Housing and Planning Bill (Seventeenth sitting)
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Richard Bacon
Mr Thomas
Very wise, Mr Gray; leave it to us and trust our judgment instead. I have not seen anything specific in the Bill that offers improvement regarding the worrying shortage of skilled construction workers. I tabled this probing new clause because it is worth raising the need for more apprenticeships, particularly in the construction sector.
Mr Bacon
The hon. Gentleman is, as usual, ineffably kind, but I wonder why he looks to the Bill for a solution to his problem. Were he to look at the website of the excellent Easton and Otley College in my constituency, he would see that with the opening of its modern, well equipped £3.75 million construction centres, it aims to lay the foundations for a more secure future by trebling the number of construction students. It does not have to be legislation that does it.
Mr Thomas
The hon. Gentleman is right in the sense that legislation is not the answer to everything. Although I am glad to give him the opportunity to praise a provider of apprenticeships in his constituency, I simply make the point, which I am sure he would not try to counter completely, that at the moment we do not have enough skilled workers in the construction industry in this country. All the fine words that we have exchanged over the past four weeks about how we might get more people into their own home are surely put at risk if we cannot find the people to build those homes in the first place.
Mr Thomas
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
This new clause seeks to remove the limit on debt where an authority has a housing revenue account. I hope that it will attract the support of the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton, who rightly reminded the Committee of the 1.4 million households on council waiting lists and the need for urgent action to tackle the scale of housing need those waiting lists represent. Crucially, we need to do more to build homes that those on the waiting lists can afford. Rents have rocketed because of the shortage of supply, as we have discussed, which is another factor necessitating urgent action. Hon. Members will be more than well aware of the particularly acute shortage of housing in London, where, even according to the Mayor of London’s planning documents, we are building only half of the housing we need.
In April 2012, the Government gave councils that own their own housing full control over their stock for the first time, although it was planned under the previous Labour Government. That meant that councils have the right to keep and manage all their rental income. In exchange for that right, councils in London agreed to take on billions of pounds of the nation’s housing debt. One of the benefits of giving councils full control of their own housing stock is that councils can borrow money against their assets to invest in new housing. However, as part of the agreement, the Government sadly imposed a cap on such borrowing. That cap was over and above the Treasury’s normal prudential borrowing rules that apply to most local authority borrowing. That artificial cap effectively halved the potential cash available for councils in London to invest in new homes.
London Councils has estimated that aligning the housing borrowing cap with the Treasury’s prudential borrowing rules—that is the purpose of my new clause—could generate an additional £3.2 billion of sustainable borrowing, which could potentially pay for an additional 54,000 extra affordable homes for Londoners over and above those already planned.
I understand that the reason—or at least the reason that was given in public—for the introduction of that cap was the worry that even prudential borrowing by local authorities might have an impact on the national deficit. But work by Capital Economics was drawn to the attention of the Lyons review, which made clear, from a series of conversations with City interviewers, that the amount of money that is likely to be borrowed would not be sufficient for the markets to worry, irrespective of any changes in accounting methods.
I understand that, on occasion, some flexibility around the cap has been on offer to local authorities. I hope the Minister, if he does not feel that he can support new clause 37 in its entirety, might be willing to look at the possibility of giving further flexibility to local authorities that have clear, sensible and thought-through plans to build additional homes so they can use their borrowing powers.
It is worth pointing out that a number of councils are seeking to get around the existing borrowing cap by setting up additional partnerships with developers and housing companies that are often wholly run by the local authority. Sheffield Housing Company, which will build some 2,300 homes over the next 15 years, is a particularly interesting example. It has had to go down the housing company route in order to get access to finance from the market. Having to go down such a bureaucratic route by setting up a company would not be necessary if there was no borrowing cap, or indeed, if the Ministers showed more flexibility.
Mr Bacon
I do not quite understand what the hon. Gentleman’s problem is with having to set up a company. When I worked in property banking as a young man, I would run five or six annual general meetings for different special purpose vehicle companies before breakfast on one day—literally.
Housing and Planning Bill (Sixteenth sitting)
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Richard Bacon
Mr Thomas
I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that I have not made up the Home Builders Federation’s concerns. The quotes that I have just given are real. There is a real problem preventing many small and medium-sized house builders from accessing finance. I suggest to him that more needs to be done and the new clause is a way of doing that.
Finally, there is one other option available if a guarantor bank or a help-to-build scheme were not acceptable. Government and Opposition Members will be familiar with the regional growth fund. A series of community development finance institutions occasionally work with construction firms but have difficulty in building their capital base. Regional growth fund moneys might be better used in increasing their ability to lend money to small businesses in their communities. In the context of the new clause, some of that financing could be directed at helping small and medium-sized house builders.
Mr Bacon
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman is prepared to give way. I am worried for the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, who looks very hungry, but the hon. Member for Harrow West is so interesting that we have to keep going. He will be interested to know that the Minister for Housing and Planning, the leader of South Norfolk Council and I were at a self-build summit yesterday at which we heard financiers from Lloyds bank and Nationwide Building Society talking about such issues. It is really not about legislation. The hon. Gentleman needs to know that it is about de-risking. Does he not understand that, were we to have large projects with local development orders, as has been done by Cherwell District Council with the largest self-build project in the country, for example, that automatically de-risks things and makes automatically coming forward much more attractive to lenders?
Housing and Planning Bill (Fifteenth sitting)
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Richard Bacon
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful for the opportunity to resume where I left off, Mr Gray. I hope that Conservative Members, particularly the hon. Member for South Norfolk, have had a good lunch and continue to look forward with enthusiasm to the Minister’s response to the new clauses, not least out of concern for and interest in jazz at small venues, but also out of more general interest in the concerns of small music venues that may be at risk.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
Mr Gray, for the record I feel I should point out that I have had no lunch at all. The time I had allocated for lunch was taken up with that vote we have just had and I just managed to eat a banana on the way up here.
Mr Thomas
The hon. Gentleman has, I am sure, secured the sympathy of the whole Committee. Anyone reading the extracts from Hansard of this section of the debate will be instantly sympathetic.
As well as paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham for the way she introduced this debate, I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dagher), who has championed the new clauses and worked with a number of organisations within the music industry concerned about the impact of planning legislation on music venues. It is in part through his work, as well as the work of the industry itself, that the idea of trying to write into legislation the principle of an agent for change concept being established in planning law has come to fruition. The industry points to a number of examples where this principle is already written into law. I am told it has been particularly successful in Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, and I think it is well worth looking at in the British context, not least given the sharp decline in music venues in London.
