Housing: Long-term Plan

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bridgen]

I thank the Minister for agreeing to a meeting. I hope that he and our Liberal Democrat colleagues will bear it in mind that if every constituency in the country was completing homes at the same rate as North West Leicestershire, there would be more than 450,000 new homes this year, which is one and a half times the Liberal Democrat target.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

With his great expertise and knowledge of house building, would my hon. Friend ever contemplate building on the green belt?

[Andrew Bridgen]

There is no green belt in my constituency, but there is a green wedge, which is a valued area of separation between Coalville and the villages of Swannington, Whitwick and Thringstone. In a recent survey, it was claimed to be the most valued green space in the whole of Leicestershire. It is under threat from developers at the moment and we wish to defend it from that.

[Bob Stewart]

So the answer is no.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Indeed.

The Government have announced that there will be 400,000 new affordable homes and they aim, as the Minister mentioned, to have planning permission in place on 90% of suitable brownfield sites by 2020.

In summary, it can be seen from my constituency that the Government are delivering not just houses, but good-quality, well-designed homes that will provide much more social benefit and a better quality of life than many of the estates that were constructed in the past. Thanks to our long-term economic plan, house builders and home seekers have greater confidence to build and to purchase than at any time in the last decade.

The shadow Minister said in response to an intervention that I was obviously proud of my constituency. Indeed I am. Whether it is in housing, the fact that my constituency is delivering the highest economic growth outside London and the south-east, or the fact that unemployment is at an historic low of below 1%, I assure her that where North West Leicestershire leads, everyone else would be very wise to follow.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I declare my interest as a director of a shared ownership property portal and a mortgage broker. I want to make a couple of points about second-hand supply, which is often overlooked, and about estate regeneration, for which the Prime Minister has set out a very bold agenda. All the statistics show that there is a record low in the number of instructions to estate agents in the second-hand market. That is actually one of the main crises that we are facing, because the second-hand market forms such a large part of the market.

However, there is evidence that hope might be around the corner. We have recently heard a prediction from the National Landlords Association that 500,000 extra properties will come on to the market this year because of the buy-to-let tax changes and other changes that we are bringing in. I will put my neck on the line here and say that those measures represent the single most radical change that this Government have introduced so far, in the light of the wider impact that they will have. It is extraordinary to note, however, that just as it appears that those changes could have an impact, someone out there is going to go to court to try to stop them. I am of course talking about Cherie Blair. Looking at Blair Inc., we see that when Tony Blair finished as Prime Minister, he went round the world advising dodgy dictatorships, and that Cherie Blair is now going to lead a court action on behalf of, and defending, the rentiers. That is an interesting legacy indeed. It proves that champagne socialism is not yet dead.

On the regeneration agenda, I am proud that the Prime Minister has seized this important opportunity. He has set out plans to provide £140 million to transform 100 of our very worst estates. The theory behind estate regeneration is clear: it is that we can rebuild the very worst estates in the country and yet deliver a higher density of homes, thereby providing more housing for those who need it. That is an incredibly powerful agenda. Some will say, “Well, that all sounds very good in theory, but in practice those are people’s homes.” Developing those estates is not easy.

As the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on housing, I have had the privilege of visiting two major estate regeneration schemes in recent weeks: Woodberry Down in Hackney, and Elephant Road at the Elephant and Castle. In both cases, I saw the practical reality on the ground: we have rebuilt terrible sink estates with higher density housing of better quality and with a better eco-rating. We should be seizing this agenda. There is a link between the changes that we are bringing in on buy to let and the estate regeneration agenda.

[Bob Stewart]

Given my hon. Friend’s great expertise on this matter and my lack of knowledge, could he enlighten me as to what happens to the people who live on a sink estate when it is brought down and rebuilt? What happens to those people while they are having their homes rebuilt?

[James Cartlidge]

This is very simple. My hon. Friend is an expert on decanting, I think, and the answer to his question is that we decant them. That is the technical term. I am sure that this will be interesting to him, and I am sure that I know what he keeps in his decanter. It is probably the same nationality as his wife. The process is difficult, however, because we do have to decant those people. One solution, which we saw at Woodberry Down, is to build the new housing and decant the people in stages. We saw another solution at the Elephant and Castle, which was difficult but there was no alternative. It was to allow the estate to run down and become empty over time. That is the toughest part of the process.

The details of regeneration are incredibly difficult, as my hon. Friend the Housing Minister will know. However, the aim—which is the same as that of our policy on buy to let—is a one-nation Conservative housing policy that is about revitalising our worst estates and extending opportunities to first-time buyers, and if that hits some of those buy-to-let landlords, all I can say is that I wish them good luck in court but I believe we need a housing policy that is on the side of those who aspire to own their own home.