Ebbsfleet Garden City: Update
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
I am today laying a departmental minute to advise that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has received approval from Her Majesty’s Treasury for a remote contingent liability for the Department arising from Ebbsfleet Development Corporation’s investment in the Ebbsfleet central site.
As part of the 2014 Budget, the Government announced plans to create a new garden city—the first in over a century—at Ebbsfleet, north Kent. The Government also established the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, a statutory body that reports to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, to bring forward the development of the garden city.
The Ebbsfleet garden city will help provide new homes and support wider economic growth across the Thames estuary.
The departmental minute describes the remote contingent liability DLUHC will incur in relation to EDC entering into an indemnity with HS1 Ltd. The remote contingent liability will remain for the short time that the works will be ongoing and will cease to exist once the occupiers of the land have signed off the works.
The Department will fund any expenditure should any claims be brought forward against EDC, through the normal supply procedure.
[HCWS581]
Planning Permissions and Unauthorised Developments
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
It is a great pleasure to speak in this important Adjournment debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) on raising an important issue on behalf of his and all our constituents, as well as our colleagues and partners in local government.
If we want our country to have a planning system that is prepared for the challenges of the future, we need to keep the conversation going about how the system will work in practice. I admire my hon. Friend’s personal commitment to the issue. If I may say so, there is certainly nothing woke about this bloke, because last year he proposed several interesting changes to the enforcement regime in the private Member’s Bill to which he alluded. We have had some constructive conversations about those changes, and I look forward to further such conversations to determine what we can take forward together. This matter may not generate as huge a number of column inches as other touchstone issues of our day, but I assure the House and my hon. Friend that the Government share his interest in and commitment to improving planning enforcement in this country.
I also share the interest shown by my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), and I am concerned by the ongoing issue he faces. He will appreciate that I should not say too much more about it because of my quasi-judicial role, but I am certainly happy to discuss his worries about inter-departmental connectivity—let us call it that—and how agencies work together to effect appropriate planning decisions. He will know that we propose to bring forward planning reform, and I will certainly talk to my colleagues at DEFRA and engage him in those conversations. He is a distinguished Member of this House with a distinguished ministerial career, and in his 21 years here he has been a doughty campaigner on his constituents’ behalf. He has demonstrated that again this afternoon.
It goes without saying that the overwhelming majority of people across the country will need to engage with our planning system only when they are looking for planning permission prior to any works they may want done. While a small number of works will inevitably slip through the net, with people accidentally undertaking work without realising it requires planning permission—most people, as my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington rightly said, want to play by the rules—some will try to bend the rules to their will by gambling that planning permission will be granted retrospectively.
That gamble should never be allowed to pay off. It shows contempt for the rules that hold the system together, and it is unacceptable to every person who approaches the planning regime with good faith. When the system is gamed, local authorities have an array of powers—my hon. Friend alluded to some of them—in their enforcement arsenal, including strong financial penalties for non-compliance. Councils can step in to suspend works on a site so that proper investigation can take place. Again, if an individual or companies try to subvert that process, they can find themselves facing an unlimited fine for non-compliance.
Bob Stewart
In support of my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), a close constituency neighbour, he and I both have a problem, because people gamble with the weekend. We must give local authorities the power to take immediate action when people start their work, as my hon. Friend said, on a Friday evening or Saturday morning and then work through the weekend before anyone can actually take enforcement action. Such action should be almost immediate, and the police should be given the power to evict people before they start building too much.
Christopher Pincher
My right hon. Friend makes a practical point, and I will come on to say something about the support we want to give local authorities so that they are better able to enforce the rules. It is all very well regulating, but regulations are only as good as the enforcement capability of those charges with that responsibility—[Interruption.] I note, as I look to my right, that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) appears to be about to get to his feet, so I shall pre-empt him by sitting down.
Jonathan Gullis
I thank my right hon. Friend. He will know that, when it comes to giving local authorities more powers, it is about tackling not just retrospective planning, but those who own buildings, especially heritage buildings, that they are allowing to fall into a state of disrepair by being either a rogue landowner or an absentee property owner. I have introduced the Planning (Proper Maintenance of Land) Bill—not a very sexy title, I accept—which seeks to increase the fines in section 216 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. I have obviously been lobbying the Minister relentlessly, and I could not waste this opportunity to ask him to confirm at the Dispatch Box that, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), my ten-minute rule Bill is certainly being considered as part of the planning reforms.
Christopher Pincher
I am never knowingly under-lobbied by my hon. Friend, and I salute not only his indefatigability in campaigning on this issue, but the elasticity with which he has shoehorned it into this particular debate. Let me assure him that the matter he raises is important, and we do want to address his concerns effectively when we bring forward our planning reform. I am sure we will be talking further with him about those matters.
I have said that councils can step in to suspend works and enforcement notices can be served, but if a council needs to go nuclear, it can apply for a planning injunction via a court order that would restrain any actual or expected breach of planning controls. The outcome of this sort of process can lead to jail time, assets being seized and fines being handed down.
Gareth Bacon
The Minister is completely correct in what he has just outlined. The problem, however, is that this all takes time. It takes time to get a court appearance and it takes time for the injunction to be issued. Injunctions can very often be ignored, and further legal action has to take place to issue stop notices or other such action. All the while, development continues and the landscape continues to get scarred, local residents continue to get very anxious, and more time and money is being spent by the council. Would the Minister acknowledge that this is in fact part of the problem, and would he concede that this could be looked at in future, potentially as part of the planning Bill when it comes to the House?
Christopher Pincher
I appreciate and recognise my hon. Friend’s concern. We do want to ensure that the innocent are not caught up in a regime that pursues the guilty, but we also want to ensure that the system is more speedy and has much greater deterrent effects on those who attempt to gamble with the law, those who attempt to bend it and, indeed, those who choose to break it.
We all recognise that the reason why we need the important debate my hon. Friend has brought to the House today is that we believe—we genuinely believe—that there is more that we can do, and there is more that we shall do. As everyone in the House will appreciate, we are committed to improving our planning system and making it one that delivers better outcomes for people in all parts of the country. It is going to be the bedrock of one of our principal missions, which is to level up the United Kingdom and to help revive and regenerate those areas that have long felt forgotten by politicians of all stripes in Westminster. In our constituencies, however affluent they may be on the face of it, we all have areas of our constituency where there is deprivation and where residents feel left behind, and we have to fix that.
When it comes to pulling the handbrake on unauthorised developments in their areas, we want to make it even easier for local planning authorities to step in and make sure that retrospective planning permission is not exploited by those bent on gaming the system. Let me be clear: retrospective applications are only for individuals or businesses that have made a genuine mistake. As my hon. Friend alluded to, the enforcement process needs to work better. We make that happen by closing loopholes, and strengthening the existing powers and penalties at our disposal.
As we modernise our planning system in England, we plan to engage with communities and key stakeholders throughout the planning process. Our ambition is to ensure that the outdated system, which is essentially a relic of the post-war period, is now made fit for the 21st century, with proper digitisation of applications so that residents can easily see the proposed development in their area at the touch of their smartphone screen. As my hon. Friend and others have said, we have all seen and read about egregious examples of people bending the rules on retrospective planning applications. My hon. Friend mentioned the situation of the caravan park in Chelmsford, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell mentioned the situation faced by his constituents in Epsom. We see such challenges from individuals and commercial organisations up and down the country.
The simple idea behind retrospective applications is that they give people who have failed to seek planning permission prior to building a structure a fair chance to get the necessary approvals.
Chris Grayling
My right hon. Friend made the important point that a retrospective application should only be for somebody who has made a genuine mistake. May I press him a little bit on that? Should a local authority—and, crucially, the inspectorate—disallow a retrospective application that is clearly not based on a genuine mistake?
Christopher Pincher
Essentially, it should, but of course there are legal interpretations that need to be considered. Therefore, we need to ensure that any rule changes that we make are right, that they do not allow the new system to be gamed and therefore brought into disrepute, and that they do not lead to unintended and unfair consequences for, shall we say, the innocent.
Over the years, the system has been deliberately gamed by cowboy builders creating large structures or even whole developments before trying their luck with the local council to see whether they can get retrospective planning permission. There is one infamous case in Bedfordshire, which saw a local business owner who was originally granted permission to make a modest improvement to his 1960s bungalow end up building a three-storey mega-mansion, complete with a turret and sweeping balconies. That is just not right; it is the sort of egregious development that should not be allowed.
In other cases, we have heard of, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) has said, lorries and building equipment arriving on site in the dead of night or at the weekend, and people laying internal roads and hardstanding without planning permission. Retrospective planning permission is then sought soon afterwards, and wrongly so. Clamping down on such flagrant planning violations and abuses of the system is going to be a key focus of my Department. It is one of the reasons why we have made intentional unauthorised development a material planning consideration, meaning that local authorities can factor in intent behind the unauthorised development when considering a retrospective application. In other words, it is not enough for builders to plead ignorance when it is plain for all—not least the planning authority—to see that they were well aware that their structure needed planning permission right from the outset.
Legislation also states that retrospective applications must be assessed in the same way as standard planning applications, so that permission cannot be granted retrospectively if there was little or no prospect of it being approved in the first place.
People making small improvements to their own home or garden are human, like all of us. Our constituents might not always think that we are human, but, like them, we are, and we know that genuine mistakes can be made. They will happen, so it would be unfair, where someone built their rear extension a foot too high, for example, or erected a fence in the wrong place, to take a sledgehammer to that work when retrospective planning permission would do. We have to be fair, as my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington said in his remarks.
With that principle in mind, while also accounting for the natural frustration that people and communities can feel about unauthorised development, criminalisation for infringements that fall into the minor or unwitting camp would be disproportionate. That is why we need to make sure that any changes we make are right and do not lead to unintended and unfair consequences.
As the House will know, we are considering a whole suite of possible planning reforms. I reassure my hon. Friend that that includes consideration of whether the current scope of offences is fit for purpose. He mentioned some matters, including using such terms as “egregious” in the law. We would need to look closely at that to ensure that there is a fair and proper legal interpretation of that word. He mentioned the greater use of fines, and we will certainly look at that possibility. The fundamental must be that the system deters retrospective planning applications and also deters the activity that results in those retrospective applications—the building in the first place.
We recognise that these reforms will only be worth making if our local authorities and the wider planning sector have the right tools to implement them and are able to give our planning enforcement regime proper teeth. To that end, an additional £65 million was made available by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Budget last year. That will help build the skills and capability that we need at the local level to translate our words into deeds on the ground.
As we look beyond the here and now, our commitment in the long term is to digitisation. Digitisation will mean that local authorities and their planning officers have much more space and much more time to focus on the things that really matter, rather than the administrative bumf that goes along with the present planning system. By digitising the system, we can make it more effective, and we can also create the headroom for planning officers and other officials to be more effective in their own work.
I will say a few brief words on appeals, which I know are a bugbear for many communities that find themselves in protracted and exhausting disputes. We certainly want them speeded up. It is absolutely right that everyone should be able to make their case and to have that case heard. Our priority is to accelerate that process by closing loopholes through future planning reforms. We are undoubtedly making progress in that direction. In the 18-month stretch from March 2020—the height of the covid pandemic—the Planning Inspectorate issued some 3,300 appeal decisions on enforcement cases. However, as I set out, there is more to be done to improve how the fundamentals of our appeals process work, and that has to start with removing the incentive for those who set out deliberately to abuse the system to try to delay the appeals process. I will say more about that as we advance our planning reforms, and I am happy to discuss it further with my hon. Friend and other Members to ensure that we get this aspect of our reforms right.
I thank my hon. Friend for championing this issue on behalf of his constituents, and I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who contributed. The concerns raised echo through local authorities around the country, and I assure the House that they echo through my Department. They will have been heard loudly and clearly, and we are determined to act on them. I look forward to working with colleagues from across the House in the months to come to ensure that we get our planning reforms ready, right and on the statute book so that all our constituents are protected.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
As a Government we are determined to level up opportunities across our country, and that starts with building the homes that our people need. That is why we are helping millions of people into home ownership. Since 2010, Government-backed schemes have helped over 756,000 households to purchase their own dream home. Last June, we launched our new flagship First Homes scheme, providing homes discounted by at least 30% for first-time buyers, with a priority for local residents and key workers.
Kevin Hollinrake
First Homes is an excellent initiative that could deliver homes in my constituency for local first-time buyers at even below half price. Will the Minister accelerate their delivery through section 106 agreements, pilot their delivery on public sector land in my constituency, and rename the policy from First Homes to “Half-Price Homes”, because then people would understand it much more clearly?
Christopher Pincher
My hon. Friend, who is a doughty campaigner for home ownership, teases me. He wishes me to call First Homes “Half-Price Homes”. Perhaps that will become the shorthand name for this project. Perhaps even, in time, they will be known as Hollinrake homes. As to his other questions, we are already commissioning First Homes properties on both public and private sector land through our two early delivery programmes. We are aiming to deliver 1,500 of them before April 2023, and we certainly want to accelerate the programme so that more people are able to achieve the dream home that they want and deserve.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The whole nation breathed a sigh of relief when the Government’s planning-by-algorithm so-called reforms were ditched, so when will the son of planning-by-algorithm come out? My constituent Heidi has kept a small hairdressing business going throughout the pandemic, but she is not eligible for Help to Buy, so will the Minister look at introducing more schemes that would help people like her? We also want things that will preserve suburban character, because all the build-to-let things going up locally, up to 60 storeys high, are destroying everything that people liked about Ealing and Acton.
Christopher Pincher
We certainly want people such as Heidi to achieve the home that they want. Through Help to Buy, right to buy, right to acquire, help to build and a variety of mechanisms, including our 95% fixed-term mortgage guarantee, there is a multiplicity of ways in which we can get people on to the housing ladder. The hon. Lady also asks about our planning reforms, and I can tell her that she will be hearing more about those in due course.
James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I am sure that the Minister would agree that by far the best people to decide how many homes we want and where they should be are local people. Would he therefore agree with me and the town of Malmesbury in my constituency, which raised the point that the neighbourhood plan, which this Conservative Government brought in, is currently being trumped by the so-called five-year housing land supply figures, which are handed down by central Government? Will he give me a hint as to whether greater importance will be given in the forthcoming housing White Paper to neighbourhood planning, thereby allowing local people to decide how many houses they want and where?
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, because it gives me the opportunity to make it clear that it is for local communities to determine how many homes they want and need in their vicinity. Local housing need numbers are not an end point; they are a starting point. It is for local authorities to determine what constraints they may face to determine the numbers of homes that they need in their area. They then agree those numbers with the Planning Inspectorate to set a sound plan, and that is then the number that the local authorities build toward. Local authorities that fail to set an up-to-date plan leave their constituents at risk of speculative development, so it is for local authorities to set the numbers and make their plans.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
As I said in a previous answer, building homes is key to levelling up, and that is why we announced an additional £1.8 billion for housing supply at the last spending review, delivering £10 billion-worth of investment since the start of this Parliament and unlocking over 1 million new homes. However, it is important that local communities have input to the planning process, and we recognise that as part of our planning reforms the planning system must be more engaging and much more democratic.
Mr Holden
Many people in social housing have been able to exercise the voluntary right to buy scheme for tenants of social landlords. However, in so-called rural locations, many are excluded, including many thousands of my own constituents. Would the Minister or the Secretary of State meet me and other MPs with constituents in similar situations to find a way forward that both enables people to own their own homes and ensures that the level of housing stock for rent from social landlords is maintained?
Christopher Pincher
I am obliged to my hon. Friend. We are committed to enabling tenants in social housing to acquire their own home through right to buy or right to acquire, and we have helped nearly 2 million tenants to become homeowners—dream-home owners. I am aware that there are some particular issues in some particular rural areas, and I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend and his colleagues to discuss how we can ensure that those people have the opportunity of home ownership, too.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister will know—and you will know, Mr Speaker—that I am a fan of One Direction, and Harry Styles in particular. If it is true that Harry Styles is looking to buy a £10 million property in the west country, he will join the thousands of people who have been hoovering up our homes to make them second homes. The pandemic has turbocharged the housing crisis in the west country, so will the Minister look seriously at ensuring every west country family can have a first home, not just have a region full of second homes for those who can afford one?
Christopher Pincher
We are determined to make sure that there are homes available to buy for the people who want them around our United Kingdom, including in holiday hotspots such as the west country. That is why we have brought forward new policies such as First Homes, why we are closing the loophole which allows some people to abuse their second home and holiday let properties, and why we want to build more homes in those places to ensure people have the opportunity to own and enjoy them.
Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
The Government support local authorities through both central funding and developer contributions to deliver the infrastructure that new development demands. In 2020-21, Swale Borough Council secured over £3.7 million of developer contributions and we are providing Kent County Council with £38 million from the housing infrastructure fund to support road improvements, which will unlock 8,500 homes in Swale.
Gordon Henderson
I am always grateful for any money that Swale Borough Council gets, but of course those particular funds are designed to ensure even more homes can be built, and that would do nothing to reduce congestion on roads in Sittingbourne and Sheppey, or to increase the number of secondary school places available to local people, or to make it easier for those people to get an appointment with a GP. What Swale needs is fewer houses, not more; so would my right hon. Friend consider placing a moratorium on housing targets for Swale Borough Council and local authorities in Kent generally until the problems I have highlighted are resolved?
Christopher Pincher
As I said in a previous answer, it is for local authorities to determine the number of homes they need and to set those numbers accordingly. We want to make sure that where development takes place infrastructure is available to support it. That is why we have the HIF—housing infrastructure fund—to which I have referred and the new home building fund, with a significant amount of money for infrastructure. It is also why we want through our planning reforms to look carefully at how infrastructure funding can be provided, so that it is provided up front and new developments benefit from the schools and clinics and kids’ playgrounds that they need, and new communities get bang for their buck.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
I am obliged to my hon. Friend. As he will know, protecting the green belt is a firm manifesto commitment. Certificates of lawful use are intended to confirm that an existing use of land is lawful from a planning perspective. If there is any doubt about the lawfulness of the existing use, local authorities should reject the application and consider other ways of ensuring that progress is made. I am happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the issue further.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
The latest figures from Shelter show that women are 36% more likely than men to be in a constant struggle to afford housing costs or be in arrears and that under this Government nearly two-thirds of people in temporary accommodation are women. Can the Secretary of State not see that the Conservative cost of living crisis, the damaging cuts to universal credit, and the failure to give renters security in their homes are forcing even more women into homelessness?
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Christopher Pincher
Again, I am obliged to my hon. Friend for his question. I will certainly consider the specific points he makes, but that is exactly what we want to do. Through the planning reforms we envisage, we want to ensure that developer contributions are made much more quickly in the process so that the sort of infrastructure he talks about is provided, and to ensure that greater land capture value is collected to ensure that those services can be provided to a greater extent.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
Almost a year ago, the Minister for Housing, who has responsibility for planning, wrote to Liberal Democrat-run Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council to say that it does not have an up-to-date local plan and to ask it to do more to get it updated. In his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray), the Minister said that part of the problem is that areas become open to speculative developments. One way to strengthen the position is by having a neighbourhood plan, as in vanguard places such as Market Bosworth. The problem is that they are being ridden roughshod over. Will he look to strengthen the role of neighbourhood plans in future, and failing that, in the meantime, will he encourage Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council to get its plan sorted and up to date?
Christopher Pincher
I am obliged to my hon. Friend. We certainly want to extend and expand the use of neighbourhood plans in constituencies such as his—in Hinckley and Bosworth—and he is right that I have written to the council to encourage it to get on and update its local plan. It is nice to see that there are a couple of Lib Dems on duty here, because they ought to hear that there is nothing liberal or democratic about exposing a local community to speculative development. That is what the people in Hinckley and Bosworth face and I am very keen to make sure that my officials work with Hinckley and Bosworth to get that plan in place.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
Under the Conservatives, home insulation rates have plummeted, emissions from homes are higher now than they were in 2015 and UK homes are the least energy-efficient in the whole of Europe. To help struggling families with the spiralling cost of energy bills, will the Minister finally copy and paste Labour’s plan to retrofit every single home with a special scheme to help low-income households?
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
Compared with communities across the country, Basingstoke has built 50% more new homes over the past two decades. Local residents want to make sure that we have homes for our children and grandchildren, but we believe that Basingstoke has been doing far more than that. What advice can my right hon. Friend give my local council on how we can make sure that future projected house-building levels reflect the very special circumstances in my constituency?
Christopher Pincher
I commend my right hon. Friend and her council for all the sterling work they have done to build the homes in Basingstoke that people need. The important thing is for people to make sure that their local plan is up to date and that they agree a sound plan with the Planning Inspectorate, based on the constraints that there are, to get the number of houses they need. I am very happy to work with her to make sure that that is so.
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)
The Secretary of State cannot fail to have noticed the number of questions in this session that have centred on the White Paper. Councils around the UK want to know what the timetable is, what the criteria are and when it will be published. Inverclyde wants to apply for this levelling-up funding. Will he help me? Does he want to visit Greenock, so I can show him the projects?
Building Safety Bill
Christopher Pincher ExcerptsWednesday 19th January 2022
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Building Safety Act 2022 View all Building Safety Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 19 January 2022 - large print - (19 Jan 2022)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government new clause 21—Amendment of the Government of Wales Act 2006.
Government new clause 22—Architects: Appeals Committee.
New clause 3—Remediation costs and Building Works Agency—
“(1) The remediation costs condition applies where a landlord has carried out any fire safety works to an applicable building in consequence of any provision, duty or guidance arising from—
(a) the Housing Act 2004;
(b) the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety Order) 2005;
(c) the Building Safety Act 2021;
(d) any direction, recommendation or suggestion of any public authority or regulatory body;
(e) such other circumstances or enactment as the Secretary of State may prescribe by regulations or in accordance with subsection (9), below.
(2) If the remediation costs condition is met, then the costs incurred by the landlord in connection with those matters may not be the subject of a demand for payment of service charges, administration charges or any other charge permitted or authorised by any provision of any long lease.
(3) Any demand for payment which contravenes this section shall be of no force or effect and will have no validity in law.
(4) Any covenant or agreement, whether contained in a lease or in an agreement collateral to such a lease, is void in so far as it purports to authorise any forfeiture or impose on the tenant any penalty, disability or obligation in the event of the tenant refusing, failing or declining to make a payment to which this section applies.
(5) The remediation costs condition applies to demands for payment before the landlord incurs the costs in the same way as it applies to demands for payment made after the costs have been incurred.
(6) The remediation costs condition does not apply where the landlord is a company in which the majority of the shares are held by leaseholders or where the landlord is an RTM company.
(7) Within six months of the day on which this section comes into force, the Secretary of State must create an agency referred to as the Building Works Agency.
(8) The purpose of the Building Works Agency shall be to administer a programme of cladding remediation and other building safety works, including—
(a) overseeing an audit of cladding, insulation and other building safety issues in buildings over two storeys;
(b) prioritising audited buildings for remediation based on risk;
(c) determining the granting or refusal of grant funding for cladding remediation work;
(d) monitoring progress of remediation work and enforce remediation work where appropriate;
(e) determining buildings to be safe once remediation work has been completed;
(f) seeking to recover costs of remediation where appropriate from responsible parties; and
(g) providing support, information and advice for owners of buildings during the remediation process.
(9) The Building Works Agency shall also have power to recommend that the Secretary of State exercises his power under clause (1)(e) in such terms and to such extent that it sees fit. If such a recommendation is made, the Secretary of State must, within 28 days, either—
(a) accept it and exercise the power under clause 1(e) within 28 days of acceptance; or
(b) reject it and, within 28 days of rejection, lay before Parliament a report setting out the reasons for rejection.
(10) In this section—
(a) ‘fire safety works’ means any work or service carried out for the purpose of eradicating or mitigating (whether permanently or temporarily) any risk associated with the spread of fire, the structural integrity of the building or the ability of people to evacuate the building;
(b) ‘applicable building’ means a building subject to one or more long leases on the day on which section comes into force;
(c) ‘service charge’ has the meaning given by s.18, Landlord and Tenant Act 1985;
(d) ‘administration charge’ has the meaning given by Schedule 11, Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002;
(e) ‘long lease’ has the meaning given by sections 76 and 77 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002;
(f) ‘RTM company’ has the meaning given by section 113 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002.
(11) This section comes into force on the day on which this Act is passed.”
New clause 4—Building Safety remediation and works: zero-rating for Value Added Tax purposes—
“(1) The Value Added Tax Act 1994 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 35(1A)(b) at the end leave out ‘and’.
(3) In subsection 35(1A)(c) leave out the final full stop and insert ‘, and’.
(4) After subsection 35(1A)(c) insert—
‘(d) building safety remediation or building safety works of the type described in item 4A of the table in paragraph 1 of Group 5 of Schedule 8 to this Act.’
(5) After subsection 35(2) insert—
‘(2A) For the purposes of subsection (2), the Commissioners shall make regulations providing for a period of not less than 6 months to be open for claims for repayment of VAT in relation to supplies under subsection 35(1A)(d) where the date of supply is between 14 June 2017 and 31 July 2022.’
(6) In the table at paragraph 1 of Group 5 of Schedule 8, after existing item 4 insert new item 4A—
‘The supply in the course of—
(a) remediation of any defect in any external wall of any building containing two or more residential dwellings; or
(b) remediation of any defect in any attachment to any external wall of any building containing two or more residential dwellings; or
(c) the installation of a new or upgraded communal fire alarm system, other than to replace a communal system which has reached the end of its working life, or a communal system which has broken down as a result of failure to make reasonable repairs over time; or
(d) remediation of any internal or external defect other than a defect described in paragraphs (a), (b) or (c); or
(e) any building safety works carried out by an accountable person under section 86 of the Building Safety Act 2021
of any services related to the remediation.’
(7) In the table at paragraph 1 of Group 5 of Schedule 8, in item 4 replace ‘item 2 or 3’ with ‘item 2, 3 or 4A’.
(8) After note 24 insert a new note as follows—
‘(25) For the purposes of item 4A in the table above—
“defect” means anything posing any risk to the spread of fire, the structural integrity of the building or the ability of people to evacuate the building, including but not limited to any risk identified in guidance issued under Article 50 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (S.I. 2005/1541) or any risk identified in regulations made under section 59 of the Building Safety Act 2021;
“external wall” has the same meaning as in Article 6 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (S.I. 2005/1541);
“remediation” means any step taken to eradicate or to mitigate a defect, including employment of any person temporarily or permanently to assist in evacuation of any part of a building, and whether or not the defect in question existed at the date any dwelling in the building was first occupied. Remediation does not include anything required in consequence of omitting to effect reasonable repairs or maintenance to all or any part of the building over time, or anything which is the responsibility of the occupant of a dwelling in the building.’
(9) This section comes into force on 1 August 2022.”
This new clause allows recovery of VAT on building safety remedial works paid since 14 June 2017 and makes future supplies of materials, goods and services for building safety remediation projects zero-rated for Value Added Tax.
New clause 5—Fire safety defects and defective dwellings—
“(1) The Housing Act 1985 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 528(1)(a) leave out the final ‘, and’ and insert ‘, or’.
(3) After section 528(1)(a) insert—
‘(aa) buildings in the proposed class are defective as a result of their external walls or any attachment to the external walls, whether as a result of the design or construction of the external walls or the attachment in question; or
(ab) buildings in the proposed class are defective as a result of anything which in the opinion of the Secretary of State poses a building safety risk or the ability of anyone to evacuate the building, whether or not the building is a higher-risk building, and’
(4) In section 528(1)(b) for ‘paragraph (a)’ substitute ‘paragraphs (a), (aa) or (ab)’.
(5) In section 528(1)(b) at the end insert ‘, or in the opinion of the Secretary of State is materially difficult to mortgage, insure or sell compared to non-defective dwellings.’
(6) After section 528(4) insert—
‘(4A) A designation may identify any part of a building or class of buildings, any design feature, any material used in the construction of that building, any error in workmanship or installation or anything missing from that building, whether or not it should have been included when the building was constructed.
(4B) A designation may be made if the defect requires the employment of any person, whether on a permanent or temporary basis, specifically to assist with the evacuation of that building or part of that building.’
(7) After section 528(6) insert—
‘(7) In this section—
“building safety risk” has the same meaning as in section 59 of the Building Safety Act 2021.
“external wall” has the same meaning as in Article 6 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (S.I. 2005/1541).
“higher-risk building” has the same meaning as in section 62 of the Building Safety Act 2021.’
(8) In section 559(1)(a) omit the final ‘, and’ and replace it with ‘, or’.
(9) After section 559(1)(a) insert—
‘(aa) buildings in the proposed class are defective as a result of their external walls or any attachment to the external walls, whether as a result of the design or construction of the external walls or the attachment in question; or
(ab) buildings in the proposed class are defective as a result of anything which in the opinion of the local housing authority poses a building safety risk or the ability of anyone to evacuate the building, whether or not the building is a higher-risk building, and’
(10) In section 559(1)(b) for ‘paragraph (a)’ substitute ‘paragraphs (a), (aa) or (ab)’.
(11) In section 559(1)(b) at end insert—
‘or in the opinion of the local housing authority materially difficult to mortgage, insure or sell compared to non-defective dwellings.’
(12) After section 559(4) insert—
‘(4A) A designation may identify any part of a building or class of buildings, any design feature, any material used in the construction of that building, any error in workmanship or installation or anything missing from that building, whether or not it should have been included when the building was constructed.
(4B) A designation may be made if the defect requires the employment of any person, whether on a permanent or temporary basis, specifically to assist with the evacuation of that building or part of that building.’
(13) After section 559(6) insert—
‘(7) In this section—
“building safety risk” has the same meaning as in section 59 of the Building Safety Act 2021;
“external wall” has the same meaning as in Article 6 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (S.I. 2005/1541);
“higher-risk building” has the same meaning as in section 62 of the Building Safety Act 2021.’
(14) This section comes into force on the day this Act is passed.”
This new clause is suggested before clause 126. This new clause amends Part XVI of the Housing Act 1985 (originally enacted as the Housing Defects Act 1984) to empower the government and local authorities to designate dwellings with cladding and fire safety defects as defective and to provide grant support for remediation.
New clause 6—Duty on the Secretary of State to report on designations under Part XVI of the Housing Act 1985—
“(1) Within the period of six months beginning with the day on which this section comes into force, the Secretary of State must—
(a) consider the financial impact on leaseholders in England and Wales of building safety advice given by his department since 14 June 2017; and
(b) in conjunction with the Treasury and the Prudential Regulation Authority, consider the impact of building safety advice given by his department since 14 June 2017 on the supply of mortgage finance for leasehold flats in England and Wales; and
(c) publish a report setting out his determination, in light of the factors identified in paragraphs (a) and (b), as to whether designations under section 528 or section 559 of the Housing Act 1985 would improve conditions for leaseholders, or would improve the supply of mortgage finance for leasehold flats in England and Wales.
(2) If the Secretary of State’s report under subsection (1) concludes that designations under section 528 or section 559 of the Housing Act 1985 would improve financial conditions for leaseholders in England and Wales, or would improve the supply of mortgage finance for leasehold flats in England and Wales, then at the same time as publishing his report he must—
(a) make arrangements to provide all necessary funding;
(b) make the appropriate designations under section 528 of the Housing Act 1985; and
(c) advise local housing authorities to make appropriate designations under section 559 of the Housing Act 1985.
(3) Before making any regulations bringing into force any section in Part 4 of this Act, the Secretary of State must make arrangements for—
(a) a motion to the effect that the House of Commons has approved the report prepared under subsection (1), to be moved in the House of Commons by a minister of the Crown; and
(b) a motion to the effect that the House of Lords to take note of the report prepared under subsection (1), to be moved in the House of Lords by a minister of the Crown.
(4) The motions required under subsections (3)(a) and (3)(b) must be moved in the relevant House by a Minister of the Crown within the period of five calendar days beginning with the end of the day on which the report under subsection (1) is published.
(5) If the motion tabled in the House of Commons is rejected or amended, the Secretary of State must, within 30 calendar days, publish a further report under subsection (1) and make arrangements for further approval equivalent to those under subsection (2).
(6) The Secretary of State shall make a further report under subsection (1) at least every 90 calendar days beginning with the day of any rejection or amendment by the House of Commons under subsection (5) until otherwise indicated by a resolution of the House of Commons.
(7) In this section—
‘leaseholder’ means the registered legal owner of a long lease; and
‘leasehold flat’ means a flat owned by a leaseholder; and
‘long lease’ has the same meaning as in section 76 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002.
(8) This section comes into force on the day this Act is passed.”
This new clause is suggested before clause 126. It places a time-limited duty on the Secretary of State to consider making designations under Part XVI of the Housing Act 1985 to provide funding for cladding and fire safety remediation and for Parliament to approve the plans for doing so.
New clause 7—Building Safety Indemnity Scheme—
“(1) There shall be a body called the ‘Building Safety Indemnity Scheme’ (referred to in this Act as ‘the Scheme’).