On Thursday evening we will all go back and Government Members will celebrate the fact that the legislation has got through its Committee stage and that they have successfully resisted any temptation to engage with the Bill in a critical way. They might want to go out on the town to celebrate, and look for a music venue. Perhaps the hon. Member for Peterborough will want to go out to see an ABBA tribute band—he has the look of someone who likes that type of music—
Housing and Planning Bill (Fourteenth sitting)
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Richard Bacon
Mr Bacon
I will ignore that comment from the hon. Member for Harrow West and concentrate on my intervention. We have had enough parping from him for one day already. Does the hon. Lady think that it is just possible that the Secretary of State might choose to exercise his or her discretion? Where and when local communities are getting on with it and producing high-quality local neighbourhood plans, that can carry on, but where people—as is often the case—are taking longer than it took to fight the second world war to produce a local plan of any kind at all, the Secretary of State should have the power to act, and that is what the Bill gives him or her.
Mr Thomas
My hon. Friend makes a good point and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Ministers have occasionally said that they want to help small and medium-sized house builders to increase their market share. Giving those developers much more certainty about what would and would not be acceptable on a site would surely reduce their costs over time and increase their chances of accessing sites that they can afford.
I would have thought that amendment 284 would appeal to the Government, given their enthusiasm for starter homes. Giving greater clarity to would-be developers about the proportion of starter homes required on a site as part of the suitable dwelling mix that a community might expect would surely both encourage the starter homes initiative that the Government want to push and give more certainty to developers.
Finally, I come to the question of the re-election of the hon. Member for South Norfolk. I paraphrase it in those terms because he prayed in aid with enthusiasm tall buildings in central London. I worry that his constituents might not share his love of tall buildings. I see their virtue in places such as Croydon; I am not quite so enthusiastic about the prospect of having them in central Harrow, and nor are my constituents. I have to confess that I do not know, but I suspect that the constituents of South Norfolk would not be too enthusiastic about the prospect of 20-storey blocks of flats being part of developments there or in the surrounding area.
Mr Bacon
I can resist no longer—the hon. Gentleman is such fun. I am not suggesting 20-storey blocks of flats in South Norfolk or anywhere else. I pointed out that the Cadogan estate in Chelsea has slightly higher blocks. If he visited the self-build project known as “Elf Freunde”—meaning 11 friends; it is a German footballing pun—in central Berlin that produced 11 four-storey terraced houses for €220,000 each, he would see what I am talking about.
Mr Thomas
Well, it is an important point, Mr Gray. I was not for a moment suggesting that the hon. Gentleman would be enthusiastic about a proposal for tall buildings, but there would be much less likelihood of his constituents being provoked by an application for an unnecessarily high development if the provisions in amendment 284 were on the statute book and would-be developers in South Norfolk knew that the community, South Norfolk Council and so on did not expect a development of more than, perhaps, 11 storeys, as I think he referred to in his Berlin example—
Mr Thomas
Oh, I beg his pardon: a development of four storeys, or even fewer. That would help to give some confidence to the community about potential developments. If the hon. Gentleman were to have the courage to resist the power of the Government Whips Office and back the amendment, I have no doubt that he would be smoothing the path a little to his re-election.
The hon. Gentleman provokes me to speak about self-build and custom housebuilding—
Mr Thomas
I rise to support these new clauses. To me, they seem to make eminent sense. They are not an over-the-top provision and they are not creating a particularly onerous regulatory burden. However, they are seeking to re-establish a balance between, on the one side, the need and the appetite for new housing that all Committee members report and, on the other side, the need to maintain centres of cultural activity.
My hon. Friend has just set out some of the rationale for these amendments. I want to draw the Committee’s attention to what motivates my support for the new clauses. I am motivated in part by the experience of one of the grassroots venues that has closed in my constituency. The Rayners pub used to host jazz and ska nights on a regular basis, and when it closed there was a long campaign to stop it being earmarked for development. The campaign was led by an excellent local resident, Bill Ashton, who was then the conductor for the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. He was rightly concerned to protect a local music venue, and he argued that very few such venues in outer London hosted jazz and ska nights. My worry is that, without the amendments, the environmental health concerns that my hon. Friend alluded to will continue to increase the pressure on licensing authorities to take away licences for music venues.
The Trinity pub in my constituency is still very much going on. It has two floors and the upper floor often hosts small bands, or bands that have not yet made it. There are many offices within the vicinity of that pub. It is an excellent pub—Labour-supporting, which is an additional benefit that the Trinity brings—and I would not want to see it forced to stop allowing performances by local and other bands as a result of the pressure that may or may not come from those who move into homes where there were once offices.
Mr Thomas
Again, I gently encourage the hon. Gentleman not to go for a long liquid lunch, but to be back promptly to be able to hear the Minister when he declaims on this subject. I am glad he is an enthusiast for the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, but it is not only jazz that might be affected in future; a host of other genres might also be affected. I hope the hon. Member for South Norfolk is not in a parochial phase, but that he might be willing to recognise that the idea of a European city of culture bid from outer London—something for which I have campaigned for some time—might benefit from the provisions in the amendment. The pressure on music venues to close might not be there and there would be opportunities for more parts of our great capital city to benefit from the European city of culture and provide an additional range of cultural activity for people in the area.
My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham rightly dwelt on the Mayor of London’s music venue taskforce. I am not a huge fan of the current Mayor of London, but I give him credit when it is due on occasion. His taskforce has shone a spotlight on the closure of grassroots venues—a 35% decline, as my hon. Friend said, in the past eight years in London. That is deeply worrying and ought to be a wake-up call for us all, not only in this Committee but across London, to see what else we can do to make sure there is not pressure to lose such venues.
My hon. Friend rightly highlighted the fact that London has borne the brunt of the closure of music venues, but it is not only in London where music venues have closed; Birmingham and Manchester have seen small music venues closing, as have Edinburgh and Glasgow—of course, Scotland is outwith the scope of the Bill—and Bristol, Plymouth, Newport and Swindon have all seen important local music venues closing. We must do more to stop such local venues closing in future.
As my hon. Friend has alluded to, it is clear that there is insufficient guidance for our planning authorities to stop the closure of music venues.
Housing and Planning Bill (Thirteenth sitting)
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Richard Bacon
Mr Thomas
A stand part debate on the clause is an opportunity for us to explore in a little more detail why there is a disparity between local authorities and housing associations over who gets to keep any additional income raised under the pay-to-stay policy. In essence, as the clause is drafted, housing associations get to keep any additional resources under pay to stay, but local authorities have to return them to the Chancellor.
