New Housing Supply

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I will do my best, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, tangential though it may be. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western) on his speech, much of the contents of which I agreed with.

Some four years ago, when I was Housing Minister, I decided to hold a housing summit in my largely rural constituency—220 square miles of beautiful rolling Hampshire downland, much of it an area of outstanding natural beauty. About 150, shall we say, more senior members of society showed up for the event in a village hall, and it was obvious from the outset that I was heading for a beating. I began my remarks by posing two questions to the assembled group. I asked them first to put their hands up if they had a child or grandchild over 25 still living at home, and about half of them did so. I then asked them to put their hands up if they had bought their first home in their 20s, and about two thirds of them did so.

Having thus posited the problem, we went on to have quite a civilised conversation about where houses should be going in my constituency and, indeed, in much of the south-east—for these people had come from far and wide. In truth, the message to people who are resistant to or nervous about housing development—even to the small number of verifiable nimbys among us—is that whether they like it or not, the houses are coming. A generation that has been denied access to housing will eventually come of age and be able to vote for councils and councillors, Members of Parliament and Governments, who will deliver what that generation has been denied and put those houses in place.

[Mark Pawsey]

How many sites have been allocated following that meeting?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am pleased to say that my constituency overall is forecast to take something like 30,000 homes over the next 10 years or so. There are some questions to be asked about where the houses are going and what they are going to look like, but those are fundamentally the only two questions that we have to ask. We are building a lot. Indeed, I hope that over the next 10 years, Andover, the main town in my constituency, will get close to double the size that it has been in the past.

This is not just a problem for those individuals who are denied housing; it is a problem for the nation as a whole. We can see the impact of restrictions on housing and the inability to access housing elsewhere. In the United States, for example, a brain drain is taking place from major coastal cities such as San Francisco, New York and Washington DC as young, highly productive people who cannot access housing are leaving in large numbers. In this country, we might see that spreading to other parts, but because we are a smaller country geographically, we will see other impacts. We have seen lower household formations over the last 20 years than we have before, along with a declining birth rate, and more and more young people are choosing to live and work overseas. The history of human economic achievement has shown us that the closer we gather and crowd together, the more productive and innovative we are, so there is going to be a long-term impact for us overall, economically as well as individually.

Now, how do we deliver those houses? I do not think that anybody believes that we should not be delivering 300,000 houses today. When I was Housing Minister, I had a church totaliser on my whiteboard showing me where those houses were going to come from and how we were going to get there. For me, there are broadly three things that we need to do. The first involves the planning system. It has long been an obsession of wonkery that the planning system needs to be swept away because it is not working, yet local authorities tell us that 92% of applications are approved and that it is functioning. They do, however, express a frustration with it, which is that the system as it is currently configured has become a huge game of poker. Developers, councillors and local people are gambling on what is going to happen, and somebody in a suit, male or female, from Bristol—the planning inspector—will be the final croupier who decides who wins the game of poker. That is just not good enough. As the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston said, certainty is what produces results.

So for me, the first step is the abolition of the Planning Inspectorate, alongside setting hard targets for local authorities but giving them an absolute right democratically to choose where those houses should go in their area. Hopefully that will be brownfield, and some of it may indeed be garden villages. It is a great sadness to me that the Oxford-Cambridge arc seems to have been abandoned by the Government; I had huge ambitions for that part of the world. If we can create certainty by putting local authorities in charge, with those hard targets, they will know that they have their fate in their own hands and we can just get on and build.

The second element of the planning system that needs to be removed is the viability test. Many developers over-densify and hide behind the viability test. They do the local community out of its rightful contribution from the uplift in value because they show a spreadsheet of whether a development is going to make money or not and they justify adjustments here and there. That is particularly the case in London, where it is simply impossible to overpay for land. The viability test says that anyone who has overpaid for land can just build a 44-storey skyscraper that will pay for their effective overpayment and largesse. If we get rid of the viability test, we would get an actual market for land and it would be possible to overpay. We would then see realistic values and get more land coming through.

Finally, one of the key elements for the acceptance of housing in local areas, alongside the need for the restoration and strengthening of neighbourhood planning, is a strong sense of aesthetics. I certainly see this in my constituency. I have joked in the past that if they would only build thatched cottages in my constituency, we could build thousands of the damned things. Aesthetics matter. When we look at some of our historic towns and cities, we see that they have been scarred by previous generations building rubbish stuff. The houses that were built in the 1960s and ’70s have largely been—or will largely be—bulldozed and replaced. Hardly anything from that era will be deemed to be a conservation area, unlike so much of the mass development created by the Victorians. If we get the aesthetics right, along with providing local people with the certainty that they are in charge of their destiny on housing, acceptability will rise.

Let me give the House an example. Anyone who has the joy of going to Stamford in Lincolnshire—I did not mention to my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies) that I was going to mention his constituency—can see a game of two halves. They will find developments in the classic tradition that look like Stamford, and people queue round the block to buy those houses. On the other side of town, they will see developments that look like the same old rubbish that is built anywhere else in the UK, and they will scar that beautiful town for many generations to come.

