Oral Answers to Questions

David Johnston Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson]

My Department is committed to the delivery of safe accommodation with support for all victims of domestic abuse. That is part of the Government’s overall strategy to tackle violence against women and girls. I would be happy to write to the hon. Lady with more details.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

T9. My hon. Friend will know that I have been campaigning for new homes to be built to the latest environmental standards, about which I have met previous Ministers in his Department. I very much welcome what the Government have done on recent building regulations, but will he meet me to ensure that houses are not just started but completed to the latest environmental standards?

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Paul Scully)]

I thank my hon. Friend, who does amazing work in tackling this issue in his area. In June, an uplift in energy efficiency standards for new homes came into force. There is a transitional period of one year to minimise disruption to projects that are already under way. To stop developers sitting on this, however, it will be about not just each project but each house, because homes must be built to the new standards.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

David Johnston Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

I welcome many things in this Bill, from the setting up of levelling-up missions through to the powers to regenerate, but I will focus on housing and planning because I get more correspondence about that than anything else.

I believe strongly that Governments should be helping as many people as possible to own their own home. More importantly, the vast majority of my constituents believe that as well. Those who already own their own home remember the pride they felt in getting on the ladder for the first time, and they are often helping their children and grandchildren to try to do the same. Those who do not own their own home have never complained to me about too many houses being built—they only say that they are not affordable.

The problems in my constituency, which are dismissed as “nimbyism”, actually stem from the fact that the two district councils I cover are in the top 10 for house building in the country relative to their zone but the bottom third for infrastructure. That has meant we get many homes that are too often low quality and unaffordable, and put an unnecessary strain on the environment, local infrastructure and people’s quality of life.

So I entirely support the Government’s focus on BIDEN—beauty, infrastructure, democracy, environment and neighbourhoods. I am grateful that they have listened to a lot of the complaints people had about the planning system. Such complaints related to issues from stressing the importance of local plans, which I believe will have greater weight in the Bill, through to the issues of five-year land supply; we had the bizarre situation where land is allocated by councils for development and if it is not developed, it is not classed towards this—it is not the council’s fault that that is the case. I am pleased we are going to challenge some of the anti-competitive practices that we have seen in this industry for a long time. Like a number of colleagues who have spoken, I also support moving away from the zonal system, because that was one thing that most concerned constituents; someone would be able to build whatever they wanted in certain areas.

There are lots of things we might still do to help enhance this Bill as it moves through—many of them have been touched on, but I shall address them briefly. First, I support the digitisation of the planning process. I would like to think we might bring back hybrid meetings for people when it comes to these planning situations, as that is a logical approach. We must make sure that the digitally excluded still have ways of taking part.

I welcome the environmental outcome reports. However, as the Minister knows, I feel strongly that this is not just about what something does to the surrounding environment; it is about the way in which the houses are constructed. He knows that I would like to see houses built to the latest environmental standard once a certain period has elapsed, rather than to the one at the time permission was obtained, which is often five or six years previously. We know that we will have to retrofit those homes.

I agree with what a lot of colleagues have said about targets. I understand why they are needed. My two district councils have usually exceeded their targets, but the way in which they are used is unhelpful. We have a problem with Oxford City Council always demanding the highest possible number of houses but not building any of them; in my area, we build 1,500 when it builds 88, yet it still says it always wants the highest target it could have.

Finally, on infrastructure, I completely endorse what my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) has said. We have to get infrastructure in first, particularly GP surgeries. Constituents do not believe it is coming any more. They, like most of the rest of the country, believe in home ownership, but the way we have built homes has too often made them feel a curse on the area people used to love. I hope this Bill can fix that.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Johnston Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

8. What steps his Department is taking to give residents greater input on local developments.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

17. What steps his Department is taking to give residents greater input on local developments.

[The Minister for Housing (Stuart Andrew)]

The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill will improve our planning system and give residents more involvement in local development. The Bill will strengthen and scale up neighbourhood planning and enable the piloting of street votes supported by new digital tools to give communities more say in the developments that affect them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart Andrew]

I am absolutely clear that communities must have a say on developments that affect them, and that is why we are making it easier and simpler to engage with the planning system. At the moment, it simply is not good enough. I recognise the specific concerns that my hon. Friend and the leader of Crawley Borough Council have raised about this development. The site itself is included in the Horsham draft plan that has been produced with Crawley council. Residents of Crawley are able to comment on that, as well as on any subsequent planning applications.

[David Johnston]

Constituents object not simply to the sheer number of developments in my constituency and the pressure that they place on local infrastructure, but to the environmental impact of the way the homes are constructed. My hon. Friend knows that I would like to see a requirement for homes to be built to the latest environmental standard, rather than the one that was in place when permission was granted. Can he tell the House whether local communities will be able to have a say on how the homes are constructed, rather than just what they look like from the outside?

