Clive Betts
Main Page: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point that goes to the heart of what we are seeking to do. With starter homes, shared ownership and other areas of Government policy, we are seeking to deliver homes for people who want to be part of the 86% who aspire to home ownership. Labour Members have often voted against and regularly outlined their opposition to that. We want to support those people; that is what the Bill is about.
Let me make it clear that the starter home requirement will not prevent councils from delivering other forms of affordable housing and home ownership products. For example, shared ownership and other home ownership products are part of the diverse and thriving housing market that we enjoy in this country. They help those who aspire to home ownership but who cannot afford even a discounted purchase. We have published a prospectus in the past couple of weeks that invites housing associations and other providers to bid for £4.7 billion of funding to deliver 135,000 shared ownership homes and £200 million to deliver 10,000 rent-to-buy homes as well.
The Bill focuses on starter homes, creating that new product and kick-starting delivery. We strongly believe that this is the most effective way to meet our manifesto commitment. Let me remind the House that we promised in our manifesto to deliver 200,000 new starter homes exclusively for first-time buyers under 40.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I am still a little confused about the position that local authorities will be put in if this amendment falls. They will, I think, still be entering into section 106 negotiations with a developer, part of which will involve a requirement to provide starter homes, but will they also have an ability to provide shared ownership properties and, presumably, affordable homes to rent as well? How will the balance and proportion of those homes be determined? Will that be a matter for local discretion?
Brandon Lewis
Yes, there is no change to the position that has always pertained. It will be for local authorities to negotiate with developers over what they do beyond the requirement for starter homes. We will have a requirement for 20% starter homes, but what the local authorities do beyond that will be a matter for them. My experience of talking to developers is that in some areas where they have negotiated lower levels of affordable housing, the local authorities will be able to deliver more under the starter homes requirement.
Mr Betts
So let me be clear: there will be requirement for 20% starter homes but if, as is the case in most of my constituency, the maximum requirement on sites for affordable housing is a total of 10%, does that mean that there would be nothing other than starter homes on those sites—that is, no other affordable housing?
Brandon Lewis
That will be a matter for the local authority to negotiate. I know from talking to developers in my own constituency, where we have had similar levels of affordable housing, that we will be able to have more affordable housing as a result of the starter homes requirement. Local authorities will be able to deliver more affordable housing through this programme. We will not allow anyone to prevent us from meeting our commitment to deliver those new homes for first-time buyers.
I also want to defend another of our manifesto commitments. Our manifesto made this very clear, and I will quote from it again as I did last week. It stated:
“We will fund the replacement of properties sold under the extended Right to Buy by requiring local authorities to manage their housing assets more efficiently, with the most expensive properties sold off and replaced as they fall vacant.”
We are discussing this again today because the Lords have yet again chosen to send our proposals back, in spite of the overwhelming majority in this House which overturned their last attempt to undermine our election mandate. I am shocked and disappointed by their action. I commend the noble Lord Lisvane, who has a wealth of knowledge and experience of procedural matters and who chose not to press his amendments any further, recognising the primacy of this, the elected House. I just wish I could say the same about other noble Lords. Lords amendments 47B and 47C, which have been offered in lieu of amendment 47, with which this House has disagreed, are more or less identical to earlier incarnations.
Nick Herbert
I think my hon. Friend has expressed the Government’s concern about the particular amendment and the proposal for a neighbourhood right of appeal. He has shown why they were not willing to accept it as drafted, and why they rejected it and seek to do so again.
I understand the Government’s concern in this area. I am seeking not to drive a coach and horses through the local planning system or to stymie house building, but to ensure that this very important policy, which is producing more housing than was anticipated and which reflects local needs, is not wrecked because local support for it is undermined. That is certainly in danger of happening in my constituency in West Sussex where neighbourhood planning was going very well, but people are now starting to say, “Well, what are neighbourhood plans worth if they can so easily be overturned?” That is why action in this area is necessary. The Government have taken a step towards it by seeking to insist on an amendment in lieu, which would require local authorities to identify where there was a conflict with the neighbourhood plan. That does not go far enough, because it merely reflects what happens in the planning system at the moment. I welcome the Minister’s willingness to engage with concerned Members on this issue, his understanding of its importance and his commitment to look at it again, perhaps with a view to some future proposals that will ensure that the policy of neighbourhood planning is upheld.