The question for Government Members to reflect on is why, say, South Norfolk Council should be treated differently from housing associations that operate in the South Norfolk area? Why should housing associations in Harrow retain some additional resources under pay to stay and yet Harrow Council will not be able to do so? I hope we will hear from the Committee’s answer to Robespierre.
Mr Bacon
I was going to quote Mao Tse Tung earlier, but I gather that it is a sensitive point in the Labour party at the moment—although the hon. Member for City of Durham, who is not in her place, referred to a thousand flowers blooming, so she has already quoted him. Just to reassure the hon. Gentleman, the Housing and Planning Minister will be in my constituency tomorrow to visit a self-build project and separately I will see the leader of South Norfolk Council tomorrow evening at a Christmas drinks party. Therefore I—and the Minister, I am sure—will take the trouble to allay his concerns.
Mr Thomas
I am always tempted to agree with the hon. Gentleman, who I have always thought should be on his party’s Front Bench—that would be only an improvement on what we see before us today. However, I am slightly surprised that he did not commit to ensuring that the Minister not only visits that self-build project as he should—one hopes that it is a housing co-operative—but sits down with the leader of South Norfolk Council to explain why he intends to discriminate against South Norfolk Council as opposed to South Norfolk’s housing associations. It seems to be a bizarre and arbitrary distinction to make.
Mr Bacon
First, I assure the hon. Gentleman that South Norfolk Council does not feel discriminated against, because the leader of the council is so dynamic that he has found alternative routes provided by this visionary Government to set up independent commercial entities under the general power of competence. Secondly, I reassure the hon. Gentleman that Ministers tell me that they met the leader of South Norfolk Council yesterday.
Mr Thomas
Now that is good news. I hope that the details and minutes of that conversation will be published, because I was struck by the concern of the Local Government Association, sadly at the moment run by the Conservative party, and by its strong opposition to and concern about the distinction between housing associations, which will be able to receive the additional proceeds that might be generated under pay to stay, and local authorities, which will not be able to receive them.
I do not know whether the leader of South Norfolk Council is an active player in the Local Government Association and we do not know whether the leader of the LGA took the opportunity yesterday to bend the ear of the Minister on—
Housing and Planning Bill (Eleventh sitting)
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Richard Bacon
Mr Thomas
I rise to support the amendment in my hon. Friend’s name. In doing so, I am struck by an example in Wealdstone in my constituency, where one particular housing association, A2Dominion, is engaged with tenants and leaseholders in what seems to be a never-ending discussion about a series of construction problems with the property. It has been going on since 2008, and the problems still do not seem to have been sorted out. There are extensive leaks, a whole series of flats have been affected and there is as yet no sense when my constituents in Bannister House, an A2Dominion property, will have their problems sorted out.
In the context of the amendment, the last thing that I would want is for other tenants, under the portability arrangements, to be offered a poor property such as those in Bannister House, with a history of maintenance problems. My hon. Friend’s amendment seems to be a sensible pro-tenant safety measure on which it is worth pushing the Minister. I raised a couple of questions during debate on clause 57 stand part, one of which related to portability. The Minister resorted to the classic tactic of Ministers who do not know the answer by referring to some document on a website.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman says that it is a classic tactic because he is speaking from experience.
Housing and Planning Bill (Tenth sitting)
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Richard Bacon
Mr Thomas
That aspiration is one that I strongly support but I think that support should be through the supply of housing for sale. I argue gently to the Committee and in particular to the hon. Member for South Norfolk, who started so well by agreeing with me, that the additional supply of homes for sale should never be at the expense of affordable homes for rent. In the context of the amendment, that is homes for rent for the most vulnerable.
Mr Thomas
The hon. Gentleman begins to make my point for me. If he observes a little patience but continues to listen with the enthusiasm he has shown thus far, I will come to exactly that point.
I should allude to some of the difficulty that the Opposition, the hon. Gentleman and some of his friends, and those listening and watching our proceedings, are facing in being able to scrutinise the terms of right to buy. In response to the points of order I raised last week about the lack of information about right to buy, the Minister referred us to the offer details on the National Housing Federation website. When I had the chance to read that information, it made clear that the Government and the National Housing Federation and its members would work together on the implementation of an agreement and an operational document would be published. To date I can find no evidence of that operational document having been published. I look forward to the Minister giving clarity on that. It is particularly important in the context of the pilot schemes that have been launched. We simply do not know the terms on which those housing associations are piloting the offer of the right to buy.
In the context of the amendment, we do not know whether sheltered and specialist housing are excluded, or whether in the context of amendment 146 other forms of housing will be excluded in line with the original offer document. We do not know how long the pilots will run before other housing associations are required to join in. We do not know how the deal will be financed, given that it will take some time for vacant high-value council homes to be sold off to provide the finance to compensate housing associations.
As I indicated, we do not know whether the five pilots are operating exactly in line with the headlines that were agreed between the National Housing Federation and the Government. We do not know whether the five housing associations will be committing to replace like for like rented homes for sale with other homes for rent.
In particular, in the context of my amendment, we do not know whether the five housing associations will specifically replace any sheltered or specialist housing that is sold in a like-for-like way. In the National Housing Federation offer, which was published on its website, housing associations expected the Government to work with them to put in place measures to limit fraudulent activity. That is surely particularly important in the context of vulnerable adults who, in some cases, will be in sheltered or specialist housing provided by housing associations.
It would have been helpful for the Minister to have published the operational document to which he, presumably, and the National Housing Federation remain committed. Presumably, within that document, there would have been information on how action to stop such fraudulent activity might have taken place. One of the concerns raised in evidence to the Communities and Local Government Committee by one of the housing associations was the worry that family members or friends might try to persuade someone to buy their sheltered housing property when, in fact, they may not really want to do that. It is presumably that type of activity that the Government might want to stop. It would have been helpful to have the detail of the types of measures that they were going to put in place to stop that.
The offer document also anticipates the Government putting in place arrangements to manage the financial costs of the right to buy, to ensure that the cost of sales does not exceed the value of the receipts received, which could include an annual cap on the cost of right-to-buy discounts. Does the Minister remain committed to that in general, as part of the offer and in the context of sheltered and specialised housing? Will it apply in the context of the five pilot housing associations? It would be helpful to hear a little more detail.
