Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Earl of Lytton Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, I must remind your Lordships of my professional involvement in aspects of this sector as a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, an honorary fellow of the Chartered Association of Building Engineers, a vice-president of the National Association of Local Councils and joint president of the East Sussex Association of Local Councils. I am also a CLA member and a small-scale landowner.

There is much to welcome in this Bill, especially on the need to speed up the pace of delivery. Inordinate delays involve substantial cost and risk. However—and I apologise for concentrating on some of the bits that concern me—cutting out consultees and some local deliberations, which seems to be part of the proposal, strikes me as an unlikely saving. I feel that a more systematic approach to a rather labyrinthine planning system is in fact needed. The main focus of the Bill is infrastructure rollout, but delivery seems to remain via a rather poorly regulated private sector and still risks putting commercial imperatives in front of national policy and public interest, both as to rollout and cost to the taxpayer. Look where we are with utilities and telecoms right now.

As to electrical power, for instance, the rate of transfer of carbon-based road fuel and heating loads on to a greener electricity grid remains fettered by excessive cost per unit, while generation capacity and distribution lag years behind need, arguably requiring significant redesign beyond ever more pylons—which, of course, is a challenge in itself.

Water quality and quantity affect several key regions. Limiting consumption of a finite resource by the rest of us is a necessary offset as part of new housing and water neutrality, but that is happening only at the margins. Simply adopting an aspirational cut of 40% in per capita consumption is nonsense, if my information is correct; there is a good trade in removing water flow restrictors and upgrading showers. Nobody seems to have any incentive to monitor or enforce neutrality offsets effectively.

The same could easily happen with environment and nature. Will there be eco-deserts of some sort where development takes place, but for commercial convenience ecology has been traded away to another location? Or will the immediate locality have priority, as it rightly should? Will nature offsets still be adequately managed in 100 years’ time—as mentioned by other noble Lords—and will Natural England remain the objective government conservation adviser, or become the agent for a developer-led offsetting activity based on viability? Will it continue to command respect, especially if environmental NGOs start being excluded as consultees—they are, after all, the source of one’s information.

We have a system that involves democracy and rights of public audience; that has been mentioned by other noble Lords, and needs to be fostered. Councillor training has been referred to more than adequately by others.

I am unclear what Part 3 means for urban density or long-promised reforms to tenure, for individual autonomy and exclusivity—the sort of things that go into building a concept of one’s home, whether it be by ownership or otherwise—for communities that are stable, engaged and self-sustaining, and for making the best use of urban infrastructure as a means of preventing endless development on the fringes and urban sprawl.

I am concerned about the commercial risks to urban redevelopment, in particular those caused by the expanded compulsory purchase powers in the Bill. All of these issues are interlinked and need to be dealt with together, unless coherence is to be lost.

I turn specifically to the compulsory purchase step-in powers under Part 5 of the Bill and the removal of hope value from compensation. The Bill does not actually say that it will use existing use value as the basis for land value, but the Explanatory Notes do say that. However, there is no national or international definition of this term, without which the measures are flawed, uncertain of outcomes and, arguably, expropriatory and open to challenge. Many desirable sites are under option, so I simply ask: whose existing use are we addressing? Others, including society at large, make large profits from developers on greenfield sites, whereas the landowner often gets quite a small proportion of the overall profit after it has been totted up.

I will make one point that I was not going to make. For too long, emphasis on housing development has been a proxy for growth in the economy. There is evidence that this is reaching an endpoint. Whether we are going to continue to have year-on-year increases in values, including in the value of the housing inventory, is in doubt; if that is correct, it will have profound implications, socially and economically. I therefore agree with the noble Lord, Lord Best—but for other reasons—that a different delivery model is in fact needed.

Unless these critical factors are addressed, many of the measures in this Bill risk substantial failure. I look forward to pursuing these as the Bill moves forward.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Earl of Lytton Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

I will see what I can do.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

This group of amendments raises several interesting areas about which I, as a chartered surveyor and an occupier and co-owner of listed buildings, feel strongly. I welcome the opportunity to discuss these and the question of proportionality referred to by several noble Lords and by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller. It relates to how the costs are built up and into what particular categories, pigeonholes or whatever one wishes to put them.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, referred to this question of the preponderance of very large developments in terms of their cost, and how the same metric applies to smaller SMEs and indeed, one could say, to individual householders with really quite small-scale things. She could perhaps have referred to the fact that the way in which large developments end up setting the tone and the content that goes into planning applications therefore raises the expectation. Whether deliberately or inadvertently, it creates that rather awkward but historically well-known feature of a barrier to entry by the very nature of where you have to get to, what boxes you have to tick and what expense you have to underwrite to get there. This principle is as old as economics, but it is one of the things that is particularly germane to this discussion.