[Stuart Andrew]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that. It is a crucial area for me in this role, and I hope that he will be reassured that improving environmental standards and community engagement are key elements of our reforms. Clear local plans, tested against environmental outcomes and with strong community input, are central to that, alongside the steps we are taking through the future homes standard and the Environment Act 2021.

General Practice: Large Housing Developments

David Johnston Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing the debate. He and I got talking a few weeks ago because I asked a question at Prime Minister’s questions too. In it, I gave some figures about the growth in my constituency. The largest town, Didcot, is set to be 42% larger in 2027 than it was just a decade earlier. Wantage and Grove, the second largest area, is set to be 59% larger than it was just a decade earlier. Thousands of houses are also being built in the other two towns, Faringdon and Wallingford, and in the 64 villages I represent. My hon. Friend and I decided we would be better combining forces and working with other colleagues, as the issues we face are similar.

People know what the growth figures mean: it is harder and harder to get a GP appointment. It is a separate issue to the post-covid debate on face-to-face, telephone appointments or an e-consultation. This issue is much longer running. It is also distinct from the 6,000 GPs and 26,000 other primary care staff that the Government have committed to recruiting, which I warmly welcome.

It should go without saying—although I will say it anyway—that our GPs and primary care staff work incredibly hard. They want a solution to the problem as much as anybody else, because they are working flat out and are presented with more and more patients. I have a surgery in Wallingford that actually closed its books recently because it simply cannot take any more patients.

Depending on what measure we look at, different parts of my constituency look the worst, but Didcot ranks lowest on the measure of permanent qualified GPs. Didcot is a good example, because we have had a development there called Great Western Park, which is 3,500 houses. On the basis that 2.4 people live in every house, 8,400 people have been added to the constituency, and they have now been waiting seven years for the GP surgery that was promised with the development. There is still no sign of it, but what they do know is coming is Valley Park right next to them—4,200 more houses, and a further 9,600 people. That is 18,000 people just in those two developments, but there is no prospect at the moment of additional GP surgeries.

Who is accountable? Part of the problem is that it is very unclear. Many people think it must be the Government, and of course it is partly down to the Government and the rules for infrastructure not keeping up with house building. As hon. Members have said, there is a difference between what the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Treasury want. Of course that is true, but the provision of GP surgeries is also down to councils and what they do with the section 106 money and community infrastructure levy that they are given. It is also down to the developers and the promises they make, the CCGs and how they plan for things, and the national planning bodies such as NHS England and Health Education England. Part of the problem is that there is no directly responsible body that can ensure that people get the services they need.

There is no shortage of people wanting to be medical students. I used to work in social mobility, and studying medicine is one of the most popular things that young people want to do. The issue is partly the diversity of the people who get into it: only 6% of doctors are from a working-class background, and someone is 24 times more likely to be a doctor if a parent is a doctor. I cannot help but feel that we are missing out on a talent pool of people who want to be doctors, yet we do not have enough GPs.

A number of Members have made important points about the things we need to do. Of course, it is not just about GPs. Lots of things I campaign on are about infrastructure—reopening Grove station, improving the A420 and A34, having more school places and so on—but there are three things that I would draw attention to. First, we need the infrastructure before the houses go in. In this case, that means knowing precisely who will run the GP surgery and having them signed up with the contract to do so before we start. We recognise that most GP surgeries are private businesses. It should not be as difficult as it is to get somebody committed and to know what we will do with the money.

The second point is that I am not persuaded that we should not have a limit on the number of patients that a GP or practice should have. It would be extraordinary in other fields if we did not have a limit on the number of people that we thought was suitable. I totally accept that areas are very different, but surely we can have an upper limit that triggers additional services once it has been reached or exceeded, as it clearly has been in my constituency.

The third point is about the talent pool. We have shortages of all sorts of things in this country, but a lot of people want to study medicine and we are not using them. We could be much better at recruiting people.

We will not solve this problem today, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, but if we want people to not feel that houses are a curse on their local area, they need to know that their quality of life will not decline. That means putting in the right infrastructure, particularly GP surgeries.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Johnston Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes]

What we do see is that Government funding during the covid pandemic has meant that, as the English Housing Survey tells us, 93% of people are up to date with their rent. With regard to helping people, our renters White Paper is coming forward. We will be doing things like banning no-fault evictions and they will help renters regardless of gender.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

T6. I warmly welcome the Future Homes Standard, but in the meantime many homes are being built to the environmental standard of several years ago purely because of when their planning permission was granted. They will need to be retrofitted. Will my right hon. Friend consider requiring companies to build to the latest environmental standard, rather than the one in place when permission was granted, after a certain time has elapsed?

