Housing: Young People

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for tabling this most important debate and, as always, for sharing his very considerable expertise and for all the work that he has done in the past and in your Lordships’ House to champion housing and the many issues related to housing and planning. As usual, he does not clap with one hand. He raised some important issues around downsizing incentives, incentivising to sell properties from the private rented sector and institutional finance, especially pension funds. That is something we definitely have to look at. It would resolve some of the investment issues that were raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. I am not so sure about his idea on lifetime tenancies, but we need to have a look at more issues around tenancies.

I thank my noble friend Lady Donaghy for her words and for reminding us of the inspirational Lord McKenzie, who I knew very well. It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. I agree with him on the right-to-buy issues. Just this week we learned that the retention of right-to-buy receipts at 100% has been cancelled by the Secretary of State—a completely incomprehensible decision.

It is shocking to realise that this year we have over 136,000 young people aged between 16 and 25 who are approaching their councils as homeless. This represents a 5% increase on the year before. Even worse, this is the very tip of the iceberg. The median age of people presenting as homeless is just 32, with many being much younger. There is also a gender issue: for females presenting as homeless it is even younger, at just 25. With homelessness increasing dramatically across the country, as we have heard in so many recent debates in this House, it is worrying to see the evidence that those who become homeless at a young age will be far more likely to face multiple long-term challenges.

I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for starting with two anonymised stories from my casework which illustrate some of the many issues that lead to homelessness and to hidden homelessness. The first is Alison, a qualified nurse working in the NHS. She came to my surgery and asked very calmly whether we thought that it was reasonable that she had been sleeping on the sofa at a friend’s house for seven years. She patiently explained the issues that this caused in relation to her shift work. As a single working woman in her late 20s, she was very low priority for social housing, but her low salary and the scarcity of affordable private rented accommodation excluded her from those options. She was too concerned about the pressure on her finances to seek a mortgage and had little enough money left at the end of the month to save for a deposit anyway. Alison was one of the hidden homeless, which I will talk about more later. Her case illustrates just how skewed allocation policies have become, in terms of homelessness prevention, for all but the most extreme cases.

Shannon also came to see us. She had been thrown out of the family home when she told her dad that she was gay. He had attacked her with a whisky bottle and told her never to come near the house again. Shannon had a pet dog which gave her emotional support in this awful situation. Although keeping him excluded her from much of the emergency hostel-type accommodation, she could not bear to part with him. She was working full-time in a restaurant, so she slept outside the restaurant in the bushes and then washed and changed in the restaurant before starting work.

This illustrates one of the many types of family breakdown that can lead to young people becoming homeless. We all know that there are multiple potential causes of homelessness among our young people and that the chronic undersupply of housing—of all tenures but particularly affordable rented and social rented homes —makes matters far worse for them. For some of our young people, it is simply the lack of support networks from family or community that would help them navigate the complexities of securing housing in this country. Family breakdown because of parental conflict, as in Shannon’s case, divorce, abuse or neglect, domestic abuse or bereavement, can all lead to homelessness, as can their own or a carer’s mental health issues.

We had a powerful debate in your Lordships’ House recently on poverty, led by the noble Lord, Lord Bird. We all know that poverty is the major driver of homelessness. For young people, this can mean their parents can no longer afford to have them living at home, and with over 1.2 million families now living in poverty, this brings an enormous impact. Financial deprivation stays with those young people. While for some, the bank of Mum and Dad will help with housing or rental deposits, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for others whose early life may also have been marked by housing insecurity, no such facility exists.

There are other groups more at risk too, including those from black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups, young people from the LGBT+ community and young asylum seekers and refugees. There are also regional disparities: the north-east has the highest level of youth homelessness in the UK. The noble Lord, Lord Best, often refers, rightly, to the disparities of housing availability in rural areas. Every year, as the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, mentioned, 100,000 young people leave local authority care, and this group are particularly at risk of homelessness. Some 14% of them will have slept rough and 26% will be sofa surfing. It is vital that the corporate parenting role undertaken with looked-after children does not hit a cliff edge when they reach 18. Most parents will know that young people making the transition into adult life is the point at which they need more support, not for it to come to an end. Can the Minister tell us whether the Government have given thought to how this transition may be better managed and housing policy designed to support young care leavers?

