Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Earl of Lytton and Lord Greaves
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, I generally support both amendments, up to a point. On Amendment 50F, so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, the question of infrastructure clearly goes beyond starter homes alone. For example, in certain coastal towns along the south coast it has become evident from my travels to and fro that the amount of development in what I call the suburban areas has now produced difficult traffic conditions—not because of the development process but because of the subsequent use which is causing an overload on feeder roads. This, I fear, will become an increasing problem because alternative forms of transport for journeys to work have not had the necessary investment and it does not look like they are going to get it any time soon. For instance, the high-quality rapid-transit type of bus such as you have in large parts of central London—where you can see when the next bus is coming and where it is going to—is not there. It is a considerable problem.
We know that doctors’ surgeries, schools and other infrastructure are not keeping pace with the state of development. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, is right that we have to look at the broader picture of the setting—otherwise we will be creating the latter-day slums of tomorrow while we are trying to create high-quality homes. I say high-quality homes because I had the privilege of serving on the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment, which looked particularly at the need for decent quality and not just building anything at any price with all that that means.
On the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, I understood her to be referring to what I know as post-occupancy evaluation. I hope I have not used the wrong term. Some years ago, an All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Built Environment—which is not the same thing as a Select Committee, I hasten to add—on which I also had the privilege to serve, produced a report on procurement. It identified various shortcomings in the procurement process. First, the people who were doing the procuring—they might have been a particular subsector of local government, school governors or parish councillors—did not have the tools or the ability to deal with the procurement themselves and were not bringing in the necessary skills required to do that properly. What they were procuring ended up not serving its proper purpose, not having any reuse value, being over budget and not being properly controlled. That failure, in particular, identified a complete absence of post-occupancy evaluation—in this respect, it pointed the finger rather pertinently at many government departments. You did not have any feedback as to where you were going wrong and so you made the same mistakes all over again the next time round. We have got to do better with this.
The noble Lord, Lord Deben, referred to the scarcity of the precious space that is available for development without impinging on the green spaces outside. I say hooray to that. However, the process is getting much more demanding than it used to be. If you do not want to create cramming, if you want to create greater density and the best use of urban, previously developed land, then we have got to be smarter about how we do it. The two amendments seem to address aspects of being smarter about it and I support the principle that lies behind them. I hope the Minister will consider them in that tone.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I support a great deal of what the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, has said about the importance of infrastructure in relation to housing. I am greatly worried that there is now such a housing crisis in this country that we are doing exactly what the noble Earl suggested and failing to learn the lessons of the past. At times in the past in the post-war years, large numbers of houses were built but infrastructure and services were not put in and local authorities spent a long time playing catch-up. In some cases they did not succeed because of the problems which existed on those estates. So what has been said is absolutely right. There is a huge danger that under the pressures to find ways of building more and more houses the proper overall planning of houses as part of future communities is being forgotten in too many areas.