[Michael Gove]

We absolutely will consider that. I know there are innovators in my hon. Friend’s constituency who are leading work in that precise area, so I look forward to working with him and those in his constituency to achieve just that goal.

Building Safety

David Johnston Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. Of course there are things we need to do to ensure building safety when it comes to construction products and materials, and when it comes to the quality of development and building control, but he is right that the fundamental aspects of wiring, power supply and electricity in our homes need to be addressed if people are to have the safe homes to which they are entitled.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

Last week I led a debate on the broader issue of developers and house builders making large profits from low-quality homes that cause problems for owners and local communities. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the safety issues he seeks to tackle today are on a list of issues that people see with these companies, albeit that they are the most serious? That means the public will be very unsympathetic if they see further foot-dragging in trying to get a satisfactory solution.

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point, and he tempts me into a broader debate to which I will return. In a nutshell, many people involved in housing provision, construction and development produce safe, beautiful homes with concern for the environment that enhance our communities, and we need more homes that are safe, decent and sustainable. There are also problems in the system, and the behaviour of certain actors needs to be addressed.

Everyone in this House wants to work with the industry, because having a home of our own is such an important part of our aspirations and ambitions, but we must recognise that more work needs to be done so we can be proud of the sector. I know that was at the heart of the points my hon. Friend made in his Westminster Hall debate.

New Homes: Developers, Housebuilders and Management Companies

David Johnston Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Let us begin the first parliamentary sitting of the new year by wishing everyone a happy new year. As is now tradition before all our sittings, I remind all hon. Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when they are not speaking in the debate. I am also asked to remind everyone to get a lateral flow test—provided, of course, that you can get one—at least twice a week, before coming on to the parliamentary estate. These can be done at the testing centre here as well. Welcome, everyone.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the role of developers, housebuilders and management companies in new homes.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. Happy new year to you and to everybody else who is here this morning. This is a 90-minute debate, and I have said to quite a number of people that I could easily speak for at least 90 minutes on this topic—it will be a relief to everyone that I am not going to do that. The reason is that it is a source of huge frustration in my constituency. Owning a new home and the development of new homes should be a source of great joy, but too often it is a source of great distress. There are a few reasons for that that I want to talk about, but before I go into those, I want to say at the outset that, contrary to some of the media stereotypes about areas such as mine, most people in my constituency are not opposed to new homes. If they are homeowners themselves, they entirely understand why other people want to own a home. They often have children and grandchildren whom they are trying to help get on the housing ladder. They know that we need housing for key workers. They know that sometimes people just want to move into one of these new homes from where they already live in the constituency. But people have real frustration with the way in which these things are developing and the problems they are causing in the local area.

The first issue is simply the quality of a lot of the homes that go up, because it is often poor. Sometimes it is very good, but too often it is poor, and constituents’ homes have major defects that take years to try to deal with. I have constituents who have spent two, three or four years—sometimes more—trying to get these defects repaired. This is not like buying a cheap version of something on eBay, half-expecting that there might be something wrong with it. This is the biggest purchase that any of us will make, and we do not expect to then have years of trying to sort out the problems with it. Unfortunately, when constituents try to do that, they feel completely outmatched by the builder that built their home. Sometimes the builder will blame the contractor; sometimes they will say that there is nothing wrong: “We signed it off according to building regulations.” But I have been in some of these places and we can see these huge issues. It is completely unacceptable that people are experiencing them.

The second issue is about the impact of these homes on the environment. That has two major aspects to it. One is what it does to the local environment around the area. Naturally, people can see greenfield sites disappearing. One constituent wrote to me and said that the biodiversity commitments that a particular house builder had made had not been kept whatsoever. There is an impact on air quality and water quality, but the other aspect is how the homes themselves are built. I am continually asked by constituents, “Why are we building so many homes that we know we will have to retrofit in a few years’ time?”, and there is no easy answer to that. I am continually asked, “Why can’t every new home have solar panels? Why can’t every new home have a heat pump?” I understand why: there are various reasons why we might not put the same thing in every kind of house.

I completely welcome the Government’s commitment to having electric charging points in every new home. I really welcome the future homes standard, which will make new homes from 2025 net zero ready, with a 75% reduction in their emissions. But the point still stands that thousands of homes are going up right now and we know that because of our ambitious net zero goals, we will have to retrofit a lot of them. The reason is that it is cheaper for the house builders to build them that way today.

