New Housing Design

David Linden Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point. We can still have a reasonably traditional design and regional design that also fits into the new type of living we want. Older people may well need wheelchair access, wider doors and all sorts of things in these properties, and those can be fitted in. Our housing almost fits into categories—affordable homes, homes for young people or homes for the elderly—but it should be a complete mix. When we have a complete mix within the design, we can then get it right. Traditionally, we would not have had one type of housing all put together; my hon. Friend makes a good point.

We must build new housing in the right way, with designs and forms sympathetic to local areas. Ruth Davidson hit the nail on the head when she recently wrote:

“The biggest ally we have in increasing housing supply is beauty—if new houses complement the local environment and avoid the disastrous design choices of the past we can help build sustainable local support for extra construction.”

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I must say, as a Scottish MP, that I found it rather ironic last week when Ruth Davidson talked about investment in housing and was looking to see if she might be getting the polish out for her brass neck; the Conservative party has left a massive social housing crisis in Scotland as a result of the disastrous right to buy. That has only been helped by the abolition of right to buy by the Scottish National party Government in Scotland.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on securing this debate on an important and timely subject. I certainly always welcome the opportunity to debate housing and house building, and I will try to focus more in my remarks on social housing and affordable housing, which is something I am glad to see the Labour party doing as well, in some respects.

The most important thing about housing policy is ensuring that we have an adequate supply of safe housing, which is what the Scottish National party-led Scottish Government are doing. As the MP for Glasgow’s east end, I am particularly proud to follow in the footsteps of the late great John Wheatley, who served my constituency as the MP for Glasgow Shettleston from 1922 to 1930. On being appointed Health Minister by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, John Wheatley introduced legislation to tackle the social housing crisis at the time. The Act famously became known as the Wheatley Housing Act and allowed the Government to provide subsidies to build public housing. As a result of Wheatley’s Act, more than 500,000 council homes had been built in the UK by 1933. Wheatley’s housing legacy lives on today, and I am delighted that Parkhead Housing Association in my constituency will, as it celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, once again host the John Wheatley lecture. I will be proud to introduce the lecture, which will be delivered by Dame Elish Angiolini QC.

I have mentioned that the debate is timely, and I touched on this matter in my intervention on the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton. Last week, the leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, Ruth Davidson, suggested that the Scottish Government should build more new towns and council houses in Scotland to ease the country’s housing shortage. I am afraid I was not alone in being taken aback by the sheer rank hypocrisy of a Conservative politician lecturing us on the need to invest more in social housing, not least because it was a Conservative Government under the stewardship of Margaret Thatcher who sold off vast swathes of social housing. Worse still, the housing stock was not replaced, which has left generation Y struggling to get into social housing and being squeezed into the hands of the private sector.

Before I move on to the substance of today’s debate, it would be remiss of me not to highlight the excellent work undertaken by the Scottish Government to build good quality affordable housing in our communities. I mentioned the mismanagement of our housing stock by the Government of the 1980s, and I am afraid that the initial delivery of devolution did not vastly improve housing under the first Labour-Lib Dem Administration. Since 2007, and under the SNP, house building has come on leaps and bounds, with more than £590 million available this funding year to increase the supply of affordable homes across Scotland, which is an increase of £18 million on the 2016-17 figure. Of that, all 32 councils will share £422 million to deliver more affordable homes in their local communities.

Due to our action, we have maintained higher build rates and lower price inflation than in England. If we had built at English rates since 2007, we would have about 20,000 fewer affordable new build homes. In 2009-10, we reintroduced council house building and, since then, we have delivered more than 7,500 council homes. Between 2003 and 2007, Labour in government delivered six—yes, six—council houses in an entire Parliament. We are investing more than £3 billion to deliver at least 50,000 affordable homes over the lifetime of this Parliament—a 76% increase on our previous five-year investment. Some 35,000 homes out of the 50,000 target will be for social rent, which is a 75% increase on our previous social rented target. I mention that because a huge part of the debate today has focused on the private sector and, in my capacity as spokesperson for the third party—the SNP—I want to bring Westminster back to looking at our investment in social housing as well. We are determined to increase and accelerate housing supply across all tenures and to support the industry and local authorities in delivering their housing priorities, with quality homes in mixed communities that fit local needs. More Homes Scotland includes a new mid-market rent offer to alternative providers, which is a further option to help deliver the 50,000 target, and we have increased housing subsidies by up to £14,000 for social homes and affordable homes for rent, being delivered by councils and registered social landlords.

