Estate Regeneration

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2026 Westminster Hall

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I congratulate the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) on securing the debate. His call for minimum repair standards seems very reasonable, and I am happy to echo it. I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) identifying the regular attendees in this Chamber—I am tempted to say that it takes one to know one. I am sure we will see him again; it is always a pleasure to have him with us in a debate.

It is a shame that the constituents of the hon. Member for Basingstoke do not feel they have been fully consulted, as they should have been, on the regeneration project he mentioned. Regeneration, when done with genuine community involvement, can change lives in some of the best ways possible. Community involvement, consent and consultation are fundamental necessities if that kind of positive and transformative outcome is to be achieved.

Regeneration is one of the best tools we have to help solve the housing crisis. It allows us to build the new homes we desperately need—including, crucially, new social homes—on brownfield sites, saving precious greenfield from development. It allows residents to exchange some of the coldest, leakiest housing stock in Europe for better homes that are affordable to run, while adding the kind of infrastructure that the hon. Gentleman referred to, such as GP surgeries, school places and playparks, which some estates built 60 years ago never had.

Many Liberal Democrat councils are showing the way to do this. My Somerset councillor colleagues, including Federica Smith-Roberts, Tom Deakin and Lee Baker, have led the way on the regeneration of the North Taunton estate. There are 162 defective prefabricated concrete Woolaway homes, unfit for the 21st century, being demolished and replaced with 229 council homes for affordable rent—67 more than we had before. The scheme was built around a resident design group from the outset, not token consultations or consultation after the drawings were finished. Local community champions like Lesley Councill, who has done amazing work at the Priorswood community centre, helped to lead that involvement and deserve to be credited for a lot of the work. Existing tenants were rehoused during the works, with a guaranteed right to return.

Another example is the Cambridge road estate in Kingston upon Thames, in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey). The Liberal Democrat council there insisted on subjecting the proposed regeneration scheme to the kind of ballot that the hon. Member for Basingstoke referred to. Those involved worked hard with local residents and the proposal received overwhelming support, resulting in 2,100 new homes and 871 new council houses—218 more than were on the site before.

Those are not marginal examples; they are proof that the choice is not between going ahead with regeneration or getting community consent. With leadership and real involvement, communities can and do vote for more housing, not less. The Liberal Democrats want to see that ambition matched nationally, and we would go further. We want infrastructure to come first in these developments, so that regeneration comes with the GP surgeries, transport and drainage capacity that the extra density demands, rather than as an afterthought. As we have said: no doctors, no development.

We would also get serious about the housing that already exists, but sits empty. There are more than 359 homes across the country that have been empty for six months or longer. Addressing that would ease the pressure to drive up to unsustainable densities in other parts of towns and communities, and would relieve pressure on greenfield sites.

The same principle applies to our high streets. The Liberal Democrats want to see a properly funded high streets strategy that genuinely brings empty units back into use as accommodation and housing above shops, strengthens the town centre-first principle and supports property owners who want to do those conversions. We would deliver on our 10-year emergency home upgrade programme, starting with free insulation and heat pumps for low-income households, so that regeneration is not the only route to warm homes.

We welcome the fact that the Government have made housing a priority. We have read that the new Prime Minister will want to increase the number of council and social rent homes being built. Does the Minister believe that the new Prime Minister will match the Liberal Democrat ambition to reach 150,000 new social rent homes per year? I am sure we would all be interested to hear that.

We ask the Minister for an infrastructure-first requirement, so that regeneration schemes are properly funded to deliver the GP surgeries, schools and transport links that increased density requires; a national target for 150,000 social rent homes per year, rather than the market-led approach that we have at the moment; the delivery of a 10-year emergency home upgrade programme, starting with free insulation and heat pumps for low-income households, and a recognition that regeneration should never be done to a community, but done with and by the community.