Of course, if we are getting into the situation referred to by other noble Lords of some sort of cross-subsidy from the application fee to issues of enforcement or covering other things, for instance the general costs of the legal department dealing with gruesomely complicated Section 106 agreements—I have seen some gruesomely complicated ones and am very glad to say that I have never had to draft one myself—that rather raises the question: is that right, or should we be subdividing, for instance, the costs of enforcement as a separate charging entity and the costs of dealing with a particular Section 106 agreement dealt with as part of that process? We have to worry about the degree to which there is this cross-subsidy approach, because without a set of rules for that, almost any sort of charging process can be set in place. That might be manifestly unsatisfactory for all sorts of reasons.

I very much welcome Amendment 97, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. I can relate to it as an owner, and in the past a professional adviser on heritage properties, although I would not really claim to be a heritage expert. We have heard that listed building applications are an addition to the need for development consent generally. Because they may revolve around matters that involve the historic character of the asset in question, it then becomes a matter of what is the character and what is the effect. These are often largely subjective considerations. That inevitably results in a sort of precautionary reaction in the eyes of local authorities. Inevitably, if that precautionary reaction takes root, all sorts of assessments and justifications may then be demanded of the applicant. Whether in fact they are reasonable is often in question. Given that, for owners who happen to live in or own listed buildings—putting aside badges of honour, in my case, several have been listed during my lifetime and ownership gratuitously imposed without consultation—I think it fair that the listed building element should not attract an additional fee.

It is important that we get this in context, and I observe that many local planning authorities do not have their own trained heritage officer. Many used to but no longer have one. In my experience, it is often outsourced to a private firm for so many days a month. Again in my experience, even where the external contractor so appointed makes a sensible recommendation, further conditions quite often get added by the local planning authority itself, in some instances displaying quite woeful failure to understand the practicalities of carrying out the work proposed. I will not go into further details on that, but I have several examples. It is therefore a matter of concern that defensively preventive or precautionary permitting practices and a lack of in-house officer competence—and, indeed, confidence—lie behind the added costs. Added to this, of course, is the citation relating to listing of buildings. In many cases, it is so cursory as to prevent a clear understanding of what features are actually important in terms of its character.

I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Mann, that something needs sorting out on a much wider scale here. I certainly would commend the Minister to take this away and see if we cannot, in the context of the Bill, produce something more cohesive going forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Banner (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 162, which would put chief planning officers on a statutory basis. I agree with the case made for it by my noble friend Lord Lansley and the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Best. I can add little to what they said, but I want to emphasise one point in particular. It is not uncommon in some—not all—local planning authorities for officers to come under considerable pressure from members in relation to matters that are within officers’ remit, whether it is preparing an officer report or an application to committee, or a delegated decision or work in relation to an emerging plan. It is entirely right and proper for members to reach their own views on matters within their remit, but matters within officers’ delegated remit should be exercised in accordance with their independent professional judgment. Putting the role of the chief planner on a statutory basis would buttress their independence and that of those working underneath them, all the more so were it to be combined with a statutory purpose of planning, which the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, proposes in another amendment. This is an issue already; it will be all the more of an issue in the event that the proposed national scheme of delegation becomes effective pursuant to the Bill. Amendment 162 would help give greater effect to that national scheme of delegation and ensure that it would not be undermined by officers who have additional delegated powers going forward being unduly lent on by their members in the context of exercising those delegated powers.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, the issue of training was behind my comments in the previous group about planning and proceeding on the basis of competence and confidence, so I support all the amendments in this group as well, and particularly Amendments 102, 103, and 162, which are absolutely pivotal.

In my profession, it is incumbent on practitioners not to undertake tasks for which they have inadequate technical knowledge or practical experience. Unfortunately, there is nothing which currently mandates the use and input of such professionals. So, when resources are tight and finance is limited, the inevitable result seems to be that it is passed down to the lowest-cost element of the process. This is, as other noble Lords have commented, to the increasing dismay of local communities, many of whose members have high levels of relevant knowledge and are therefore particularly concerned about what they see as self-evident flaws in what is presented. It erodes confidence, and we should really be concerned about that.