(2) The purpose of the Scheme shall be to collect money from levies and to disburse the money raised from those levies in the form of grants to leaseholders to pay all or any part of the following types of costs—
(a) remediation of any defect in any external wall of any building containing two or more residential units; or
(b) remediation of any defect in any attachment to any external wall of any building containing two or more residential units; or
(c) remediation of any internal or external defect other than a defect described in paragraphs (a) or (b); or
(d) any building safety works carried out by an accountable person under section 86; or
(e) any other cost of a type specified by the Secretary of State in regulations made under this section.
(3) The Scheme may disburse money for the benefit of leaseholders in any type of building, whether or not a higher-risk building and whether or not the building was first occupied before the coming into force of this Act.
(4) The levy imposed by the Scheme shall be determined by reference to each of the following—
(a) the Scheme’s best estimate of the reasonably likely total cost of grants to cover any type of cost described in subsection (2);
(b) the Scheme’s best estimate of the costs of raising and administering the levy; and
(c) the Scheme’s best estimate of the costs of processing applications for grants to leaseholders and disbursing funds to leaseholders from monies raised by the levy.
(5) Members of the Scheme subject to levies shall include the following—
(a) any person seeking building control approval;
(b) any prescribed insurer providing buildings insurance to buildings containing two or more residential units, whether or not the buildings are higher-risk buildings;
(c) any prescribed supplier of construction products subject to regulations made under Schedule 9 to this Act;
(d) any prescribed lender providing mortgage finance in the United Kingdom, whether or not secured over residential units in higher-risk buildings; and
(e) any other person whom the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(6) The Scheme is to consult with levy paying members before determining the amount and duration of any levy.
(7) The Scheme must provide a process by which leaseholders, or persons acting on behalf of leaseholders, can apply for grants for the types of costs specified in subsection (2).
(8) The Scheme must provide an appeals process for the Scheme’s decisions regarding—
(a) the determination of the amount of any levy; or
(b) the determination of any grant application.
(9) A building control authority may not give building control approval to anyone unless—
(a) the person seeking building control approval is a registered member of the Scheme, or that person becomes a registered member of the Scheme before the building control approval is given; and
(b) the person seeking building control approval pays all levies made on that person by the Scheme before the building control approval is given.
(10) The Secretary of State must provide that any regulations made under Schedule 9 to this Act provide, as a condition of approval of any regulated construction product, that any prescribed supplier of such a product—
(a) is a registered member of the Scheme, or that prescribed supplier becomes a registered member of the Scheme; and
(b) that the prescribed supplier pays all levies made on that person by the Scheme.
(11) Any liability to pay a levy under this section does not affect the liability of the same person to pay an additional levy under section 57 of this Act.
(12) Within a period of 12 months beginning with the coming into force of this section, the Secretary of State must make regulations providing for—
(a) the appointment of a board to oversee the Scheme;
(b) the staffing of the Scheme;
(c) the creation and maintenance of a public register of members of the Scheme;
(d) the preparation of the best estimates described in subsection (4);
(e) the amount, manner and timing of payment of the levies on members of the Scheme under this section;
(f) the process of joining the Scheme;
(g) the process of leaseholders applying to the Scheme for grants towards any of the types of costs specified in subsection (2);
(h) the process for handling any appeals against decisions of the Scheme on any levy or any grant;
(i) the Scheme to make an annual report to Parliament; and
(j) any other matters consequential to the Scheme’s operation.
(13) Regulations made under this section are to be made by statutory instrument.
(14) A statutory instrument under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
(15) In this section—
‘building’ has the same meaning as in section 29;
‘building control approval’ has the same meaning as in paragraph (1B)(2) of Schedule 1 to the Building Act 1984;
‘building control authority’ has the same meaning as in section 121A of the Building Act 1984;
‘defect’ means anything posing any risk to the spread of fire, the structural integrity of the building or the ability of people to evacuate the building, including but not limited to any risk identified in guidance issued under Article 50 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (S.I. 2005/1541) or any risk identified in regulations made under section 59;
‘external wall’ has the same meaning as in Article 6 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (S.I. 2005/1541);
‘higher-risk building’ has the same meaning as in section 59;
‘prescribed’ means prescribed by regulations made by the Secretary of State;
‘remediation’ means any step taken to eradicate or to mitigate a defect, including employment of any person to temporarily assist in evacuation of any part of a building, and whether or not the defect in question existed at the date any residential unit in the building was first occupied. Remediation does not include anything required in consequence of omitting to effect reasonable repairs or maintenance to all or any part of the building over time, or anything which is the responsibility of an occupant of a residential unit within the building;
‘residential unit’ has the same meaning as in section 29.
(16) This section shall come into force on the day this Act is passed.”
This new clause is suggested after clause 126, requiring the government to establish a comprehensive fund, equivalent to the Motor Insurers’ Bureau, to provide grants to remediate cladding and fire safety defects of all descriptions, paid for by levies on developers, building insurers and mortgage lenders.
New clause 8—Implied terms in residential building and residential renovation contracts—
“(1) Every residential building contract is to be taken to contain terms that—
(a) the residential unit is fit for the purpose of ordinary residential occupation and is likely to remain so for a reasonable period if kept in appropriate repair;
(b) the residential unit in question is constructed in all material respects as described or stated on the approved plans;
(c) the residential unit is not subject to any building safety risk;
(d) the materials incorporated in the residential unit are as described in any approved plans;
(e) the materials incorporated in the residential unit are of satisfactory quality;
(f) the design of the residential unit is of a reasonable standard;
(g) the design of the residential unit is prepared with reasonable care and skill;
(h) all works in connection with the construction of the residential unit are executed with reasonable care and skill; and
(i) the residential unit complies in all material respects with all applicable statutory requirements and with all applicable building regulations in force as at the date of completion.
(2) Every residential renovation contract is to be taken to contain terms that any renovation works—
(a) do not render the unit unfit for the purpose of ordinary residential occupation;
(b) do not create any building safety risk;
(c) do not involve the incorporation of materials in the residential unit which are not as described in any approved plans;
(d) do not involve the incorporation of materials in the residential unit which are not of satisfactory quality;
(e) are executed with reasonable care and skill; and
(f) do not render the residential unit materially non-compliant with any applicable statutory requirement or with any applicable requirement of building regulations in force as at the date of completion.
(3) For the purposes of subsections (1) and (2), where the residential unit forms part of a building consisting of two or more residential units, the internal and external common parts of that building necessary for the reasonable occupation of any of the residential units are also to be taken to be subject to the same terms.
(4) A residential unit is fit for the ordinary purpose of residential occupation if it would be regarded as such by a reasonable person and taking into account—
(a) the ordinary costs of repair and maintenance of that residential unit by reference to that unit’s location and specific characteristics;
(b) any marketing materials provided before the sale of the residential unit in question; and
(c) whether that unit was marketed, designed or intended to be occupied by any particular class of persons, whether by age, by gender or by physical or mental disability.
(5) For the purposes of this section—
(a) a matter is material if it would be considered material if known or discovered by a reasonable purchaser of that residential unit before completing a purchase of that residential unit on ordinary commercial terms;
(b) a design is of a reasonable standard if a designer of average competence would have produced the same or a similar design;
(c) a material is of satisfactory quality if it would meet the requirements for satisfactory quality of goods under section 9 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015; and
(d) a material is as described if it would meet the requirements for description of goods under section 11 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
(6) The terms taken to be included in any residential building contract or residential renovation contract are enforceable by any owner of the residential unit provided or renovated under the contract in question.
(7) A term of a residential building contract or a residential renovation contract is not binding on the owner of a residential unit provided or renovated pursuant to that contract if it would exclude or restrict any liability in relation to the terms implied by this section.
(8) The reference in subsection (7) to excluding or restricting a liability also includes preventing an obligation or duty arising or limiting its extent.
(9) An agreement in writing to submit present or future differences to arbitration is not to be regarded as excluding or restricting any liability for the purposes of this section.
(10) In this section—
‘approved plans’ means any document submitted as part of obtaining building control approval;
‘building control approval’ has the same meaning as in paragraph (1B) of Schedule 1 to the Building Act 1984;
‘building safety risk’ has the same meaning as in section 59, whether or not the residential unit is in a higher-risk building;
‘higher-risk building’ has the same meaning as in section 62;
‘owner’ means the registered legal owner of the residential unit from time to time, including any trustee holding a beneficial interest on behalf of a third party and any transferee or assignee of the original owner;
‘residential unit’ has the same meaning as in section 29;
‘residential building contract’ means a contract made in the course of business involving work on or in connection with the construction of a residential unit (whether the dwelling is provided by the erection or by the conversion or enlargement of an existing building);
‘residential renovation contract’ means a contract made in the course of business involving work on an existing residential unit, except where it is expected that, on completion of the work, it will have ceased to be a residential unit or will otherwise have ceased to exist.”
This new clause, proposed to be inserted after clause 128 strengthens consumer rights for future buyers by implying terms that houses and flats are built, and are renovated, to reasonable standards of quality and compliant in all material respects with the law and with building regulations.
New clause 9—Implied terms: limitation—
“(1) The Limitation Act 1980 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 5 insert—
‘5A Time limit for actions related to breach of implied terms in residential building contracts and residential renovation contracts
An action in respect of the breach of the term implied into a residential building contract or a residential renovation contract by section (Implied terms in residential building and residential renovation contracts) of the Building Safety Act 2021 may not be brought after the expiration of 25 years from the date on which the cause of action accrued.’”
This new clause provides for a 25 year limitation period for breaches of the terms implied by the amendment proposed above.
New clause 10—Implied terms: mandatory insurance—
“(1) No member of the new homes ombudsman scheme created by this Act may offer for sale or sell any residential unit unless —
(a) every potential purchaser is provided on request with an accurate written summary of the terms of a prescribed policy applying to the residential unit when completed; and
(b) in accordance with any relevant regulation made under this section, or under section 131, or under section 132, the person offering for sale or the seller of the residential unit arranges a valid prescribed policy and provides a copy of a valid prescribed policy given to the purchaser of the residential unit on the day of the transfer to the purchaser of legal title in the residential unit.
(2) Any person in the course of business providing a residential unit under a residential building contract or renovations to a residential unit under a residential renovation contract must obtain a valid prescribed policy.
(3) No term of any residential building contract or residential renovation contract is enforceable unless a valid prescribed policy is in force in respect of such a contract.
(4) Within a period of six months beginning on the day this section comes into force, the Secretary of State must make regulations prescribing insurance terms for the purposes for this section, including—
(a) the creditworthiness of any insurer or warranty scheme under this section;
(b) the name of any warranty scheme which in the opinion of the Secretary of State achieves the purposes of this section;
(c) the minimum terms of any insurance or warranty under this section;
(d) that any policy or warranty scheme also provides reasonably adequate cover for any claim under sections 1 and 2A of the Defective Premises Act 1972 and section 38 of the Building Act 1984;
(e) a policy term or a warranty term of not less than the limitation period for making claims under any term implied into a residential building contract or residential renovation contract by this Act; and
(f) to bring into force section [Implied terms in residential building and residential renovation contracts] and section [Implied terms: limitation].
(5) Regulations made under this section are to be made by statutory instrument.
(6) A statutory instrument under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
(7) In this section—
‘new homes ombudsman scheme’ means the scheme established under section 129;
‘prescribed’ means prescribed in regulations made by the Secretary of State, whether under this section, or under section 131, or under section 132;
‘residential building contract’ has the same meaning as in section [Implied terms in residential building and residential renovation contracts];
‘residential renovation contract’ has the same meaning as in section [Implied terms in residential building and residential renovation contracts]; and
‘residential unit’ has the same meaning as in section 29.
(8) This section shall come into force on the day this Act is passed.”
This new clause provides that members of the New Homes Ombudsman Scheme may not sell any new flat or house unless they provide insurance for 25-years to cover breach of implied terms as to quality.
New clause 11—Limitation Period for claims under section 38 of the Building Act 1984—
“(1) Section 38 of the Building Act 1984 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 38(4) after ‘includes’ insert ‘economic loss,’.
(3) After section 38(4) insert—
‘(5) No right of action for damages for economic loss under this section shall accrue until any person to whom the duty is owed has actual knowledge of breach that duty.
(6) Notwithstanding anything in subsection (5) or any regulations made under this section, an action for damages for economic loss under this section shall not be brought after the expiration of twenty-five years from the date the breach of duty occurred.
(7) For the purposes of subsection (6), where there is more than one actionable breach of duty causing economic loss and the breaches in question occurred on different dates, then time runs only from the date of the last such breach.
(8) Any right of action under this section other than a right of action for damages for economic loss shall be subject to section 11 and section 14A of the Limitation Act 1980.’
(4) This section shall come into force at the end of the period of two months beginning on the day on which this Act is passed.”
This new clause proposed for the Building Act 1984 enables claims for recovery of monetary damages (economic loss) and provides that the time limit for claims start when a resident becomes aware of a breach, subject to a 25-year longstop date.
New clause 12—Abolition of the rule preventing recovery of economic loss in certain actions relating to damage or defects in buildings—
“(1) In any prescribed statutory action for damages, there is no bar to recovering economic loss.
(2) In any action for damages for negligence in relation to the construction or renovation of any residential unit, other than an action for damages to which section 11 or section 14A of the Limitation Act 1980 applies, there is no bar to recovering economic loss.
(3) This section shall apply to any right of action accruing on or after the day this section comes into force.
(4) For the purposes of this section —
‘prescribed statutory action for damages’ means any action for damages for breach of section 1 or section 2A of the Defective Premises Act 1972.
‘residential unit’ means any dwelling or other unit of residential accommodation, including any internal or external common parts of any building necessary for the occupation of that residential unit.
(5) This section shall come into force at the end of the period of two months beginning on the day on which this Act is passed.”
This new clause abolishes the rule preventing the recovery of economic loss from developers and other professionals in claims for negligence and in claims under the Defective Premises Act 1972.
New clause 13—Leaseholder Costs Protection—
“(1) This section applies to a relevant building where a landlord has carried out any fire safety works to a building in consequence of any provision, duty or guidance arising from—
(a) the Housing Act 2004;
(b) the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety Order) 2005;
(c) this Act;
(d) any direction, recommendation or suggestion of any public authority or regulatory body; and
(e) such other circumstances or enactment as the Secretary of State may prescribe by regulations.
(2) If any of the conditions in subsection (1) are met, then the costs incurred by the landlord in connection with those matters may not be the subject of a demand for payment of service charges, administration charges or any other charge permitted or authorised by any provision of any long lease.
(3) Any demand for payment which contravenes this section shall be of no force or effect and will have no validity in law.
(4) Any covenant or agreement, whether contained in a lease or in an agreement collateral to such a lease, is void insofar as it purports to authorise any forfeiture or impose on the tenant any penalty, disability or obligation in the event of the tenant refusing, failing or declining to make a payment to which this section applies.
(5) This section applies to demands for payment before the landlord incurs the costs in the same way as it applies to demands for payment made after the costs have been incurred.
(6) This section does not apply where the landlord is a company in which the majority of the shares are held by leaseholders or where the landlord is an RTM company.
(7) For the purposes of this section, a relevant building is any building containing one or more residential dwellings let on a long lease.
(8) In this section—
‘administration charge’ has the meaning given by Schedule 11 to the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002; ‘fire safety works’ means any work or service carried out for the purpose of eradicating or mitigating (whether permanently or temporarily) any risk associated with the spread of fire, the structural integrity of the building or the ability of people to evacuate the building;
‘long lease’ has the meaning given by sections 76 and 77 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002;
‘residential dwelling’ means any dwelling or other unit of residential accommodation, including any internal or external common parts of any building necessary for the occupation of that residential unit;
‘service charge’ has the meaning given by section 18 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985;
‘RTM company’ has the meaning given by section 113 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002.
(9) This section comes into force on the day on which this Act is passed.”
This new clause prevents the costs of any fire safety or building safety remedial works being passed on to leaseholders.
Amendment 2, in clause 126, page 133, line 17, at end insert—
“(d) In respect of remediation works completed before the coming into force of this section, apply for any refund of VAT due under section 35(1A)(d) of the Value Added Tax Act 1994 and credit the whole amount of any such refund received to leaseholders pro-rata in accordance with the terms of the lease.”
This amendment is consequential on NC4. Where works have already been carried out, this new subclause requires the landlord to obtain any retrospective VAT refund and to credit the whole amount of that VAT refund to leaseholders.
Amendment 5, in clause 127, page 135, line 29, leave out
“at the time the work is completed”
and insert
“when any person to whom the duty under this section is owed has actual knowledge of breach of that duty.”
