Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

I will return to the issue of capturing land value with later amendments covering privately owned land. However, this amendment—requiring public bodies to look at their landholdings, determine their optimal use and dispose of their sites on terms that make these optimal uses viable—stands in its own right. It would bring thousands of sites, large and small, into play on terms that make possible all the good things that local communities need. I commend the amendment.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 312A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best. I declare my interest as a patron of the Community Land Trust Network, and a vice-president of the LGA. I apologise for not being present at Second Reading.

As always the noble Lord, Lord Best, has fully set out the rationale behind this amendment, which is quite complex. He gave an example of a redundant hospital which could have been used for extra care. When considering disposing of land they own, local authorities and other bodies feel that they have to get the best price possible. This often means that local communities are cut out of the equation, even when they may have excellent plans for a site or building. The inclusion of this proposed new clause introduces the duty to optimise the use of public land, which is quite different from getting best value or best consideration.

Often, local community land trusts are formed specifically to provide housing in areas which are either unviable for developers or on small and difficult sites. The local community has, however, identified a need for housing that may be of mixed type and tenure. For example, there may be young families wishing to stay in the area and, equally, there may be older people wishing to downsize but there is nothing of the right size in the area; it could also be for single young people wishing for a space of their own. The price of land is expensive and local authorities are obliged to get best value, which means going with the highest bidder, although this may not always meet the needs of the community. If local authorities are permitted to make the optimal use of public land, this opens up the availability of land for communities to have the facilities and homes that they need. I will try to explain this by giving an example. If a council has policies in certain areas—such as increasing social housing and achieving net zero—the council could then say, “How much would it cost somebody to develop homes on this site to achieve net-zero standards? What would the homes sell for or what would the rent be?” If this cost is deducted from the value of the land, you arrive at the correct valuation that will achieve the optimal use for the site.

It may be that a community is looking not for homes but to enter into a community shop run by volunteers. Both small rural shops and pubs have closed at an alarming rate over recent years; communities are now discovering what a valuable asset they have lost in terms of shopping at a convenient local venue and a venue where they could meet for a coffee and a chat. Perhaps a small local school has stood empty for some time, and it could be attractive to a developer. At the same time, it could be the saviour of the community in bringing residents together to create a much-needed facility for use by all ages. Levelling up is surely about the examples that I and others have given.

This is a complex subject but one that the Government are aware of. The Secretary of State received a letter in December 2021 on it and there has been subsequent correspondence with DLUHC. There were over 34 signatories to the original letter and the amendment is supported by various luminaries of the planning and real estate profession, including Yolande Barnes, professor of real estate at UCL, and various chairs and former chairs of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, including members and fellows.

The credentials of what is proposed have strong foundations. The noble Lord, Lord Best, has made a strong and lucid case for this amendment, which will make a real difference to the way in which local authorities, mayoral development corporations, Homes England and others approach the issue of best consideration for land, which should be a great asset to all communities. I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Best, and other speakers on this group of amendments.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and to join her in commending the noble Lord, Lord Best, and his expert collaborators on tackling a huge issue for communities up and down the land, but particularly for some of our most disadvantaged communities. It is important that we put this in the context of where we are now. Since the late 1970s, about half of all public land— 2 million hectares in total—has been sold from public to largely private hands. That means that local government has 40% less landholding than it did four decades ago; the NHS estate is down by 70%.

What we have seen, as we have heard from other speakers in this group, is not just a loss of land—people might or might not have ideological views about that—but a loss of capacity, facilities, access for local people, and the simple destruction of what had been a public resource. I think of one of these that I visited a few years ago on the Isle of Wight, a particularly tragic tale. The Frank James Hospital had been donated as a charity—a beautiful, big piece of land. It was a public facility that over decades—the best part of a century—the public had raised money for and put money into, but was sold 20 years ago to a developer and is still sitting there rotting.

Closer to us here, some noble Lords may know of Caxton Hall, which was a huge centre of historical interest and a place to hold public meetings in the vicinity of Westminster, at one point fairly affordably—something that anyone who has tried to organise one of those will know is a very rare breed indeed these days. Now it is, of course, private flats.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, has hit on something really important here, and I offer to do what I can to work with him if he wishes to take this forward into the next stage of the Bill. We have lost space for political campaigning. We have lost space particularly for our young people—those public spaces were often where young people gathered and where they were not surveilled, overseen, and expected to spend money; they were just a public space for young people to gather. So much of that has been lost. As I think the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, said through the ventriloquism of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, this is very much a levelling-up issue. When you go to the poorer communities around our country, the public spaces have been sold off, but they also do not have even private spaces that you could rent because there is not enough money to support that kind of private space. This is a crucial issue to pick up in the Bill.

I will briefly comment on the Government’s Amendment 165, which broadly concerns the principle of choosing to dispose of land for “less than best” consideration. It is an excellent idea. The example that comes to mind is of a police and crime commissioner deciding to give at very low cost, perhaps even at peppercorn cost, a piece of land that might be used to build a youth centre on—that facility that we have lost so terribly in most parts of the country. That would clearly be a very good thing for a police and crime commissioner to do, directly serving their mandate.

What worries me a little about this is the Secretary of State consent element, which is just one more centralisation. I wonder whether there should not be a range of local and regional bodies having an input, rather than it coming down to Westminster. None the less, I applaud some degree of progress.