We need a rigid aesthetic code looking at vernacular architecture. We need to put local authorities in charge, rather than having arbitrary decision making by the Planning Inspectorate. We need to get rid of artificially inflated land values through the abolition of the viability test. We also need some hard numbers that will add up to 300,000, or possibly more, as the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston said. Then I think we would stand a chance of answering the question that we have to answer for the next generation: will their life be better than ours? If we can do all that, the answer may well be yes.

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[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) for securing this debate on such a pressing and important topic, which I have been involved with, in one way or another, for 20 years in elected office. I was pleased to lead a Westminster Hall debate on the related topic of the future for SME house builders just the other week, and today’s debate provides a welcome opportunity to hammer home some of the points I made then.

As a Conservative, the idea of the UK as a property-owning democracy is one about which I feel very strongly, and it worries me deeply that, for many younger people, home ownership is increasingly out of reach. Unsurprisingly, given my chairmanship of the all-party parliamentary group for SME house builders, I have a strongly held view that the sector can play an important role in helping to address the dual problems of housing accessibility and affordability across the UK.

The Home Builders Federation reports that, in 2020, the SME house building sector delivered about 22,000 homes. To put that in context, according to the Federation of Master Builders, SME builders could deliver 65,000 homes by 2025, compared with 12,000 in 2021, given the right conditions.

For those who are not aware of how vital the SME sector is to housing delivery, let me explain. SME developers typically carry out smaller developments built on trickier sites, and the SME sector tends to go where volume house builders cannot. As well as this, they often face less vocal opposition, as they deliver brownfield housing up and down the country, instead of the large-scale developments that often do not have the infrastructure to go along with them and which are responsible for so much so-called nimbyism. The sector delivered 39% of all homes built in England in the late 1980s yet, 40 years later, it barely manages 10% of our annual housing completions.

The rising cost of materials is causing difficulties for developers across the board, which is why I welcome initiatives such as the one developed by Travis Perkins, based in my Northampton South constituency, that enables SME house builders to access building supplies and materials directly without facing lengthy pre-approval checks. Another issue for SME house builders is access to finance, on which my APPG is soon to deliver a report. That includes difficulties in the Land Registry process for recording changes of property ownership. Labour shortages are another issue, as labour is crucial to the whole process.

[Kit Malthouse]

It is extremely important to recognise that small house builders, which were largely wiped out in the 2007-08 crash, have not re-emerged. Does my hon. Friend think the Government should look at the generation of new house builders—in the ’70s we had Lawrie Barratt and the chap behind Redrow, these big house builders—in the same way that they are looking at the generation of new scientists and new companies that promote science and technology? They have a strategy and funding all of their own, but I have yet to see anything that would stimulate new house building companies for the future. Does he agree that is something the Government should look at?

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[Ben Everitt]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. I think he might be zeroing in on a particular aspect of the picture that I have painted of the broken market. The behaviour—or perceived behaviour, in some cases—of developers and builders is not necessarily the cause of issues that I have been discussing; it is more a symptom.

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend is making a very good speech. On the numbers given by my county colleague, my hon. Friend from the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), at the current rate of building, which is 200,000-odd homes a year, outstanding permissions would account for four or five years’ supply. That is in an uncertain planning environment, where seeking planning permission, as I illustrated earlier, is a huge gamble. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) agree that it is more likely that land prices are driven by the existence of the viability test, which means that you cannot overpay for land, rather than land prices being driven by the value of the property—that is, downwards? That means that land is at an unrealistic value.

[Ben Everitt]

Absolutely. I could not agree more. In any regulated environment, the market players require, and are incredibly hungry for, clarity, consistency and certainty. The system is so complex, and subject to so many historical and, to be frank, future changes; there is not the clarity, consistency and certainty needed by the market players—the people who will provide the houses. They do not have the confidence to put bricks and mortar on the ground. We are calling for massive reform, but we need certainty, which we will put to good use. It should be massive reform first, and then some certainty. I am grateful for the interventions.

The market is broken. Land prices follow economic activity. This is the critical point: what was once a symptom of the need to level up is now a cause. When we have gone through all the pain of getting through the planning process and getting houses built, very often we end up with identikit estates of massive, four-bedroom houses that look exactly like the suite ofb estates in our existing stock. That does nothing for mobility between our existing sector, which is of course about 99% of our stock, and the new build sector. It does not make moving out a viable option for people who are under-occupying former family homes in the existing sector. New build homes are not genuinely affordable and attainable for young, local, first-time buyers, and they are not appropriate for elderly people who are looking to downsize and live in retirement living. There are multiple issues, but fundamentally we are building the wrong kind of houses in the wrong places.

My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) touched on the subject of small and medium-sized enterprise builders, labour and material shortages, build cost, inflation, and access to finance, so I will not go on about those, but one of the key barriers to mobility between existing stock and new build stock is stamp duty. Stamp duty is a tax on social mobility. It is crippling mobility in the sectors that we need to drive economic activity. We need to set people free in terms of their labour mobility as well.