When preparing for today’s debate, I was pleased to come across the Scottish Housing Regulator’s 2017 national report on the Scottish social housing charter, which states:

“Average satisfaction with the quality of homes has increased for RSL tenants to 88%”.

At this juncture, I pay tribute to CCG (Scotland) Ltd, which is based in my constituency and provided the kit homes we saw built in the Dalmarnock area of Glasgow for the Commonwealth games. Some 700 homes were put together in a year or two. So while the Conservatives and Ruth Davidson sit polishing their brass necks and giving us lectures on investment in housing and building new communities, we will get on with the actual job of building communities and homes for the people of Scotland.

I want briefly to touch on housing design. I am mindful that the focus of the debate is policy, which is a devolved competence, so I seek only to introduce a different dimension, namely what we are doing north of the border. I commend to the House—and will place a copy of it in the Library—the document entitled “Places, People and Planning: A consultation of the future of the Scottish Planning System”, which the Scottish Government published in June of this year. I know that colleagues in the Scottish Parliament will today announce the programme for government and I expect there might be something in it on new planning legislation, which is welcome, and long overdue. One suggestion in that June 2017 document is that local development plans be considered over a 10-year rather than a five-year period, and that is certainly worthy of being thrown into the mix.

Another aspect I would like to introduce from a Scottish point of view is tenement stock. Whereas Aberdeen is famous for its granite buildings, my own city of Glasgow is famous for its sandstone tenements, and I am mindful that many of them are of an age at which they require a lot of attention. I very much hope, therefore, that the Government in Scotland, housing associations and local authorities factor into their plans investing in and looking after the current tenement stock as well as investing in new housing supply.

To sum up, the point made by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton about a new homes ombudsman is pertinent. Last night, before catching the sleeper train down to London, I attended a public meeting in my constituency. The hon. Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) made a point about Bellway. Too often, we see house builders come along and make promises to communities for which they are not held accountable—Broomhouse and Eastfields are just two communities in my constituency where that has happened—which is why I am keen that housing associations should be able to take through the whole process of building new developments. I am, therefore, keen to pursue the idea of a new homes ombudsman.

We have heard excellent speeches from the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) and the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). I agree particularly with the points made by the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). It is good to see a focus on tackling the housing crisis by way of investing in social housing and affordable housing. The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) talked about people’s perceptions of homes. Before I came along to the debate, I was in the Tea Room, chatting about perceptions with some of my colleagues. If you ask kids to draw a house, they all draw a little detached building that looks like a bungalow—there is a point there.

The point about building up and not out is absolutely worth considering. As a new Member, I am looking to move into a flat in London, and as I have gone around various parts of the city I have been interested to see more developments that go up than go out, which is not necessarily the case in my constituency. The hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts) spoke about looking up, and I encourage him to come to Glasgow because we are a city that is renowned as a place where people look up to the architecture. I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in the all-party parliamentary group on healthy homes and buildings.

I started by talking about the legacy of John Wheatley. I am confident that in Scotland we are working towards tackling the legacy of a lack of investment in housing, but I will finish with a word of advice for colleagues here in England. We need to look at abolishing the right to buy. I know it is not popular in this Parliament. We abolished it in Scotland, where it is bearing fruit. It is difficult to build more homes and get people into social housing when we sell off such housing. That is a conversation that colleagues need to have. Ultimately, we need to identify a new John Wheatley.