I remember that some years ago a senior political figure rubbished the idea of quality in development. It was a numbers game, and not quality. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington of Fulham, referred to the critical nature of satisfaction. That is satisfaction not just in the physical environment but in the working environments that we present to the people who have to administer this. Once trained, the knowledge is, of course, portable with the individual. I remember not so long ago an instance of a planning officer who left his authority, tempted no doubt by better terms from a developer, who then returned as a private sector consultant only for the purpose of undermining the very policies that he had formulated and was defending in his previous authority.

As other noble Lords have said, this goes to the heart of the satisfaction of the job, the longevity of it and whether it is properly paid, respected and nurtured, both from outside in terms of the standing of the individual and inside among committee members—I think the noble Lord, Lord Banner, referred to that. It is a false economy not to make these positions worth while, durable and of standing. I remember in my early profession how important certain local government officials were. The planner, the estates director or whatever his title was, and people in other walks of life, such as the district valuer for whom I worked for several years down in Brighton, had standing and status, but not so today. They are regarded as just another, if I may put it like this, petty official. That is to the great detriment of good delivery.

I wholeheartedly support the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, in support of Amendment 102. I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Lansley, Lord Shipley and Lord Best, in particular, that we need to address an awful lot of these things if we are to achieve a fraction of what this Bill is capable of delivering.

I turn to Amendment 103, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller. In the central government sector, I recently spoke to a professional body which had laboured long and hard to get a particular departmental official to understand a very complex series of issues, all of which had critical outcomes for the way in which policy would be delivered. I am not going to embarrass anybody by saying which department it was. However, with their having reached this elevated stage and got this person to really understand what was involved, that official was promptly moved to another, completely unrelated function—I am not even sure that it was within the same department. That was a loss of human resource and a waste of knowledge and experience, and it was to the considerable dismay of this body which had been trying to deal with it. If the idea is that as soon as somebody understands something, they have gone too native, or something like that, that is the wrong sentiment. We are losing people, and we are losing the force and direction of policy. While I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, I fear that a much wider organisational change in terms of holding on to those core skills in appropriate locations is necessary.

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, referred to the scope of training. I would add groundwater and geology to her list of basic skills and understanding. Like her, I do not suggest that people have an in-depth knowledge of this as a trained geologist or ecologist, but they must have a minimum understanding to do the job, to know when they need further, more detailed technical advice and to understand what the advice is when it is being given. On all those counts, we are falling down. Therefore, I very much support what she says about getting this right.

This is a very large issue. I fear that much of it may, in terms of policy and implementation, stray outside the strict terms of this Bill. However, unless we address these issues and unless that forms part of the consciousness of how we move this forward, we will have another large body of Explanatory Notes, impact assessments and all the rest of it, which will ultimately be on somebody’s cutting-room floor. That is a terrible waste of the resources of this House, of the other place and of all the people who have engaged with us to give us their views on how aspects of this should be brought forward. There is a common golden thread here that I hope will be picked up by the Government. It is at the core of getting delivery on this Bill.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Earl of Lytton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest, as I have nine water butts all collecting rainwater when it rains. However, further to what the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, said, there are some issues. For instance, what falls on roofs does not necessarily arrive in a clean form; particularly in some urban areas and in others, it may be contaminated by things such as bird droppings, which would be quite a serious issue.

The noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, refers rightly to the problem of having dual plumbing systems in houses. There is a serious issue to do with potential cross-contamination and, therefore, who is responsible. But on the generality of what the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, has put forward, supported by the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Parminter, it is right that we need to conserve water, so we do not use expensively treated water from the mains supply. It is absolutely daft to be using that for washing the car or watering the roses. The roses do not care how much bacteriological contamination there is in it—they love it. From that point of view, the more the merrier. The vehicle does not mind what you wash it with either, most of the time.

I learned a great deal from my late sister, the elder of my two sisters, who died earlier this year, that I did not learn from being a chartered surveyor. She was a very senior hydrogeologist, and her point about rainwater harvesting is that you have to be careful about the infiltration that is necessary and naturally occurring. When rainwater falls on a hard surface, it runs off to a drain. What then? Does it disappear off down through some massive Thames pipeline to somewhere beyond Barking, or does it go into the soil and replenish an aquifer? If it has all been put into the loo and is going off as foul water, you lose that to the infiltration process. The more that we build, the more hard surfaces that we have and the more we pipe it away, the more we have to be concerned about infiltration.

