Affordable Housing

Baroness Humphreys Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Humphreys (LD)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to those already expressed to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for initiating this interesting debate. I am sure that your Lordships, and, indeed, the Minister, will understand if I restrict my comments to the existing supply of affordable housing in Wales, and in particular the case for increasing it.

I remember, perhaps eight years ago, attending a housing conference in north Wales and castigating the Welsh Labour Government for the fact that there were 80,000 households in Wales on waiting lists for homes. Despite all the words, plans and promises I heard from the Welsh Government Ministers and housing officials that day—and, I will admit, all the hard work in the mean time—the situation overall has not improved. Shelter Cymru—Shelter Wales—estimates that 90,000 households are on waiting lists for homes in Wales, with all the personal anxieties that that entails. It also estimates that we need 5,000 new affordable homes every year. It makes the point that we need not only to make the case for increasing the supply of affordable homes but to find ways to increase the supply. It has been very informative to hear experienced voices here pointing the way forward.

Although there has been some increase in the supply of affordable homes in Wales in recent years, which is to be commended, it does not make up for the lack of building in previous years. It certainly has not met and does not meet demand. As a relatively young borough councillor in the 1980s, I experienced the impact of the right to buy local authority homes scheme and the frustration that my council colleagues felt because we were prevented from using the receipt from the sales to reinvest in new social housing. The housing associations that were formed at that time struggled, and still struggle, to meet demand, and along with others I despair at the impact of the right to buy housing association homes and the loss to the social housing numbers. To add to an already difficult situation, Shelter Cymru also reports that social housing repossessions hit a seven-year high last year in Wales, with nearly 1,000 social tenant households losing their homes, the majority of them having to turn to the private rented sector.

The area I live in is extremely beautiful at this time of year, as are most rural areas. However, the beauty of the area masks the reality of social and affordable housing in our rural communities. Conwy council has seen house prices soar and, like our neighbouring county of Gwynedd, admits that one of its biggest challenges is to provide affordable housing for people who have been priced out of the housing market. Gwynedd and part of Conwy make up the largest part of the Snowdonia National Park: breathtaking scenery, I know, and a wonderful place to live, but the reality of living in a national park can equate to planning restrictions, a lack of development and industry, and living somewhere that is sometimes described as being preserved in aspic.

People living in Gwynedd and Conwy rely on the tourism industry for employment—employment that is often seasonal and part-time. Well over a quarter of all employment in the Conwy county borough area is related to tourism. In fact, many people have two or three part-time jobs to help make ends meet. In our part of the world, we knew all about zero-hours contracts before the term was invented. In Conwy, the proportion of part-time workers is high at 42%, compared with a Great Britain figure of 31%, and wage levels in Conwy county borough are significantly below levels for Great Britain as a whole at only 88% of the average.

During the last few years, both Gwynedd and Conwy have encouraged the development of attractions that are open throughout the year and give employees the opportunity of a year-round wage, using our natural environment to build the local economy. If you care to visit Snowdonia at any time of the year, you can climb trees and use high ropes to move from one treetop to the other, take a trip on the longest zip wire in the northern hemisphere across a slate quarry, bounce to your heart’s content on large trampolines in massive underground slate caverns and, from 1 August, surf on the world’s longest man-made surfing wave, which will create six-foot barrels once a minute—I do not really understand that—in Surf Snowdonia’s new surfing and water sports park. These are ambitious attempts to increase employee incomes but, with many inhabitants in both Gwynedd and Conwy surviving on part-time or low wages, providing affordable and social housing is obviously a challenge and replicates the situation in rural areas throughout the UK.

I can see that my time is up but, as I make my final point, there is one question which the Minister might want to answer, which is the responsibility of the UK Government. Less than 15% of Conwy’s social housing stock is in one-bedroom accommodation, and the council itself admits that this,

“limits the opportunities for tenants to downsize if they are affected by caps on housing benefits due to under occupation in their existing accommodation”.

In circumstances such as these, does the Minister agree that, if residents have made two attempts at downsizing and cannot move because of the lack of alternative properties, they should not be penalised by having to pay the bedroom tax?