(4 days, 5 hours ago)
Commons ChamberFirst, I pay tribute to the leaders in both Norfolk and Suffolk for the conversations we are having, particularly on devolution. We look forward to, I hope, making progress on that in the near future, because that is where the real prize is. We can sort out the foundations of council funding and reorganise public services to get efficiencies, but in the end we need to see devolution. We need to see power coming out of this place and being given to local communities. The best way to achieve that is through a mayoral strategic authority working hand in glove with local authorities.
On the question about NICs, we have provided over £500 million for the costs of employers’ national insurance contributions and we are providing additional money through the social care grant, and it is for councils to decide how best to spend that money.
I welcome the Minister’s statement and the fact that this Government are starting to fix the damage done by more than a decade of disastrous settlements for local government. In my constituency, that means increases of more than 5% for each local authority in core spending power, but does the Minister agree that as important, if not more important, is the consultation on long-term proposals to fundamentally improve the way that local government is funded through a fairer system?
That is exactly right. We have approached this year as very much a recovery operation. We could see that councils were in the ditch and needed to be pulled out and taken home, and that is exactly what this one-year settlement will do. However, what they need and deserve is a multi-year settlement that gives long-term security and stability, and for that long-term settlement not to be the continuation of a broken system, but a system that has been rewired and put right. With the fair funding review, the multi-year settlement and the reform agenda, putting prevention at the heart of public services, we will begin to achieve the end to which my hon. Friend rightly points.
(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
Commons ChamberI think the hon. Lady is referring to the pressures placed on residential freeholders as a result of some of the management estate charges that come through that route. There are provisions in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act to provide residential freeholders with additional protections, and we need to bring those measures into force. We also then need to look more widely at how we reduce the prevalence of private and mixed-tenure housing estates, which are the fundamental root of the problem.
The English devolution White Paper, due by the end of the year, sets out how we will transfer power from Westminster to people who know their areas best. The White Paper will also announce measures that will give local places and communities greater control over shaping their area.
Libraries, pubs, football, community centres—these are the things that make up a community, but in so many places they have vanished over the last 14 years. I am delighted to hear plans of a community right to buy. What work are the Government doing to ensure that local authorities and community groups have the guidance and expertise needed to utilise this powerful new right once it is realised?
In there is the point about devolution and localism: structures matter and the framework matters, but in the end it is about getting the power out to the communities who have skin in the game. That is why we want to ensure that the community right to buy provides an effective means for communities across the country to take ownership of assets that are important to them. We are considering what further support and guidance we will provide to communities and local authorities to support them in this measure, and I know that the Minister for local growth, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North and Kimberley (Alex Norris), is fully engaged in this endeavour.
(2 months, 1 week ago)
Westminster HallWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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I beg to move,
That this House has considered estate adoption in the North East.
Thank you for the honour of serving under your chairship, Mrs Harris. I am grateful to have this opportunity to move the motion, which is of considerable importance to my constituency of Cramlington and Killingworth. It is a newly formed constituency, made up of new towns as well as a number of villages, covering the north of Newcastle, south-east Northumberland, and north and north-west North Tyneside. As it is on the edge of different local authorities, over the past 10 to 15 years, our villages and towns have grown with significant levels of development. These developments provide important and needed homes for our communities, but there have also been significant challenges for those communities, and adoption and delivery of infrastructure are key among those challenges.
With the commitment of the new Labour Government to deliver the homes that our country needs, we need to ensure that we are not only building homes, but sustainable communities, with buy-in from residents. Delivering timely and appropriate infrastructure is a key part of that, because a home is not just the property that we live in, but the street that we live on, and the community we are a part of. For too many of my constituents, there are unacceptable delays in the delivery of even the most basic infrastructure. Residents who have worked hard, saved, and bought their first home, their family home, or their dream home, are left without adequate road surfaces, pavements, street lighting, pedestrian crossings, and road markings. Too often, people are left in limbo—passed from one organisation to the next, with each one trying to pass the buck—paying management fees and council tax, yet not having the basics, such as completed pavements, roads or communal facilities. Residents are left frustrated and angry, with a lack of communication from those responsible, a lack of accountability, and no certainty on when their estates will be finished.