The third issue is affordability. I have said a few times in this place that no one who rents has ever said to me, “There are too many new homes going up.” They say only that those homes are not affordable. They say that they have saved for years and years, and it does not matter how much they save; they do not get close to being able to afford one. The average house price in my constituency is £335,000. The average house price in my constituency is £335,000. To London ears that might sound fine, but it is 9.2 times median income, and that is out of reach for most people. An affordability threshold of 80% of that is still not affordable. Again, we run into bad practices. We all know that developers commit to a certain number of affordable homes, but time after time that number is driven down on the grounds that the development would not be viable if that commitment were maintained, so broken promises are a constant theme.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a particularly important point about affordable housing. I am often told that developers who make such arguments about viability are working on a 20% profit margin per property. Does he agree that that is completely unsustainable?

[David Johnston]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I was just about to say that when the taxpayer is subsidising the development of affordable homes and when the profits of house builders are so large—often bordering on 30%, come rain or shine; they are making these profits in all weathers—it is completely unacceptable for them to play this game so that people are unable to get on the housing ladder.

The fourth aspect that I want to talk about is the role of management companies. After someone has purchased one of these new homes, the costs do not always stop. People are often signed up to quite expensive contracts with management companies who purport to provide services to maintain communal areas, and it is often very difficult for residents to find out what is being done for that money. The charge goes up year after year, but their communal area is not maintained. They are told that staff are employed to do things, but they never see the staff. They work hard to try to get transparency about what is being provided for the money, but they cannot get it. They get a basic summary, and that is about it. The people who try to get the information are often well qualified, but they cannot get it.

I know of a management company—the residents do not want me to name them, so I will not—where many of the residents are elderly, sick or vulnerable, and they feel completely bullied and exploited by their management company. Right now they are being pressured into taking a new lease, which they do not want to take because they know it will be bad for them, but they fear the repercussions if they do not or if they go to someone to talk about it. They have talked to me, but, as I have said, they do not want to me to talk about who they are. That is an appalling situation for people to be in. Far too often there is a real problem with the way in which management companies fleece people in new homes when those people have already spent so much money.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. In preparing for it, I looked into leasehold in the United Kingdom. In England, Wales and Scotland, people are unable to buy their leasehold, but Northern Ireland is one part of the United Kingdom where they can. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when it comes to purchasing the freehold, people certainly get a “fleecehold” in England, Wales and Scotland? In Northern Ireland they have a chance to buy it out. Does he feel that that should happen here on the mainland?

[David Johnston]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I expect the Minister will address that point when he speaks later. Most people think that they own their home, but they can often end up feeling like tenants. I experienced that myself until recently. I used to get a bill for £300 on Christmas day every year. The bill, dated 25 December, was £300 for absolutely nothing, but constituents of mine are in a much worse situation.

The fifth aspect I want to talk about is the overall broken system in which the process operates. I do not blame the Government entirely. Councils have some responsibilities: One is if they do not enforce the planning conditions when developers go above the assessed numbers that they are supposed to build. Another is if they allow the same application to be made over and over again, when they could refuse it after two tries. They do not take a bigger-picture view. There are villages in my constituency, such as Sutton Courtenay, that feel hugely overdeveloped because individual applications are all being approved and nobody is looking at what is happening to the whole area and why it might not be a good idea to keep approving those applications.

Ultimately, these companies have to be held accountable for their behaviour. They apply for sites that they know the local plan does not allow them to apply for, as is happening in Grove, in my constituency. They continually try to build on flood plains. They continually fail to adhere to their section 106 agreements and community infrastructure levy agreements—sometimes not building infrastructure at all, and sometimes building pointless things, such as a pathway that goes only halfway across an estate or a bike path that leads to nowhere, just so they can say that they have done it. All those things are going on with new developments in my constituency. I do not blame Government for it all, but it is the Government’s job to ensure that the system does not operate in that way.

If I had to sum up the problems in my constituency, it would be, “Too many homes, too little infrastructure.” The two district councils that my constituency covers are, relative to their size, in the top 10 areas for house building in the country, yet they are in the bottom third for infrastructure spending. That is a huge bugbear. To put that in numerical context, an estimate of the population change between 2017 and 2027 found that the largest town and surrounding area in my constituency, Didcot, will increase from 36,000 to 51,000. The second largest area, Wantage and Grove, will increase from 17,000 to 27,000—that is in a 10-year period. Faringdon is getting thousands more people, and Wallingford is getting thousands more.

The infrastructure is not following that. It is harder to get a GP appointment, the roads in the constituency get more and more congested and it is harder to get a school place. One village has a 220-child school, and 300 houses have been built right next to it; just last year, the catchment area became less than 470 metres. People who have lived there for a long time and who expected their children to go to that school now cannot get in. When my constituents hear that planning reform may mean new houses and that they will not be able to oppose them, or that the Oxford-Cambridge arc may mean more houses, or that the council leaders’ Oxfordshire 2050 plan may lead to more houses, they are not concerned out of nimbyism; they are concerned because of their experience, over many years, of so many houses being built and so many promises being broken.

