Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I had looked forward to this Bill, so it is disappointing that the opportunity seems to have been missed. This feels like not a levelling-up Bill but an unambitious planning Bill. There are huge environmental, housing and planning control crises to be solved, but the Bill has not done so.

I will focus on some of the issues affecting rural communities such as mine in Cumbria and in Northumberland, Devon and Cornwall. These areas are under huge pressure. We have seen a housing crisis become a housing catastrophe over the last couple of years. I saw a story in last week’s Sunday Times about Langdale in my constituency, where 90% of houses are second homes. Up to 80% of houses that changed hands during the pandemic went into the second home market. We have seen the collapse of the private rented sector into the holiday let sector and Airbnb. And we have seen individuals forced out of their community because there is nowhere else to go. People with jobs, and with places at the local school for their children, are having to uproot and go to places where they have none of those things because they have been kicked out.

This is having an impact across the country. Fifty per cent. fewer rentals are available across the country, but there is a 6% increase in demand. Average rents outside London are going up by more than 10%. In the last generation, buying a home was a pipe dream for most people in rural communities and elsewhere. It now appears that even renting a property is a pipe dream for many. Such properties are not available, and they are certainly not affordable. Meanwhile, planning permission is being given for buildings that do not meet net zero and without a compulsion for them to be sustainable and to meet the climate emergency.

What could and should this Bill do? It should give new powers to local authorities, national parks and local councils to prevent family homes from becoming second homes and holiday lets. We could create a separate category of planning use for second home ownership and holiday lets, as distinct from full-time, permanent dwellings. Local communities would then have the power to control what happens to their housing stock.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman asks an important question. At the very least, the Bill should match what the European structural funds were doing. Those funds dwarf the paltry levelling-up fund. Some people would call this Bill a subsidy from less well off areas to better off areas.

[Tim Farron]

I agree. Rural communities such as mine are being completely overlooked, in terms of both funding and the powers we are demanding to tackle these huge problems.

In planning, enforcing affordability in perpetuity is crucial. In this country, we seem to give planning permission and to build for demand, not need. In places such as the lakes, the dales, Cumbria, Cornwall and Devon, any house that is built will sell, but will it meet local need? No, it will not. This Bill does not give us the powers to enforce affordability in perpetuity. It does so little to build in nature recovery, which is vital to our communities and to any new developments.

The Bill also does nothing to give planning authorities, national parks and local authorities the power to enforce planning conditions. If a developer starts work on a field for which it has been given planning permission to build houses—they may have been told to build 25% or 30% affordable housing, which is not enough in the first place—and finds a few more rocks than it says it expected, it can use a viability assessment to go back to the drawing board. The developer can then say, “We don’t need to provide you with any affordable homes at all, and the Government will back us up.” That has happened in Allithwaite in my constituency and elsewhere. Let us give communities real power.

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[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

I am glad to speak to this Bill and also to follow my hon. Friends the Members for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) and for North Devon (Selaine Saxby). My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon and I have worked extremely hard and we understand the challenges in our constituencies extremely well.

I am going to talk about housing and Cornwall. We have already heard from MPs who do not represent my area about the challenges that Cornwall faces. I am looking to the Bill to provide accessible housing, affordable housing and healthy housing. On accessible housing, we have heard a few ideas this afternoon about how to make sure that the houses that are built are made available to local people. Whether through this levelling up Bill or a county deal, we in Cornwall need our local authorities to be given the power to place a restriction on new homes so that they go to permanent residents. That would give local communities the confidence that any housing they are asked to accept will meet local need. It is a lot easier to win the argument in a community if it knows, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon said, that the houses built will help to secure the community and work for everybody.

Issues in Cornwall include nurses, doctors, police, planning officers, engineers, marine engineers—all sorts of people—being unable to get the homes they need, or even to get close to where the jobs that they can take on are located. There is a critical problem on the Isles of Scilly, because the people who need to work there to ensure the provision of basic services cannot get housing. It is important that new housing is prioritised and meets local needs and pressures.

On affordable housing, I was glad to hear the Secretary of State refer to mortgages, which have not been mentioned by others. The Bill does not necessarily have to mention them, but it would be helpful if it could reform our approach to affordable housing. At the moment, mortgage providers will often turn down affordable housing applications from people who have been paying a lot of rent for a long time. If someone has been paying high rents for five or six years, that should be taken into account by the mortgage sector when considering affordability. Many people pay more in rent than they would pay having purchased a property.