We saw the considerable efforts made to tackle rough sleeping during the pandemic, and more can be done to learn the lessons from this, including considering the “invest to save” impact of schemes such as Housing First, where emergency accommodation is provided alongside a package of support for complex needs. Are the Government looking at schemes like this around the country to help prioritise funding decisions and what comparative assessment has been done with some of the initiatives being developed in Wales and Scotland?

Rough sleeping is the tip of the iceberg: many people will be living the precarious life of sofa surfing, hostels and temporary accommodation. That can be entirely unsuitable for vulnerable young people: just imagine a vulnerable young female care leaver in a shared house with violent ex-offenders. This hidden homeless issue continues to get worse as there are few statistics collected, either on the numbers or on the impact this has on the lives of young people. Can the Minister tell us whether any work is going on in government to address this?

As usual, many local authorities—including my own, through Herts Young Homeless—have stepped up, despite the financial situation, with a range of interventions to tackle homelessness among young people. These include: prevention and early intervention to provide mediation to resolve family conflict; talking to young people in schools about housing and homelessness; crisis support which ensures that young people at risk of homelessness can access advice and guidance quickly and that, where necessary, they can access other support such as for emergency mental health needs; independent living support for young adults who do not have that support from friends or family; and advice on funding the housing, setting up bill payments, managing money, cooking, jobseeking and how to manage independent living.

The best local areas have Future Roots programmes, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, that provide tailored transition for vulnerable young people with supported living accommodation until they are ready to live independently. Although these approaches are best practice, they are not universal. Are the Government taking more steps to promote and share this best practice, preferably incentivised with some funding, and has any analysis been carried out of the long-term benefits of such preventive steps?

At the heart of this problem is the wider problem of the crisis in housing supply of all tenures. Noble Lords have referred to many of the interventions that will be needed to address that. The record on housing is simply not good enough. If the situation continues as it is, we will see further generations of young people whose life opportunities are limited by poor housing, with consequential impacts on their education, health and employment. That is why my party’s plan to build 1.5 million homes over the course of the next Parliament is at the heart of the surge we need to kickstart a housing recovery plan. We must restore the targets removed by the Secretary of State last year, as other noble Lords have mentioned. If we do not have targets locally, how will we ever achieve a national target? For young people it is social homes that often provide the start in adult life that they need. Last week, the outstanding report by Cebr for Shelter and the National Housing Federation showed conclusively that building 90,000 social homes each year would have a combined socioeconomic value of around £50 billion—last year, we built just 9,000.

Young people are disproportionately affected by practices in the private rented sector and leasehold markets. Some of them move very frequently, at a cost estimated by the Renters Reform Coalition of around £1,700 each time they move. We hoped that the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill and the Renters (Reform) Bill would scrap the tenure of leasehold and end the injustice of Section 21, but we now find that both those Bills have been watered down. I hope we will get the chance to reinstate some of those promises in your Lordships’ House.

My parents were given the start they needed for their married and family life by opportunities presented in Britain’s first post-war new town, Stevenage. That is why I was so delighted to hear my party’s pledge of a new generation of new towns, based on sustainable principles and with communities enjoying a quality of life that balances economy, environment and social aspects with high-quality housing, including a new social housing renaissance. We need a long-term housing strategy that gets the houses built that we know we need, through a planning system designed for the builders, not the bureaucrats. Labour will undertake a complete reform of planning to unblock it and get Britain building. I do not have time to go into the detail today, but I think we should have another debate on that. For our young people, what we need within that housing strategy is a national plan to tackle young homelessness, before we undermine the potential and opportunities of another generation of young people by failing them on housing.