I will skip the bits of my speech about the planning system and resourcing planning departments, for reasons of time. I want to end with a reason to be optimistic and hopeful. We have a huge opportunity. We are pouring billions of pounds into left-behind communities through the levelling-up fund, the high streets fund, the shared prosperity fund and the towns fund. All of that is based on the concept of levelling being about opportunities for people who need somewhere to live. So we need to revisit the algorithm and recast the targets. We need to put much more emphasis on where we create and stimulate demand through the billions of pounds the Government are investing through levelling up and make it sustainable, so that communities can benefit from the economic growth from the levelling-up agenda but be sustainable, because people are living and building families and communities in the places near where they work.

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[Rachel Maclean]

I will not at this point, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, because I have a lot to get on the record.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden has passionately advocated for new towns. We agree that an ambitious pipeline of housing and regeneration opportunities is crucial. I am a representative of a new town, Redditch, which currently houses about 70,000 people, so I know how successful and how important those developments can be. That is one of the reasons why we are already supporting delivery at scale along the lines he suggested through several funds, including the garden communities programme, which will support the delivery of more 3,000 homes by 2050, most of them in the north, the midlands and the south-west.

To pick out a couple of examples, Halsnead garden village in Knowsley will deliver more than 1,600 new homes in Merseyside, along with new businesses. Another, West Carclaze garden village, will support up to 1,500 new homes in an innovative and sustainable new community that promotes the health and wellbeing of its residents. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford noted the fantastic development in her local area, and I look forward to continued active discussions with her about the proposals in her Affordable Housing (Conversion of Commercial Property) Bill.

We must also work to unlock large complex sites through initiatives such as our housing infrastructure fund, which my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle has welcomed in his area. The fund delivers the infrastructure needed to ensure that new communities are well connected and supported by local amenities.

New towns, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden rightly asserted, can deliver high-quality, sustainable urban development and make an important contribution to housing supply. However, they require considerable resources and co-ordination, a long-term vision or masterplan, strong local support, enabling infrastructure and a significant capacity and capability commitment that is often beyond the abilities of local authorities.

For all those reasons, the Government believe that new towns can be part of the solution, but not the whole solution, to alleviate housing demand. They should be considered alongside regeneration opportunities to make the most efficient use of brownfield land and maximise the benefits of existing transport infrastructure. All our reforms are based on the principle that we will deliver housing only with the consent of communities and elected representatives at all levels. We know that wherever development takes place, local people will express the same concerns, so we have to get it right.

[Kit Malthouse]

Would the Minister at this point like to address the issue that a number of us have raised about the removal of hard targets and the uncertainty that that creates, particularly for the industry? For example, as she will know, gearing up to deliver 300,000 homes a year is a huge logistical exercise that requires massive capital investment to produce bricks, building machines and all sorts of stuff. That requires a very long horizon of certainty of delivery. If there are no targets, how is she going to give that certainty to industry?

[Rachel Maclean]

My right hon. Friend will, I hope, hear the remarks about that later in my speech.

Unfortunately, I cannot do justice to all the questions that are being asked, but I will touch on the importance of a healthy and diverse housing market, including the SME builders that were rightly mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South. We have launched the levelling up home building fund, which provides £1.5 billion in development finance to SMEs and modern methods of construction builders. Our Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill makes changes to the planning system to make it much easier for SMEs to operate.

Every Member has spoken about the importance of a modern, responsive and transparent planning system. I think it vital that our reformed planning system helps to bring certainty to communities and developers. That will enable them to take those positive steps towards building more housing, regenerating their local areas and supporting economic growth.

To address the point on which my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire challenged me, he will know that we have just concluded a consultation on the NPPF. A number of those policy questions are live and the Government will respond as quickly as possible to provide that certainty to the market and to local authorities. However, it is a huge consultation and it is important that we get it right.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

It was a good Budget, a fine Budget, filled with lots of delights, with something in there for everybody. In deference to the Opposition Front Bench, it had Osbornian overtones, filled with smart, clever tactical manoeuvres to fan the flicker of growth that there is in the economy, hopefully into a flame.

There are three areas that I want to raise with the Minister in my five minutes. While we have made some progress, we need to go further and do some thinking before the autumn, and indeed the Budget next year.

First, on childcare, in my brief time at the Department for Education, I was pleased to put together some options that were going to form what we were calling “a childcare big bang”. I was happy to see a number of those appear in the Budget, not least the expansion of the provision of free hours of care for under twos. However, I am sure the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), recognises that the system is still very complicated and still has a number of anomalies in it, not least the £100,000 threshold, which keeps a lot of highly productive women out of the workforce who are punished for going back by having their free hours withdrawn.

In addition, there are seven different ways for childminders to receive payment for the care they give. Given that the Government are putting lots of money in at the front-end of the equation, they need to think carefully about supply. I urge my right hon. Friend to look at what more we can do to expand childminder agencies in particular across the country as they are the only proactive tool we have for recruiting childminders. I also urge him to think more flexibly about what we can do to allow families to choose for themselves what kind of care they want to give.