To conclude, I will talk about a few things that I think should happen. There are lots of things, and there are plenty of experts in this room who I know will talk about other aspects. First, we need a much tougher regime for the quality of new buildings. I know that the new homes ombudsman will deal with some of these issues, but it is completely unacceptable to pay that much money and have that many problems. We need very tight quality conditions, and the threshold needs to be raised. If it is not met within a certain timeframe, there should be penalties; issues must not go on for years.

Secondly, we need “use it or lose it” planning permissions. I know that there are debates about how best to do this, and I am frequently written to about the 1 million permissions that have not been built on. I know that there is a debate about land banking and whether it happens; hon. Members would be hard pressed to persuade me that it does not, at least from the developers’ point of view. We in this place are familiar with the phrase “dig a trench.” The emphasis has been on starting the building: companies dig a trench to suggest that they have started building, and the houses then take years to appear. We need these homes to be completed within a certain period. If they are not, taxes might be levied or fines paid, but I think that the permission should be lost entirely.

Thirdly, I want to talk about environmental standards. If it takes several years for these houses to be built, they should be built to the latest environmental standards, not to those that existed when the developers got permission. That is what is happening at the moment: companies are building houses to an environmental standard of several years ago, when they should be building to a standard of the future. That needs to change.

We have got to make developers and house builders commit to their affordability criteria. Our big house builders are doing completely fine for profits for their own viability, so they cannot keep saying that developments would not be viable if they committed to what they originally promised.

When it comes to management companies, we need a much stricter regime, because the current one is very murky. Companies are getting away with appalling practices, bullying residents into things and fleecing them, year after year, for things that are not being provided. We need a tougher regime under which companies cannot keep hiking charges without an extraordinary set of circumstances. The charges often go up because of things the company itself has done and got wrong, and it passes the cost on to residents who had no say in the first place. Much more transparency is needed, and penalties for such bad behaviour.

I understand that house builders want a level playing field, because an individual company does not want to commit to expensive things if its rivals are not doing so. That is where there is a role for Government in raising standards, so that all house builders have to do the same. I want more of a level playing field for smaller companies, such as Greencore Construction in my constituency. Many such companies are more environmentally friendly and more efficient, and produce higher-quality homes, but they are often outbid by the financial muscle of the big boys. Perhaps we need to reserve a greater proportion of development sites for such companies or give them greater access to capital. I am all in favour of smaller organisations rather than larger ones—I ran small charities, not larger ones. I think we can get a better product from smaller house builders, and we need to help more such companies into the market.

My final point is that infrastructure needs to go in first. It is not right to pile more and more houses and people into an area, but to do nothing to support local services and infrastructure. I have been campaigning for Grove station to be reopened, for improvements on our roads and for better medical facilities. GP surgeries are bursting at the seams because thousands more people have been added to the area—Members have heard the numbers. GP surgeries and school places have not been added along with the people. Infrastructure must go in first. Unfortunately, over decades my constituents have been told too many times that the infrastructure will come with the houses, but it never has, and now they do not believe it. That has to come first. As part of that, we might better capture the land value increase that comes with planning permission. At the moment, the increase all goes to the owner. Some of it ought to go to the local community who will live with the new houses, not to the landowner who has sold the land.

The balance of power is wrong. Management companies, house builders and developers have too much power, and local residents have too little. The Government cannot be blamed for every single thing that a private company does, but they can help to restore the balance, so that local communities do not see new houses as a curse on the area they used to love.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

There are eight colleagues wishing to speak in the debate, and I want to start the winding-up speeches just before 10.40 am. That gives us just under an hour, which is six or seven minutes per person. I will not put a formal guideline on speeches, but I ask that people comply with that time limit.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Johnston]

I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), and the Minister for their comments. There is a lot of agreement beyond the party political arguments.

A constituent said to me that buying a new home had been a terrible experience that they would not repeat, which is an indictment of how the current system operates. The hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) and my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) gave powerful examples of the impact on constituents, including on their mental health, because it is in their minds at all times. The hon. Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) were right about the system working in the interest of developers, not local people. As the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said, “What is the incentive to come back and fix a problem?”. At the moment, there is none.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) had interesting ideas about how we might use company law and character tests. We all know who the bad companies and individuals are. We should not keep letting them build more and more homes. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) was bang on about the near market failure. I have read some of Liam Halligan’s work. He found that just three companies owned 90% of the million-plus permissions that are not built on. If that is not an example of near market failure, I am not sure what is.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) was very encouraging about the forthcoming new code. The scale of the problem is pretty clear if only 4% of homeowners think that their developers are meeting the code or one business is changing 40,000 aspects of its practices in order to meet it.

