Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Earl Howe Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, as we have heard, these amendments relate to housing need and the homebuying process.

I will address Amendments 207 and 219A together. Amendment 207 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best, seeks to enable the Secretary of State to include older people’s housing needs assessments in documentation related to local plans and require that local authorities consider the needs for housing for older people when preparing such plans. Amendment 219A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, seeks to enable the Secretary of State to require local planning authorities to have regard to the housing requirements of the student population, developed in conjunction with local higher education providers, when preparing their local plans. I recognise the noble Lord’s personal knowledge of this subject.

I entirely understand the sentiment behind both amendments and offer words for the comfort of both noble Lords. I believe I can first do so by highlighting that national policy already sets strong expectations in these precise areas. The existing National Planning Policy Framework makes it clear that the size, type and tenure of housing needed for different groups in the community, including older people and students, should be assessed and reflected in planning policies. In 2019, we also published guidance to help local authorities implement the policies that can deliver on this expectation. Therefore, as regards student housing, we already have a clear policy in place, backed up by guidance, to deliver solutions designed locally. Any proposals to amend this would be considered as part of our review of the National Planning Policy Framework once this Bill receives Royal Assent.

I listened with a great care and respect to all that the noble Lord, Lord Best, said to draw attention to the housing needs of older people. The Government are absolutely on his wavelength in that regard. He was right to point out that there should be a variety and diversity of housing options for older people, as underscored by my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough. To further improve the diversity of housing options available to older people and boost the supply of specialist elderly accommodation, we recently consulted on proposals to strengthen the existing policy by adding a specific expectation that, when ensuring that the needs of older people are met, particular regard is given to retirement housing, housing with care and care homes. We know that those are important typologies of housing that can help support our ageing population.

Furthermore, it would be remiss of me not to point out that there is already a provision in the Bill setting out that the Secretary of State must issue guidance for local planning authorities on how their local plan and any supplementary plans, taken as a whole, should address housing needs that result from old age or disability. This is a key statutory provision.

So, again, we already have a clear policy in place on this issue, and we are proposing, as I have explained, to strengthen it to further support the supply of older people’s housing. I hope that this provides the noble Lord, Lord Best, with the assurances that he needs to withdraw his Amendment 207 at this stage.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his explanation of what is already in the policy and how it is going to be strengthened, and the national planning policy guidance. However, so far that has not brought forth anything like the numbers that are needed, so perhaps the Minister will be able to explain how that policy—which is very worthy and which I support—can be put into practice?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I say to the noble Baroness that I will try to do so as I go along. First, though, I will address Amendment 210, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, which would require local authorities to adopt policies to ensure that the marketing of housing accurately describes the nature of the tenure. I listened to all that she said about the need to review, or indeed do away with, leasehold tenure, and I hope she will forgive me if I do not repeat what I said on that subject in one of our earlier Committee debates. We shall also be debating Amendment 504GJG in the name of my noble friend Lord Moylan on leasehold reform later on in Committee.

Buying a home is the largest investment that many of us will make in our lifetime, and we all want to be sure of what we are buying before we commit to purchase, so I absolutely understand the motivation behind the amendment. However, we do not believe that local plans have the legal remit to specify how property agents can market property in a local area. Even if they could, such an approach would create a complicated patchwork of requirements which would vary between one local planning authority area and another. That would be very difficult for property agents operating on a regional or national basis to navigate, and it would be confusing for buyers as well.

That is not to dismiss the concern that the noble Baroness has expressed—in the levelling up White Paper, the Government committed to working with industry to make sure that buyers have the critical information they need to know, including tenure type, lease length and service charges. The Government have also signalled our intention to legislate if this is required. We are currently considering options which will set a common approach to all property listings across England and Wales, providing certainty for buyers, sellers and estate agents, and we will set out further information in due course.

I turn next to Amendments 215 and 218, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley. These amendments both relate to local authority housing need, and this is where I hope I can answer the question posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. Amendment 215 seeks to require a local plan to secure a sufficient supply of housing to meet or exceed the authority’s area requirement for housing over the plan period. The amendment also sets out that an area’s housing requirement must be derived from the housing targets and standard method prescribed in guidance by the Secretary of State. Amendment 218 seeks to set out in legislation that local authorities must have regard to any housing targets and the Government’s standard method for calculating housing need when preparing their local plan.

While I entirely understand the sentiment behind these amendments, the proposals would impose unnecessary constraints by seeking to put into primary legislation matters that are already addressed effectively, I contend, through national policy and guidance. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham made the point, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, that national planning policy already sets out that local authorities should make sufficient provision for housing, including affordable housing, and that they must take this into account when preparing their local plans.

Additionally, again in response to the noble Baroness, policy and guidance set out how local authorities should establish their housing requirements, and they make it clear that the standard method for assessing local housing need should be the starting point for establishing housing requirements in the plan-making process, in all but exceptional circumstances. That is not a straitjacket and nor is it laissez-faire; our planning policies already allow authorities to choose to plan for more homes than required to meet need, and we have consulted on proposed changes to national policy designed to empower local authorities to go further where that is right for their area.

It is right, however, that local communities can respond to local circumstances. To introduce more flexibility to take account of local circumstances, we are proposing some changes through our consultation on reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework. These are expressly designed to support local authorities to set local housing requirements that respond to demographic and affordability pressures while at the same time being realistic, given local constraints.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that we will be talking about neighbourhood plans later this evening if we get there—I hope we do, otherwise on Thursday—and we can return to the issues that he has raised on that topic. But I would just like to make a general point about housing targets: local housing need is not a housing target. The standard method for assessing local housing need is used by councils to inform the preparation of their local plans. Local areas are then free to take into account constraints and opportunities when determining their actual housing targets such as green belts, AONBs, and so on, that prevent them allocating enough sites to meet need. There are some councils that choose to plan for more homes than their local housing need number; nor does the local housing need method dictate where homes should go. It is up to councils to decide what sorts of homes can be built where.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

Can I put the question the other way around? The noble Lord used phrases like “councils can choose” and “in conjunction with their local authority”. Can I ask about councils that choose not to provide supportive housing for people in need, that choose not to provide places for ex-offenders, and that rely on councils with a conscience to do those things? It seems to me that councils can choose to do very little if they want, including building homes, and certainly to not provide for the other groups that we have heard about—that is what worries me. We need more compulsion across all councils to provide for all of the population.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

In those circumstances, local plans can be checked against the assessment of need and can be shown to be defective where that is deemed to be the case—so it is not as if there is no oversight of what local authorities are doing. What we do not want to do—and I hope the noble Baroness agrees—is to get perilously close to a one-size-fits-all, top-down target mode of acting. We are trying to strike a balance between showing local authorities how to do the job that they are there to do and have been elected to do, while at the same time not being guilty of dictating or second-guessing local circumstances.

We do already have a clear policy in place on these issues, and we are proposing to clarify and strengthen this further. I hope my noble friend will feel comfortable in not moving his amendments when they are reached.

Before I finish, I will respond briefly to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, on his points about buildout. In large part, he was anticipating the debate we look set to have in a later group, which begins with Amendment 261 to Clause 104, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage. However, I just say that the Bill already contains provisions to tackle slow buildout by developers. Clause 105 gives local planning authorities powers to determine planning applications made by a person connected to an earlier permission on that same land which was not begun or has been carried out unreasonably slowly. Developers should know that planning authorities expect new residential developments to come forward at a reasonable rate.