This amendment provides that time to make a claim in respect of building renovations under section 2A of the Defective Premises Act 1972 only runs from the date a resident has knowledge of the breach, subject to a 25-year longstop.
Amendment 6, in clause 127, page 135, line 33, at end insert—
“(9) Notwithstanding anything in subsection (8), an action for damages for breach of the duty in this section, insofar as that action relates only to the original work in question, shall not be brought after the expiration of twenty-five years from the date the work in question is completed.”
This amendment provides that time to make a claim in respect of building renovations under section 2A of the Defective Premises Act 1972 only runs from the date a resident has knowledge of the breach, subject to a 25-year longstop.
Amendment 4, in clause 128, page 136, line 1, leave out “15 years” insert “25 years”.
This amendment proposes a longer period for claims under the Defective Premises Act 1972 and the Building Act 1984 considering the recent history of cladding and fire safety related defects and retrospective guidance issued by the government.
Government amendment 41.
Amendment 7, in clause 128, page 136, line 11, at end insert—
“(2A) In section 1(5) of the Defective Premises Act 1972 for ‘time when the dwelling was completed’ substitute ‘time when any person to whom the duty under this section is owed has actual knowledge of breach of that duty’.
(2B) After section 1(5) of the Defective Premises Act 1972 insert—
(6) Notwithstanding anything in subsection (5), an action for damages for breach of the duty in this section, insofar as that action relates only to the original construction of the building in question, shall not be brought after the expiration of twenty-five years from the time the dwelling is completed.’”
This amendment provides that time to bring a claim for damages under section 1 of the Defective Premises Act 1972 only runs from the date a resident has knowledge of a breach, subject to a 25-year longstop in relation to claims related to failures during the original construction.
Government amendment 42.
Amendment 8, in clause 128, page 136, line 19, leave out subsection (5).
The Human Rights Act 1998 already protects defendants’ rights in relation to retrospectively extended limitation periods. Removing subsection (5) removes the material risk a court may construe clause 128 in a way that means it has no practical benefit and will lead to years of costly litigation for leaseholders.
Amendment 9, in clause 128, page 136, leave out line 27 and line 28.
This amendment is consequential to Amendment 8 because the defined term “Convention Rights” is no longer required.
Government amendment 43.
Amendment 10, in clause 128, page 136, line 29, leave out “90 days” and insert “2 years”.
This amendment allows a period of up to 2 years, instead of 90 days, to obtain the necessary expert evidence required to issue viable claims under the Defective Premises Act 1972.
Government amendments 44 to 55.
Amendment 3, in clause 132, page 139, line 17, at end insert—
“(f) require members of the scheme under paragraph (a) to obtain policies of insurance that meet the requirements of section (Implied terms: mandatory insurance).”
Government amendments 56 to 58.
Government new schedule 2—Amendments in connection with the new homes ombudsman scheme.
Government amendment 71 and 72.
Government amendment 59.
Government amendment 62.
Government amendments 65 to 69.
Christopher Pincher
It is a great pleasure to report to the House, to move the Government’s new clauses and to be able listen to the important debate that we will have on the Bill’s remaining stages. Over the past few months, the Bill has been subject to scrutiny and debate not only in Committee but through ongoing debate in this House, in the other place and, indeed, throughout the country.
Only last week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities updated the House on our progress in addressing the ongoing issues and protecting leaseholders. We have brought the Bill forward on Report because we are clear that it needs to move forward, but we are conscious that further work needs to be done to it and look forward to working with parties from across the House and with interested parties to ensure that it is further improved in the other place.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Will the Minister confirm that the Government intend to table amendments in the other place to implement the statutory protection for leaseholders announced last week by the Secretary of State? By the time that the Bill is debated there, can we expect amendments to have been published so that we can consider them?
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question. As I said, we are introducing the Bill at this stage because we are conscious that it is very important, and we need to get it through both Houses. However, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in his statemen on 10 January, we want to ensure that we look closely to improve the appropriate legislative and statutory protections for leaseholders, and we will have to do that in a parliamentary way, which will of course include the other place.
Several hon. Members rose—
Christopher Pincher
Crikey. I give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill).
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the undertaking to bring forward such matters in the other place and for listening to colleagues’ representations on a number of important issues. Given the pressures on business in the other House, will he assure us that there will be time properly to debate the amendments and that they will include important issues such as clarifying the position on internal developer fire safety defects—where there has been a defect that is the fault of the developer and/or regulatory failure and not anything else—just as much as external defects, and consequential costs that stem from those failures such as waking watch? Those are important issues, so I hope he will ensure that we have a proper debate and clarification on them in the other place.
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Of course, the time made available for debate in the other place is for the other place to determine, but I am sure that the business managers in both Houses have heard his points. I certainly want to ensure that there is adequate time to debate properly what are somewhat technical and detailed matters so that, working across party and with members of the Select Committee on Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, we can properly get the Bill right.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
Further to the answer given to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), will the Minister explain why the statutory protection that the Government are considering will apparently not extend to leaseholders not living in their flats? I know of at least one constituent of mine who was forced to leave his flat and rent it out as that was the only way he could raise the money to pay for the waking watches and insurance bills. Given that he is just as much a victim as those still living in their flats, why should protection against unreasonable costs not be extended to people such as him?
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He will know, as the House does, that building safety and the challenges that leaseholders face are very complicated. The House will also know that we have committed to help those in shared ownership, for example, by making it easier for them to rent out their properties if that is a means of ensuring that they can pay their mortgages. I assure him that we will look closely and work collegiately and collectively across parties, and with other interested parties, to ensure that such issues are effectively and appropriately debated and addressed.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has done a stoic job in taking the Bill through its various stages. The other place is under incredible pressure in dealing with Government legislation, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) mentioned. It is clearly up to business managers there how much time they allocate to amendments and so forth, but will he commit that when the Bill comes back to us with the Lords amendments, we will get a chance to debate them—and, if necessary, correct them and improve them—rather than just a 60-minute debate where hardly anyone gets an opportunity to debate the issues?
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The business managers in this House, if not the other House, will have heard his points—he has got a pretty loud voice—and will want to ensure that appropriate, adequate debating time is made available to deal with these technical and detailed issues. As I said, I believe that business managers will have heard what has been said by him and by right hon. and hon. Members and will react accordingly.
Several hon. Members rose—
Christopher Pincher
I will give way to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and then I probably ought to make a little more progress, having thus far read out only one paragraph of my opening remarks.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
It was very well read, though.
I re-emphasise the point raised by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). The Select Committee will have a very short but very thorough inquiry into the issues that the Secretary of State rightly raised in his statement to the House last week and the follow-up, but debating time in this place is an issue. The Minister’s answer is very helpful because the Lords will have lots of time, and then it is normal for us to have one hour to consider their amendments. The Bill needs a full-day debate because the amendments that the Government intend to make, following consultation with industry, are key to resolving the issue. I appreciate what the Minister said, and I hope the business managers are as supportive when they come to allocate time.
Christopher Pincher
The hon. Gentleman and others remind me of what is often said of politics: even though everything that can be said has been said, not everybody who could say it has said it. He has just spoken for the entire House, and it is of course for the usual channels to determine the time allocated for debating and disposing of business, but the point of view of both sides of the House has thus far, very early in the debate, been heard.
Several hon. Members rose—
Christopher Pincher
I will make a little progress before giving way, if I may.
I have been delighted to talk to colleagues on both sides of the House, following the statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I draw the House’s attention to the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) and for Ipswich (Tom Hunt), who cannot be with us today because they are on parliamentary business elsewhere. They commissioned me to tell the House that they are very pleased with the direction of travel set out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. They are pleased with the Government’s commitment to continue working with parliamentarians to protect leaseholders and to hold to account those responsible for building defects. If they were here, they would support the Government in the Lobby this afternoon.
I am sure we will address some difficult and challenging questions in this debate. Before we do, I am keen to introduce a group of Government amendments that I trust will be welcomed.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
The Minister is generous in giving way. Could he reassure leaseholders in the Roundway in Wood Green that, after several years of lobbying both me and the Government, not only will the whole of the cladding costs be covered under this arrangement but their mortgage issues will be resolved?
Christopher Pincher
The hon. Lady is a doughty campaigner on behalf of her constituents in the Roundway and elsewhere. I do not want to speak about specific buildings, which probably would not be appropriate because I do not know the detail, but we certainly want to make sure that we agree proper leaseholder protections across political parties and with interested parties. We will make amendments to that effect, as well as a suite of non-statutory interventions to make sure the people who ought to pay do pay.
Several hon. Members rose—
Christopher Pincher
I will give way a little more later. I am conscious that I have already spoken for a little while, and there are a number of new clauses and amendments that the House will want to debate and on which Members will want to make their views plain.
The Government are committed to improving redress and consumer protection for home buyers in new buildings. I am therefore pleased that we have introduced access to the new homes ombudsman scheme. Amendments 49, 50 and 72 introduce several changes to the new homes ombudsman provisions to enable them to work practically in Wales and Scotland, and to ensure that the scheme includes provision of information to Ministers in the devolved Administrations.
In addition, amendments 47, 48 and 71 and new schedule 2 remove barriers to enable the new homes ombudsman to work jointly with existing ombudsman schemes and clarify provision of co-operation between the ombudsman and other redress schemes. To ensure that the provisions work for home buyers across our nations, any differences in law and custom and practice will be respected.
Amendments 45, 56 and 57 include requirements for the Secretary of State to consult the devolved Administrations before making arrangements for the scheme. We want that consultation to be meaningful and our intention is to make sure that consideration is given to the views of the devolved Administrations at an appropriate time and before key decisions are taken about the ombudsman regime.
Amendments 54 and 55 confer a power on the relevant national authority for England, Scotland and Wales to add the meaning of the term “developer” in the new homes ombudsman provisions, through regulations as appropriate and following a discussion with other relevant national authorities.
New clause 20 makes provision for how Welsh and Scottish Ministers may exercise that power. New clause 21 makes sure that the devolved Administrations are not restricted from bringing forward legislation to alter the ombudsman’s statutory functions in relation to that territory’s future by disapplying a restriction in the Government of Wales Act 2006.
Finally, our intention is for the new homes ombudsman to work jointly with the other redress schemes and ombudsmen, and the amendments clarify that intention, removing barriers in existing legislation.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Will the Minister say how he will keep his promises to leaseholders to ensure that they will not bear the cost of the building safety crisis?
Christopher Pincher
As I have already said, we want to work across the parties to make sure that leaseholders are properly protected and that those who should properly pay the costs of defective fire safety work bear that cost. I have said it from the Dispatch Box, and, on 10 January, the Secretary of State made the same commitment. We will work through the passage of the Bill to make sure that those protections are in place.
Christopher Pincher
I give way to the hon. Gentleman and then I shall make some further progress.
Jonathan Edwards
I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way. I welcome the ombudsman. Uncompleted estates have been a big issue in my constituency, and I welcome the consultation with the Welsh Government. May I take him back to the intervention from the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) about people who are landlords and leaseholders in one property and the need to include them in the scheme. In the spirit of that consultation—whatever compensation scheme comes forward will be administered in Wales by the Welsh Government—can he tell me what discussions he is having with the Welsh Government about that specific group of people who are very worried about the situation at the moment?
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support for the proposals in general. I can assure him that my officials work closely with officials in the devolved Administrations and we will continue to do so, again, as an example of working with interested parties to make sure that issues are properly addressed.
New clause 22 relates to appeals against registration decisions made by the Architects Registration Board. The new clause gives applicants for registration the opportunity to appeal a decision made by the board or the registrar to remove or refuse to enter or re-enter a person’s name onto the register. Without that, registrants removed under the new competence regime, to be introduced with clause 137, and first-time registrants will only have recourse to the High Court. The costs of an appeal made to the High Court could be prohibitive.
Amendment 58 will allow the board to delegate its prescription responsibilities to the prescription committee, giving it greater flexibility while maintaining oversight of the prescription of qualifications. Amendments 65 and 69 are consequential to that change.
I now turn to our proposed amendments on redress. The Bill Committee debated section 1 of the Defective Premises Act 1972 in significant detail; I recall that the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) made several concise and incisive interventions. Section 1 allows a claim for compensation to be brought through the civil courts when a dwelling was “not fit for habitation” on completion. The limitation period in that Act currently stands at six years, which means that a claim must be brought within that period following the completion of the defective works.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
I ask for the Minister’s further reassurance on some points of detail that relate to these amendments. First, around half of the buildings in my constituency that have difficulties associated with them have non-cladding-related problems. Those include internal compartmentalisation that has been improperly finished. Indeed, in Queens Wharf in Reading town centre, the building owners estimate that nearly £1 million of work needs to be carried out. These are often very large sums. In other cases, the problem is wooden cladding, wooden balconies or a range of other things. Do the amendments relate to these problems, or to flammable cladding only?
Christopher Pincher
The Defective Premises Act has been in effect since 1972, so there is a significant body of case law that those wishing to bring an action, and indeed the courts, will be able to refer to, to determine whether a premises is defective and therefore whether an action should be successful. I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with further detail, but I can assure him that the Act is of long standing and has been well used, and there is a body of case law that can be applied.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Is there any right of redress to the regulatory authorities in local government, such as building inspectors and others, who were responsible for signing off on these schemes?
Christopher Pincher
We certainly want to ensure though the Bill, that the building control mechanism and the industry are improved. I think that a suite of measures, including the introduction of better building control measures, the retrospection of the Defective Premises Act and further work that we may choose to do, working across parties, will help ensure that a very complicated and detailed set of challenges, which have emerged recently but have been developing over many years, are properly addressed.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
I want to clarify, should I be lucky enough to catch Madam Deputy Speaker’s eye later, where my speech might be going. This is retrospective legislation, and that is fantastic—if we can track down the freeholder, the developer and the insurer. If they cannot be tracked down, where does that burden come? Surely we can find a way—I may suggest this in my speech, but I wonder whether the Minister has thought of a way—by which the unfairness of the impact of what we are now prescribing in the Minister’s legislation on those in cases where we cannot find them, as opposed to where we can, can be resolved.
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the forewarning of what his speech may contain. I would say to him that quite apart from the body of case law that exists with respect to the 1972 Act, and quite apart from the fact that even if a company has become defunct directors can still be held liable for the decisions made, as it were, “on their watch”, the challenges that he has described are the sorts of things that we will want to discuss in this place and in the other place, across parties, to ensure that such challenges are addressed.
Christopher Pincher
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment, but I am conscious that I have been speaking for 22 minutes and that there are one or two other remarks that I ought to make before the House has an opportunity to debate the new clauses and amendments.
Since the introduction of the Bill, it has become clear that a number of buildings affected by cladding and other serious fire safety defects were completed prior to 2007. We have listened to hon. Members from across the House who wanted a route to redress for those buildings. I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), for Kensington (Felicity Buchan), for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) and for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), as well as a great many Opposition Members.
That is why we tabled Government amendment 41, which will retrospectively extend the limitation period for section 1 of the 1972 Act to 30 years, meaning that there will be access to this route of redress for buildings completed from mid-1992 onwards. That represents a substantial extension beyond the current six years. I recognise that changing the law in this way is unusual and that 30 years represents a long limitation period. However, I consider that the exceptionality of the current circumstances in respect of cladding and other serious fire safety defects warrants the longer retrospective limitation period of 30 years.
Several hon. Members rose—
Christopher Pincher
I shall give way to the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage.
Graham Stringer
The Minister is being extraordinarily generous with his time. The Government have moved a good distance to get all-party support for what they are doing and to take the burden away from leaseholders. However, I suspect that in many cases, the people responsible for the defects will have liquidated themselves and will no longer be there. Is not one possible solution that a charge be put against the land, so that neither the leaseholder nor the taxpayer has to pay? Has he considered that?
Christopher Pincher
We will consider all proposals that are put to us to see whether they work and to ensure that leaseholders are protected. As the Secretary of State said in his statement, we will conduct a series of summits with the sector to put people on notice that they must pay for the problems they have caused. If they will not do it voluntarily, we will find a means of requiring them to do so.
The hon. Gentleman was wrong to say that I am being generous with my time. In fact, I am being generous with the House’s time. I propose to be less generous in future, but not before I have allowed my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage to intervene.
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)
I would like to thank the Minister on behalf of a number of leaseholders around the country, because our amendments asked for only 25 years and the Government have gone further with 30 years. I put on the record my thanks to the Government for that.
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I assure him that the 30-year retrospection is what we decided on; it is not a typo and it should not read 25 years.
