Housing and Homes

John Penrose Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

It is clear from what we have already heard that the Secretary of State, the Government’s previous housing White Paper and Labour’s Front-Bench team all agree that house building is in crisis, and I agree with that. There are many possible solutions, but I wish to propose just two in the limited time that I have, which, if we start now, could be big and bold enough to make a difference.

The first is to overhaul our slow, expensive, uncertain and conflict-ridden planning laws to give people a legal right to build up, not out, in towns and cities without needing planning permission. I am talking about creating good-looking four and five-storey town houses and mansion blocks rather than sky-high tower blocks, and about giving back local character to our town and cityscapes by letting councils issue local design codes, so that new buildings match local architectural styles or use local materials, killing off town estates of identical homes, which all look the same no matter where one is in the country. Building up, not out, will transform house building, whether it is to own or to rent. Most of Britain’s towns and cities are, on average, two storeys tall, so going up to four or five storeys in urban areas would almost double, at a stroke, the amount of buildable living space in British homes.

Britain’s housing associations are right behind the idea. The scheme would attract much-needed new investment to regenerate and save tired or rundown town and city centres. It would be greener because building in towns and cities would cut urban sprawl, taking pressure off green fields, and letting people live closer to work and commute less. It would also encourage those small and medium-sized builders that we were hearing about before and new entrants to the house building industry, breaking the power of the big housing developers which currently ration supply to keep prices high. This would make housing cheaper for hard-pressed 20 or 30-somethings, whether they want to rent or buy.

My second idea is to get people building faster once planning permission is granted and to give local communities a share in the value that is created when permission is given. At the moment, the value of an acre of land goes up by at least 10 times—often by a whole lot more—when it gets planning permission. That happens before a single brick has been laid or a single home has been built. The value of actually designing and building beautiful houses to rent or buy is far less than the trading gains made by land speculators.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Should not the Government at least look seriously at land value taxation? It is about time that we had a proper review of how the issue that the hon. Gentleman is describing can be capped by land value taxation.

[John Penrose]

The hon. Gentleman leads me to my next point.

The current situation is the wrong way around. It should not be easier to buy land, do nothing, aim to get planning permission and then flip for a profit than it is to build houses. From a moral and an economic standpoint, design and construction should be the things that add value to land, not hope or speculation. Planning permission is a huge and value-creating decision. The decision is taken by each local community, so they should see some of the value that is created. We need a tax on the speculators’ profits, paid straight to local councils on the day that planning permission is given or changed, in order to fund the local services that turn dormitories into communities.

[Mr Bacon]

It is great to hear a radical speech. I hope that those on the Government Front Bench are listening carefully. Will my hon. Friend come to the next Right to Build expo, which is run by the Right to Build Task Force, and speak about lowering the barriers to entry so that more new players can come in? For example, governors of high schools or NHS trusts wanting to use housing as a recruitment and retention device should be able to get involved in this space.

[John Penrose]

I would be delighted to accept my hon. Friend’s invitation.

Fortunately we do not need a new tax, which the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) mentioned, to achieve this value acquisition. Here’s one we prepared earlier—the community infrastructure levy. The levy nearly does what we need and could easily be tweaked so that it does what we need by making it simpler and broader with fewer exemptions. It would be simpler, faster, cheaper and more predictable for developers, planners and landowners alike. Best of all, the revised community infrastructure levy would completely replace the hideously overcomplicated section 106 agreements, with all their uncertainty, unpredictability and lawyer-friendly viability assessments.

Finally, in order to get developers building faster, councils should be able to charge business rates and council tax starting from the day that planning permission is granted, rather than when developers finally get round to start building. We could give big developers a few months’ grace to get their crews on site, but then the meter would start running. They would have a huge incentive to build and sell promptly, rather than to take their time.

Equally important, the same forces would apply to the hedge funds that own derelict brownfield land in town and city centres. These sites already have old, unused permissions, so the clock would start ticking immediately. Just think of the enormous shot in the arm—the jolt of adrenaline—that we would give to urban regeneration projects everywhere, right across the country, if the owners could no longer sit on them for years waiting for something to turn up.

As the Government’s housing White Paper says, the only way to make homes more affordable to rent or buy is to build a whole lot more of them. I agree. There is no time to waste, otherwise house prices will continue to spiral and we will lock another generation out of the dream of a place of their own.