it has come about, but it is not helping the people of Perivale, and I do not think it is helping the people of Stoke, Northampton or Reading either.

The article 4 directions are what are normally flagged up. They are normally considered to be

“backstop powers to require developers to apply for planning permission for HMO conversions”.

Councils may use them

“in cases where they have concerns about the impact of a concentration of HMOs on local objectives in an area.”

Marvellous! That is music to my ears—absolutely delightful. This is where the council has backstop powers where there is a concern about the impact of a concentration of HMOs. Sadly, all is not well. It might appear good, but this is the curate’s egg. There might be a good bit, but most of it is completely rotten.

The plan continues:

“A council has to give 12 months’ notice before it can use an Article 4 Direction”—

meaning that the powers have no use whatsoever

“for reacting swiftly or efficiently”.

It goes on:

“If a council cannot wait 12 months to use an Article 4 Direction because it would risk the best interests of their residents…they must pay compensation costs.”

I need hardly say that local authorities are under unprecedented financial pressure and simply to take the risk of having to pay in these particular cases would be untenable.

Equally:

“If a council uses an Article 4 direction, it will not necessarily prohibit the development or change of use.”

What use is it? That is ridiculous. It is as much use as a chocolate teapot. I see no more purpose in it whatsoever. It simply means that local people may have an opportunity to make representations and the elected representatives can decide on the development’s merits, but after the horse has bolted.

Article 4 directions must be reduced to get rid of the 12-month notice period and the compensation provisions. These are handcuffs. These are a ball and chain on local councils. It is impossible for a serious, sensible and concerned local council to actually act in the ambit of the article 4 direction, if 12 months’ notice must be given, plus the concentration provision. It simply makes no sense whatsoever. I believe that the Local Government Association has made representations to the Minister and her Secretary of State on this matter.

Planning law has to balance the two priorities. In the case of HMOs, I think we tended to look at it through the prism of student accommodation, or accommodation in some rundown, old areas, where it seemed to be a regeneration and gentrifying tool—in some cases it was; in some cases it was not. In the case of Perivale, it seems to me that someone has constructed a financial algorithm that says, “Because house prices here are lower than in the rest of west London, for the moment, where you can buy a three-bedroom suburban house for under £700,000”—that might raise eyebrows in Stoke but, believe me, it is pretty good value for money in west London—“if that is split into six units, you will get about £1,000 a month in rent.” Do the maths, as they say. It will work out as a very profitable arrangement. One of the people behind these companies is based in Brooklyn, New York, which is not normally closely linked with the London borough of Ealing, let alone Perivale. That suggests to me that this is a straightforward financial consideration that someone has made.

I am in no way opposed to people making a few honest bob. Good luck to them. I am quite new Labour about this. I think that people should be able to make money, but not at the expense of suffering constituents and residents, who wake up in the morning to find that what was their home—their parent’s home, in many cases—their neighbourhood and their area have changed utterly beyond recognition. What about the people moving in there? The young professionals or students moving into an HMO in Perivale are not going to be welcomed, wanted, liked or loved; it is going to be damn difficult for them.

What worries me most of all, however, is the fact that people look to their local authority, just as they look to us as Members of Parliament, to protect and defend their rights and interests. We must do that. The law should work for people, not against them. In this case, by tightening up an article 4 direction and maybe having a look at some of the other regulations within the use classes order, we can solve this problem. Now is the right time to solve this problem, because the national planning policy framework is subject to consultation at the moment.

I want my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) to make a brief speech. Mr Hanson. I hope that I have not been overly emotional, but I cannot stress too strongly the impact of this sort of development on quiet, decent, ordinary suburban people, who have not asked for this, do not want it and cannot endure it much longer. I look to the Government to come to their rescue.