I urge my right hon. Friend to consider conflating the childminding budget, which now rises to about £9 billion, with the child benefit budget, which is now £12 billion although that is falling, and other ancillary budgets, into one huge budget that would allow us to think carefully about what reform we could put in place to support families, not just in looking after children but encouraging them to have more children. As my right hon. Friend will know, we are not replacing ourselves in this country. We have a demographic problem and we have to encourage those who want to have children to do so. More thinking in that area would be great.

The second area that I wish to raise is corporation tax. I concur with my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) in wanting corporation tax to be lower, not least because I believe in the Laffer curve; I do not believe that we will necessarily raise that much more by raising corporation tax rates. It raises a question in my mind about how we tax companies and why we continue to chase them for corporation tax when we know that the international and online nature of business makes it very difficult to tax such organisations.

When he was the Chancellor, the Prime Minister put us into an international cabal of minimum corporation tax chargers across the world in an attempt to track all these companies down and tax all their profits, but if we went for a sales tax—if we focused on consumption and on those businesses’ sales—their domicile would be irrelevant, because the tax would relate to where their transactions had taken place. The huge international businesses that operate online and that we are currently chasing around the world would come into our taxation envelope, and we would find it easier to collect tax from them.

The third big area is, in many ways, the missed strategic move in the Budget. It did not address one of the fundamental problems with the operation of our economy, which is the nature, spread and dynamism of capital within it. Happily, the Government have talked expansively about science, technology and innovation; they obviously recognise that we are on the threshold of the fourth great advance in human understanding and ingenuity. Our country caught the first two advances—the industrial revolution and the industrialisation at the turn of the 20th century—but we broadly missed the advance that took place in the 1960s and ’70s. That was largely because our economy was sclerotic, but, critically, it was also because we had forgotten a basic tenet of capitalism: if we want the private sector to weigh in behind science, technology and advancement, we have to let capital rip. We have to deregulate it. We have to make sure that profit can be made from taking risk.

Critically, we also have to allow capital to spread into as many hands as possible. We talk a lot about housing in this country, and about putting houses in the hands of young people, but we never talk about putting shares in the hands of young people and encouraging them to own shares in the businesses for which they work and to participate in a capitalist economy.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Oral Answers to Questions

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dehenna Davison]

I am very grateful to the hon. Member for his pitch. I was in Barnsley a few months ago—an area very close to where I grew up—and I did have some local people making their own representations on the importance of this particular fund. At this stage I cannot comment on the merits of individual bids, but I heard loud and clear his pitch, and we will be announcing the result in due course.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

Will the Minister please confirm as she moves towards the award of these moneys, that she has sharply in her mind the fact that hidden among the averages of the otherwise prosperous south-east, there are some serious pockets of deprivation, not least in those London overspill towns that still ring the capital? Those include Andover in my constituency, which as well as importing an unfortunate number of Arsenal supporters, also brought with it a number of social and demographic problems with which the town still struggles, and towards which the grant award could significantly assist.

[Dehenna Davison]

I had best keep my comments about Arsenal to myself in this House, but my right hon. Friend is right: levelling up is not something that can be simplified purely by region or by north and south, and there are pockets all over the country that need to benefit from funds such as the levelling-up fund. I know how much of a passionate advocate he is for the Andover bid, and we will be announcing the result in due course.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 1 Report

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) and I completely agreed with much of what he said. We must learn what mistakes were made and then make improvements across the board so that others never suffer the same terrible tragedy that happened at Grenfell.

I want to express both sympathy for the Grenfell victims and admiration for their demeanour. I have met many of them. If such a thing happened to most of us, I do not think we would be able to cope. I express my admiration for the way they have conducted themselves since this terrible tragedy and sympathy for the people who lost their lives and their families. It must be the most horrendous experience possible to die in such circumstances, and we must always remember that that is what happened.

I served on the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority between 2004 and 2007. The Minister served on the same board subsequently.

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service (Kit Malthouse)]

indicated dissent.

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[The Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service (Kit Malthouse)]

No one in this House will ever forget the tragic events that unfolded in the early hours of 14 June 2017 or the 72 people who lost their lives in the most appalling circumstances. This city and country have had too many dark days, but the night of the Grenfell disaster must rank among the darkest. In a debate in this House on 30 October, the Prime Minister said that no words, written or spoken, can undo the pain caused to so many by this tragedy, and I am sure we all echo that sentiment. However, we can and must learn from it, so I want to thank personally Sir Martin Moore-Bick and his team for their work in producing this first report. Many questions about that night remain unanswered, but given the forensic and unflinching nature of part 1 of his report, I am confident that Sir Martin and his team will leave no stone unturned in getting to the truth.