The situation which my hon. Friend describes in her constituency is mirrored in mine; it is an issue that affects properties around the country. Locals in my constituency will know the old Birds Eye site. It was a brilliant idea to bring new housing into the town centre, on a brownfield site, but latterly it has been discovered that the estate is half-finished, the roads are unpassable, and the paths unusable. Does she agree that local authorities should be given additional powers and that there should be caps on the costs that local authorities are required to pay, to force developers to complete these estates so that people can live in their dream home?
This is an experience that is shared around the country, and we need to look at all available options to we resolve this matter. We are not talking about months that residents are left in this situation, but years—five, 10, 15 years, in which families see their children grow up and leave home before a road is completed.
Before the debate, I asked my constituents for their testimonies and experiences of the range of issues that they face. David, who lives on the Fairways estate in the west of Cramlington speaks of roads and pavements on the estate that are largely without tarmac, which has made using bikes, wheelchairs, and pushchairs dangerous outside the home. He talks of how residents are cut off from other facilities such as shops, schools, and parks, because the necessary footpaths were not built for years. He says that only after constant pressure from residents did the developer build a footpath, which is unlit and poorly laid—it would be difficult to use a pushchair or a wheelchair on it—and it links one housing estate to another through a field. If people have a car, the roads are not much better. They are often unfinished, with is a higher risk of damaging vehicles. When the roads are icy, there is more risk of traffic accidents.
Another constituent, Iain, has been contacting the developer of Five Mile Park in Wideopen for three years regarding the road surface. The estate was constructed almost 10 years ago, and he has been given excuse after excuse about why work has been delayed on the roads, pavements and footpaths. The developer informed Iain that the road had been completed more than a year ago. However, poor-quality work by contractors means that it has not been brought up to adoptable standards. That is just one case of many in which a developer will claim to have completed roads, pavements or other infrastructure, but not up to a standard for the local authority to adopt them.
This is such an important debate. Likewise, in Amble in my constituency of North Northumberland, constituents have contacted me about a private developer that has left their estate in a scruffy and untidy manner and which is using a contractual error to try to escape blame. That is in the context of a 65% decrease in planning spending in the north of England, so there is also a key issue about the resources that local authorities need. Does my hon. Friend agree that private developers should be willing to bring estates up to an acceptable standard so that local authorities are not forced to adopt unkempt and unfinished estates?
I thank my hon. Friend for raising those issues. I know it is something that is raised with all Northumberland MPs, and I agree that we need to look at all mechanisms to ensure that estates are at an adoptable standard.
In my constituency, Dan from West Meadows, another estate, shared his worries that local football pitches would never be brought up to the standard that has been promised. Mark, who lives in Backworth View, told me how the street lighting on his road has never been switched on in the five years he has lived there, yet he is paying full council tax and management fees. Many residents express frustration that they are paying both estate management fees and council tax, yet, because the estate is unadopted, they have poorer quality infrastructure, despite paying more.
Local authorities often feel the brunt of complaints from residents, but they hold little power to compel developers to bring private unadopted estates to the standards required for them to be adopted. Local authorities should not be footing the bill for delays and lack of delivery from private house builders. Too often, local authorities are hamstrung. The developers have long since left the site, so local authorities are left fielding complaints from residents, despite having little power to compel action. A chief planning officer at a local authority told me that the current system is skewed towards developers. They pick their own contractors, timeframes and materials, which are often not up to the standard for a council to be able to adopt their work, yet it is the local authority that is left with understandably frustrated residents long after the developer has gone.
I have also seen problems holding developers to account in my constituency of Stockton North, where we have estates such as Willow Sage Court, Wynyard and Queensgate, which have unfinished roads, a lack of facilities and high maintenance charges. The Competition and Markets Authority said in a report earlier this year that there was an increasing trend for this type of estate, and it recommended a set of national standards. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should have a national framework of standards for private developers, as well as sanctions for developers that do not deliver?
I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution; it is as if he has seen the next part of my speech as I am going to reference the CMA, so I will progress and touch on the issues he raised.
I have mentioned the homeowners, the local authorities and the developers, but there is another third party that has an important role: the utilities and the broadband companies that have to deliver the infrastructure as well. In Earsdon View, residents remain on an unadopted estate, as the developer and the water company have been unable to resolve adoption. A resident on the estate, Jim, feels that the water company and the developer have passed the buck, and nothing has been done on the issue. As he put it, residents are left with “stalemate”.