The National Housing Federation offer specifically suggested seven categories where housing associations might exercise discretion over sales. Again, it would be helpful to hear from the Minister on whether, as part of the deal that he has agreed with the housing associations that are piloting this deal—the London & Quadrant Housing Trust, or L&Q, Riverside, Saffron, Sovereign and Thames Valley—the seven categories will remain the same, not least because, in the context of the amendment, one of the specific categories mentioned includes “supported housing”, as defined by part 5 of one of the previous Housing Acts. Other categories that are potentially directly related to the discussion on amendments 89 and 146 relate to properties in rural locations being excluded, properties where there are restricted covenants being excluded, and properties held in a community land trust being excluded. Again, it would be helpful to hear from the Minister whether the five piloting housing associations will continue to offer exclusions in those areas.
Mr Thomas
Not completely, I have to say. Although it was helpful to receive the NHF document, it would have been helpful to have received the full operational document from the Government. Why does it not satisfy my concerns? I give the example of the Greenoak Housing Association, which operates in Woking. Its chief executive gave evidence to the Communities and Local Government Committee on 4 November and noted the fact that Greenoak is a particular specialist in the supply of sheltered housing. She said:
“Around one-third of our housing is sheltered with support. We could obviously exclude them ourselves, but the difficulty would be in re-providing.”
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that, as part of the deal with the Government, the National Housing Federation committed that, where a property was excluded from a sale but a tenant wanted to buy it, housing associations would have to offer an alternative property for sale. The chief executive of Greenoak said:
“We do not see why we should be giving a portable discount for people who are in the most suitable housing for them at the current time with the support that they need.”
It would be helpful to hear from the Minister what future the Government see for housing associations that are specialists in sheltered, supported and other specialist housing. How will those housing associations deal with the issue of portable discounts and the potential requirement they face under the deal to offer another property for sale? There is a risk of that making those housing associations not financially sustainable, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman, and indeed all hon. Members, would not want to happen.
What happens when all properties owned by a housing association in one area are specialist or sheltered housing? How would the right to buy be exercised in that situation? One could understand a tenant approaching the housing association and saying, “I want to stay within Harrow because it is so well represented in Parliament,” and no doubt for other reasons. The housing association will want to do the right thing by its tenant, but it is only offering sheltered housing in that area and wants to maintain that stock. How would that situation be dealt with by the Government and housing associations?
Age UK, in its written evidence, specifically laments the failure to build more sheltered and retirement housing and to offer older people more housing options in later life. It argues:
“Based on demographic trends, specialist housing will need to increase by between 35 per cent and 75 per cent just to keep pace with demand.”
Age UK is concerned about the decline in the availability of sheltered and other forms of specialist housing for older people on low incomes.
Although I welcome the extra capital funding announced as part of the spending review for specialist housing, which I assume includes sheltered housing, the Bill must be clear about the need to exclude sheltered and other specialist housing from the right to buy in order to ensure there is not inadvertently a further decline in the provision of sheltered housing as a result of the Bill.
I support amendment 146, tabled by my hon. Friends, not least because there is increasing concern in Harrow and, indeed, other parts of London about the provision of housing that key workers are able to afford. Of course, those key workers will no doubt have the aspiration I alluded to earlier to buy a home in due course, but if that is some way off, their immediate priority will be to find a property that is affordable to rent. One thinks of careworkers, of nurses, of teaching assistants, of the cleaner for the Minister’s office and of policemen, on occasion. One wants surely to ensure that there continues to be a reasonable supply of affordable accommodation within reasonable distance of those people’s place of work.
I welcome also the National Housing Federation decision to insist that co-op housing is not included in any right to buy, but there should be additional protection on the face of the Bill. Indeed, the Housing Act 1985 approached the issue of exclusions from the right to buy by putting those exclusions on the face of the Bill. Schedule 5 to that Act lists a series of exceptions to right to buy, including—this is a particular interest of mine—
“if the landlord is a co-operative housing association.”
The amendment would replicate that provision. Surely it would be sensible to put that on the face of the Bill. In that spirit, I look forward to the Minister’s reply to the various questions I have asked and hope that the hon. Member for South Norfolk is convinced of the sensibleness of my amendment.
Mr Bacon
I know the hon. Gentleman struggles to emulate Cicero or Demosthenes but I feel I ought to point out that, although there is a certain dulcet quality to his delivery, it reminds me more of bagpipes. There is a certain onward droning quality. I caution him not to speak like that for so long in the early afternoon because many Conservative Members will probably fall asleep.
Mr Thomas
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps I should caution him not to go for the expensive and well oiled lunch that perhaps is a feature of interest for him from Tuesday to Thursday. I am not quite sure that I have convinced him on this amendment and I fear that I will have to try a little harder to convince him of other issues during the course of the day.
Mr Bacon
I would like a brief chance to respond to the amendment as well. The constituents whom the hon. Lady described would attract all our sympathy. I only say to her that if it is possible to do it in Berlin, Amsterdam, Stockholm and many other major cities around the world, it is possible to do it in London as well.
Mr Thomas
I rise briefly to support the amendment in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting and to note that there is nothing in the National Housing Federation’s deal with the Government that protects the interests of London compared with the rest of the country. As I alluded to in my intervention on the hon. Member for Wimbledon, there is nothing to stop housing associations that sell off housing for tenants replacing that housing in Nuneaton or Great Yarmouth, or indeed in other parts of the UK. Surely that is an unacceptable situation. Equally, there is nothing in the Bill that requires central London authorities to find like-for-like properties to be built in their areas. There is nothing to stop housing associations operating in the whole of London selling off properties in inner London and replacing them with properties elsewhere in London.
I say gently to Conservative Members that perhaps the ghost of Shirley Porter motivated this omission in the Bill. Hon. Members will remember that Shirley Porter went out of her way to push those in rented accommodation in Westminster City Council out of those properties in order to influence future elections.
Mr Bacon
It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman mentions Dame Shirley Porter. Does he agree that one should not really mention her without mentioning in the same sentence Herbert Morrison, Peter Mandelson’s grandfather? He said, in the late 1940s, “We will build the Tories out of London,” and I think he meant psephologically.
Housing and Planning Bill (Eighth sitting)
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Richard Bacon
Mr Thomas
My hon. Friend makes a good point. If the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton will forgive me, that is another reason why it would be good to hear his experience about why the additional provisions, albeit with the Government amendments, are necessary. We will no doubt hear from the Minister in due course.
Part of my concern is that tenants evicted under the new provisions will struggle to challenge their evictions. I asked on Tuesday about legal aid for someone wanting to make sure a rent repayment order would be available, and the Minister was going to reflect on that. Will he also reflect on whether legal aid will be available to a tenant who wants to challenge an eviction under the new provisions?