On healthy homes, if the Minister wants to make his life a little easier, he could look at the forthcoming Healthy Homes Bill in the other place, a private Member’s Bill that includes a lot of good principles. If homes are not healthy, they curtail education and cause problems for older people. We have heard examples of poor housing this afternoon. The healthy homes principles include houses having the necessary space and access to natural light, and that they should be located near good transport and walking links. It is vital that we build housing in areas where people can get to their jobs.

I commend the levelling up Bill and the Minister for engaging extremely well.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman makes some good points on housing, but I have just been given some figures by Calum Iain MacIver of the Western Isles Council. My part of Scotland in the Hebrides used to get £3 million a year from European structural funds. We will now be getting only £2.35 million from the levelling-up fund, and that is over three years, so it is about a quarter of what we used to get. Is Cornwall suffering similarly, and is it not more of a levelling-down fund than a levelling-up fund for people like us?

[Derek Thomas]

I am glad to answer that question, but just to finish what I was going to say earlier, I commend the Minister for the way in which he has engaged with all of us in trying to get this right.

Cornwall has received enormous sums through European funding, but not all the systems are very easy to navigate; I have had personal experience of trying to navigate them just to claw down funds already committed. What we see in the levelling-up fund, the shared prosperity fund, the high street fund—[Interruption.] The hon. Member is disagreeing with me, but the rough calculation in the Library’s figures is that we will receive £80 million a year, compared with the £50 million a year that we received in European funding, which will carry on until next year.

In Cornwall, we want to make sure that every penny that we receive genuinely leads to the transformation of every life and every opportunity for the people who live there.

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[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

At the heart of this Bill, which I welcome on behalf of Southend West, is reversing geographical disparity and spreading opportunity. Coastal communities such as the new city of Southend are the unrecognised potential powerhouses of the UK economy.

I make no apologies for reminding the Minister that Southend alone welcomes more than 7 million visitors every year and contributes £3 billion to the Exchequer, yet coastal communities face their own unique challenges—housing being one that was powerfully addressed by my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby). I therefore hope the Minister can confirm that coastal communities will be given the very highest priority in the Government’s levelling-up agenda.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I represent an entirely coastal constituency. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is an absolute travesty that, now we have left the EU, we will be given just a quarter of the sum from the levelling-up fund that we would have had from the European structural fund? And does she agree that the UK Government should make good the damage that Brexit is doing? I hope Southend does just as well. Money for Southend and money for Na h-Eileanan an Iar.

[Anna Firth]

No, I do not accept that at all. My understanding is that regions have had just as much money as they would have had. I particularly welcome the £27 million of levelling-up funding that Southend has already received, and the £20 million that has been given to the old port of Leigh to enable our famous cockle industry to provide employment well into the future.

Now Southend is a city, we need to go further and faster. A key part of this Bill is recognising that levelling up means restoring civic pride and spreading opportunity through investment in culture. For Southend that means becoming an international centre for culture and, of course, following Bradford as the UK’s next city of culture.

Levelling up must mean delivering a long overdue shot in the arm for a once ignored community. Southend has an international award-winning music and performance charity for people with learning disabilities. It is the first of its kind in the world, and I am grateful to Ministers for engaging with me on this project.

The Music Man Project was founded by the remarkable David Stanley BEM, and it oversees a global network of special needs music educators from Southend to South Africa. Students develop confidence and a clear sense of identity by giving hundreds of largescale public performances, including at the London Palladium and the Royal Albert Hall. Through the power of music, students with learning disabilities in Southend gain high-quality skills, becoming far better equipped for the workplace. Despite being an international beacon of disability potential, the Music Man Project does not yet have a specialist permanent facility of its own. It needs premises that would enable disabled people to access specialist music education in an equivalent way to someone who is not disabled. It needs premises that would enable us to host concerts to showcase disability talent, record disability music making and enable collaborations between non-disabled and disabled creative artists. There can be no more deserving project for levelling-up funding than to take this once ignored community from isolation to opportunity. I hope that the Minister will confirm in his winding-up speech that projects such as this will be prioritised for levelling-up funding.