The noble Lord, Lord Young, is right to point out that there have 16 Housing Ministers since 2010; that does not help. This Government have had 14 years to address the chronic housing problems this country faces, which are still getting worse. Is it not time we had a general election, to give these young people their future back?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham for bringing forward this important debate, and also for the continued passion and knowledge that he gives to this House about the sector. I appreciate his challenge, as I am sure many others in the Chamber do. This is an important debate about the needs of young people within the overall housing market and I thank all other noble Lords who have spoken today for their considered and insightful contributions.

Throughout the debate, we have heard about the challenges the younger generation of this country face in achieving home ownership, and in accessing affordable housing to rent. Securing affordable, decent and stable homes is critical to ensuring young people can meet major life milestones, move for career opportunities, and start a family. The Government are committed to delivering the warm, safe, decent and affordable housing needed to support them through their life journeys.

Young people are part of a housing market significantly different from the one experienced by previous generations. Children of home owners are over twice as likely to be home owners than children of renters—an issue raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Donaghy and Lady Thornhill. The dependence on the bank of mum and dad, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Attlee, to afford a home shows the difficulties in accessing the housing ladder. This is reflected in how the historic home ownership rate for those aged 25 to 34 has fallen from 51% in 1989 to 28% in 2019.

The Government have worked hard to reverse these historic trends with our long-term housing strategy. We have made huge strides since 2010 to increase home ownership, provide stability and security for those renting, and improve the quality of houses young adults own and rent. This will ultimately improve their life outcomes and quality of life. The hundreds of thousands of new homes we are delivering will create the homes young people need now and in the future. I am proud of the progress this Government have made to deliver on these priorities, but we cannot stop. We will therefore continue to press ahead in meeting these challenges.

First, almost all noble Lords brought up the planning system. We have built more homes in places young people want to live, and at prices that they can afford. Since 2010, over 2.5 million additional homes have been delivered, and the four highest rates of additional housing supply in over 30 years have all come since 2018. Increasing housing supply is at the heart of solving our housing challenges; crucial to that is reforming our planning system. Not only must we have enough homes in the right places, we must also have homes suitable for those with a range of needs, including those with disabilities and special care needs, and the vulnerable.

My noble friends Lord Young of Cookham, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Attlee raised important questions about how we are unblocking the planning system to deliver the houses that we need in the places where we need them. Building on our work since 2010, in December 2023 the Government revised the National Planning Policy Framework in response to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act. The framework sets out the Government’s planning policies for England and how we expect them to be applied. While the Government’s standard method for assessing local housing need is used to assess the total number of homes needed in a local area, the framework makes it clear that local authorities should assess the size, type and tenure of housing needed for different groups, including young people, young people with disabilities, care leavers and students.

Government housing targets have not changed. We remain committed to our ambition to deliver 300,000 homes a year. The Secretary of State’s Written Ministerial Statement of 6 December 2022 confirmed that the standard method for assessing local housing need will be retained. The Government have made it clear that every local authority is expected to progress their local plans. If sufficient progress is not made, the Secretary of State will consider using his powers of intervention to ensure that plans are put in place. We also recently consulted on proposals to implement reforms to plan-making processes to ensure that plans are prepared in 30 months. The reason for that is that we know that local authorities that have up-to-date local plans deliver more houses.

The Government have in place a strong programme of support to upskill the capacity and capability of local planning authorities, as raised by my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough. This includes a £13.5 million “planning super-squad” of leading planners and other experts that will deploy teams of specialists into planning authorities to accelerate development and a £29 million planning skills development delivery fund to help planning authorities deal with the backlog of planning applications ahead of the forthcoming changes to the planning system through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act. To ensure that local authorities are doing everything they can to build the homes that are needed, in February this year the Secretary of State set out clear expectations for every council in England to prioritise building on brownfield developments —a key point raised by my noble friend Lord Jackson.

However, it is not enough just to build more houses. The Government are committed to ensuring that the planning system creates more beautiful and sustainable buildings and places everywhere, as raised by the noble Lord, Lord Best. The duty introduced through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act for all local councils to produce a design code at the spatial scale of their authority area will give design codes significant weight when planning applications are determined, and the establishment of the Office for Place will support the creation of healthy, beautiful places. This Government will not compromise on quality and beauty.