Previously in Committee, noble Baronesses raised the point about flooding. Of course, infiltration is part and parcel of that. If you have all the run-off arriving at the same point down a modern piping system that conveys water away very quickly, you will end up with trouble. If you can detain water in some way by storage and infiltration, you stand a better chance, little by little, of dealing with some of those problems. But it is a fine balance as to what is happening, and it certainly requires a lot of further investigation.

The other amendment that attracted my attention was the one on ground source heat pump installation. I absolutely take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson. All I would say is that, if a heat pump requires three-fifths of what you might call the energy demand to provide heating, that means that three-fifths of whatever the alternative will be—oil or gas—is put on to the grid.

The chief problem with the grid is that it does not have the distribution capacity—I am not sure that it has the generation capacity in total, but other noble Lords are much more knowledgeable about that than I am. This raises a particular problem with housing development. I recall not so long ago going to visit a small housing development in north Dorset. The developer there had to provide energy for cooking and heating via an LPG bulk storage tank, which noble Lords will know is a very expensive way of funding your energy. That was done because the tank was provided free of charge, provided that the LPG was purchased from the particular supplier, and the reason for that was because there was not sufficient capacity in the local grid to power these things from an electrical standpoint.

That ties in, to some extent, with the other point that the noble Baroness raised, about solar power. Yes, I agree that that ought to be part and parcel of it, but maybe there is a link to be made between solar power and the efficiency thereof and the ground source heat pump. Now, I know nothing about the wattage that is needed for a ground heat source pump, but again I say that there is a trade-off, a balance between that 60% of what would otherwise be the carbon load being transferred on to either the grid or a solar panel system.

I know that in places such as Austria, there are now things that they refer to as balcony panels or balcony sheets. These are flexible sheets of material composed entirely of solar PV material. People put them up and they can power small appliances. Other people tell me that solar panels in certain configurations have become so cheap that they can now be used as a fencing panel, because it is a cheaper way of doing it. Now, I do not know what the rate of deterioration and attrition is of these panels, and that is obviously a fairly important consideration, because they contain things which are not readily recyclable and therefore there is that problem of end-of-life disposal, but I think that perhaps the noble Baroness could encourage the Minister to think about and work on getting this balance right, so that at least we cut some of the consumption—maybe not all of it, but some of it—of these expensively produced and increasingly scarce resources. To that extent, I very much support these amendments.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I ask the noble Earl, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, perhaps rhetorically, whether they are aware of the One Million Cisterns project in Brazil, which aimed to deliver what it said on the tin and indeed has done so and was expanded subsequently. This is in the semi-arid area of Brazil, home to 18 million people. Brazil, of course, has a lot less infrastructure and is much economically poorer than the UK, yet it has been able to deliver a programme that has won United Nations awards and had all sorts of impacts. I hope the noble Lords will acknowledge that since other countries have achieved this, maybe it is not an unreasonable expectation for us to achieve it too.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, the greatest example of the gathering of rainwater that we can learn from is in Bermuda. They have stepped roofs made of limestone, so when the water lands on them the possibility of purifying the water is high—the sunlight also works as a purifier. The water then goes through the tunnels into cisterns under each house, and that is how they get their water. It is clean and pure, so if you want to capture more water to be used for drinking, it is not by mixing it with what comes out of the taps, but by recreating the miracle of Bermuda and its water. It is an island, there are no rivers—there is nothing. The only thing they have is rain. When it comes, everybody is very glad, and all their tanks are filled with beautiful water. If you want to capture more rainwater, why not learn from Bermuda?

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, invited me to acknowledge that other jurisdictions do this better. I entirely agree, but they do not always have the same regulatory baggage that we in this country seem to have; perhaps there is something that can be unpicked and dissolved there.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, before I turn to the substance of the amendments in this group, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Khan. Although he sat on the Opposition Benches, he always approached his shadow ministerial duties in your Lordships’ House with courtesy, commitment and friendship. He was diligent, engaged and unfailingly respectful in his dealings with me and my team. While we did not always agree, I greatly valued the constructive spirit he brought to our debates, and I wish him well in whatever lies ahead; I will miss working with him.