As the chief executive of one of my local housing associations said to me, “They are building something to walk away from, and we are buying something we need to maintain for people to live in for 50 to 100 years.” That is at the core of the problem. I know that the Minister worked on this area before he became a Minister and is very committed to it. I hope that we will see the full weight of government behind this, because a home should be a sanctuary, not a place of great stress. I will continue to keep campaigning on the issue, and I know that other Members will, too. I thank you, Mr Betts, for chairing the debate.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Oral Answers to Questions

David Johnston Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)]

20. What steps he is taking to reform planning rules.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

22. What steps he is taking to reform planning rules.

[The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)]

The response to last year’s consultation on the planning White Paper generated significant interest. I am considering all those responses and will make an announcement on next steps in due course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. It is thanks to the work of organisations such as the Hunsdon, Eastwick and Gilston neighbourhood plan group that we involve local communities in making these uniquely sensitive decisions. As we consider our plans for the future, one thing we want to do is to make sure that the voice of local people is integrated more effectively into planning decisions.

[David Johnston]

The two district councils that Wantage and Didcot cover are in the top 10 areas of England for houses built, but in the bottom third for infrastructure. People would be less unhappy with the house building if it came with more GP surgeries, the reopening of Grove station and better roads. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that, as he reforms planning, there will be a greater emphasis on improving infrastructure to support the population that the houses come with?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Across the country, many people would welcome new housing development enthusiastically if they had the assurance of knowing that there was sufficient investment in infrastructure to ensure that public services and other utilities were there for them so that additional pressure was not applied unequally. His argument is correct, and it has been incorporated into our thinking about the future of planning reform.

Royal Mail

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of Royal Mail.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McDonagh. In some ways, I wish this debate about the performance of Royal Mail was not necessary, and I want to be crystal clear at the outset that I do not think that the problems I will describe are the fault of Royal Mail’s workers. I live in the Didcot area and I have experienced some of these problems, although not nearly as badly as some of my constituents have. I have also seen how hard Royal Mail staff have all been working in my area and right across the constituency. Indeed, when my constituents complain to me, they often say the same thing. They do not blame Royal Mail’s workers, and they have huge admiration for them. However, I have had more complaints about Royal Mail than about any other company or organisation in my time as an MP, so I thought it was important to have this debate.

My constituents have been complaining since 10 August 2020; that was when I got my first complaint. My most recent complaint was on Monday just gone. During that time, my constituents complained about all sorts of post not arriving, and I will give some examples in a minute to illustrate the problem. I think it is right that we take that seriously, because what they have experienced has caused great distress. I naively hoped that when I called a meeting with Royal Mail headquarters towards the end of last year, that would resolve it. I had no idea how widespread the problem was and how many areas of the country were affected, albeit that it is not all areas.

To give a sense of what has been happening, the complaints in my constituency have been concentrated in the Didcot area, the Wantage and Grove area and some of the villages surrounding Wantage, and there have been bits in Cholsey and Wallingford, too. The very first complaint that I got on 10 August was from a man called Sean, who lives in Didcot. He wrote to me because he has a two-year-old son who is deaf. Sean relies on the post because he regularly needs moulds that hold his two-year-old son’s hearing aids. His family also have a series of hospital appointments that they need to attend, and he has found himself in the situation both of missing hospital appointments because the letters did not arrive on time, and of turning up at the hospital for appointments that were not happening, because he did not get the cancellation letters on time. We can understand how distressing that is, and it is having a knock-on effect on services such as the NHS.

My constituent Ann and her husband, who live in Wantage, did not get their 65th wedding anniversary cards. As I have said in the House before, anyone who gets to 65 years of marriage ought to be getting their anniversary cards on time. Much more sadly, my constituent Matthew’s wife died last year and he did not receive the condolence cards or the death certificates on time.

I have constituents who have not had their insurance renewals, meaning they have ended up having to pay more for their insurance. One did not get his bank card, so he could not pay for anything when he was out and about, and had to go online each time he made a payment. Constituents have complained that they have not received mail for one, two or three weeks, and they sometimes go to the sorting office and are handed that mail. One recent complainant has still not had her Christmas post.

It is common for constituents to downplay such situations and say, “I suppose it’s only trivial, you know. I haven’t had my Christmas cards but it is only trivial.” I do not think it is trivial at all. We all appreciate the importance of medical appointments arriving by post, but things such as magazine subscriptions really matter as well. They bring joy to people, and cards are also hugely important to mark occasions. A whole range of constituents have not had birthday cards arrive, often for significant birthdays.

This is clearly not happening in all areas of the country. Royal Mail’s recently published official figures say that on their first class delivery target, which is 93%, they actually hit 74.7%. In the figures I have looked at, that is the lowest level for a considerable time. Covid is part of that, but I do not think it is only covid. I have given Royal Mail a right of reply, so I will come to what it feels the problems are later. Royal Mail’s national complaint figures also show a huge spike in complaints.