Turning to housing supply, an area raised by the noble Lord, Lord Best, with regard to the 300,000 target, I recognise the significant challenges faced by the housebuilding sector in the current economic climate. The Government continue to prioritise support to the industry and local areas as part of our commitment to deliver 1 million new homes over the lifetime of this Parliament, which we are on track to deliver. This is critical in ensuring that housing across that the market is affordable—a crucial topic raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. We are investing billions to support housebuilding and achieve that commitment, including through our £1 billion brownfield, infrastructure and land fund, and to manage different drivers of demand, such as migration—an important area raised by my noble friend Lord Lilley. Our £1.2 billion local authority housing fund is providing capital funding directly to councils. It will provide capital funding to local authorities to obtain better-quality temporary accommodation for those owed homelessness duty and to provide safe and suitable homes for those on the Afghan resettlement schemes—an extremely important point noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine.

As my noble friend Lord Jackson mentioned, ensuring that we are facilitating institutional investment in housebuilding in this country is of paramount importance. The £1.5 billion Levelling Up Home Building Fund leverages institutional investment from both private capital and pensions to achieve our ambitions.

My noble friend Lord Jackson and the noble Lord, Lord Best, raised the recent Competition and Markets Authority report on housebuilding. I welcome the report. The Government will carefully consider the findings and the recommendation to formally respond to it within 90 days of publication.

I want to note where we have made substantial progress through our delivery of affordable homes, an issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Best, in particular. Since 2010 we have delivered almost 700,000 new affordable homes, making it easier for young people to access the housing ladder. We have scaled up the delivery of affordable housing by investing £11.5 billion through the affordable homes programme, working ambitiously towards meeting our target of a quarter of a million new affordable homes.

At the same time, we have taken steps to reduce demand competition. Although the expansion of the short-term lets market has brought a range of benefits, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, we want to ensure that housing continues to be affordable. That is why the Government have announced a mandatory national short-term lets registration scheme to provide valuable information to local authorities in supporting the application and enforcement of planning changes. The Government also introduced higher rates of stamp duty land tax in April 2016 for those purchasing additional properties.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, raised the issue of the Church of England’s report Coming Home, which argued that an ambitious approach is needed to solve the housing challenges facing this country. As he said, it was debated in detail on 24 February, when the Government set out the comprehensive long-term housing strategy in responding to those challenges.

Turning to home ownership, the Government have a robust programme of interventions. My noble friend Lord Young, the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, raised the important question of how we are making it easier for young people to buy their own home. One key programme to note, shared ownership, is a unique scheme targeted at first-time buyers. It allows young people to purchase a share of a home through a mortgage while paying rent at below-market value on the rest of the home. Over time, young people can buy more shares, until they have bought the home in its entirety. I have seen many schemes like this and how pleased young people, particularly young families, are when they feel they are getting towards owning that home of their own.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

Many young people who have gone into those schemes are now having incredibly high service charges imposed on them, and we need to come back to that issue when we look at the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill. In a case I saw today, the charge had gone up from £94 a month to over £600, and as a result that young couple cannot sell the property or afford to live in it. The colloquial term for this is “fleecehold”. We need to think very carefully about those schemes.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right, and I have heard similar stories. That is why we have the leaseholder Bill coming through, which we will be debating in just a few weeks’ time.

In 2022-23, of those reported to my department, an estimated 77% of shared ownership purchases were made by first-time buyers and 33% of those purchases were made by buyers under the age of 30—a testament to the effectiveness of the action of this Government. Furthermore, our First Homes scheme offers first-time buyers under the age of 40 a minimum 30% discount on the price of an eligible new home, helping the younger generation get a foothold on the property ladder. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, asked for further detail on what the programme has delivered. I have only the top line, which is that there were 1,250 completions through the First Homes early delivery programme to the end of September 2023. If the noble Baroness wants more detail, she is welcome to come and ask me.