I am concerned that the clauses and Government amendments could lead to further illegal evictions, and part of the reason for that is that there are very few successful prosecutions at the moment for unlawful eviction by landlords. In 2011 there were only 13. The brutal truth is that illegal evictions are rarely investigated, and few landlords are prosecuted.
There are a number of reasons for that. There have been substantial cuts to many of the tenancy relations teams in housing associations, which have traditionally carried out that function—if, indeed, they still exist. Police forces often think that illegal eviction is a civil matter, so it is quite rare that they investigate. For someone who has been evicted illegally and is now homeless, finding accommodation is a much more urgent priority than launching a prosecution.
My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead is right to ask for an additional check and balance before a landlord can take action under the provisions. The opportunity to go and ask a local housing authority whether it shares the view that a property has been abandoned is a check strongly worthy of consideration.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman made an interesting point that police forces often think that an illegal eviction is a civil matter. If such an eviction is actually a criminal matter subject to prosecution, does he agree that it ought to be relatively simple for the Government to make it clear to police forces that it is a criminal matter and should be dealt with as part of their responsibilities to protect the public from crime?
Mr Thomas
I am tempted to think that it ought to be relatively simple for Ministers to write to police forces urging them to check things carefully. If the Minister were to agree to that, I would certainly welcome it. I encourage the hon. Member for South Norfolk to consider the whole piece and all the reasons why it is unlikely that landlords who pursue unlawful evictions will be taken to task. The police issue is one thing, but I alluded to a series of other issues that prompt concern about the Bill’s clauses, albeit there are potential amendments from the Minister.
Mr Thomas
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and it will be useful to hear from the Minister on that.
Returning to a point I made in an intervention, the vast majority of landlords are not large buy-to-let companies. They are often individuals or families with just one or two properties who want to do the right thing by their tenants. The opportunity to talk to a body before taking a view that abandonment has happened gives them an additional safeguard and provides an additional opportunity for them to satisfy themselves that they are not making somebody homeless inadvertently. The amendment is pro-good-landlord just as much as it is anti-rogue-landlord, as my hon. Friend suggested.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Peterborough is not in his place, because he very much—
Mr Thomas
I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. It is good to have him here. Indeed, he has arrived in time to allow me to draw his attention once again to the examples of rogue landlords that I mentioned on Tuesday. Mr Antoniades, Mr Ippolito, Stanley John Rodgers, Zuo Jun He, Andrew Panayi, Katia Goremsandu, and Ishak Hussein have all been convicted of appalling behaviour. One suspects that they are looking at the abandonment provisions in the Bill—the Minister has proposed amendments—and thinking that they are a further weapon in their armoury, if they need it, when behaving badly towards tenants for not doing exactly what they want in the time that they want them to do it.
I urge the Minister to understand the spirit with which my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead tabled the amendment, which is pro-good-landlord and anti-rogue-landlord and will strengthen the Bill. I hope the Minister embraces it.
Housing and Planning Bill (Seventh sitting)
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Richard Bacon
Mr Thomas
I might do that on Report, now that the hon. Gentleman has encouraged me. However, hopefully in the interventions that I have made, I might have encouraged the more reasonable of the two Ministers to fight the fight within the Department and strengthen the teeth that are available to housing authorities to fight this problem. I do not know whether the hon. Member for South Norfolk, when he meets housing officials in South Norfolk Council, talks about these issues. I know that he talks to them a lot about self-build and custom build—that is excellent news—but does he go into detail about the powers that they will have under the Bill in other areas? I hope that he does, and if he has not up till now, I hope that he will in future.
I apologise to you, Sir Alan, as I think I have been led astray by the hon. Member. We are, after all, talking about London and whether the London rental standard might benefit from the amendments moved by the hon. Member for Wimbledon. I simply urge the Minister to embrace with enthusiasm the concerns expressed by colleagues on the Conservative Benches about the database.
Mr Thomas
That was an extremely good intervention and a further powerful point that I hope the Minister will take into account.
I can imagine the hon. Member for Peterborough seeing constituents turn up at his surgery in 2020. The next Labour Government will be introducing new housing legislation. The hon. Member for South Norfolk will have been drafted in on the housing Bill Committee for the new Opposition and he may be tempted to make a speech about self-build and custom house building. I am always excited to hear him speak, but the hon. Member for Peterborough may not be and he may use the opportunity, if he has been approached by a constituent who is worried about their landlord, to put in a request under the freedom of information legislation to see whether that landlord had in some way come to the notice of the housing authority and was therefore included in the database.
Mr Bacon
The hon. Gentleman tempts me to intervene. Under my revolutionary approach, there would not be any of this faffing around the edges. If landlords were misbehaving, the tenants would have the power to take their destiny into their own hands, remove the property from the bad landlord and form a housing co-operative. The hon. Gentleman might like to know that buildforlife.org.uk—the start of the revolution—was launched this afternoon.
Mr Thomas
I am very happy to have been the vehicle for the revelation that the hon. Gentleman has just provided. His intervention reminds me that I have not yet sent to him the membership form for the Co-op party. Perhaps I should also send him a Labour party membership form, although I do not want to fall out of order.
We were discussing whether the hon. Member for Peterborough, during one of the speeches by the hon. Member for South Norfolk, might put in a freedom of information request, and I was about to appeal to the Minister to prevent the hon. Member for Peterborough from being tempted to do so. Allow us to see that information as Members of Parliament. Allow us to help our constituents. I think of the caseworkers in my office. They are extremely experienced and effective. If they are concerned that a rogue landlord is operating in my constituency and there might be a way of teasing out confirmation of that fact through an FOI request to the local planning authority, they would be at me straightaway to suggest that I put that FOI request in. I suspect that that would be the case for all Opposition Members and even, I suspect, for one or two Government Members. I therefore say to the Minister: let us try to avoid that situation by accepting the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead.
Housing and Planning Bill (Sixth sitting)
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Richard Bacon
Mr Thomas
I beg to move amendment 88, in clause 8, page 5, line 1, at end insert—
“or
community-led housing schemes as defined at Schedule [New Schedule 1: community-led housing schemes]”
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. Given your huge experience, you will know the disadvantage that Back-Bench Opposition Members are at in comparison with the massed ranks of the Government with all their civil servants behind them. In saying that, I hope you will protect me from any bullying by Government Members.
In moving amendment 88, I probe whether the definitions in clause 8 are sufficiently tightly drafted to allow the full range of would-be self-builders and custom house builders to benefit, while not creating loopholes for bigger beasts of the housing market to exploit.