I do not think covid is the only reason for that. When we look at the data, Royal Mail has not hit that first-class delivery figure in six of the last 10 years. It has not hit its delivery completion target in nine of the last 10 years. It is even the same with special delivery. We have all been to the post office and had that talk from the person behind the counter, who says, “Well, if you really want it to get there on time and if you really want to make sure that it gets there, you should go special delivery, although it is lot more expensive.” However, Royal Mail has not hit that target in the past 10 years, although admittedly that is a much higher target to hit and it hits the target a high proportion of the time.

The experience of the past year is particularly frustrating as the Royal Mail has just recorded record profits. I was not eating cornflakes that I could choke on at the time, but I was surprised to open the newspaper and see the headline, “Royal Mail profits treble.” The price of a first-class stamp has gone up a third in the last five years, including a rise of 12% this year. The fall in service is difficult to reconcile with the increase in Royal Mail’s profits.

I do not work for Royal Mail, so I cannot say exactly what the problem is, but I think part of it is to do with its prioritising parcels. When I met Royal Mail representatives last year, they said to me, “We have gone from being a letter service that delivers parcels, to a parcel service that delivers letters.” They said that if I had been able to visit the sorting office, I would have seen things like washing machines and big screen TVs being delivered.

That is a business decision for them, but it is frustrating for constituents, who have reported to me that they have not had any mail for two or three weeks, but they have seen Royal Mail staff and vans delivering parcels and much bigger items. A number of them have spoken to their local postmen and women, and been told confidentially, off the record, that they have been told to prioritise parcels over other mail.

We have to work out what the problem is, and ensure that Royal Mail deals with it and that we do not just write it off as being something to do with covid. I contacted Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union to ask for their opinions. Royal Mail says that the issue is a combination of covid-related absences, the social distancing requirements—meaning that it cannot have as many people in its buildings—and the increase in the number of parcels. That increase has been of 32%, in part because everyone is at home and sending each other stuff, although that might in part be the Royal Mail business decision to develop that aspect of its work, no doubt contributing to its profitability in the past year. That cuts both ways.

I wanted to have this debate because my constituents often feel fobbed off when they complain to Royal Mail directly. They do not get something that answers the question. One constituent told me that one response it got amounted to, “We’re trying but it’s not our fault.” I wanted the debate so that I can ensure that Ministers are aware of what is going on and of my constituents’ experience. In my constituency alone, I would like Royal Mail to review the operation and perhaps invest some of its profits in it. Do we need more staff? Do we need bigger service centres? If parcels are taking up too much space, so they have to get them out, do they need bigger delivery centres? We certainly need to work out what is going wrong.

We could have a simpler process for compensating constituents, perhaps an automatic one—Royal Mail knows when it is delivering something very late, because it has to report on that figure. It should therefore know when those people ought to be compensated automatically. It is important that Ofcom does not allow that to be written off as, “Well, it’s covid, don’t worry about it.” I understand why it has given a dispensation to Royal Mail this year to say that covid has imposed a particular burden, so it will not be held to that 93%” but some of my constituents would say that it had problems before covid. It is not good enough to write it off as covid.

In the end, Royal Mail has a near monopoly on that type of post. Our constituents cannot go anywhere else—they can with parcels, but not with the things involved in the problems they have been experiencing. Again, I do not hold Royal Mail’s workers responsible, but Royal Mail HQ—under pressure from the Government and Ofcom—needs to provide the service that our constituents are paying an increasing amount for all the time.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Johnston]

I am grateful to everybody who has taken part in the debate this afternoon. It has been a good debate. The hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) spoke for all of us when she said that we owe our postal workers a huge debt of gratitude for the work they have done during this period. She was quite right to say there is a difference between pausing deliveries on Saturdays and not delivering anything for weeks at a time, which has been the experience in Wantage and Didcot. I support her request for postcode-level data on deliveries.

The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) detailed very well the impact of delays and the sorts of things that have been delayed, from shielding letters to vaccination letters. It was a very good idea that Royal Mail should create more apprenticeship positions and support young people, thereby also improving the service.

I am grateful to the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn). He and I do not agree on the number of British institutions that are worthy of high regard—I am sure that is no surprise. We also do not agree on the privatisation, because there are some public services that I could complain about today, but where I do agree with him is, if Royal Mail’s priorities have changed to parcels, it is important that it is honest about that. That is what my constituents feel they can see, but it is not something that Royal Mail has admitted.

I am also grateful to the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah). She was exactly right about the important role that Royal Mail has played in the pandemic in delivering PPE and so on, and also—a point I do not think the rest of us made—that postal workers were often the only human contact for people who were shielding. She reminded me that people had hugely appreciated that, because it was often the only conversation they had with anybody during that period.