I thank my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger for tabling these probing amendments, which raise important issues about the way we prepare our housing stock for the future. Amendment 115, on rainwater harvesting, Amendment 116, on communal ground source heat pumps, and Amendment 117, on solar panels, speak to the wider challenge of how new homes can be made more resilient in the face of climate change. The principle of future-proofing is one most of us would support, but the question for government is how far and at what cost such measures should be mandated, and the practicality of doing so. Can the Minister clarify whether, in the Government’s view, current building regulations, as mentioned by my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, already provide the right framework to encourage technologies such as rainwater capture, ground source heat pumps and solar panels, or is further regulation envisaged? Has the department carried out an assessment of the costs and benefits of making such systems compulsory, including the potential impact on house prices and affordability, and how these costs might be lowered in the future? Has it also considered the capacity of local electrical grids to support these systems and other potential loads such as EV charging?

There is also a question of consistency. To what extent are local authorities currently able to set higher environmental standards for new developments, and do the Government believe this local flexibility is the right approach, or should it be centralised?

Finally, how are the Government weighing the balance between affordability for first-time buyers on the one hand and, on the other, the need to reduce the long-term costs to households and infrastructure of failing to invest in resilience? These are the issues I hope the Minister will address, because it is that balance between ambition, practicality and cost which must guide policy in this area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I want to add a few points to what I think has been a good and interesting debate. I remind the Committee of my registered interests as chair of development forums in Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire. Much as I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, I will not follow his track. I will revert to places where there is a very high demand for housing and a serious problem of affordability for housing. I want to follow the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Best, in particular, and to ask him a question, if he has a moment to respond. It seems to me that he is looking to target the social rent sector by reference to the definition that he includes—not the definition for social housing in the Bill. He effectively said: social rent under Section 69 of the Housing and Regeneration Act but not Section 70 of that Act, which relates to low-cost home ownership. The targets he refers to would have the effect of squeezing the availability of support for low-cost home ownership. I wonder if that is his intention, because it is not one that I would be wholly supportive of.

However, I do support the delivery of affordable housing. He mentioned the National Audit Office report from June this year and I want to follow up on two or three points. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham and I have both asked questions about the take-up of contracts for affordable housing under Section 106 obligations entered into by developers. In addition to what he asked, the National Audit Office said that it felt that the Homes England clearing scheme should become permanent. Since it published its report in June, the Government have provided a substantial and welcome increase in the affordable homes programme. The question is: to what extent is Homes England, through the affordable homes programme, going to be empowered to use those resources to take up those contracts, even if it does not go on to own the homes itself but rather acts as a clearing house by taking up those contracts and then making them available to registered providers who can access the affordable homes programme?

In addition, I will mention two things. The National Audit Office said that it wished the Government would proceed with issuing financial viability guidance. We are going to talk later in the Bill about further issues relating to viability guidance. I know my Front Bench colleagues share my view on this. In order to deliver more housing, there are powers available to the Government that need to be used quickly. Part of that is the issuance of guidance that will allow procedures like Section 106 to make progress. The Government have powers to reform Section 106 and the community infrastructure levy and they have not done so. They also have the power to issue new guidance relating to financial viability and they have not done so. So can the Minister, who remembers our debates on these things in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, tell us when progress will be made?

The final point is about Section 106 funding. The noble Lord, Lord Best, said that developers provided less last year by way of Section 106. I think that is principally because they provided less housing, so it is a simple consequence. If we can deliver more market housing, we should be able to deliver more by way of resources for the delivery of affordable housing. I think the noble Lord and the Committee will not criticise developers who feel somewhat unhappy. The National Audit Office reported that last year there was £8 billion in unspent Section 106 contributions. This is overwhelmingly for infrastructure that has not been delivered, but quite rightly the National Audit Office thinks it not helpful for local authorities to be placing obligations on developers—taking substantial resources, which sometimes can imperil the viability of a project—and then not delivering the infrastructure that is committed. As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, quite accurately said, it is a contract, in effect, between developers and local authorities. Sometimes developers let down local authorities, but sometimes local authorities let down developers.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

After such an expert series of speeches on this, I hesitate to rise, but I feel compelled to support the noble Lord, Lord Best, and others who have introduced a critical series of amendments and raised a challenge to current practice. As somebody who has had a long-standing association with Exmoor National Park, I fully understand and recognise what my noble friend Lord Inglewood has said, but I suspect that we are dealing with the process and proceeds of bulk housing rather than the situation that he refers to, important though that is.

I have in the past had to wrestle with development appraisals and I recognise the points that noble Lords have made about that. The system is rather opaque. You can variously tweak the process to decide on the profitability, on your relationship with your subcontractors, on what you are prepared to concede by way of Section 106 obligations, and on what you are prepared to pay for the land—and all of these in one model. So the model is complex and, unless one is familiar with the algorithms that stand behind it, it is very difficult for local authorities to find their way through that.