It is interesting that the Conservative party, which is so committed to the free market, should be so actively seeking to meddle with the free market in the clause by creating almost a mini-market within the overall housing market. However, it would be a digression to go down that route.
To give the Committee a flavour of my interest in the clause and to amplify my concern, it might be worth imagining a situation where every member of the Committee lives in the same planning authority area—say Harrow, which is probably the best planning authority in the country and certainly the best place to live, with some very high-quality political representation, especially in the western part of the planning authority area. Let us assume we all live in the same planning authority area and have done so for a number of years. We are all living in houses that we do not see as suitable for our needs going forward and so want to be part of building a better home for each of us. We all get along famously, so we decide to work together and support each other’s efforts to get a better home.
If we were to build our homes under the self-build route, they would clearly, by their very nature, be somewhat different. I am a new man at the moment—I appreciate that is a controversial concept and my partner is not necessarily a supporter of it. As a new man, I do not need anywhere to watch the television. I simply do not have the time any longer to do that, because of childcare arrangements.
My property would be, by definition, very different from those of other Committee members who are not new men or do not have childcare responsibilities. The Minister looks like a man who would want a hot tub in his self-build property. Again, his would be a very different property from those that the rest of us want. The hon. Member for South Norfolk is the very definition of the type of Member who would want to create a mini-castle. Certainly, he would want a wide, sweeping drive to accommodate all his cars.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. Although my mother used to worry when, as a small child, I expressed the desire to live in a castle, I do not want my self-build to be a castle, but I do want it to contain a library based on the one in Eastnor castle in Herefordshire, which I recommend that the hon. Gentleman visits.
Mr Thomas
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that kind intervention. I will come to the subject of libraries shortly.
I think I have demonstrated that, if we were to go down the self-build route, each of us would build a different type of property. Nevertheless, we might need to work together to achieve that. We might need the help of my hon. Friend the Member for Leicestershire-ish way, I believe—[Interruption.] I am sorry, I mean my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle. [Interruption.] I am a London MP—bear with me. We might need the help of my hon. Friend, with all his council experience, to approach the local planning authority. He knows how planning authorities work, so he could register our collective self-interest. That is one small way in which we could work together, although we would nevertheless build the properties ourselves.
If we were to go down the custom build route, we might again need my hon. Friend to register our interests with the planning authority. My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood, who is not in her place, has experience of the planning system and would be useful in helping us to find custom house builders. Again, Government and Opposition Members would probably require different types of custom house builder. I gently suggest that Opposition Members would need larger libraries, because we are much more committed to evidence-based policy. The hon. Member for South Norfolk probably does not need such a big library. That is one difference in the type of specialist custom house builders that we might want.
Given the harmonious relationships that have developed in this Committee under your chairmanship, Sir Alan, we could all come together to form a housing co-operative—let us call it the Toffs and Oiks Housing Co-operative—to build a new series of properties in which to live. However, would that qualify under clause 8? Could we register an interest with the local planning authority to build homes?
Why might we go down the housing co-operative route, as opposed to the traditional self-build route or the traditional custom build route? It might be easier to raise finance if we were acting collectively and sharing risk. That might make us more attractive to a potential financier. We might build the houses ourselves or contract them out and design how the properties look, but it would be hard to describe that as traditional self-build or traditional custom build. I seek to probe the Minister about whether a housing co-operative would qualify under the terms of the Bill. Indeed, many rightly acknowledge that the self-build and custom build parts of the housing development market are niche areas. The Government and, indeed, the Opposition, rightly want to see that part of the housing market becoming less niche and more mainstream. Again, the housing co-operative movement—which shares many parts of the definition that one might use to describe a self-build or custom build property—is regarded as quite niche. It may be covered by the definitions in clause 8, but at the moment it is not clear.
Mr Bacon
Thank you for that advice, Sir Alan. I feel that on such an important subject I ought to be wearing a dinner jacket, like Lord Reith reading the news.
It was a pleasure to listen to the hon. Member for Harrow West—albeit at such length that the pleasure was alloyed—but I do not think his amendment is necessary. The Bill provides for “associations of individuals”, so the question one has to ask is: what would a court say about a housing co-operative in such a case? Would a court deem a housing co-operative to be an association of individuals? I think it would.
Mr Thomas
Perhaps I should have gone on a little longer and drawn the hon. Gentleman’s attention to clause 8(2) which, referencing his own Private Member’s Bill, talks about omitting,
“bodies corporate that exercise functions on behalf of associations of individuals”.
That is one of the things that initially triggered my concern that housing co-operatives or community-led housing might, inadvertently perhaps, be affected by the definition in proposed new subsection (A1).
Mr Bacon
I would certainly not want to omit housing co-operatives inadvertently. I will listen with interest to what the Minister says about that, but it seems unlikely that they would not be regarded as associations of individuals.
May I say how important housing co-operatives can be? The hon. Gentleman rightly pointed to activities on the continent, such as at Almere in the Netherlands and in Berlin. As the founder of the all-party parliamentary group on self-build, custom and community housebuilding and place-making, I strongly support community activity to increase the number of dwellings, because the system as a whole has failed for 50 years. Volume house builders as a whole have failed to cause supply to rise to meet demand, as have too many of our housing associations, because while some are nimble and innovative, some are bloated. An official recently said to me that trying to contact a person in a large housing association was like sticking a knitting needle into blubber: it went on and on and he could not get a response of any kind.
Mr Thomas
I find myself in agreement with the hon. Gentleman. I have experience of a housing association that is incredibly difficult to get hold of and is not treating some of my constituents as well as it should. He supports co-operatives as one part of the self-build and custom house building world, so does he want the Minister to be clear that they will be covered under the terms of the definition?
Mr Bacon
Yes, I do. In Berlin, people have come together, often led by an architect who has identified the site, people and finance, and worked in co-operation with the local authority, very much in a community-driven way, to produce housing co-operatives that people join. By becoming a member, they are entitled to a dwelling. As the co-operative grows, they can move to a different dwelling that is the right size for them—as they get older or become members of larger families—and they can continue to do that throughout their lives. I therefore support the idea of housing co-operatives.
I will correct the hon. Gentleman on one thing, though. To take the example of Housing People Building Communities in Liverpool, which I visited recently, he described owners as active, albeit collective. Of course it is possible to have co-operative action by communities that results in individual ownership, and that is what has happened in Liverpool. I support the idea of housing co-operatives being covered by the Bill. The difference I have with him is that I think they already are.