I would also like to join every speaker in the Chamber this afternoon in acknowledging the survivors and the bereaved for their dignity and their resolution to see lessons learned following this devastating event. Their determination and resilience helps us to remember the scale of this tragedy and keep those who lost their lives firmly in our minds while we work to make the changes needed. For their sake, we must ensure that a disaster on this scale can never happen again.

I also want to express my own thanks to the firefighters who braved the unprecedented conditions they faced that night. As my hon. Friends the Members for Watford (Dean Russell) and for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) pointed out, many disregarded their own safety, returning time and again to the flames to try to rescue those who were trapped. Such individual acts of heroism cannot, however, undo the systemic failures that the inquiry has found in the London Fire Brigade response. They must be addressed, and work is already well under way.

The report makes a number of significant findings and recommendations. As highlighted in this House, in the Government’s published response to the report and in the opening of this debate, we are committed to driving forward the work needed to effect real change. The Government have accepted in full the principle of all the recommendations addressed to them. On legislation, it is clear that urgent action is needed from all corners of the fire sector and the construction industry to secure the future safety of residents. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and others have pointed out, the pace of this change concerns us all. So the Government will bring forward the fire safety Bill, as outlined today by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, which will help our remediation efforts immediately. The foundation set by this Bill lays the groundwork for further regulations to meet a number of recommendations in the report, which we will consult on in the spring.

On “stay put”, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Home Office’s expert stay put steering group met on 18 December to discuss the parameters of its stay put and evacuation research. The Home Office will begin the tendering process in February for the first package of research required. The outcomes of that will inform operational research later in the year. It is also relevant to stay put that the inquiry recommended that all high rise buildings be equipped with facilities for evacuation signals and have way-finding signage. The Government ran a consultation on building-wide alarms, signage and sprinklers, which closed on 28 November. The consultation led to more than 180 responses, which the Government are currently analysing. But we urge all developers and building owners to act now on the inquiry’s recommendations and not wait for legislation or other changes to take effect.

Turning to the criticisms of the LFB and the recommendations for it, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services completed its first tranche of inspections of all fire and rescue services in December 2019 and produced its first “State of Fire and Rescue” report last week. The inspectorate and the inquiry reports both show that there is much work to be done. The inspector found that the LFB had learned the lessons of Grenfell but that change has been slow. In November, the Home Secretary wrote to the previous commissioner asking that the LFB provide regular updates on its improvement actions. We have now received an action plan from the LFB setting out the work it will do to take forward the recommendations over the coming weeks and months. We will look for ongoing assurance from the commissioner and the Mayor of London, as well as from the inspectorate, that plans are robust and that progress is being made. I note that today the Mayor has today published his first update report on the work he is taking responsibility for in this regard. I have written to the Mayor and met the new commissioner, Andy Roe, and I welcome his commitment to work with the Mayor to ensure that performance improves and to ensure his acceptance of all the report’s recommendations.

Beyond London, the report and its recommendations have implications for all fire and rescue services. The Government are working with the sector leaders and the National Fire Chiefs Council to identify the improvements needed and to ensure co-ordination across the sector. The Home Secretary wrote to the chief fire officers after the inquiry published its report, asking that they work together and through the National Fire Chiefs Council. Her letter also announced that the Government would bring fire leaders together to discuss the report, and we will do so before the end of March.

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That this House has considered the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s Phase 1 Report.

[Kit Malthouse]

A national improvement plan is being created for the sector by the National Fire Chiefs Council and will build on the work of its central programme office, the fire standards board, the protection board and the inspectorate.

Several Members, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), raised the issue of interoperability, and concerns have rightly been raised about co-ordination and communication errors between the emergency services at Grenfell. We take this issue very seriously, and the Government are committed to working with all emergency services to improve interoperability. The joint emergency services interoperability principles, or JESIP—their joint doctrine—set out a standard approach to multi-agency working. It will be reviewed and republished by September this year to incorporate learnings from the Grenfell disaster. Following the inquiry’s report, the interoperability board has written to all emergency services to reinforce what is required when a major incident occurs. The report made recommendations in relation to the images and data sent from the National Police Air Service helicopters, and I can confirm that that work has been completed.

Let me turn to some specific issues that Members have raised during the debate. If I miss any out, I am more than happy to write to Members afterwards. Several Members raised the issue of members of the Grenfell community—survivors and families—still remaining in temporary accommodation. As Housing Minister for 12 months, I met individuals regularly and reviewed individual cases. As I have explained, particularly to the Opposition housing spokesman, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), these are complex and difficult cases. Our concern at the repeated raising of this issue is not necessarily for our own political advantage, but that raising it increases the pressure on individuals who are living in temporary accommodation, who are leading complex and difficult lives. We are attempting to be sensitive to them and to accommodate them. We should not assume that those individuals have been continuously in temporary accommodation: a number have been in and out as they have struggled with the circumstances they face. We are keeping up pressure on the council—the Secretary of State and the Housing Minister meet the council regularly—but as we deal with these particular individuals, it behoves us all to remain sensitive to their plight.