We have heard that affordable housing is funded out of the development of market housing. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made the point. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, the question arises as to what we mean by “affordable”, since 80% of the market price in the south and south-east of the country, for instance, is still totally unaffordable to anybody with limited means, particularly if it is pegged to the selling price of market housing, which of itself often carries a premium as a result of marketing processes. That premium is instantly lost as soon as the house is second hand and on the resale market. Often, market prices do not catch up with that premium on the second-hand market for some years. Sometimes it is quite a long time. For somebody of limited means in need of a home, this is a matter not of voluntary choice but of what is economically possible and of their own priority as a candidate for an affordable home, based on the housing need and the length of the waiting list. For many people, this is something of a lottery.

The affordable housing component of a residential development scheme is subject to this viability, the core financial ingredients of which are largely owned by and the intellectual property of the developer. Bearing in mind what I have said about the general complexity of the whole process, that adds to the problems that we are dealing with. Developers are a breed on which the noble Lord, Lord Best, has previously expressed some quite trenchant views, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has rather spectacularly reinforced those this evening. I have no remit to necessarily speak up for housebuilders. Some of them are clearly thoroughly exploitative, but I do not think that all of them are. I feel certain that there are some who are decent, honest and disposed to be transparent as far as they are able, but my professional work certainly has revealed that there is a great deal of opacity to the whole process.

The nature of the affordability offering ranges from what in developer terms might be regarded as the optimal—namely, a shared ownership, because of course it releases a sum of money for the development through affordable rent—and what might be regarded as the least profitable bit, social rent, which is often driven by accountancy processes and profit motives. Social rent components thus inevitably get seriously squeezed. The whole process of affordable housing may get further eroded by being fitted out to a lower standard than market housing. I will leave that to one side, but it gives a bit of an insight into how much cheeseparing goes on in the whole process and how many adjustments might be made before the final product comes out.

I acknowledge that part of the problem may go back to the rolled-up costs of land acquisition and the expectations of the parties under the original sale of land, although I venture to suggest that some of the developer’s profit, taken in the round, in many cases substantially exceeds the sum paid to the original landowner, and part of that is rolled-up cost, risk, finance and all sorts of other things that are going on at the same time. It is also a fact that satisfying this housing need depends on the perceived profit from the development at any given time. The ability of developers to defer starts or go slow on a site, depending on market conditions, adds to the problem of congestion in terms of providing affordability, and those in critical need of something genuinely affordable in rent are effectively seriously compromised.

Mention has been made by other noble Lords of shared ownership; I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who a week or so ago mentioned shared-ownership problems. My mailbag is often punctuated with people who are unable to get round the resale of their properties because there may be a pre-emption problem or they have to get consent from their registered provider, for example—and then circumstances change, the whole thing goes back into the melting pot and they have to start all over again. For owners who are trapped in such difficult-to-shift situations—even without fire safety remediation problems, which is another thing—if that is what ownership looks like, we should be prepared for people to start switching off, because it is not good enough if you are offering that as a home-ownership approach.

As another aside, I have recently heard it said that house prices are driven by the availability of credit, not the inherent value of the product. If so, there just has to be a better way of dealing with that without choking off land supply, and I think it starts with shortening timescales, derisking the current protracted processes, making planning more cost efficient, less contentious and less uncertain—and probably with a not-for-profit construction model. Protracted timescales allow for far too much wriggle room and reconfiguring of the offering that is made, and they give too much space for poor practices to take root.

I have tried to work out how such a model would be achieved—possibly through community interest structures in which local need and desire would come a long way in front of imposed bulk market housing—but I am not there yet. It raises questions too about clustering of social housing versus pepperpotting, and about building the sort of inspirational developments that deliver best quality rather than having some sort of stigma attached to them because of the nature of what is produced. We in this country have in the past succeeded spectacularly with schemes; some of the great industrialists produced wonderful developments for their workforce that were really well thought out. We ought to be able to do the same sort of thing for those in critical need of social housing.

My view on this is that, if one is concerned about the attitude of landowners, maybe it is time to start asking whether getting maximum price at some uncertain point in the future would not be offset by having a greater certainty of outcomes and transparency, and being able to plan for that over a timescale might be appropriate. With that, I will sit down, but that may warrant looking at further.