Brandon Lewis
As I said on Thursday, I always think it best to start by outlining what we agree on before moving to what we perhaps do not agree on. I agree with the opening comments of the hon. Member for Harrow West. I am sure we agree that he believes that he is the best representation that Harrow could have. I say gently that I hope that his other opening remarks were meant with some tongue in cheek, because otherwise Conservative Members will have found them pretty offensive.
I am sure that all members of the Committee will have spent many hours during mornings, evenings and weekends working through issues behind the Bill to ensure that what we are presenting will be transformational in how we make housing supply and increase home ownership. If the hon. Gentleman looks back at Thursday’s Hansard report—I appreciate that he was not with us on Thursday, as he obviously had other commitments—he will find that amendments were withdrawn and ideas were taken on board from both sides of the Committee in that proper tradition of working together where we can agree in the best interests of all. In that spirit, I hope to give him and my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk some words of comfort and reassurance about what the clause seeks to do.
The Government very much support community-led housing schemes, and the hon. Gentleman was right to outline the importance of co-operatives and those schemes. His amendment would add housing built by community-led housing groups for the good of the community to the clause. However, the individuals who first live in such properties would not necessarily have an input in their design, and I argue that that is not self-build or custom house building, nor should it be considered as such.
Where a group of people want to build or commission their own homes next to each other to enable them to live as a community, legislation already allows for that, as my hon. Friend rightly identified. Indeed, supporting such people in the way we see elsewhere around the world, and in Europe in particular, is the reason why “associations of individuals” is included in the definition, as he rightly pointed out. I categorically assure him that groups of people coming together in whatever format—whether loosely and informally or in a more formal organisation—to develop a genuine self or custom build property into whose design and build they have an input is intended to be included in the definition.
Mr Bacon
I will not detain the Committee for too long. Given that the clause is the first in chapter 2 on “Self-build and custom housebuilding”, I want to say how much I welcome the Government taking further the provisions of the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015, which was my private Member’s Bill, to establish the right to build and to make it a practical reality that serviced plots are delivered at scale, so that we have in this country what has been a great lack: the building of houses as if customers mattered. In most markets supply rises to meet demand. The reason it does not do so in the housing space is that customers are not at the centre, as the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich has said. Historically, customers have not been at the centre as they need to be.
I want to make one other important point about the role of SMEs, which the Minister mentioned in speaking to the previous amendment. Up and down the country many builders merchants provide timber, plumbing and electrical supplies, and other building materials. The purchase of such supplies locally for a house, whether self-built or built to commission by a local builder, does a great deal to put money into a local economy. The Minister probably knows Brett Amphlett of the Builders Merchants Federation, who helped with my Adjournment debate and my private Member’s Bill, and nor would I be surprised if the Minister had visited a builders merchant to find out the good work that such businesses do to promote local sales to keep money in the local economy.
We need a revolution in the way in which housing is done in this country. We have to create a situation in which the supply of houses rises properly to meet demand. A key part of that will be serviced plots at scale, which is why I agreed with the Minister’s earlier comments.
Mr Thomas
It is always great to have a fellow revolutionary in Committee. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should drift over to the Opposition Benches, at least for this part of our proceedings. I agree that self-build and custom house building could be part of a housing revolution, but surely in order for that to happen there has to be much greater access to finance to enable self-build and custom house builders to develop. Does he not agree that the decision by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to impose a levy on building societies to take some of their capital away potentially makes it harder for them to make finance available to self-build and custom house builders? Will he be a revolutionary on that as well?
Mr Bacon
The reason I am not on the Opposition side is that they are not revolutionary enough in this space. When I think about the Labour and Co-operative parties I wonder what could have happened in the past 50 years if the Co-operative party had done to housing what John Lewis has done to retail. I am afraid there has been a lot of talk but not enough action over those 50 years.
Mr Bacon
Since the debate is only on stand part, I shall make just one other point—about the nature of the protection in the new subsection (A2) that clause 8 would insert into section 1 of 2015 Act. Under that subsection, the definition of “self-build and custom housebuilding”
“does not include the building of a house on a plot acquired from a person who builds the house wholly or mainly to plans or specifications decided or offered by that person.”
That is sound. The Minister referred to it in commenting on an earlier amendment. It should prevent gaming of the system by those who want to present their product as if it is a custom house-building product without allowing the customer to specify and determine properly what gets built. Custom house building is not about allowing the customer to choose from a small number of pre-baked designs. It is about the customer deciding and specifying what gets built.
The clause is sound and sufficient. By the way, I sought and obtained the support of the Federation of Master Builders for my private Member’s Bill, but could not even get a meeting with the Home Builders Federation. The fact that the Home Builders Federation thinks that the clause goes too far is sufficient reassurance for me that it is good enough as it stands. None the less, I should welcome the Minister’s reassurance.
The Chair
Mr Bacon, I apologise: I should have called you last time, but your svelte figure deceived me.
Mr Bacon
Sir Alan, I have lost so much weight, but have a lot more to go. I am afraid I do not agree that the amendment is helpful. I know we are short of time and I would not have spoken were it not for the phrase “to meet housing need”.
Three years ago I was at a conference at the QEII Centre with local authorities and people from the National Self Build Association. Several local authority leaders of different political parties were asking questions. One of them, a Conservative from a wealthy area in the south-east, was very excited because he had already managed to deliver housing, including the cost of the land, for £140,000 to £150,000 per unit. Another local authority leader, whose party I will leave you to guess, Sir Alan, but he was not a Conservative, sat there with hands folded and said he would have nothing to do with it. I chatted to him afterwards and asked why not. He said, “Because it will not help me meet housing need.”
The reason I got into this area and wrote the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015 is because I am sick and tired of people in local authorities saying they know more about housing need than the people who need housing. That is why it has to change. With respect, I do not think the amendment helps that process. When I want advice on how revolutionary I am, I will certainly not go to the hon. Member for Harrow West. None the less, I give way.
Mr Thomas
I thought we had established consensus but now the hon. Gentleman seeks to spoil the positive atmosphere that was developing between us. People in my constituency come to see me about housing issues. I am sure they are supportive of self-build and custom house build, but they also want the local authority, housing associations or private developers to be able to provide decent homes.
The amendment does not seek to exclude self-build or custom house building; my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich simply seeks to make a range of other tenures available. I counsel the hon. Member for South Norfolk that one failing of revolutionaries in the past has been blinkeredness. I hope the hon. Gentleman will not fall for that weakness on this occasion.
Mr Bacon
What the hon. Gentleman calls blinkeredness, I call focus, and this very good clause would be cluttered up by the amendment. What annoys me is this. We have heard a lot in the Bill and oral evidence about the need for housing need to be taken into account, but there is nothing to stop a local authority that wishes to do so from helping the formation, establishment and growth of a housing co-operative. If local authorities are concerned to protect housing in perpetuity, they can do so by that route, in a way that is exempt from the Bill. There is nothing to stop them doing that.
