Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
Main Page: Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Housing and Planning Bill
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts
Lord Best
I shall speak briefly to Amendment 10, but I add my support for Amendment 4 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. Amendment 10 states that age-restricted housing schemes for older persons will be exempt from any requirement to provide starter homes. I do not think this will detain us for very long because it is pretty obvious that if you are building an extra care scheme for older people, or even a block of retirement apartments, there is no place for housing for people under 40, for whom starter homes are intended. The 22% requirement simply cannot apply if we are to have those homes built for older people. I therefore hope that the Minister will be able to be very reassuring on this point and that wherever a developer or a housing association puts in for planning consent for an extra care or continuing care development, a retirement village, a retirement community, a sheltered housing scheme or a retirement apartment block the planner will be able to say that in these cases there is no requirement to insist upon starter homes and that the developer can proceed with a scheme exclusively for older people. That will help younger people as well because nearly everyone who moves into a retirement apartment leaves behind a three-bedroom or possibly even a four-bedroom family home and frees a flow through the marketplace that helps everybody right through the system.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken on Report, I draw the attention of the House to my interests as set out in the register as a South Somerset District Council councillor and as a vice-president of the LGA.
I rise to support Amendment 10. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, ably demonstrated, age-restricted housing schemes for older people should, by their very nature, be exempt from the requirement to provide starter homes. The majority of these schemes will have been designed around the needs of older people and will be completely tailored to their needs. The ethos of the Government’s starter homes policy is targeted at younger people between the ages of 23 and 40. It would be inappropriate for starter homes to become part of an elderly people’s complex, and they should therefore be exempt. This should be clear in the Bill.
Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)
My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken on Report, I remind the House of my declaration of interests. It is long and exhaustive, and I do not propose to read it out again. Noble Lords should refer to previous copies of Hansard or to the register, where it is all recorded.
I support my noble friend Lord True on the age restriction. I would not go through the wrong Lobby on this minor issue, which is going to go to the other end of the building and hopefully someone will look at it, but the age restriction based on the arguments that were exercised in this House excludes some people who may well be able to purchase a starter home if they are not university students. To exclude people who are not university students because we are worried about avaricious parents of university students seems perverse. I hope the Government will try to work out a way in which we can get a restriction on people getting into schemes that does not preclude those youngsters—probably in couples, with trades behind them—who could earn enough money, subject to being able to get access to a deposit, for 80% of the value of the scheme where they would not for 100%. That aspect requires a bit more work.
In response to my noble friend Lord Best’s comments about properties for the elderly being excluded from this measure, quite clearly there would be an expectation that we would not be putting starter homes on elderly-unit accommodation. However, that is not to say that a developer, if the financial circumstances warranted it, should not be expected to pay a commuted sum to offset the cost of starter homes on an alternative site. Some more work needs to be done on this to ensure that we are not allowing some developers to get off without it while we are imposing it on others.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
In moving Amendment 6, I shall speak very strongly in support of the other amendments in this group. While the Government’s aim to provide starter homes for young people is to be commended, it should not be seen as the only route for people to access homes and accommodation. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, said and as was said in Committee, local authorities up and down the country continually update their housing requirements and are able to assess the local need for all types of social and affordable housing. There must therefore be a requirement for them to provide other forms of homes outside the starter homes programme, which they are willing and able to do.
A large of number of residents will require homes to rent, as their incomes and circumstances will preclude their buying a home of their own regardless of their desire to do so. The needs of such residents should be met by local authorities, which are keen to fulfil their housing function in this direction.
Alternative social and affordable housing will also include shared ownership—as has been said—and shared equity schemes, as well as social rented homes. For local authorities to focus entirely on the starter homes programme will leave a large number of families, couples and single people without any means to access a home. It is a basic right for every individual to have a home that is fit for purpose so that they may access employment and ensure that their children are able regularly to attend school.
Having carried out their housing needs surveys, English planning authorities should grant permission for residential developments only where their survey indicates a need and a demand for such housing. This could include starter homes but not to the exclusion of other forms of affordable housing. I look forward to the Minister’s response on this important matter and I beg to move.
Lord Kerslake (CB)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 8 and 9 and in doing so declare my interests as president of the Local Government Association and chair of Peabody.
The amendments form part of a series of amendments intended to make the Bill fairer, more localist and more workable, while respecting the manifesto commitments made by the Conservative Party during the general election last May. The specific purpose of Amendment 8 and the consequential Amendment 9—I would argue that it is consequential—is to place the responsibility for determining the proportion of starter homes in any particular development where it should properly lie: with the local planning authority.