Several Members, not least the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) and my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), raised the wider issue of the ability of those who are living in buildings with cladding either to sell or to secure finance against their properties. Work did start last year, and I understand from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that it has now concluded. A working party at the MHCLG, including the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and UK Finance, was formed to try to resolve the issue. That has now produced a new simplified process by which surveyors can reassure themselves that a property is mortgageable and insurable, and therefore financeable, so that sales can be effected.

[David Linden]

We will of course wait and see the outcome of that process and how it works in practice, but can the Minister give an undertaking that, in the months to come, his Ministry will have a watching brief over it to see whether it is indeed working for our constituents who have been raising some of the concerns expressed by myself and by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake)?

[Kit Malthouse]

Yes—my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State reassures me that we will absolutely keep a watching brief. The early signs are that the new protocol is having a beneficial effect.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) raised a query about what will happen to the site. He should be aware that a commission has now been constituted. I gather that it has met a number of times, and it is very much being led by the bereaved, the survivors and the community themselves so that they are in the driving seat about what should happen on the site and what kind of memorial they wish to have. I am sure we can provide the hon. Gentleman with more information on that if he wishes.

Some Members raised issues around electrical safety compliance. Obviously progress has been made as far on the duty of landlords, in both the private and the social sector, to ensure compliance, particularly where small electrical goods are concerned. I am informed that the Consumers Minister—my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst)—has commissioned the Office for Product Safety and Standards to develop options for increasing the rate of product registrations, including potential mandatory registration. A number of workstreams are under way looking to understand the barriers to registration and consumers’ attitudes to that registration, which will inform this work in the future.

The hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken)—I know her area well from my time as a councillor and as a London Assembly member—raised the issue of sprinklers and the complexity of tenure that may stand in the way of the retrofitting of sprinklers in older blocks across the city. That is obviously a difficult and complex area of legality, not least because one would have to cross the barrier of possibly fitting sprinklers against the will of a property owner where they are in a collective block and therefore have collective safety, but I know colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will be dealing with the issue.

Finally, in her excellent speech, following on from her equally brilliant maiden speech in which she raised this subject, my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) mentioned a couple of issues. First, she said that she had met the new commissioner of the LFB, whom I have also met recently. He impressed me with his ambition and his willingness to embrace the issues for the London Fire Brigade that have been raised both by the inspectorate and by the inquiry. He does seem committed to real change in that organisation, which was very encouraging to see.

Along with the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), my hon. Friend raised the issue of a member of the inquiry panel. The Home Office is obviously a core participant in the inquiry, so it would not be right for me to comment either way, but I can reassure both of them that the Cabinet Office is aware of this issue and is giving it some thought.

There is nothing that we can do to turn back the clock on this tragedy, and there are no words of condolence or sympathy that will bring back those who lost their lives or offer comfort to those whose lives have been irrevocably changed by this tragedy. All we can do is learn the lessons of this terrible event and work tirelessly to ensure that a disaster on this scale can never happen again.

It is incumbent on all of us—the Government, the emergency services, those responsible for managing high rise residential buildings and the construction industry—to work together to bring real change. I am confident that the inquiry’s detailed analysis of the evidence seen in phase 1 will continue to phase 2, and that the panel will uncover the full truth of what happened on that terrible, dark night.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s Phase 1 Report.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

7. What steps he is taking in relation to local authorities that do not have an adopted local plan.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

Under the current plan-making regime, 37 local authorities have yet to adopt a local plan. Of these, 27 have submitted their draft plan for examination. We continue to monitor progress and offer support where appropriate in all these areas.

[Gareth Snell]

The Minister’s Department is taking action against only 15 local authorities where no local plan is actively in place. The Department also has an ambitious target of 300,000 homes a year—about 80,000 a year short. What action will he take to ensure that local authorities like Stoke-on-Trent that are failing to get a local plan in place do so quickly, so that they can develop and address this country’s housing need?

[Kit Malthouse]

As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, we commenced a formal process of intervention in 15 local authorities to ensure that they fulfil their obligations. I have spent the last 12 months touring the country, exhorting local authorities not only to get a local plan in place, but to do so on a long-term basis so that people can see the kind of decadal-scale planning that is required to get to 300,000 homes a year. If local authorities remain sluggish in producing a plan, as the hon. Gentleman claims his local authority has been—I think that its plan is due for submission in August 2020, which does seem a little tardy—action may be required, beyond just a stiffly-worded letter.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

When district councils do not have a local plan and a five-year land supply in place, it is villages and parishes that face the consequences of planning development. What protections will the Minister and his Department put in place for communities trying to establish neighbourhood plans, and will he reflect on his Department’s recent decision to grant planning permission to two sites in Hatfield Peverel that go against the neighbourhood plan?