Although I appreciate the reasons why the Government wish to insist on their amendment in lieu for the reasons that my hon. Friend the Minister set out about the specific right of appeal, I do hope that the Government will not dismiss the intention behind the amendment and will honour the commitment that they have made to Members to look again at this important issue. Where we have given local communities a say, we must stand by that commitment, particularly when they have voted democratically. It will damage the policy of neighbourhood planning if we do not. That is why future action, properly constrained in a way that does not stymie planned development, is so important.
Mr Betts
I shall speak to Lords amendment 10B, 47B and 47C.
The Minister is right to say that the Conservatives had a manifesto commitment to build starter homes. Although I may have some disagreements with elements of that policy, I respect it. It is the will of the electorate, and the Government have every right to put it into practice. However, what the Government did not say at the election was that, in large parts of the country, people who could not afford to buy a home would find it virtually impossible to find an affordable home to rent, or that, as a result of their policy, people’s chances of finding that affordable home to rent would be substantially diminished and, in some cases, removed altogether. That is the impact of the policies that are in the Bill, connected with other Government policies as well.
When I intervened on the Minister, I raised the issue of section 106 agreements and the requirement that starter homes should make up 20% of homes on that site. I do not think that there are any sites in my constituency where there will be a 20% requirement. In fact, I cannot think of many sites throughout the whole of the city of Sheffield. That is not because the local authority does not want affordable homes built as part of 106 agreements, but because market values are so low that the sites would not be viable if a higher level of affordable homes were insisted on. That means that the policy of the local council conforms with paragraphs 47 and 48 on viability and deliverability in the national planning policy framework, which are a key element of Government policy. Therefore, in complying with Government policy, the local authority would be in a position where, in order to conform with the requirement to have at least 20% as starter homes, there will be no other affordable homes built as part of 106 agreements in my constituency; they will be gone completely.
If that is put alongside the Government policy on spending on housing for the remainder of this Parliament, there will be no money for councils or housing associations to bid for to fund affordable rented housing—it will all go on shared ownership and starter homes. There will be no new building as part of the Government’s spending grant availability.
On top of that, as a result of the rules about higher value council homes being sold off, every single vacant property in the slightly better off parts of my constituency is likely to be sold off, so there will be no vacant council properties coming up for rent. The Government have produced no figures whatsoever on how the money that comes in from the sales of those properties will add up to the replacement of the housing association property once the discount has been provided for. Then there is the contribution towards a brownfield remediation pot and a replacement council home. There is no possibility that the home sold off by the council will be replaced by a property that is for affordable rent.
The reality is that in large parts of my constituency no affordable homes for rent will be built through section 106, or through Government grant provision. Affordable homes for rent will be sold off in their totality in some parts of the constituency, with no like-for-like replacement. That adds up to one simple fact: where people are in urgent need of housing for whatever reason, their urgent need will remain, but there will not be an urgent offer of a property, because it will not exist. People in my constituency who have been on the waiting list for 15 years or more will wait not 20 or 25 years, but for ever, because a property will never become available under these policies.
The Bill and other Government measures effectively mean the end of social rented housing in large parts of my constituency, for the simple reason that there will be no social rented housing available to offer people on the waiting list or in urgent need.
Mr Jackson
I shall refer to most of the amendments. I reiterate my concerns about the amendment relating to neighbourhood planning. It would establish a dangerous precedent that would potentially end the neighbourhood right of appeal against conservatories and small-scale extensions. It would very much reduce the speed at which residential development could progress. There would also be an opportunity for sleight of hand by the more unscrupulous planning authorities that do not want any development in their area: they might move residential development on to a neighbourhood planning regime, in lieu of a local structure plan or district plan. With a third-party appeal, that development would be held up for months and years. People who desperately need homes in high-cost, high-value areas would suffer as a result, so the Government are absolutely right to resist the amendment, although clearly I recognise the sincerity with which my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) represents his constituents’ very legitimate concerns.
Mr Jackson
My hon. Friend, who has a great deal of experience in local government housing and planning, makes an important point. He is right to draw the House’s attention to the anomalous nature of some of the comments from the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chairman of the Communities and Local Government Committee, on which, I think, my hon. Friend also serves.
Mr Betts
Yes, the houses for sale in my constituency are much lower in price than in many other parts of the country, though higher than in one or two other areas in the north. However, the tens of thousands of people on the waiting list are on the waiting list primarily because they cannot afford to buy the houses, even though they are lower in value than those in the constituency of the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman).
Mr Jackson
I take the hon. Gentleman’s point but local planning authorities like his in Sheffield have not been circumscribed by section 106 in the recent past or at all in developing the tenure that they choose. He will know, because the centre of his city has undergone significant regeneration over many years, that the capacity for section 106 payments to go back into social housing has been an issue in his city and others.