The prospective limitation period will remain at 15 years, as is currently proposed, which still represents a substantial extension beyond the existing six years. In a small number of cases, the retrospectively extended limitation period will expire very soon following the commencement of the provision. We believe that it is important that the extended limitation period is of practical benefit in the case of all buildings that fall within scope. That is why we have proposed adding section 4B(4) to the Limitation Act 1980 through clause 128, which will ensure that there is always a minimum amount of time to lodge a claim under section 1 of the Defective Premises Act for buildings whose limitation periods will be revived for a very short period of time.
As introduced, the Bill provided for an initial period of 90 days in which action relating to defective premises could be taken when the extension was about to run out. I agree with several of my hon. Friends that 90 days is an insufficient amount of time to take the necessary advice and lodge a claim, which is why we are bringing forward amendments 42 and 43 to extend the initial period to one year. That means that those in any buildings completed between mid-1992 and mid-1993 will always have one full year in which to lodge their claim, once this Bill and its provisions apply. These amendments will ensure that the retrospectively extended limitation period can be of practical benefit in the case of all buildings in scope, and I trust that the House will support them.
Clause 127 expands the scope of the Defective Premises Act to include refurbishment works, and a technical amendment in the next group will ensure that this commences two months after Royal Assent, ensuring that this important new safeguard against shoddy workmanship is taken up as soon as possible. This was a debate that we had, and agreed about, in Committee. I am grateful to my right hon. and hon. Friends, and indeed to colleagues across the House, for debating these matters and for tabling amendments in this area, but I hope that in the light of what I have said from the Dispatch Box they will feel able to withdraw their amendments.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I want the Minister to clarify one last thing before he sits down, because although other hon. Members have raised it, I am still not entirely clear what reassurance there is for our constituents who are leaseholders experiencing problems that are not related to cladding. Others have raised the issues of internal partitions, roof spaces and so forth, and the Minister has referred to other legal channels that may be available, but can he tell me clearly now what reassurance there is for leaseholders who are not facing cladding problems but are facing other fire defects? Will the legal protections that he is offering extend to them?
Christopher Pincher
We will work with parties across this House—across both Houses—and with interested parties to ensure that these issues are properly understood and debated.
Christopher Pincher
No, I will not.
We want to ensure that these matters are properly debated and properly agreed. We also want to ensure, through a suite of mechanisms such as the extension of the Defective Premises Act and working with the sector to ensure that it pays for the defects it has caused, that this issue for leaseholders, which has gone on for far too long, is finally put to bed. This group of Government new clauses and amendments make key improvements to the Bill and extend its benefits to include the whole of Great Britain. I hope therefore that Members across the House will feel able to support the new clauses and the new schedule and allow them to stand part of the Bill.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
It will not have escaped your notice, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I have taken on this Bill in its final stages, so I must begin by thanking my hon. Friends the Members for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) and for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for their prodigious efforts during its earlier stages. I also want to thank my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) and for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) for so ably scrutinising it in Committee.
The issues covered by the Bill have been extensively set out in debates on Second Reading and in Committee. I have no intention of seeking to reprise them this afternoon, but before I turn to part 5 of the Bill and the consideration of the amendments related to it, I feel it is incumbent on me briefly to restate why we believe this legislation is so important. As the House knows, on 14 June 2017, 72 men, women and children lost their lives in an inferno fuelled by the highly combustible cladding system installed on the outside of their 24-storey tower block in north Kensington. That tower block was also compromised by a range of other fire safety defects. I put on record once again our admiration for the survivors and the bereaved of the Grenfell Tower fire and for the wider Grenfell Tower community, who continue to seek not only justice for their families and neighbours but wider change to ensure that everyone is safe in their home.
Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)
I shall speak to Opposition new clause 3 and to the amendments that, although they will not be pressed to a vote this evening, would protect leaseholders from the costs of not only cladding removal, but the remediation of non-cladding defects.
I can hardly believe that it is four and a half years since the horrific fire at Grenfell, and still we are fighting for the robust legal protection that leaseholders in my constituency and across the country need and deserve. It is too easy to assume that removing cladding is the beginning and end of the scandal; the costs of remediating non-cladding fire safety defects are just as ruinous, and blameless leaseholders should not be picking up those costs. I have seen for myself the extent of fire safety defects at various buildings in my constituency, including the Brindley House development, where the scale of the missing firebreaks and other defects was truly shocking. The people who were responsible for putting up that building were grossly negligent and, in my opinion, complete cowboys.
The regulatory failure whereby buildings were declared fit for human habitation when they contained defective or inappropriate fire safety measures, or when those measures were wholly absent, is staggering. When there were negligent and dishonest practices, the costs of remediation should not fall at the feet of my constituents. A commitment to full legal protection for leaseholders from all costs—both for the removal of dangerous cladding and for the remediation of all other fire safety defects—should have been added to the Bill today, because those issues are not new and have been the subject of intense debate for years.
Ministers and their officials know full well the contours of the debate and the issues at stake, so it is not good enough that the Government did not make such amendments today. Instead, we will have to wait to see whether full legal protection is made available when the Bill goes to the other place. We may understand parliamentary procedure and the different staging posts of a Bill, but to my constituents watching from the outside, every single staging post feels like a slap in the face when they are not given the full protection that they need and deserve.
I associate myself with the comments that have been made about insurance, particularly professional indemnity insurance, but I want to mention the increased insurance premiums that many of our constituents have faced across the country. I have been writing to the Government, the FCA and others for more than two years to ask for action against the insurance industry for the huge increase—the hike—in premiums that our cladding-affected leaseholders have faced. That increase bears no resemblance to the mitigations that our constituents have paid for to decrease the risks in their buildings.
People have paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for new fire alarm systems and internal compartmentation to try to bring the risk down in their buildings, yet that is never reflected in the insurance premiums that they have to pay. That is unconscionable. There are big questions for the wider insurance sector to answer, in addition to the buildings industry. It seems to me that someone who has profited from, for example, charging a building in my constituency an insurance premium of £700,000 in total, which has never come down, has some big questions to answer.
I hope that when the Minister brings the Bill back to this place, we get the time for adequate debate and the further amendments that we need. I hope that we take action on insurance and perhaps even—God help us—implore the FCA to do its job and stand by our constituents, who deserve the regulator’s protection. When the Bill comes back, I hope that it addresses all those issues, as it is high time that the Government did right by leaseholders.
Christopher Pincher
I congratulate right hon. and hon. Members on their contributions to this important debate and to the amendments that we are debating. In the short time that I have, I will say that I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), who raised the terrible plight faced by her constituents at Brindley House, as did the Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street. Too many people, for far too long, have been far too worried. We have to end this scandal.
Several hon. Members asked whether we intend to bring forward legal protections in the House of Lords. I assure the House that we do. We certainly want to ensure that all leaseholders in medium and high-rise buildings, who live in them or who used to live in them but have had to move out and sub-let because of the situation in which they find themselves, will have put in place the robust legal protections to which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred. We want to work cross-party and with interested parties to ensure that those robust protections are right.
We believe that leaseholders should not be asked to pay anything further until those legal protections are in place, as was raised by several hon. Members on both sides of the House. I encourage any hon. Member who is aware of demands from freeholders that their leaseholders pay to make me or my officials aware of that demand.
I am also grateful for the points raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) about the, shall we say, peculiarities of the insurance system. Some of those are wider issues that go beyond the Bill, but I am happy to discuss how we can resolve such issues with them.
I will certainly work collaboratively with the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda). I am conscious that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) is right that there are limitations through mitigation, but the law can change the culture. That is part of the point of bringing forward the Bill—to change the culture of the sector.
We will instigate a summit with the sector to ensure that it pays what it owes, and if it will not pay voluntarily, we will introduce appropriate mechanisms to ensure that it does. I am conscious that the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), referred to the Defective Premises Act 1972. I may have misheard him, but I think he suggested that that Act is not available for use by leaseholders. That is not correct. Leaseholders are able to avail themselves of the Act, as may any freeholder.
I am conscious, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I have only 14 more seconds in which to speak. Let me reassure Members that we want to work across the House to bring forward sensible legal protections in amendments in the other place, and we will do that as soon as may be.
Christopher Pincher
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 1—Review of payment practices and building safety—
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within 60 days of the day on which this Act is passed, establish a review of the effects of construction industry payment practices on building safety in general and on safety in high-risk buildings in particular.
(2) The review must, in particular, consider—
(a) the extent to the structure of the construction market incentivises procurement with building safety in mind,
(b) the extent to which contract terms and payment practices (for example, retentions) can drive poor behaviours, including the prioritisation of speed and low cost solutions and affect building safety by placing financial strain on supply chain,
(c) the effects on building safety of other matters raised in Chapter 9 (procurement and supply) of Building a Safer Future, the final report of the Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety, published in May 2018 (Cm 9607),
(d) the adequacy for the purposes of promoting building safety of the existing legislative, regulatory and policy regime governing payment practices in construction, including the provisions of Part II of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, and
(e) recommendations for legislative, regulatory or policy change.
(3) The Secretary of State must lay a report of the findings of the review before Parliament no later than one year after this Act comes into force.”
This new clause would put an obligation on the Secretary of State to review the effects of construction industry payment on practices on building safety and to report the findings to Parliament.
New clause 2—Building regulations: property protection—
“(1) The Building Act 1984 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 1 (Power to make building regulations), after subsection (1)(f), insert—
‘(g) furthering the protection of property’.
(3) In Schedule 1 (Building Regulations), in paragraph 8(5A)—
(a) after ‘1(1)(a)’ insert ‘(d), (e) and (g)’;
(b) after ‘flooding’ insert ‘and fire’.”
This new clause would add “furthering the protection of property” to the list of purposes for which building regulations may be made under the Buildings Act 1984, and extends the purposes for which persons carrying out works on a building may be required to do things to improve building resilience.
New clause 15—Duty of social landlords to undertake electrical safety inspections—
“(1) A social landlord of a residential dwelling in a high-rise building must—
(a) hold a valid Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR) for that dwelling;
(b) provide to the tenant of the dwelling, including any new such tenant—
(i) a copy of that EICR, and
(ii) a document explaining the provisions of this Act;
(c) handle any valid complaint about the safety of the electrical installations of the dwelling in accordance with subsection (5).
(2) A person who fails to comply with a duty under subsection (1) commits an offence.
(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to a fine.
(4) A complaint is valid if—
(a) it relates to the safety of the electrical installations of the dwelling;
(b) it is made in writing by, or on behalf of, the tenant of the dwelling; and
(c) it is not frivolous or vexatious.
(5) The landlord must investigate any valid complaint within 28 days of receiving that complaint.
(6) If such an investigation shows that the electrical installations are unsafe, the landlord must rectify the situation using a qualified and competent person within 28 days of the completion of the investigation.
(7) If the landlord believes that a complaint is not valid they must write to the tenant within 28 days of receiving that complaint explaining why they do not think it is valid.
(8) In this section—
a ‘valid Electrical Installation Condition Report’—
(a) is dated within the last five years;
(b) covers the whole fixed electrical installation of the dwelling;
(c) has a satisfactory outcome;
(d) was completed by a qualified and competent person; and
(e) is based on the model forms in BS 7671 or equivalent;
‘social landlord’ has the same meaning as in section 219 of the Housing Act 1996.”
This new clause requires social landlords to ensure the safety of electrical installations in high rise buildings and is intended to reduce risk of spread of fires between flats.
New clause 16—Duty of leaseholders to undertake electrical safety inspections—
“(1) A leaseholder of a residential dwelling in a high-rise building must—
(a) hold a valid Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR) for that dwelling; and
(b) provide a copy of that EICR to a person specified by the Secretary of State.
(2) A person who fails to comply with subsection (1) shall—
(a) initially receive a written request from the specified person to provide the EICR; and
(b) if he or she fails to comply with such a written request, be liable to a civil penalty.
(3) The Secretary of State shall, by regulations, nominate who the specified person shall be.
(4) In this section a ‘valid Electrical Installation Condition Report’—
(a) is dated within the last five years;
(b) covers the whole fixed electrical installation of the dwelling;
(c) has a satisfactory outcome;
(d) was completed by a qualified and competent person; and
(e) is based on the model forms in BS 7671 or equivalent.”
This new clause requires leaseholders to ensure the safety of electrical installations in high rise buildings and is intended to reduce risk of spread of fires between flats.
New clause 17—Staircase standards—
“The Secretary of State must, within 6 months of the day on which this Act is passed, consult on regulations requiring staircases in all new build properties to comply with British Standard 5395-1.”
New clause 18—Property flood resilience—
“(1) The Secretary of State must, before the end of the period of six months beginning on the day this Act is passed, use the power under section 1 of the Building Act 1984 to make building regulations for the purpose in subsection (2).
(2) That purpose is to set minimum standards for the safety of new build public and private properties in England for—
(a) property flood resilience,
(b) flood mitigation, and
(c) waste management in connection with flooding.
(3) The Secretary of State must by regulations establish—
(a) a certification scheme for safety improvements to domestic and commercial properties in England made in full or in part for flood prevention or flood mitigation purposes, and
(b) an accreditation scheme for installers of such improvements.
(4) The scheme under subsection (3)(a) must—
(a) set minimum standards for the improvements, including that they are made by a person accredited under subsection (1)(b), and
(b) provide for the issuance of certificates for insurance and assurance purposes stating that improvements to properties have met those standards.
(5) The scheme under subsection (3)(a) may make provision for the certification of improvements that were made before the establishment of the scheme provided those improvements meet the minimum standards in subsection (4)(a).
(6) In setting minimum standards under subsection (4)(a) the Secretary of State must have regard to the minimum standards for new build properties under subsection (1).
(7) The Secretary of State and local authorities in England must take all reasonable steps to make data about flood prevention and risk relevant to building safety publicly available.
(8) The duty under subsection (1) extends to seeking to facilitate use of the data by—
(a) insurers for the purpose of accurately assessing risks to buildings, and
(b) individual property owners for the purpose of assessing the need for property flood resilience measures.”
This new clause would establish minimum standards for property flood resilience measures in new build properties and in improvements to existing building designed to increase safety protections for flood prevention and mitigation purposes, and require local and national government to make data available to support this.
New clause 23—Building control: independent appointment—
“In section 47 of the Building Act 1984 (giving and acceptance of initial notice), in subsection (1)(a) after ‘approved inspector’, insert ‘who has been chosen by a system of independent appointment, prescribed by regulations made by the Secretary of State.’”
This new clause, along with Amendment 73, is intended to remove choice of building control body from those carrying out all building work.
New clause 24—Building Safety and Local Authorities—
“(1) The duties performed by the regulator under section 31 of this Act in respect of relevant buildings must be performed by the local authority that exercises building control functions in the area in which the building is located.
(2) In this section ‘relevant building’ means a building—
(a) under 18 metres in height, and
(b) comprising more than one dwelling.”
New clause 25—Building Safety Regulations for multi-occupancy dwellings—
“The Secretary of State must by regulations amend paragraph 1 of Schedule 1 to the Building Act 1984 to apply to all buildings that comprise more than one dwelling.”
Amendment 1, in clause 3, page 2, line 13, at end insert—
“(aa) furthering the protection of property, and”.
This amendment would require the building safety regulator to exercise its functions with a view to furthering the protection of property, which is intended promote longer term protections for occupant safety and reducing fire damage and cost.
Amendment 74, in clause 30, page 18, line 17, at end insert—
“(3A) In making regulations under this section, the Secretary of State must have regard to the ability of residents to evacuate a building, taking into account the vulnerability of residents and the number of means of egress.”
This amendment is intended to ensure the Secretary of State has regard to the ability of residents to evacuate a building when revising the definition of higher-risk building.
Amendment 73, page 60, line 7 leave out clause 45.
This amendment, along with NC23, is intended to remove choice of building control body for those carrying out all building work.
Amendment 75, in clause 57, page 79, line 23, at end insert—
“(5) The regulations must exempt any relevant application made by or on behalf of a registered social landlord for the provision of social housing as defined under section 68 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008.
(6) A ‘relevant application’ under subsection (5) means an application of a description specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State.”
Government amendments 11 to 40.
Government amendments 60 and 61.
Government amendments 63 and 64.
Government new schedule 1—Special measures.
Government amendment 70.
Christopher Pincher
I am happy to set out this group of new clauses and amendments that I hope will be non-contentious as they relate to special measures.
Let me briefly remind the House that special measures orders are a last-resort regulatory intervention that will be invoked if there has been a serious failure or multiple failures by the accountable person to meet their duties under part 4 of the Bill. The new clauses and amendments, beginning with new clause 19, provide for the special measures regime to operate in high-risk buildings across all housing tenures. They also ensure that a special measure order cannot be circumvented by a recalcitrant accountable person, including in respect of a situation in which an accountable person sells their interest in the building and tries to avoid being bound by the special measures order.