[Kit Malthouse]

My right hon. Friend, with her usual skill, puts up a stout defence on behalf of her constituents. She is quite right that protections that would otherwise exist for neighbourhood plans recede where a local plan is not in place, particularly when there is not a five-year land supply. I would point out that having a five-year land supply is not a necessary condition of having a local plan. It is possible to have one without the other, and I hope that her local authority will seek to do so. We will shortly be issuing planning guidance on plan making, wherein I hope we will include measures to strengthen neighbourhood plans, either in the absence of a local plan or where they are not co-terminus.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

York has not had a local plan in place since 1954, despite being one of the worst cities for investment in economic and housing opportunities for my constituents and the council’s aspiration to build 20% affordable housing but developing just 4%. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that the plan developed for York will address not only the jobs needs but the housing needs in our city?

[Kit Malthouse]

I have been in this job for just over 12 months, and I have developed a sense that in some way people have an expectation that I should be planning the country from my desk in Whitehall. Fundamentally, the decisions about the local plan are for the local democratically elected representatives, and they should be examined by a planning inspector to make sure that they are compliant with national planning regimes. In the end, the fundamental arbiter of the local plan in York—whether there should be one and what it should it contain—is a decision by the people of York. I would urge them to vote for a council that will produce the kind of the plan to which the hon. Lady aspires.

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

In relation to local plans and housing, Isle of Wight Council wants to set up a company to build council housing—I strongly support this—but says that it cannot access the necessary funds because it does not have a housing revenue account. Does the Minister agree with that statement, and, if so, what will he do to help my council to build council housing for Islanders?

[Kit Malthouse]

I congratulate my hon. Friend, who works very closely with his local council in its aspiration to build more council homes. This is exactly the sort of action that we want to see from local authorities, which were, frankly, induced out of council house building by the previous Labour Government. I am aware that quite a lot of councils in this situation do not have a housing revenue account, despite our lifting the cap and enabling them to access the funding that they need. I would be more than happy to arrange for his councillors or council officials to meet my officials to determine how they could establish just such an account.

[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

8. What assessment he has made of recent trends in the level of home ownership.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

The Government are committed to supporting people into home ownership. The most recent English housing survey saw the first rise in home ownership for 35 to 44-year-olds in over a decade. Government schemes have supported over 553,000 households to purchase a home since 2011.

[Colleen Fletcher]

With house prices in the region almost seven times the average annual salary, people in Coventry and the wider west midlands are struggling to get a foot on the housing ladder. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that more genuinely affordable homes are being built in the region so that home ownership is not out of reach for all but the best-paid and those with significant capital?

[Kit Malthouse]

May I start by saying what a pleasure it is to hear an Opposition Member who believes in the concept of private property—not something that is shared by everybody on the hon. Lady’s Front Bench or, indeed, her leadership? I am pleased that she shares Conservative Members’ obsession that people should have the ability to own their own homes where they want to. In the end, the solution to the problem that she poses is a massive increase in housing supply. We are committed to building 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s, not just for one year but for a series of years—perhaps for decades, if we can get there—to address this issue. In the meantime, the Government have put significant funding—billions of pounds—behind schemes such as Help to Buy to make homes more affordable. I hope that as many of her constituents as possible will avail themselves of the assistance that is there.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Ind)]

That is all well and good, but 30 years ago, when I bought my first house in Dudley, people were able to do so because the average cost was about three times the average income. As we have just heard, the average cost is now seven times the average income. At the same time, the number of homes for shared ownership and low-cost home ownership has fallen. So what is the Minister going to do to enable people like the ones I meet in Dudley every single week who are working hard in low-paid employment, desperate to own a home of their own, to fulfil their ambitions?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Gentleman puts his finger on an enormous problem for the country that we have not shied away from. He is quite right in pointing out that over the past three, possibly four, decades this country has failed to build the homes required by its population, and as a result we have seen unaffordability rise, particularly in London and south-east, but beyond that in the rest of the country as well. In the end, the fundamental solution is a massive increase in supply, which we are committed to. The Government have put significant resources behind lifting the number of homes being built in this country in a way that has not been seen for a generation. Last year’s net new additions to the housing stock were 222,000, and the leading indicators for next year are pointing towards something over 240,000. That will represent the largest expansion in house building in this country since the war.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

9. What steps his Department is taking to reduce homelessness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

11. What steps he is taking to ensure that planning policies on fracking provide for the safety of people and communities.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

National planning policy makes it clear that, in considering planning applications, mineral planning authorities should ensure there are no unacceptable adverse impacts on the environment or on human health.

[Cat Smith]

Fifty seven earthquakes of up to 1.5 magnitude were detected in Lancashire last year in the two months when Cuadrilla was fracking at Preston New Road. Will the Minister commit to listening to communities such as mine in Lancashire and act in their interests to prevent permitted development rights being granted for shale gas exploration?

[Kit Malthouse]

As the hon. Lady will know, we have consulted on these permitted development rights. I am hopeful, once consideration by colleagues at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has finished, that we will be able to issue our response to that consultation. I would, however, point out to her that our ability to access gas allows us to stop burning coal. This country has just been through its longest period of not burning coal, by far the dirtiest of fuels, since the industrial revolution.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I hope there will not be any changes that make it easier for fracking to be permitted through the planning system. Like many of my constituents, I am deeply concerned about some of the associated impacts on the environment that come with fracking. Can the Minister assure my constituents that an industrialisation of our countryside, which is what fracking is, will be treated in the same way in the planning system as any other industrial development in open countryside would be?

