Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Clive Betts and Lord Jackson of Peterborough
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.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Clive Betts and Lord Jackson of Peterborough
Mr Jackson
It says something about their priorities that, in five years, the previous Government built more local authority houses than the hon. Lady’s Government did in 13 years, with a much more benign financial regime. She fails to take into account how difficult brownfield remediation is and that about a third of local planning authorities do not have a local plan in place, despite the Government’s encouragement—the local plans have not gone through the inspection process. It is not either/or. Starter homes are a radical boost to ensure that more young people in work who need homes and are languishing in band 4 and band 5 council housing and housing association lists get the opportunity.
If a local authority has produced a decent plan—a structure plan or a deposited local plan—it will, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter), be in a position to effectively put in place intermediate housing and social rent provision working with registered providers. We are not in the business of squeezing that out. It is up to local authorities to do that.
The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) was right. We are not here to discuss the London housing Bill. This is about the whole of the country. In fact, this is a historic Bill because I think it is the first Bill that is subject to EVEL, so we did not have the dulcet tones of our Caledonian friends helping us on the Committee or on Second Reading.
The starter homes policy is about delivering homes to people who need them. If the hon. Member for City of Durham remembers, when the expert witnesses were challenged in Committee, they could not produce the figures, either on the day or afterwards, that showed definitively, beyond any reasonable doubt, that, from the Bristol channel to the Wash, in Chorley—Mr Deputy Speaker’s seat—in Leyland, in most parts of Lancashire, in Yorkshire and Humberside and in the east and west midlands, for most people on an average income—I accept that there is a difference with the national minimum wage and that the city of Durham is perhaps a different example—the homes would be affordable. Conservative Members on the Committee were not indulging, as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said, in some ideological pursuit. We were looking at the evidence brought before us. The evidence did not demonstrate, with all due respect, the hon. Lady’s position.
This is a radical Bill. I was disappointed by the lack of coherent, cogent alternatives from Her Majesty’s Opposition. May I end on a slightly cheeky note? I listened with interest to the hon. Lady’s plaintive cry that she was badly treated by the programme motion. My understanding is that the usual channels came to an agreement but, because of the incompetence of Her Majesty’s Opposition, they truncated or elongated various new clauses because they had forgotten to table the appropriate amendments. That is why they had to pad it out—which I am obviously not doing.
This is an excellent, radical Bill. It will deliver. It will complement other forms of tenure. We won the election. We have a mandate. I look forward to many more starter homes in my constituency and others throughout the country to give young people in particular the start in life that they deserve in the property-owning democracy that we should be building.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I want to raise three concerns about the Government’s proposals on starter homes. Obviously it is right, given the aspirations of many people to own their own home who currently cannot afford to, that we should look seriously at measures that enable that to happen. What we should be concerned about is whether those measures are good value for the taxpayer and have any unintended consequences. If it is such a good idea to help people on to the housing ladder, why do we not help the next group of people on to it by ensuring that the discount, or assistance, continues in perpetuity?