Often, it is the relationships between developers and utilities companies that hold back the full adoption of water mains and other utilities. The knock-on consequence is that roads are left open and untarmacked while the disputes are ongoing. While such issues between developers, third parties and local authorities are haggled over, residents are left to pick up the cost through estate management fees. That fee is meant to support a contractor while they carry out work on the estate, but residents have shared their experiences of being left unsatisfied by the system of estate management fees, which are often unpredictable, opaque and confusing. Many argue that they are being ripped off, with fees that can increase by unlimited and unspecified amounts each year. Residents such as Oliver fear that if fees continue to go up and they were unable to meet them they would be unable to sell their property.
The CMA report earlier this year says that one of the things that creates the most distress for homeowners on such estates is the disproportionate response time taken by management companies, as well as their response when homeowners are unable to pay. Homeowners have had their property seized because they cannot meet the costs levied by estate management companies, yet residents are left powerless to challenge the unfinished state and poor quality of their estate. People echo earlier remarks that the existing system is skewed towards developers, with little access to justice for residents. I am glad that the Labour Government have already pledged to end the leasehold system. A developer that has not met its promises to homeowners should not be able to profiteer in relation to those same homeowners.
I am proud that this Government are taking the necessary steps to solve our housing crisis. We have a complete shortage of housing of all types. This Labour Government are being bold, with a target of 1.5 million homes during the Parliament; reform of leaseholds to end exorbitant ongoing costs for residents to live in their own homes and of the existing leasehold system; the end of section 21; and reform of the rental market. The Government have said they intend to introduce legislation to deal with the commonhold and leasehold issues that are still prevalent in today’s housing market, fixing the system—adoption should be part of that.
To pick up some of the points made by my hon. Friend about estate adoption, in particular in areas such as Medburn, Corbridge and Hexham in my constituency, residents contact me regularly, concerned about the state of their roads and the fact that we have unsafe compounds, often outside communal areas. In the rural communities that I represent, that can be particularly toxic, and it damages ongoing faith in the community and the community spirit itself. I hope the Minister can, in his response, elucidate a little the importance of adopting such estates, in particular the smaller settlements.
I absolutely share the sentiments of my hon. Friend. I refer him to my earlier comments about how this is not just about building homes, but about building communities. To do that properly—the Labour Government have set out that they intend to do that—we need to be able to address the issue of unadopted estates.
The CMA report talked about common adoptable standards as one solution that would set out clearly the minimum standard that has to be met for a road to be adoptable. Where the standard is met, there should be mandatory adoption of amenities, with only a few limited exceptions. I would be grateful if the Minister responded to those suggestions in his reply.
Certainty could be provided to residents about the timescales within which the adoptable standards would be met. The Minister has talked about that previously. Such measures would give residents clarity and would enable developers to be held to account on timescales and delivery against them. The measures would strengthen the hand of residents and local authorities to hold developers accountable for putting in place the most basic infrastructure that residents ought to be able to expect. The measures would address the imbalance between developers and the rights of homeowners when it comes to adoption and delivery of infrastructure.
As my colleagues in the north-east and I have set out, residents should not be left for years on estates paying fees on top of council tax while there is unfinished infrastructure and a lack of any certainty of delivery long after the developer has left the site. People who have worked hard, saved and bought their own home deserve better than that. If we are to deliver the housing that this country needs and bring communities with us, addressing this issue and the timely delivery of appropriate infrastructure on estates is crucial to getting that buy-in. I know that this is something that the Minister will be working on, and I look forward to his response.
(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberThe right hon. Gentleman’s Government was in power for 14 years and could have resolved this issue. One reason why we are consulting on the revised NPPF is because we recognise that infrastructure is critical, as I have said to many hon. Members today. People often reject housing proposals because they do not see infrastructure. That is why we have the golden rules, why I have asked all the Departments to look at what we can do to ensure that infrastructure is there, and why we will support the strengthening of section 106 to ensure that developers do not try to squeeze out of what they promised as part of the development.
As my right hon. Friend has said, this has got to be about building communities, not just about building homes. On too many occasions, residents in my constituency have been left for too long on incomplete and unadopted estates. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that both the social and physical infrastructure must be delivered at the earliest opportunity in development, and that developers must be held to account for their delivery?
I absolutely agree. That goes back to the point that far too often people object to development because they do not see the infrastructure, and people see that in some cases developers try to wriggle out of their obligations. As I set out in the consultation document we are putting forward today, we believe this will strengthen the hand of local authorities and we will be able to ensure that we get the infrastructure we desperately need alongside the houses.