Through our lifetime ISA scheme, we have helped more than 56,000 account holders to become first-time buyers. More recently, we have recognised and responded to the challenging market conditions for lenders and buyers alike through the introduction of the mortgage guarantee scheme. This supports participating lenders to continue providing 5% deposit mortgages. We have extended this until June 2025 so that we can continue providing this vital support.

My noble friend Lord Young raised the question of stamp duty, land tax and cutting capital gains tax when landlords sell to sitting tenants. The Government have already taken action by cutting stamp duty during the pandemic, up to March 2025. This is reducing the financial burden on first-time buyers across the country, but particularly in and around London and the south-east, where these pressures are felt most acutely. On cutting capital gains tax for landlords’ sales to sitting tenants, this is not a policy the Government are currently considering. Taxation is a matter for the Chancellor and any decisions he takes on tax are considered, obviously, in the context of the wider public finances.

On the work of government on preventing homelessness and rough sleeping, as raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornhill and Lady Valentine, I want to set out the measures we have prioritised to prevent vulnerable people—young people particularly—such as care leavers ending up homeless. In 2022 we published our cross-government strategy Ending Rough Sleeping for Good, which recognised that young people face particular challenges accessing and maintaining accommodation.

For young people with disabilities, my department, alongside the Department for Health and Social Care and the NHS, provides capital grant funding to subsidise the delivery of a new supply of supported housing, including for disabled people. Young people with disabilities who satisfy needs-assessment eligibility criteria and a means test benefit from a wider statutory duty to provide home adaptions. There are powers to provide adaptions for those who do not qualify under that duty. Under this Government, the disabled facilities grant has risen from £220 million in 2015-16 to £625 million in 2024-25—a more than doubling of the grant. This has been well received by disabled people.

When young people do find themselves homeless or at risk of homelessness, within the next 56 days they are owed a homelessness duty by their local authority. Our single homelessness accommodation programme will deliver over 650 homes and support services for young people in this situation. This is in addition to other support, including the £109 million top-up to the homelessness prevention grant for councils and an initial £6 million for rough sleeping winter pressures.

Many of our young people want to be free to move to places where they can connect their talents with economic opportunities before choosing to settle down. This is where the private sector steps in. Increasing security and quality in the private rented sector requires ambitious reforms and the Government have stepped up to deliver. We have introduced the Renters (Reform) Bill, which will support tenants with a raft of measures, including applying the decent homes standard to the private rented sector for the first time and abolishing Section 21 evictions. The Bill is awaiting Report in the other place, which is subject to parliamentary scheduling, and it will be announced in the usual course of business management. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, that the proportion of private rented sector households has remained relatively stable for nearly a decade, and the number of renters has doubled since 2004.

For those in the social rented sector, we have enshrined in law, through the Social Housing (Regulation) Act, a rebalancing of the relationship between landlord and tenant. We are ensuring that landlords are held to account for their performance—an important step in improving the quality of houses across the market, which was an issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine. We are creating a housing market fit for the future.

The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill will reform the outdated leasehold system in this country. From 2025, the future homes standard will future-proof our homes, ensuring that new homes produce at least 75% less CO emissions than those built to previous standards. We know that making long-term changes takes time to deliver, and the Government are doing all they can against a challenging economic background to ensure that the younger generation can access affordable, safe and high-quality housing.

Following the £188 million allocation to the housing projects in Sheffield, Blackpool and Liverpool at the Convention of the North on 1 March, last week’s Spring Budget allocated over £240 million to housing projects in London, an area where affordability is challenging, particularly for young people, as we have heard today.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham and others brought up intergenerational housing. I totally agree with them that we need better older people’s housing and more choice for older people because, if we give them better housing and more choice, we can start to move the housing stock around. Some local authorities are doing that really well, but more can be done. The Government’s independent older people’s housing task force is looking at housing for older people, and it will make its final recommendations to Ministers this summer.

I hope I have answered as much as I can—