We discussed at length during the Committee stage of this Bill, and indeed today, how starter homes as an initiative has moved from being an interesting and positive new way to provide additional supply of new housing to effectively replacing affordable rented housing in new developments, despite the fact that starter homes will serve a very different group of people, being available only to those on middle or higher incomes in those areas where housing is in high demand. Shelter has calculated, for example, that 98% of families who are on the Chancellor’s national living wage would not be able to afford a starter home.
In Committee, we also learned that there is not one housing market in this country but many, each with their own different needs and issues. It is for this very reason that we require each local authority to consider carefully its local housing needs and draw up a local plan to meet them. The Bill, however, gives the Secretary of State the power to prevent the approval of individual planning applications unless they have met the specified requirement for starter homes. It is hard to think of a more overbearing and centralising action that the Government could have taken on something that should so clearly be a matter for local decision. So far as I am aware, it is also completely without precedent. I cannot establish any previous Government who have sought to specify the types and tenures of housing in individual planning applications in this way.
On 23 March, just prior to the Easter Recess, the department issued a technical consultation document on starter homes. It proposed a single starter homes percentage of 20%, with exceptions only for very small sites and where the viability of the scheme was in question. The Government’s consultation document does not give an estimate of how many affordable rented houses this would displace but both the Local Government Association and Shelter believe this to be significant. Indeed, the department’s own numbers estimate that, in cash terms, 91% of affordable housing contributions on an average site will be redirected to starter homes.
I have no doubt that a figure of 20% starter homes will be right for some parts of the country, but I am equally clear that for many others it will not. There is a risk that further delays will be added to the planning process as local authorities struggle in individual applications to reconcile this top-down requirement with what they know is right for their own area. Amendment 8 leaves the choice with individual local authorities but makes clear that the local authority must have regard to the provision of starter homes when it comes to make its decision. This, taken with the general duty to promote starter homes that is already in Clause 3(1), will provide more than sufficient onus on local authorities to take forward the Government’s intentions. There is enough leverage already in the Bill. We must surely be able to trust local authorities to make the right decisions based on their own local needs and circumstances.
In other parts of the debate in Committee—for example, on the appropriate size of new housing—Ministers were clear in their view that local authorities are best placed to understand and decide what is required locally. This must surely be the case for type and tenure; otherwise, we are effectively in this Bill going for “pick and mix” localism.
Today the four leaders of the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and independent groups of the Local Government Association took the unusual step of writing a joint letter to the Guardian about the Bill. In it they say the following:
“Current proposals for starter homes carry a risk that a crucial supply of new affordable rented homes will be displaced, and despite 20% discounts they will still be out of reach for the majority of people in need of an affordable home. Councils support measures to boost home ownership, and starter homes are one of the ways this can be achieved, but we are also urging peers to back amendments allowing councils to decide how many starter homes, alongside affordable rented homes, are on each development to ensure they meet the needs identified by councils with their communities”.
The letter ends:
“New homes are badly needed and councils are keen to build them. The Local Government Association believes we will only see a genuine end to our housing crisis if we are able to get on with the job”.
Quite so.
I hope, even at this late stage, that the Government will see fit to accept this amendment.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
I thank the Minister for her response, which was quite encouraging but does not completely satisfy me. I thank all noble Lords who took part in this debate, especially the noble Lords, Lord Kerslake, Lord Beecham and Lord True. I am still concerned that local authorities that know their residents and what is going on in their areas, and are best placed to decide what types of housing are needed for their areas, will have to provide 20% starter homes on all their developments because that is the Government’s intention. I understand the need for starter homes and the Government’s wish to fill the gap in the market and to help people into home ownership. However, I believe it should be for local authorities to decide how best to fulfil this gap in the market. Nevertheless, having heard what the Minister said, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 6.
Lord Beecham
On behalf of the Opposition, I congratulate the noble Lord on apparently achieving his objective of persuading the Government to be reasonable. We very much welcome the indication that that will be the case. I hope this is a trailer for what might happen when we discuss right to buy and its impact in rural areas. It is a parallel situation. There are particular needs in those areas which have to be reflected in the legislation and the changes the Government envisage. I will not ask the Minister to commit herself today to that point, but we look forward to a sympathetic response on similar lines when we get to it. I am sure the House will join me in thanking the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Best, for pursuing this case so assiduously and with what is apparently a very satisfactory outcome—although we will read the small print when it arrives.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
I, too, thank the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Best, for having negotiated what looks like an agreement we can all sign up to, but I will be looking forward to the detail at Third Reading. I gave a long and detailed speech in Committee on this subject. Your Lordships will be pleased to know that I am not going to do the same today, but I still feel very passionately about rural exception sites and protecting rural communities, so I will be looking closely at what comes forward at Third Reading.
Lord Cameron of Dillington
I thank noble Lords for their support and congratulations, if that is the right word. I, too, look forward to the detail and possibly to having future discussions with the Minister but in the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.