New clause 19 introduces new schedule 1, which will encompass the special measures provisions and replace clauses 104 to 113. I shall refer to the paragraphs in the schedule as I address the House. Proposed new paragraph 9 is a new provision that provides for a financial management proposal. This will detail how the accountable person will fund the relevant building safety expenses across both leasehold and rented buildings that are subject to special measures. The financial management proposal sets out the estimated expenses, the measures that they will fund and the special measures manager will undertake, and the apportionment of payments if there is more than one accountable person.
Proposed new paragraph 10(3)(b) ensures that for commonhold buildings a special measures manager may carry out the functions of a receiver of commonhold building safety assessments. This aligns with the provisions on the building safety charge and ensures that the manager is remunerated and can carry out their functions for such a tenure of building. Amendments 33 to 35 are supporting provisions for special measures in common-hold buildings.
Proposed new paragraph 12 is a new provision that ensures financial propriety and provides that any payments received by a manager further to the proposal are deposited into an account to be held on trust. Proposed new paragraph 16 gives power to the Building Safety Regulator to provide financial assistance to the special measures manager to enable it to carry out its functions.
Proposed new paragraph 18 provides for a proactive regulator who will review key aspects under the special measures order and, where necessary, apply to vary the order if the regulator considers that any of the functions or terms require amendment.
Proposed new paragraphs 20(7) to 20(9) provide that on the discharge of a special measures order, the tribunal must direct the special measures manager to prepare a reconciliation of those accounts held on trust and may direct final payments from the manager or accountable persons as appropriate.
Proposed new paragraph 22 creates provisions that ensure that while it is in force the terms of a special measures order will be binding against an incoming accountable person, while the outgoing accountable person remains liable for any contraventions under the order and any debts that may have been incurred prior to the transfer of ownership.
A swathe of Government amendments—Nos. 11, 12, 16 to 28, 31 and 32, 36, 40, 61, 63 and 70—are consequential amendments that make changes relating to special measures due to the provisions now appearing in new schedule 1. Amendments 33 to 35 provide for changes to provisions to ensure that special measures operate effectively for commonhold, high-risk buildings. Together, these amendments and new provisions will ensure that a special measures intervention will operate effectively across buildings, regardless of tenure.
Amendments 14 and 15 are, again, minor technical changes to the process of registration of high-risk buildings. Amendment 14 simply clarifies the meaning of registration, while amendment 15 makes it clear that the building safety regulator has the powers to update the register of high-risk buildings beyond the initial registration application. The amendment will therefore make sure that the register is kept up to date and is fit for purpose. Amendments 29 and 30 are on the protection from forfeiture and amend clause 122. They amend it so that leaseholders can be assured that they have the same protections against forfeiture of a lease as those that already exist in relation to the service charge. They are consequential amendments that ensure that statutory protections against forfeiture apply to relevant leases where there is a requirement to pay a building safety charge. We want the same procedural rights to apply to the building safety charge regime as apply to the service charge. The amendment extends service charge protections for leaseholders who default on payments or challenge the reasonableness of a charge to the building safety charge.
Finally, the Government have tabled another small batch of minor or technical amendments that are either consequential to other changes or correct clauses in the Bill. Four technical amendments are consequential to amendment 1, which I introduced earlier, relating to the new homes ombudsman. Amendments 59 and 62 remove the regulation-making power to add the description of “developer” for the purposes of the new homes ombudsman provisions from the scope of the general provision about powers to make regulations. This is because new clause 20, in respect of the regulations, means that we can ensure that Scottish and Welsh Ministers, as well as the Secretary of State, have bespoke powers. Amendments 66 and 67 adjust the territorial extent of the provisions about the new homes ombudsman scheme now that that the scheme will operate across Great Britain, and territorial extent issues are also dealt with in new schedule 2, which contains a consequential amendment related to the new homes ombudsman. [Interruption.]
Finally, I heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), who has not yet risen—
Christopher Pincher
He has risen—I am doing your work for you, Mr Deputy Speaker—and I will give way to him.
Bob Stewart
I thank my very good friend for being so nice to me—decent of him. In sum, all these special measures are devices to ensure that, once people are identified as culpable to fix the problem, they are pinged and have to do it. Is that correct?
Christopher Pincher
My right hon. and gallant Friend, as ever, is on or near the money. The point of the changes is to make sure that the accountable person is indeed accountable, so they do what it says on the tin.
Amendment 13 makes it clear in the Bill that an accountable person who allows occupation of a single residential unit or more in part of a higher risk building, as defined in clause 62, without a relevant completion certificate has committed a summary offence, and the guilty person is liable for conviction up to a maximum summary term. Amendment 60 allows regulations made under clause 71 to be subject to the affirmative procedure. Clause 71 sets out the parameters of the part of the building for which an accountable person is responsible. Amendment 64 provides that the consequential amendments in schedule 5 relating to the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967—an Act we all know well—and the Freedom of Information Act 2000 extend to all of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Amendment 68 provides that clause 127 is automatically commenced two months after Royal Assent.
The amendments, while hardly scintillating, will help to improve the Bill and make it ready for scrutiny by our colleagues in the other place. I trust that my hon. Friends and Opposition Members have listened closely, with care and attention, have absorbed all the points I have made, and that they will support the amendments.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Before I call Matthew Pennycook, I ask colleagues who are trying to catch my eye that they please make sure that they address the new clauses and amendments in the group before us, not those in the previous group.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
I rise to speak in support of new clauses 1, 2, 15, 16 and 23. The events at Grenfell Tower were devastating, with the tragic loss of 72 lives, which shocked us all. Words will never adequately describe the pain felt by the families and friends of the victims. Later, though, as light was shed on the extensive preventable failings that led to the disaster, justifiable anger followed.
I am glad to see the Bill progress through this place, but it should not have taken almost five years. I welcome the Secretary of State’s recent announcement that leaseholders in England will not face the astronomical costs of remediating unsafe cladding. I am pleased that the Government have taken a moral stance on the issue.
Unfortunately, there are still gaps that must be plugged, and I hope that the Minister’s promise of statutory protection against all building safety defects will materialise. For my constituents, I hope that the Government will engage in a constructive dialogue with the Scottish Government to ensure that leaseholder protection can be extended across the UK fully funded.
There is still a glaring lack of clarity and the Government must facilitate funding being available across the devolved Administrations to achieve an equal standing. Although much of the Bill has limited territorial extent, there are some key areas that apply across the UK and in Scotland, such as the testing and inspection of construction products.
Early last year, it was announced that the independent panel on the safety of construction materials would review the testing system and how it can be strengthened so that product safety confidence can be restored. The industry is still awaiting the report’s publication, which prompts the question of how we can fully scrutinise the Bill’s measures without knowing what the review found. Can the Minister provide a definitive date for when it will be available? Will he also provide an update on the establishment of a national regulator for construction products?
As it stands, there are a limited number of private product testing companies, and fewer still of the accredited bodies’ testing sites, which means limited access to the furnaces that are used to test all combustible building materials and products. Subsequently, there are huge delays in products moving through the testing system.
Some companies are reporting delays of up to six months to test their products. The accredited sites are managed by private sector companies, and as demand increases and supply decreases, the price set by those bodies climbs. Concerns have been raised that that model incentivises the maximising of profit over the quality of testing.
The Government must also be cautious not to create widespread quality disparity between existing buildings and new ones of any height. While preservation of life is of course the most key consideration, the lifespan of buildings must be protected too. Buildings such as schools, hospitals and care homes, which hon. Members have mentioned, should have a mandatory requirement for sprinklers. By making such buildings as safe and resilient as possible, human life is protected, yes, but many other things too. Schools are pillars of the community. Where do those students go to learn if their school burns down, or for a hospital, where do the patients go? What delays will essential services suffer?
The Bill is a mammoth piece of legislation and it is easy to look at each single part in turn to make it digestible, but a key finding in Dame Judith Hackitt’s review was that there needs to be a holistic, whole-building approach to fire safety. We ought to apply that principle here and take a whole-Bill approach, to truly understand how it will work in practice.
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to all Members across the House for their contributions to the debate. I will speak in response to the non-Government amendments first and then, as I progress through my remarks, pick up the points that have been raised about the Government’s amendments.
New clause 1 was tabled by the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), who is not in her place; we wish her a swift recovery. I thank her for raising the matter, and I recognise that the issue that she has embedded in her amendment is intended to address the fact that the poor adversarial practices in the way that payments are charged and made within the built environment can lead to unsafe, low-quality building safety outcomes as well as poor value for money.
I assure all hon. Members that we agree that the issue is important. There is already work across Government to ensure that fair and prompt payment practices are addressed with industry—such as the construction playbook, which captures commercial best practice and specific sector reforms, outlining the Government’s expectations of how contracting authorities and suppliers, including in the supply chain, should engage with each other. That is resetting the relationship between the construction industry and the Government. It is focused on delivering a more sustainable, modern industry, better able to deliver high-quality built assets for its clients.
We published guidance as a result of work set up with the Construction Leadership Council and the procurement advisory group, alongside our recent announcement. We will now work with industry to implement the principles of that guidance as widely as we can. We support industry to lead its own important culture change to deliver the very significant changes being brought forward in the Bill. There is existing legislation—part II of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996—that aims to create a framework for a fair and prompt process of payment through the construction supply chain and the resolution procedure for disputes. The intention in that framework is to ensure that it is implemented throughout the construction contract.
Turning to new clause 2 and amendment 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), our assessment is that the new Building Safety Regulator has the right two objectives to deliver this critical mission, and adding a further objective around property protection would not be necessary or beneficial.
The Bill provides the Building Safety Regulator with a broad statutory objective to improve the standard of buildings, which enables it to consider the overall performance of buildings. Meeting this objective could involve the regulator looking at such specific areas highly relevant to property protection such as security, resilience and fire safety. Therefore, we do not believe that an additional objective is necessary. Adding a specific Building Safety Regulator objective on property protection would also confuse and dilute its mission—that issue was raised in Committee. I think there was agreement across the Committee that we do not want to confuse or obfuscate the responsibilities of the Building Safety Regulator as it is set up and beds in. We want a proportionate regulatory regime that avoids putting undue and unnecessary pressures on leaseholders, but we also want to make sure that the regime builds in and beds in effectively, so I hope my hon. Friend will feel able to withdraw his amendments.
Christopher Pincher
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
This Bill represents the biggest overhaul of building and fire safety legislation in a generation, and today’s proceedings represent a significant staging post on our shared journey towards a regime that is more robust and more proportionate. In a modern liberal democracy, living in a home where you feel safe should be a basic human right, but sadly, for thousands of people up and down our country, this most reasonable of expectations does not tally with their current experience. This Bill is going to right that wrong by replacing an outdated building system with one that is attuned not just to where we are in 2021 but to how we protect people in 2031, 2041 and for many years beyond. We recognise from the outset the need for new legislation to be based on the solid foundations of independent and objective expertise, which is why, as Members across the House will know, we are delivering on the recommendations set out by Dame Judith Hackitt in her independent review of building regulations and fire safety.
It will not have escaped the House’s attention that while we have been scrutinising the Bill line by line in Committee and on Report, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been pressing ahead with wider reforms on issues that have plagued this sector for years. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have set about restoring much-needed common sense to our building safety regime, through the Secretary of State’s statement on 10 January and the Prime Minister’s remarks earlier during Question Time.
There has been progress since the Grenfell Tower tragedy, but our view in Government is that the pace of rectifying high-rise buildings with dangerous and unsafe cladding has not married up to the gravity of the situation, so we must move more effectively and more quickly. That is why we have brought the Bill to the House today to complete its remaining stages, so that it can progress smoothly and quickly to the other place where the robust legislative protections that we have outlined in previous statements can be properly and sensibly made. The Bill can then come back to this House for proper scrutiny, and I am sure that the business managers—the usual channels—will ensure that appropriate time is made available for it to conclude. We must complete this Bill. It has been on the stocks for far too long. Too many people have suffered too much, and we must, through this legislation and through the suite of measures the Secretary of State announced in his statement on 10 January, right the wrong that has been done to too many people. I commend the Bill to the House, not as the end but as the end of the beginning.
Christopher Pincher
Given all I said previously, I would not want to be accused of detaining the House and the swift passage of the Bill, beyond simply saying thank you to everyone at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, particularly my officials who are in the Box and several who are not, and Lord Greenhalgh, who have worked so assiduously to bring the Bill to its current stage, where we can all agree to it today. I also wish to thank the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for his help and support, and we look forward to further collaboration with the Committee.
I congratulate all Members from across the House for their campaigning zeal: the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley); my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland); my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell); the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn); the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi); and many others who have worked so very hard to on behalf of their constituents to make sure that their concerns are addressed. I am glad that we are able to support the Bill tonight, and I wish it well on its swift passage to the statute book.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Business of the House (Today)
Ordered,
That, at this day’s sitting, the Speaker shall put the Question necessary to dispose of proceedings on the motion in the name of Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg relating to Committee on Standards not later than one hour after the commencement of proceedings on the motion for this Order; proceedings relating to the motion on Committee on Standards may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.—(Amanda Solloway.)
Second Homes and Holiday Lets: Rural Communities
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
It is a great pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I wish you and all Members here in the Chamber a happy new year, particularly the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who secured this important debate. I congratulate him on doing so and I congratulate all hon. Members on their intelligent, thoughtful and detailed contributions.
In the time available to me, I shall certainly do my utmost to address the points that have been raised by Members and on occasion I will also refer to the very excellent speech that my officials have provided for me. However, I will begin by making a general point, and if I misquote Jane Austen, forgive me, because it is a “truth universally acknowledged” that if we are to have the affordable homes that people want and need in the places that they are needed, we must build more homes in those places. It is not just me saying that; organisations and groups as different as KPMG and Shelter also say that in order to meet the housing needs of our country, we need to build north of 250,000 new homes each year.
I am pleased to say that in the year before covid struck, we were well on our way to achieving that objective: 244,000 homes were built in that year. Indeed, even in the year of covid, 216,000 new homes were built. I am also pleased to say that in that time 408,379 first-time buyers achieved their dream of home ownership, which was a 20-year high and a 35% uplift on the previous year.
It is because we need to build more homes that we have introduced and built upon our affordable homes programme, which injects a further £11.3 billion of public money into building more affordable homes. We reckon that 180,000 affordable homes will be built in the next five years, 32,000 of which will be for social rent. That is why we have abolished the cap on the housing revenue account and provided very attractive Public Works Loan Board interest rates for local authorities to build their own homes, if they wish to do so. It is also why we have the Help to Buy scheme, which has now helped 339,000 people on to the housing ladder, why we have introduced a fixed mortgage guarantee scheme of 95% of loan-to-value, to help people to get those mortgages and get on to the housing ladder, and why we have introduced the First Homes scheme, which my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) quite properly recommended. The First Homes scheme will ensure that local people can benefit from discounts to local homes of up to 50% and in some specific cases from discounts greater than 50%.
I am very pleased that the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale is keen on the First Homes scheme. I am bound to tell him that we are yet to hear from Lakeland about an opportunity to pilot the scheme there. [Interruption.] I am very pleased that he has made the offer again and I will certainly ensure that my officials are aware of it and make contact with Lakeland, because we believe that First Homes is a way of ensuring that local people, or people with particular skills that are necessary in a local area, are able to get on to the property ladder and stay there.
However, we recognise that rural communities face some very specific challenges. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton and others pointed out that we have changed the tax system. Since 2013, local authorities have been able to levy 100% of council tax on second homes, where the people who own them do not necessarily use the local services that they might, but through the council tax have to contribute to them; 96% of local authorities make use of that opportunity. Where homes are empty for a period of time, they can levy even more significant council tax surcharges.
That is also why we have committed to close the loophole in the business rate system that the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), the Opposition spokesman, referred to, in order to ensure that letters have to reach a letting threshold before they can benefit from business rate relief, and we will introduce our proposals to close that loophole as soon as we can. Colleagues across the Chamber have mentioned the changes we have made to stamp duty to help first-time buyers, charging second home purchasers more to alleviate some of the advantages that they have over first-time buyers. That is why we have also introduced a further surcharge for foreign purchasers of property.
I hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton says about taxation policy. Taxation policy is, of course, a matter for the Treasury. As I have said before, although not all good ideas start in the Treasury, they can all end there if the Treasury does not like them—although I am bound to say that the Treasury usually likes ideas that raise its income. We will, with the Treasury, keep these issues under close review.