I am very grateful to the Minister for engaging with the issue seriously and for understanding the distress that it is causing and for providing the data that he did. He is right to say that Royal Mail did some Sunday services—it shocked constituents to get post on a Sunday—so it was trying. The Minister provided important delivery round data as well.

One of his most important points was that fewer people are relying on the service, but for those that do, it is incredibly important. That is the same debate as for the use of cheques or the use of cash, or people who do not have smartphones. We forget sometimes—we think there is this relentless progress of technology, but it can leave people very vulnerable. People not receiving the things they should have been has been very difficult for them.

The Minister is quite right to say that tomorrow I am visiting one of the service centres, so I will be able to get under the skin of the issue. Royal Mail has told me that it has hired more staff and bought more vehicles, so the test will be whether it gets better this year. If it does not, I will be back on the Minister’s case and on Royal Mail’s case, because it is important that constituents get the service they are paying for.

Thank you very much, Ms McDonagh, for chairing the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the performance of Royal Mail.

Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.

The debate is an important one, because when we talk about climate change, we tend to focus a lot more on transport than we do on buildings, and yet buildings are our second biggest cause of emissions. Domestic buildings are 30% of our energy use and 19% of our emissions overall.

Ultimately, I would like to see more of what I have in my constituency, from Greencore Construction, which has built homes that are net zero in both build and use. It sold them to housing associations at the same price they would pay for other houses. It has continued to innovate and, with recent modifications, reduced the carbon emissions by a further 40%. Those are now carbon-positive homes. I have taken the Secretary of State for BEIS and others to see them, because what the company is doing is really impressive. In July, it will be talking at my pre-COP summit for Wantage and Didcot constituents.

More broadly, I welcome the commitment on the future homes standard to reduce the amount of emissions by 75% to 80%. That is very positive but, again, that is about new homes and we know we have an issue with the homes that have already been built.

I was excited by the green homes grant scheme. I was excited by the ambition to make homes more energy-efficient. I was also excited by the jobs that I hoped it would stimulate in the supply chain. I was very disappointed when it was cancelled due, at least in part, to lack of take-up, although there were clearly other issues with it.

We have a heat and building strategy coming. We will have to see what is in that—I hope it will tackle some of the issues we are discussing—but as of today, I would support another scheme. I will quickly offer some observations on things that I have seen as a constituency MP which we would need to retain or change if we were to have a new scheme.

First, I thought it was really important that we gave more financial support to low-income households. That is the fairness aspect that shines through in the Climate Assembly report. We do not want policy decisions and judgments to be made by the most affluent in society; we should not judge everything that those on low incomes are doing without giving them the support to make changes that they may well want to but just do not have the means to make.

Secondly, price hikes very definitely took place once the scheme had been announced. Constituents wrote to me to say, “I know what that should cost because I looked at the price last week, and suddenly it has gone up.” I am not sure that there is a lot the Government can do about that—they had price guidelines for applications to the scheme. I suspect this kind of thing always happens, but I think it would be positive if we did whatever we could to avoid price hikes.

Thirdly, there was debate about the kitemark. I defended the use of the kitemark for the tradesmen, because it is important that we do not have cowboy tradesmen—for want of a better term—doing shoddy work. I know there is a debate about whether TrustMark was the right one for this. Maybe it was not, but I think it is important to have that kitemark.

Fourthly, there is a broader issue—not just for this scheme but for our strategy as a whole—relating to historic listed buildings. I have four towns in my constituency, but 64 villages. The homes that are built in Didcot are of varying quality, but they are new, whereas the homes in the villages are often protected in various ways and face a whole bucket of issues. Many of the people in those villages are keen to make their own contributions to combating climate change, but there is a range of things that we have not yet got to grips with, from the fact that some of those homes can use only oil for their heating because they are off the gas grid, to whether they are allowed to have solar panels. There is also lime rendering, which was something about which I did not know very much, but which certain types of home need as part of the insulation process. That can only be done at certain times of the year, and there are not many tradesmen who can do it.

Those things feed into the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne): if we are going to have another scheme, it needs to be over a long enough time period that we can get those things right. We need to make sure that prices are not hiked too much, that we are using the right kitemark, and that tradesmen see it as in their interests to get that kitemark because of the length of time that it will cover. We also need the scheme to cover enough seasons that those things that can be done only at certain times of the year can be included. We might even train more people who have experience with older, historic buildings, because that issue left rural areas at a considerable disadvantage in the short timeframe the scheme was to designed to cover.

We will probably still spend a lot more time talking about the cars we drive and the plane journeys we take, but unless we can make the progress we need to make on buildings, we will continue to hamstring our ability to tackle our net zero goals.