I have learned two particular things, among several, while studying this area—one about land and one about finance. There is no shortage of land; there is a shortage of accessible land. There is no shortage of finance; there is a shortage of financeable propositions. If local authorities, in conjunction with their local people, were to come forward with good strong business cases for grounding and growing housing co-operatives there would be no shortage of financiers willing to come forward to help finance those propositions. The problem is there has been a shortage—
Brandon Lewis
The amendment is aimed at ensuring that authorities give suitable development permission to housing across all tenures, not just custom build. We heard earlier what that does for a military veteran who is not interested in custom build. I would say a couple of things to that military veteran.
First, they should think about self-build and custom build under these new provisions. I visited a company called Beattie Passive in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk, which can develop and help somebody like that learn how to build their own home and deliver it for about £30,000, making it a very affordable proposition.
We come back to the debate we had, in part, on Thursday. Members should read this part of the Bill not as the entire solution to what we want to do to get house building back to where it should be after we inherited an awful legacy, but as part of the work we are doing. The Bill is part of the work and this clause is just part of that. In the same way, starter homes are part of the solution, as is custom build. It builds on the fact that we have exceeded our target for affordable house building over the past four or five years and we are now in the process of the new scheme to deliver 275,000 affordable homes. That is the fastest rate in more than two decades and, of course, in terms of council housing we, as a Conservative-led Government, have a strong record of delivering more in five years than the previous Labour Government did in 13. I am extremely keen that we continue to press ahead with further reforms to the planning system to drive up housing supply.
Through the national planning policy framework and the Localism Act we have put local plans at the heart of the system. Such plans set out a vision and a framework for the future development of the area, including where to locate new housing to meet the needs of the community, but we must be realistic about what can be achieved and when. That applies to the provision of infrastructure, and when sites might come forward for development. Linking this action to the earlier comments, I clarify for hon. Members on both sides of the Committee that we recognise that this is a new burden and, as such, money will be set aside. The process for this and the work of local authorities, not least in the 11 vanguard areas, is not complete, so I will not give specific numbers today, but I assure hon. Members that it will be sufficient to ensure that local authorities are not disadvantaged by the introduction of this policy.
Mr Thomas
Sir Alan, I have sought a stand part debate to raise the issue of the price of land. It may seem odd, having been broadly in support of clauses 8 and 9, to suggest that we need a debate on the merits of clause 9, but I worry that, on the basis of evidence that the Opposition presented to the Lyons review, the cost of land may be a significant deterrent for many would-be self and custom house builders, and that granting permission in principle may inadvertently drive up the cost of land. That is the issue I want to persuade the Minister to mull over. In its evidence to the Lyons review, the National Custom and Self Build Association said that the cost of acquiring land was the most significant barrier to more self and custom house building, and that 50% of would-be self and custom house builders had a budget of £200,000 or less with which to fund both the construction of their home and site acquisition.
Part of my reason for being interested in whether there had been a vanguard authority in London was the huge cost of land there relative to many other parts of the UK. There may be less scope for self-builders to believe that they could build in London than in the Stokes or the Bicesters, to which the Minister referred. Thinking about the cost of land in Harrow, I struggle to believe that many self-builders could build property for under £200,000 if they have also had to acquire the land.
We know that when planning permission is given for a site, it usually drives up its value and my concern is that if permission in principle is given, even on a plot that has been designated for self-building in future, it would drive up the cost of that land and limit the number of would-be self-builders or custom house builders who might want to build on it. Surely none of us wants to see the number of would-be self-builders restricted, or for them to have to look at areas of the country other than Harrow.
This morning, we have had a pretty good debate about the benefits of self and custom building and there seems to be broad consensus on both sides of the House, and particularly in the Committee, for expansion of such building. The danger is that we have been talking about the emperor’s new clothes, and that lack of finance and professional support—I am thinking of housing co-operatives—might detract from people’s ability to crack on with building their own home or getting involved with a custom house builder. My worry is that the National Custom and Self Build Association is right in saying that the cost of land will continue to be the most significant deterrent to going forward. Are we in danger of creating an additional hurdle to the cost of acquiring land by supporting the granting of permission in principle and therefore, albeit inadvertently, driving up still further the cost of acquiring land?
I worry that we missed an opportunity in clause 8 to make clause 9 even better in terms of housing co-operatives. Our earlier debate made it clear that some would-be housing co-operatives could benefit from clauses 8 and 9. Again, I encourage the Minister to think a little further about the benefits of housing co-operatives, and about what more the Department can do to encourage local authorities to look with enthusiasm at the potential of housing co-operatives to address some of the housing need in their area.
With that in mind, I return to a point that the hon. Member for South Norfolk made almost as an aside. He said that, given the exemption from right to buy, housing co-operatives could flourish as a result of the Bill. Many co-operatives are worried about other parts of the Bill, including the reduction in rental income and what that will mean for their finance and ability to expand further, and the additional administrative costs that might be generated by pay to stay. Will the Minister comment on the impact of those aspects of the Bill on housing co-operatives? That would be helpful. I hope he will focus on whether he thinks that the granting of permission in principle for self-build housing plots will inadvertently drive up the cost of land and therefore make it even more difficult for would-be self-builders and custom house builders.
Mr Bacon
I have one concern about clause 9; I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me. Clause 9(1) will insert new section 2A into the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015. Proposed new section 2A(6)(c) says that,
“development permission is ‘suitable’ if it is permission in respect of development that could”—
could—
“include self-build and custom housebuilding.”
I recognise that having a specific percentage in the measure would be unhelpful and impractical, because local circumstances vary so much, but it could have been drafted to say that development permission was suitable if it was permission in respect of development that included self-build and custom house building. That would be practical. I would like to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that. Perhaps he will take the matter away and consider whether we might tweak the clause at a later stage.
Housing and Planning Bill (Second sitting)
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Richard Bacon(9 years, 1 month ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Thomas
Q 199 Mr Montague, can you flesh out a point you made in your opening remarks about your concerns that the Bill will not add to supply in London?
David Montague: We believe there is a lot that is positive in the Bill, as I mentioned earlier—brownfield sites and so on—which will help us to deliver more homes in London. The tides that we are swimming against in London are the loss of local authority stock that will be difficult to replace and the effect of the starter home initiative, which is still difficult to determine. Our fear, as others have suggested, is that it will replace social housing.