This issue is also why we have reformed the planning system, which, at 74 years old, is even older than the plan for the City of York. It is opaque, slow, and is not predictable. That does not help small and medium-sized enterprises—often the builders who build different types of homes for different tenures in the places that the big builders do not want. We need a system that will help those SMEs and is far more engaging. Presently, 1% of local people get involved in the development of their local authority’s local plan—that is far too few—and 2% to 3% of local communities get involved in individual planning applications; again, that is far too few. If we can build a system that is digitised and far more straightforward, it will engage more people in plan making, and that will buy in communities to the plans for those communities and their needs.
We also want, as a reform to be introduced soon, a new infrastructure levy to replace section 106, which tends to favour the bigger developers that can afford the bigger batteries of lawyers. We want a system that, again, is speedier and more transparent, that front-loads the funding for local authorities to use earlier in the development process, and that captures greater land value. Our infrastructure levy proposal, which colleagues will hear more about in the near future, will, we believe, achieve that.
I recognise that more must be done, but we must ensure that we get the right balance on the economic benefits of second homes, the social challenges that they can sometimes provide, the rights of homeowners to use their properties as they choose, and the needs of homeseekers wishing to live in or near the area where their friends, families or workplaces are located.
The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale offered seven solutions. We recognise that a large number of second homes and holiday lets can have adverse effects in some areas, so I will look closely at his proposals and at the points raised by other colleagues. However, I am bound to say to him that while changing planning law so as to make second homes and holiday lets a separate category in planning use has some attractions, it also has some significant drawbacks. Use classes apply nationally in all cases, irrespective of whether one lives in a high tourism area. Therefore, a new use class would affect second homes and therefore potentially restrict the freedoms of homeowners, wherever they live, regardless of whether it is a high-use tourist area.
We also do not have the information needed to understand how, and for how long, a property is being used. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, the shadow spokesman—the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich—and others, made the point that we need data. It was also made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), and by my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double)—as a Whip, he is silent in public, but I can assure the House that he is very vocal in private with me about these matters.
I can confirm that we propose to consult on the introduction of a tourist accommodation registration scheme in England so that we can build an understanding of the evidence and the issues that second homes present, particularly when driven by the rise of online platforms such as Airbnb. We will launch that consultation later this year and will begin the process of a call for evidence in the coming weeks. We want to look at not just the issue of short-term holiday letting, but the effect that it has on supply. We will also look at compliance, health and safety regulations and the effect of antisocial behaviour and so on. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston), the Minister with responsibility for sport, tourism and heritage, has already been in touch with the local council of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, and I dare say that he will be in touch with other councils in due course.
We are acutely aware of the challenges that second homes present, as well as the opportunities that they provide. I can assure the Chamber that as we develop proposals on planning reform, we will keep those considerations and concerns in mind. I will also keep in mind the proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton to rebadge or rebrand houses under the first homes scheme as half-price homes—at least that has the benefit of alliteration, if nothing else. We certainly want to make sure that the value and importance of the first homes strategy is fully understood and appreciated by local authorities up and down the country.
I am conscious that the sponsor of the debate, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, should have an opportunity to be heard. Let me conclude, therefore, by saying that as we emerge from the pandemic we want to build new and better homes and communities while recognising that building in and of itself does not solve some of the challenges that communities face. That will be at the forefront of our minds as we bring forward our White Paper on levelling up as well as our planning proposals, which I hope I will be able to present to the House in the not too distant future.
Housing in Sittingbourne and Sheppey
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
It is, as ever, a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and certainly a great pleasure to respond to the debate brought to us by my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson), who is an industrious and doughty campaigner on behalf of his constituents in Sittingbourne and Sheppey, and across all of Swale borough. I think that he was being rather modest in his claims; I would say that he has raised this issue more than six times in the interests of his constituents.
I agree with my hon. Friend that we need a planning system that is speedier, more transparent and more fair, and that delivers the right homes, in the right places, with the right infrastructure that people want and can support. I think he would agree with me that the present planning system does not achieve those objectives. It certainly is not particularly engaging, as I think we all know. About 1% of local populations get involved in local plan making. That is almost literally only planning officers and their blood relations in a particular local authority. That percentage rises to a massive 2% or 3% when it comes to the engagement of local communities in individual planning applications—again, far too few.
Gordon Henderson
On that point, I accept that only a very small percentage of people get involved in planning decisions at the planning stage, but the Minister will find, if he looks through the results of the last local elections in Kent, that they came out in their thousands to vote for the Green party against the Conservatives because of planning issues.
Christopher Pincher
My hon. Friend makes a good point. We want to make the planning system much more engaging so that more people get involved at an early stage and play a part in local plan making, so that they can say that the choices they have made are contributing to their community while ensuring that the infrastructure that they require locally is properly planned for. I will come to that in a moment.
My hon. Friend made some important points, which I will address. First, he mentioned the local housing need numbers for Swale. He will appreciate that, because I have a quasi-judicial role, I must not go into too great detail about Swale’s local plan. I am pleased that I may say that its latest iteration is progressing—I think it is about to go to section 19 and is well on course for update before the end of 2023. However, there are some misconceptions about how local housing need should be used. It is a starting point, not an end point. It is based on the 2014 Office for National Statistics household population projections. We took a view a couple of years ago that, particularly given the pandemic, local authorities needed consistency and certainty, so we chose not to change the local housing need calculations for all but the 20 largest cities in our country.
As I say, the housing need numbers, as calculated, are a starting point, not an end point. It is for local authorities to determine their building target for each year over the lifecycle of their plan, to be agreed with the planning inspectorate. Local authorities are able to identify constraints—such as green belts or areas of outstanding natural beauty—that allow them to land at a different number from that expressed in the local housing need calculations. It is very much for local authorities to determine the right number of homes that should be built in their community. As I say, we want more people to become involved in the formulation of those local plans.
My hon. Friend mentioned developers not developing on land for which planning permission has already been granted. There are different views about those numbers. Sir Oliver Letwin found a couple of years ago that land banking, as it is popularly described, is not a particularly prevalent issue. However, I recognise the concern of local communities and our colleagues about this particular challenge. That is why we have committed, as part of our future planning reforms, to look carefully at how we can, shall we say, incentivise developers to build out on the applications that already exist, rather than looking for more and more applications to be given on other sites.
My hon. Friend also mentioned the important issue of the small number of developers who have those permissions and who build the homes in our country that we need. We want more developers, and more SME developers, developing different types of homes in different places for different tenures. We know that in the last 10 years or so, partly as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, the number of SMEs developing homes has fallen by something like 40%. We need to encourage more small and medium-sized developers to develop, and not leave development in the hands of the so-called big six. Having a planning system that is speedier, more predictable and more transparent is a way of ensuring that those SMEs come back into the marketplace and develop the sorts of homes that we want to see.
My hon. Friend and I certainly want to ensure that the right homes are being built in the right places for people to live in. We believe in a property-owning democracy; we want people to have the opportunity to get on to the property ladder. I am pleased to say, as a result of work done by the Yorkshire Building Society—I think the announcement was made only today—that some 408,379 first-time buyers got on to the property ladder last year. That is a 20-year high in first-time buyers getting on to the ladder and a 35% uplift in the figures from the year before. As we emerge from the pandemic, which has affected all our lives, we want to ensure that we are building better, building brighter, and building more homes for people to buy to live in, to get a stake in the country and in their community.
We also have to ensure, as my hon. Friend rightly says, that we have the right number of affordable homes built. We have an affordable homes programme. It is the largest cash injection in the development of affordable homes in 15 or 16 years—some £12.3 billion, £11.5 billion of which is new money. We anticipate that, economic conditions allowing, over the next five years it will build 180,000 new homes, 32,000 of which will be for social rent. We have also allowed local authorities the opportunity—through removal of the housing revenue account cap on borrowing—to spend more money on social homes if they so wish. The Public Works Loan Board offers them loans at very attractive rates. We have also allowed them much more flexibility through the use of their right-to-buy receipts—partly as a result of the pandemic—to ensure that local authorities have the wherewithal to build the sorts of homes that they want to build.
However, I am very conscious of what my hon. Friend says about the section 106 system. It has some supporters, of course. A lot of big developers like section 106 because it tends to load the weaponry—to give the ammunition to the bigger developers, with the bigger bank balances and the bigger batteries of lawyers, at the expense of smaller local authorities. We want to rectify that imbalance in the system by introducing an infrastructure levy, which will be set by the local authority, so that it is very clear what the cost of development is going to be. It will enable greater land capture value to be obtained by local authorities, so that local authorities and local communities get the infrastructure that they want, up front in the development process and not way down the line, if it is built at all. The levy means that the playgrounds, health clinics or schools that local authorities and local communities need to support the homes that are proposed for development are built where, when and how they want them, rather than what happens under the present system, which is rather more uncertain.
My hon. Friend also mentioned the predilection, shall we say, of some local authorities nearer to where we are now than to his constituency to buy up properties in his constituency. I am very conscious of that issue. I say to him that we have provided very clear—indeed, unambiguous—guidance to local authorities that they should, wherever possible, place families and individuals within their own area. The guidance also that they should only be looking to secure housing outside their local authority as a very last resort.
Gordon Henderson
I am grateful because this is a very important point that I hope the Minister will take on. I accept what he says, and he recognises the problem of London boroughs buying properties in areas such as mine. The boroughs pay for those properties and they pay the rent of the people they place there, but what they do not have to do, which they should, is fund the social services and education needed to look after those people and educate their children. Kent County Council taxpayers have to pay for that. That must be looked at.
Christopher Pincher
I am conscious of the issue raised by my hon. Friend. I will make a couple of points in response. First, he is absolutely right that we want a system that provides the school places and GP clinic places. That is why we want to change from the section 106 system to the infrastructure levy, which we believe will provide those sorts of bricks-and-mortar services more rapidly. He also knows that we are investing more in the NHS. I will not go into great detail on that; it is a matter for my colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care. However, he knows that we are training up more doctors and nurses. That will take some time, but we want to invest more in the NHS.
My hon. Friend should also be aware that, as a result of the affordable homes programme, over £4 billion have been provided to the Greater London Authority and the Mayor of London to build properties in London for Londoners. I call on the Mayor to get on and build those properties, for which he has the funds, to take the pressure off places such as Kent. My hon. Friend also mentioned brownfield sites over greenfield. We are clear through the national planning policy framework that brownfield should be used first wherever possible. We have provided funds to that effect, which he will know about, either for big or small investments, which allow local authorities to focus on the redevelopment of brownfield sites.
I also tell my hon. Friend that as a result of the Environment Act 2021, which is now on the statute book, there is a requirement on developers to ensure a biodiversity net gain of at least 10% where developments take place. Again, that will ensure that where development happens, not only is bricks-and-mortar infrastructure provided, but environmental infrastructure is supported and enhanced. I am conscious, Mr Hollobone, that my hon. Friend will probably want to say a few remarks, so I will give him the opportunity.
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Order. In a half-hour debate, I am afraid that the Member in charge does not have the right of reply, so the Minister still has two minutes to make further remarks, if he wishes to do so.
Christopher Pincher
Mr Hollobone, you honour me in allowing me further time to expostulate on the Government’s policies. We are conscious of the challenges that my hon. Friend raises. I am keen to ensure that the reform to the planning system that we have in mind will result in greater community engagement, the provision of infrastructure to give local communities the schools, school places and GP surgeries they need, an environmental support mechanism to enhance developments as they are brought forward, and more SMEs in the system to ensure new homes of different tenures, styles and types built in the places we need, so that we have a planning system which, while it will never be uncontroversial—there will always been controversies when it comes to individual developments—everybody understands, can buy into and can accept is fair, just and predictable. I look forward to further debates with my hon. Friend over the next several weeks and months, as we bring our proposals forward. I am grateful to you, Mr Hollobone, for your advice and guidance in the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Delivery Supply Chain: Planning Controls
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
I wish to update the House on the measures the Government are taking to facilitate flexibility within the delivery supply chain and mitigate challenges faced by construction sites.
Due to the covid pandemic, the logistics sector is facing an exceptional challenge resulting from the acute shortage of HGV drivers across the distribution network. This has resulted in missed deliveries which have the potential to lead to significant shortages and hinder economic growth.
Through a previous written ministerial statement made by the former Secretary of State, dated 15 July 2021, the Government responded to these pressures proactively by ensuring the industry had the tools available to adapt effectively and minimise any disruption to the public. The statement made it clear that local planning authorities should take a positive approach to their engagement with food retailers and distributors, as well as the freight industry, to ensure planning controls are not a barrier to deliveries of food, sanitary and other essential goods.
I am now expanding the scope of these measures. The purpose of this written ministerial statement, which comes into effect immediately, is to make it clear that local planning authorities should take a positive approach to their engagement with all supply chain stakeholders to ensure planning controls are not a barrier to the supply of all goods and services.
Many commercial activities in England are subject to controls which restrict the time and number of deliveries from lorries and other delivery vehicles, particularly during evenings and at night. These restrictions may be imposed by planning conditions, which are necessary to make the development acceptable to local residents who might otherwise suffer from traffic, noise and other local amenity issues. However, this needs to be balanced with the public interest, for all residents, to have access to shops which are well stocked.
The National Planning Policy Framework already emphasises that planning enforcement is a discretionary activity, and local planning authorities should act proportionately in responding to suspected breaches of planning control.
Local planning authorities should not seek to undertake planning enforcement action which would result in unnecessarily restricting deliveries, having regard to their legal obligations.
Construction output has also been inconsistent in recent months and not returned to pre-February 2020 levels. Construction sites in England may also be subject to controls which restrict the hours within which they can operate. Wherever possible, local planning authorities should respond positively to requests for flexibility for operation of construction sites to support the sector’s recovery.
The Government recognise that it may be necessary for action to be taken in relation to the impacts on neighbours of sustained disturbance due to deliveries and construction outside of conditioned hours, particularly where this affects sleep. In this case a local planning authority should consider any efforts made to manage and mitigate such disturbance, taking into account the degree and longevity of amenity impacts.
This statement will replace all the previous statements on these matters.
This written ministerial statement only covers England and will expire on 30 September 2022, giving direction to the industry and local planning authorities over the next 10 months. We will keep the need for this statement under review.
[HCWS467]
Affordable Housing: Planning Reform
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq, and to wind up this Westminster Hall debate. It has been thoughtful and considered, with detailed and useful contributions from Members from across the House. I hope that I will be able to pick up on the points made by Members, and occasionally I may refer to the excellent speech that has been provided to me by my officials.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) on his appointment to the shadow housing portfolio—a very important role indeed. I look forward to working with him as he attempts to keep us true, and to helping to persuade him of the righteousness of our approach, and I wish him well. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on securing this important debate and making such a thoughtful contribution. I am sure that he will not stop promoting Cornwall or, for that matter, Devon. We want him to promote them, but we also want to ensure that his constituents have good quality, decent and affordable homes to live in.
I remind everybody of the importance of building more homes. The hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich spoke about other reasons and methods to ensure that we provide affordable homes, but fundamentally we have to build more homes if we are going to supply good quality homes in the places that people want. That is why over the last 10 years we have had programmes such as the affordable homes programme, under which hundreds of thousands of new properties have been built across our country. That is why we are using programmes such as Help to Buy, which has only recently provided its 300,000th instance of help to buy for Sam Legg and his partner, Megan, who bought a home in Asfordby in Leicestershire. Sam said that without the Help to Buy programme, he would not have been able to afford to get on to the property ladder. That is a dream that more than 80% of people, particularly those in the social and private rented sectors, say they want to achieve—the right to own, the right to buy and the right to acquire. They want to get themselves on to the property ladder.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives and several other colleagues—including my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard)—mentioned the importance of primary residences. I recognise the challenge that has been put to us, and it is one of the reasons why we have reformed stamp duty and increased the costs to foreign and international purchasers of British property. To the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes, it is why we will introduce a threshold for the business rate loophole tie-up, to ensure that only proper letters are letting their properties and making use of the business rate regime.
I am conscious that other Members have made points about council tax and the importance of local authorities having discretion over it. We have allowed local authorities to increase the council tax to 100% for second homes, but I will consider carefully the points that Members have made about local authorities having further discretion over their council tax regime.
The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) spoke about First Homes, which the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport mentioned in a slightly different context. I was pleased to visit Bolsover a couple of weeks ago to give Nicky Bembridge, an NHS worker, the keys to his first home. As my hon. Friend pointed out, the First Homes regime is provided by developer contributions and it does not cost the taxpayer a penny. It means that local homes are available to local people at a discount of at least 30% off the market rate. Local authorities have the discretion to determine which residents will be eligible—it could be people who live locally, or people with skills that are missing from the area and are needed.
