Housing Crisis: Rural and Coastal Communities

Earl of Devon Excerpts

Monday 24th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter for calling this important debate, which is obviously crucial to Devon. Given Bishop Robert’s impending retirement, I also take this opportunity to record in Hansard my immense gratitude for his tireless spiritual and practical service to our diocese and the wider county since 2014. The Bishops of Exeter and the Earls of Devon have not always seen eye to eye—famously, we fell out over fish in the 13th century—but I hope we have gone some way to repairing that schism. The right reverend Prelate may not have realised the significance of buying me a fish lunch today.

With typically astute timing, the right reverend Prelate’s debate falls on the day that the Conservative Government have announced that the housing crisis that they have overseen for the last decade will be resolved by a focus on building more urban homes, as we have heard, leaving rural and coastal economies yet further to wither and perish. I worry that this is a knee-jerk reaction to last week’s by-election losses and a shameless attempt to retain the nimby vote by once more playing politics with peoples’ homes.

I note my interests as a resident and owner of property in rural and coastal Devon; I am also a member of the Devon Housing Commission, recently convened under the eminent chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Best. The commission has only just begun its work so this debate comes too early to report any findings, but I will speak to the issues we face and I promise to return to offer and share some conclusions.

As we have heard, the chief challenge is the lack of affordable and suitable housing for local residents—those of modest means, raised, living and working in rural and coastal areas, young people leaving college, and empty-nesters seeking to downsize. Blame is deservedly laid at the feet of the short-term rental market and second homes, which push up prices and remove hundreds of thousands of properties from the local housing stock. Some 10% of homes in the South Hams are unavailable due to being second homes or empty; in north Devon, there was a 67% decrease in the number of private rental properties between 2019 and 2021; and every local authority in Devon has affordability ratios greater than the national average, other than Plymouth.

I am sure the Minister will refer us to the levelling-up Bill, but there are plenty of other factors that contribute. Local councils struggle to deliver housing of the scale and type required. It is easier for councils, and less resource intensive, to deliver housing supply in anonymous suburban blocks on the edge of large towns and cities, not where it is needed in small market towns and villages.

Biodiversity net gain will only add to the challenge of building in rural and coastal communities; despite its excellent intentions, BNG will undoubtedly slow development in communities blessed with biodiversity. Removing no-fault evictions, as we have heard, will ultimately decrease the relative attractiveness of long-term tenancies, and EPC regulations are a blunt instrument that is punitive to rural and coastal rental stock. I look forward to hearing how the Minister will address these issues.