Housing

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted that the time has been extended and that I am able to speak in the gap. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, on getting this interesting debate, which is so relevant at present. I remind the House that my interest is in the register and on record. I agree with the noble Baroness that quality and affordability are very important issues, and I was also interested that my noble friend Lord Patten used the word “accessibility”, whereas I would use the word “availability”. The little difference between the two is quite interesting, but I bring that word forward because I am very concerned about the dramatic reduction in the number of properties to let in London. Capital cities throughout the world are being badly affected by this craze for holiday lettings, usually carried out illegally, as court decisions have made clear. If your lease says you cannot do a short let, then why should you be able to do it?

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, mentioned last year and the time we spent on the Housing and Planning Bill. Sadly, we are still waiting for the draft regulations. We were assured they would be coming promptly, but nothing has happened. That has been very disappointing, but I was even more disappointed by the Deregulation Act, which threw out council controls of any sort of short-term letting or checks on who is in a property that is meant to be available for long-term letting to residents. Instead, such lets are being converted into full-time holiday and tourist lets, often very much to the detriment of other long-term residents in the blocks. It is more that people are out to make more money, and they can make much more money out of doing short lets. Although we were told that 90 days a year would be restrictive enough, it turns out that if you plan your 90 days around January, you can have 180 continuous days—I think my maths is correct. But people are not even bothering with that: they are letting places the whole year on short-term lets, which are registered mostly with Airbnb or similar organisations. At a time when Paris and New York—it is capital cities that are the worst affected—were proposing regulation, we were deregulating. That was a very unfortunate move, and I am hoping that some control will be brought back and that councils will have a minor role, but at least a role and a right to check on what is happening.

Westminster Council used to have six officers constantly checking who was doing an illegal or legal short let. People used to come to your door and say, “Who are you?”. You were meant to have applied for it—I cannot remember whether it was 10 days before, but it was a fair time. As times have moved on, and people are used to being able to fly somewhere at 24 hours’ notice, that was really not very relevant any more. Instead, the council said it would be willing to introduce a 24-hour registration, but at least it could have gone to someone’s door and said, “Who are you, how many of you are living in this property and how long are you here for?”. The whole concept of this originally was that you should be able to come and live in a room with your host and get a feeling of how people really lived in a country—see life locally, as it was. Instead, that has turned into large and lucrative full-time holiday letting which is affecting hotels adversely and is really quite worrying.

I have a Question next week on this subject, on Wednesday 19 October, and I hope the people who have taken part in the debate today will join in then on aspects that they think are relevant, because it is a serious matter. We cannot afford to lose long-term residential houses. The loss has been very great, and it is definitely to the disadvantage of people wishing to live in London to suddenly find a great shrinkage in the number of properties available. It was very interesting to hear the noble Lord, Lord Best; I can listen to him on the subject for ever because he knows so much about it. He said that under the build-to-rent scheme, which I had high hopes for, no more than 2% or 3% of the properties that are needed will be produced, and that is a cause for concern as well.

Time is running away now, and although we have plenty of time available for this debate I do not want to take too much of it. However, I will mention in passing that the leader of Camden Council appeared on television a week or so ago deploring the complete loss of residential accommodation to let in that area, and I think that is largely due to these tourist lettings and people out to make a killing.