The First Homes product allows people to get on the property ladder, while covenanting the discount into the future so that future generations of local people or skilled workers, defined by the local authority, will be able to get on to the property ladder. I rather hope that if some First Homes are built in Plymouth, they can be built on the site of the former registry office, which I think is being demolished—thanks partly to £250,000 of brownfield funding that the Government are providing to Plymouth City Council to ensure that that work is done.
The hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) mentioned brownfield sites. We are absolutely committed to further development on brownfield land, and that is one of the reasons why we have introduced further funding for that purpose. In the recent Budget, £1.8 billion was made available for brownfield remediation, £300 million of which will be given to mayoral combined authorities. Greater Manchester has already benefited to the tune of more than £90 million of public money for brownfield remediation, and we look forward to going further in the future.
The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) raised an important point about the time it takes to make local plans. She is perhaps more aware of that than most, because York has not had a local plan since 1956, when the present planning regime was barely eight years old.
We are very conscious of that challenge. If we are to get more developers, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, to build different types of property on different land packets to different tenures, we need a planning system that is far more transparent, predictable and speedy. I take on board the points made about the planning system by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, but I think we all recognise that it is far too slow. It can take seven years for a local plan to be produced, and a further five years for planning permissions to be granted and spades to go into the ground. That is far too long for SME developers that are living, quite literally, hand to mouth. We need a system that is far more predictable and speedy, and that will be the effect of our planning reforms, which I can assure the hon. Gentleman and the House we will introduce.
We also want to make the planning system far more engaging. It is very important that more people get involved in our planning system. It really is not very democratic that literally 1% of local people on average get involved in local plan making—that is more or less local planning officers and their blood relations. The percentage rises to a massive 2% or 3% of people getting involved in individual planning applications—still not enough. We need a system that is far more engaging, three-dimensional and digitised. That is what our planning reforms will provide.
By providing a digital planning system, we will free up local planning officers, giving them much more bandwidth to do the sort of strategic planning that they trained to do, that we want them to do and that communities need them to do, rather than focusing on the administration of agreeing that a dormer window can be put in a particular building. We will ensure that we have a faster and more accessible planning system. We have also committed ourselves to a review of the resourcing of local planning authorities to make sure that—quite apart from digitisation, which should increase their bandwidth—they have the wherewithal to do the work that we want them to do.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives raised the importance of skills and apprenticeships in our construction supply chain, a point also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover. The Department for Education has made available some £2.7 billion for the purposes of apprenticeships, and innovative partnerships between the National House Building Council and developers such as Redrow have allowed for the development of bricklayer academies. One has opened in my constituency —I am sure it is just coincidence that they chose Tamworth.
The academies mean that the time it takes to train a bricklayer is cut in half. They also allow young people to see that there is a career in construction beyond bricklaying. They may be 19 and learning how to lay bricks, but they also learn that, by the time they are 30 or 35, they can do other things in the construction sector and they do not have to lay bricks for the rest of their working life. That encourages more people, and also more women, into the construction sector—a very important thing.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover raised the importance of infrastructure. That point was also made by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. We recognise that, if we are to get more people to support our planning regime, they must have the infrastructure to support the homes that are built around or near them—the GP clinic, school, roundabout or kids’ play area. We know that the present system of section 106 agreements is loaded in favour of the developers, and that the bigger developers tend to have the bigger lawyers, with the bigger guns, who can drive down the will of local authorities to resist.
That system means that proposed infrastructure is often negotiated away, or does not arrive on time. We are going to introduce an infrastructure levy, and I hear the point made by many contributors that that ought to be as localised as possible. That levy will allow infrastructure to be built up front, when people want it and in a way that they expect. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover rightly said, if the infrastructure can be put in place, that will carry with it the hearts and minds of local communities, who will see that they will get some bang for their buck.
Members raised the issue of empty homes. There are sometimes good reasons that homes are empty—for example, if they cannot be repaired, if they are in the wrong place to meet demand or if they are not the right size for the people who most need them. However, I hear what colleagues have said. As I have already pointed out in my remarks about council tax and the consideration of further discretions, I will go away and ponder the points that have been raised by a significant number of Members.
I will make one final point, Dr Huq, before I make some concluding remarks.
Christopher Pincher
Before I make those remarks, I will allow the hon. Lady rapidly to intervene.
Munira Wilson
I want to pick up the point I made in my intervention, about the statutory duty placed on police forces to sell to the highest bidder police stations that are being closed, which therefore considers financial rather than social value. This is a problem not just for Teddington police station, but across London, where we have a real dearth of sites. Will the Minister look at changing national legislation so police forces can consider affordable housing bids?
Christopher Pincher
The hon. Lady makes an important point. I remind her that developer contributions can contribute to affordable homes being built in her locality, and that it is a Government obligation carefully to consider how public money is spent so as to ensure we get best value for it. I will certainly go away and consider the point she has raised.
I will say one quick thing about net zero, which a number of Members raised. The future homes standard, which we are to introduce in 2025, will mean that homes are built with materials and heating systems that make them at least 75% more carbon efficient than homes built to present standards. As a down payment on the 2025 date that we have set the sector, next year we will introduce an uplift in building regulations to ensure that homes are at least 31% more carbon efficient than homes built at present.
This has been an important debate, and I have been pleased to hear the contributions made by colleagues from across the Chamber. I hope I have given reassurances to Members as to the importance that the Government place on building good-quality, affordable homes around our country, where they are needed. Be they for ownership, shared ownership, affordable rent or social rent, we need more good-quality homes. That is one of the building blocks of levelling up. It is a mission that the Government have set me and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and one that we shall deliver.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
As we know, local communities help to shape the identity of local places, and it is right that they should be at the heart of our planning reforms. I can tell my hon. Friend that public engagement through consultations is already required for new housing developments and in any preparation for local plans by councils. We consider plans for the future as a priority to ensure local people have a voice that is integrated much more effectively into the planning process.
Stuart Anderson
I welcome the Minister’s response on how we are making the system more responsive to local residents, but what steps will he take to ensure that residents have more of a say over the influence of developer contributions to local communities such as mine in Wolverhampton?
Christopher Pincher
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Developer contributions, provided by developers to local authorities in order to undertake important infrastructure works, can often be slow to arrive, if they arrive at all, and they are often not what was expected in the first place. We want to put more power in the hands of local authorities and local communities, and not developers. That is one of the reasons why our infrastructure levy, which is under development, will provide greater transparency and greater certainty for communities about the important infrastructure that they will get.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I think there is a desire across the House for a planning system that gets homes built but also recognises the democratic rights of local residents. Looking at the Minister’s planning reforms, may I suggest that he drops his zonal proposals, which are really quite bureaucratic and time consuming, and looks instead to simplify the local plan system, allows for more residents to contribute and be involved in it, and brings in his digital proposals, which have been generally accepted? Once a local plan is in place and an individual application comes in, should there not be a presumption that that application will be accepted where it is in agreement with the local plan, subject to any remaining concerns from residents being taken into account and listened to as part of the consideration of the application?
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to the Chairman of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, who makes some important and powerful points. He is right that we need to have more people engaged in the planning system. He will know that presently, about 1% of the local community engages in local plan making; that is, as near as damn it, local planners and their blood relations. That rises to as much as 2% or 3% of the local community engaging in individual local planning applications. We want to make sure that we have an engaging process and that we use digitisation to help us with that, and we will consider his proposals as we move forward with our important planning reforms.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
The Government agree with the independent review of fire safety that EWS1 forms should not be required on buildings under the height of 18 metres. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has issued guidance to professionals, as the hon. Lady will know, on when EWS1 forms are required. That is being reviewed following the independent expert group’s statement.
Margaret Ferrier
In February, the former Housing Secretary announced his five-point plan to bring confidence to the housing market, committing to a state-backed professional indemnity insurance scheme for professionals. We still have not seen the scheme materialise, so will the Minister provide an update today on when that scheme will become available?
Christopher Pincher
The hon. Lady is quite right. We made that commitment and we adhere to it in the narrow circumstances that are required to give fire risk assessment assurers confidence that PII ought to apply. We believe that, collectively, the associated facts of the Fire Safety Act 2021 and the fire safety order, the withdrawal of consolidated advice note PAS9980, and the introduction of British Standards Institution standards, will ensure a much clearer approach to the sorts of challenges that she outlines.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
My Department is considering responses to this very important consultation. We will publish a response that sets out next steps for increasing the supply of accessible homes as soon as possible.
Liz Twist
Housing association Habinteg estimates that more than 400,000 wheelchair users are living in homes that are neither adapted nor accessible. Having new accessible homes reduces the need to adapt as individuals change during their lifetime and allows them to live independently for longer. Will the Minister meet me and experts from the Centre for Accessible Environments to find out what good accessible design can mean for users?
Christopher Pincher
I salute the hon. Lady’s industriousness, the all-party parliamentary group that she leads, and the work that Habinteg and other groups undertake. She will know that as part of the affordable homes programme, between 2021 and 2026, 10% of the homes to be built—about 20,000 new homes—will require adaptation for living. I am very happy to meet her to discuss what more we can do and how quickly we can bring forward our response to the consultation.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
That is exactly what we are doing. As we consider new housing developments, it is important to ensure that infrastructure is in place for local communities. Our £4.3 billion housing infrastructure fund seeks to achieve that by investing to improve connectivity, healthcare services and vital infrastructure before housing is built.
Mr Robertson
I welcome the Minister’s words, but, having visited my area and observed the flood risk there, does he agree that the drainage capacity of an area should be assessed before any houses begin to be built, and that that assessment should be independent rather than being conducted by the water companies?
Christopher Pincher
As my hon. Friend will know, the national planning policy framework was amended in July this year to ensure that all sources of flood risk, including drainage, are fully considered before planning permission is granted by a local authority. Sustainable drainage infrastructure is hugely important. I should be happy to discuss the subject further with my hon. Friend, and I draw his attention to the speech that I made in last week’s Adjournment debate in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith).
Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
Not only have reforms of permitted development rights led to a new generation of slum housing, but the latest developments pose a huge risk to the beating heart of our high streets. Communities in this position have no voice and no say in these conversions, and councils are powerless to stop them. Will the Government at least give councils and communities some transparency, and release in full the promised regulatory impact assessment of the Department’s changes to permitted development rights?
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
The hon. Lady is quite wrong in her assertion. Local authorities do have powers to deny permitted development. Prior approvals are required in respect of matters such as aspect, parking and access before the buildings can be constructed. Authorities can also apply for article 4 exemptions for areas in which PDRs will therefore not apply. I can tell the hon. Lady that as a result of our PDR changes, 84,000 new homes have been built which otherwise might not have been built, often on brownfield sites and often in town centres, to the betterment of those people who want to live in them. These are advantages for home dwellers.
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)
Around 40% of workers who commute from the Charnwood Borough Council area commute into Leicester city. This is due in part to the lack of housing in the city. However, despite there being a derelict doughnut of brownfield land around the city that could be utilised for house building, more and more housing is being built in the Leicestershire countryside. Will my right hon. Friend set out what the Government are doing to encourage development on brownfield land? Will he provide greater incentives to councils to ensure this happens?
Christopher Pincher
We are doing exactly that. The brownfield remediation fund is providing significant moneys to ensure that brownfield is remediated. My hon. Friend will be hearing more about that shortly. We also made it clear when we uplifted the local housing need numbers for the largest cities in our country that we expect them to build within their own geographies and not to try to shunt building outside those geographies. That will be made clear to them time and again until they do so.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords]
Christopher Pincher ExcerptsMonday 29th November 2021
(2 years, 11 months ago)
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The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
I thank the Front Benchers from the official Opposition for their support for the Bill. I am grateful to them, as is the whole House. It is a pleasure to see them still in their places. We know there is an Opposition reshuffle going on. It must feel to them that it is taking as long for the Leader of the Opposition to conduct his reshuffle as it is to reform leasehold. We trust that we can get on a little bit quicker than he can.
It has been a real pleasure to listen to the debate unfold. We have had a valuable and considered set of speeches. One of the ornamentations, one might say, of our Standing Orders is that they allow right hon. and hon. Members to range freely across the terrain in a Second Reading debate, and that is what has happened tonight. As the House will know, the Bill is narrowly focused on leasehold ground rent reform, but the debate has allowed the House to debate more freely the wider question of leasehold reform, retrospection and other matters. We will be addressing them in future, but let me say, before I make some further and more detailed points, that I am grateful to the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) for his very thoughtful contribution. It sounds to me as though he is going to write me and the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), a very long letter. We look forward to working with him to resolve the issues he raised.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friends the Members for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), and my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) for raising the issue of retirement sector ground rent reform. As the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North, said, we have made it absolutely clear that the retirement sector has had an exemption of a further 12 months to get its business model in order. We believe that that is a right and proper amount of time, because there are a number of business models that the sector can use to effectively and appropriately levy reasonable charges that are transparent and fair on residents. It sounds as though my right hon. and hon. Friends may be interested in amendments. They know the process by which to pursue those, if they so wish. However, there will always be disparities between one set of buildings and another and between new buildings to which ground rents will not apply and older buildings to which ground rents will apply. I suspect that those differences will be factored into market calculations or will have little effect on the actual challenges that face residents.
Sir Desmond Swayne
The case for an amendment—I thank the Minister for his guidance in that respect—on the retirement sector is that it was clearly given an exemption and was assured throughout last year that that exemption would hold, but that exemption was suddenly withdrawn in January this year. Given the time that it takes to change the model and to sell such properties, this is crying out for amendment.
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend; he is not so much an ornament as an energetic battery in this House. We look forward to seeing what further proposals he has in due course.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) put his finger on it when he described how complicated the matter of wider leasehold reform is. He asked whether the Solicitors Regulation Authority and conveyancers will be engaged; whether tighter definitions will be employed; what happens in more complex developments to repair charges; and what the interaction is with the Building Safety Bill. That is why the Bill is so narrowly defined, as the Law Society advised—so that we can get on and deal with the most egregious offences on ground rents and then move on to the more complicated matter of wider leasehold reform.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) said in what I thought was a very eloquent and forceful speech, making it clear without saying a word how integral he has been to the advancement of these reforms, they are really quite challenging. We know that leasehold is woven into the tapestry of our law and our tort. We know that in parts of the country, particularly the north-west—I think you know it as well as anybody, Mr Deputy Speaker—businessfolk of yesteryear, factory owners, would buy land in order to build houses and tie workers to those factories. Unpicking those sorts of complicated arrangements needs to be thought through carefully. With an all-you-can-eat feast, as the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) knows full well, if someone stuffs themselves rather too quickly and rather too much, there may be unfortunate consequences down the line. We want to avoid those sorts of challenges with this Bill.
A great deal of thought has gone into the definition of rent to avoid the sort of loopholes that the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) mentioned. We want to ensure that we close loopholes that would allow freeholders or landlords to collect ground rent. We considered a closely defined meaning for “ground rent”, but at the end of the day, we came to the conclusion that that would be something of a fixed target, because experience teaches us that clever operators with clever lawyers often find loopholes in such circumstances. A flexible definition of rent will help us to ensure that the tribunal will have the flexibility to consider what actually represents a prohibited rent, even if it is not explicitly called “ground rent”—the sorts of prohibitive and prohibited charges to which she referred.
We have made it absolutely clear that we will introduce legislation to ban leasehold houses; we have made that manifesto commitment and will introduce legislation as soon as we are able. We will also ensure that the second part of our legislative reform addresses the challenges with respect to existing leaseholders and retrospection, because we are committed to addressing the historic imbalance in the system.
Meanwhile, I am grateful for the work that the CMA has done, which I hope the whole House will welcome. We want to make sure that the CMA moves as quickly as possible to tighten up on egregious practices; we look forward to its report and to the next steps that we will then undertake. I assure the House that we will move as rapidly as possible.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Ian Levy) is not in his place, but he has certainly raised with me the issue of ground rent in future long leases. In January, we announced that we would legislate to change the way in which the cost of buying a freehold or extending a lease is calculated to make it cheaper and easier for leaseholders. I hope that that gives my hon. Friend some reassurance.
The Bill is the beginning of a process that we, the Conservative Government, have started and that others, for too long, have shirked. It will ensure fairness and transparency in our leasehold system. I look forward to working with right hon. and hon. Members across the House in the coming weeks to get this vital legislation on the statute book and working for leaseholders. I commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] (Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords]:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 9 December 2021.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Craig Whittaker.)
Question agreed to.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] (Money)
Queen’s recommendation signified.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.—(Craig Whittaker.)
Question agreed to.