Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Brendan Clarke-Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Brendan Clarke-Smith (Bassetlaw) (Con) [V]]

They say an Englishman’s home is his castle—or a person’s home is their castle, if they prefer—and in this country we have led the way in home ownership for many, many years. What we must now focus on is making that dream a reality for today’s young people and their families.

I remember my father telling me about his own upbringing in the impoverished Meadows area of Nottingham, and the stories of tin baths in the yard and a large family crammed into very small accommodation. In the 1950s, the family moved to newly built Clifton estate—then the largest council estate in Europe. It had well built homes, indoor bathroom facilities and bedrooms suitable for families. Many of the families who moved to the estate are still there today, and I am proud to hail from that community. It was the right to buy and the vision of Margaret Thatcher that encouraged many of those people later to pursue the dream of home ownership, and today the area stands as a testament to the success of that scheme.

Compared with those families who moved in the 1950s, we live in a very different age. As we have heard, the people born between 1981 and 2000 are half as likely to be homeowners as those born between 1946 and 1975. I was born in the 1980s, but I am not quite sure where I fit in there—I probably just missed it. Home ownership does not just give us a stake in society; it provides us with security and gives us something to hand down to our children, to give them a better life. Although some decry the sale of council houses, it should be recognised that if they had not been sold, people would still be living in them anyway, so it does not affect general problems with supply. The fact is that we need greater supply of housing, and that means building more homes, not just for the future but for today’s families.

People in Bassetlaw want to be able to buy a house at an affordable price and have access to the funds needed to finance that. The emphasis nowadays must be on helping people on to the housing ladder. That is why schemes such as shared ownership, Help to Buy and the new 95% mortgages will make such a great difference and help people to realise that dream.

Gone are the days of cheap and nasty buildings, whacked up to meet targets with no regard for infrastructure, building design and quality, or community cohesion. We must learn from the mistakes of the 1960s and ’70s. We must ensure that we build the right sort of housing in the right areas and that developments are not over-intensive, like some we have seen in Worksop, Retford and Harworth. That is why having a good neighbourhood plan that properly takes into account what the community wants enables councils and communities to turn down applications without endless appeals from developers.

We need good-quality family homes. The houses need to be affordable for the right reasons and not because corners have been cut, as they were in the past. Affordable must not mean low standard. The new planning reforms will help to ensure that, as well as help people on to that very British ladder of home ownership.