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend has been a persistent advocate for his constituents on this issue. As he knows, alongside the consultation on permitted development rights for exploration, we also consulted on pre-application consultation steps that may have to be taken should an application proceed. Both those matters are under consideration by colleagues, and I hope we will be able to issue a response to them shortly.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I remind the Minister that the consultation he refers to closed last October. Twelve months ago, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee did a report opposing permitted development rights and opposing transferring part of the fracking regime to the national infrastructure regime. Given the amount of opposition on his own side, as well as on this side of the House, and in local communities, is the Minister now considering withdrawing those proposals and instead giving greater powers to communities to decide whether they want fracking in their areas?

[Kit Malthouse]

The Chairman of the Select Committee is quite right to point out the timescale on which these measures have been under consideration, and I will certainly pass on his concerns to colleagues at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I will give the Minister another chance. Everyone—from the Royal Town Planning Institute to Friends of the Earth—has criticised the Government’s plans to allow fracking to take place under permitted development, rather than by achieving planning permission, not least because it bypasses the views and concerns of local communities. Given the Government’s silence on this matter since the consultation last year, will the Minister confirm today that the Government will not proceed to use permitted development for fracking and will not dilute regulations covering seismic activity—as requested by Cuadrilla, again, today—but will accept that fracking is environmentally unsound and invest more in renewable energy sources instead?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady is normally quite precise, but I should correct what she said at the start. We consulted not on fracking taking place under permitted development rights, but on exploration in advance of a full application being made for fracking. Those consultations are still under consideration by colleagues, in particular those with whom we work closely at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. I will impress upon them the House’s demands this afternoon that a response be forthcoming.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

12. What steps his Department is taking to deliver economic growth through the midlands engine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

T8. Why has the Housing Minister not accepted the need for new primary legislation to implement the Letwin review’s call for land value uplift to be properly captured? That would support social housing construction, including in areas such as Oxford.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

We cannot wait for primary legislation; we have to get on with it now. In particular, there are lots of things in the Letwin review that can work with the grain and the weave of current planning policy. For example, we will shortly be issuing guidance on housing diversification, which is one of the key suggestions in the review. We are encouraging local authorities to introduce local plans, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) urged us to do, so that landowners can realise the obligations placed upon them and so that the value of community contributions and affordable housing can be factored into the land price.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Permitted development rights have damaged the economic and social fabric of Harlow, increased crime and placed intolerable burdens on our education and social services. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said he would review them. What has happened to that review and what is the outcome?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

What is the Department doing to make sure that Help to Buy is more accessible for those on lower incomes?

[Kit Malthouse]

As my hon. Friend knows, the Department spends an enormous amount of time and energy promoting Help to Buy to those who are eligible, and the new Help to Buy scheme, which will come in once the current scheme finishes, will be targeted very carefully at first-time buyers. I am more than happy to take any suggestions she may have for how we can focus it more on those on lower incomes.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

There is a £3.1 billion gap in funding for children’s services and a £4.3 billion gap in funding for adult social care, but, eight months before the start of the new financial year, local authorities have no idea what their funding settlement will be for the coming financial year or beyond it. What is the Secretary of State doing to address this crisis in local government funding, which is affecting the most vulnerable residents in communities up and down the country every single day? Why is he being so complacent?

Town and Country Planning

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I beg to move,

That the draft Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2019, which were laid before this House on 10 June, be approved.

The regulations were laid before the House on 10 June 2019. If approved and made, they will remove a sunset clause in the existing 2012 fees regulations, thereby ensuring that local planning authorities can continue to charge fees for planning applications. Planning fees are an important source of income, supporting local authorities to have the resources and capacity to make effective planning decisions. It is therefore vital that the fees regulations remain in force. The regulations introduce a fee of £96 for prior approval applications for a larger single-storey rear extension to a house. If approved by this House, this new charge will come into effect 28 days after the regulations are made.

Planning application fees are crucial for a well-resourced, effective and efficient planning system. They provide local planning authorities with much-needed income to consider planning applications, which in turn provide new homes and deliver economic growth for our country. In January 2018 we raised planning application fees by 20%—the first uplift since 2012. This has increased income for the planning system and has enabled local planning authorities to improve their performance. We estimate that in England the total income raised through planning applications fees is £450 million. If there was no application fee, this cost would have to be funded by the council taxpayer.

I turn to the details of the regulations. First, the regulations propose to remove the sunset clause of 21 November 2019 contained in the existing 2012 fees regulations, the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012. By removing the sunset clause, local authorities will be able to continue to charge planning application fees, in accordance with the 2012 fees regulations, beyond that date. If the sunset clause were not removed, the fees regulations would cease to have effect after 21 November. This would mean that local planning authorities would no longer be able to charge fees for planning applications.

The 2012 regulations provided that there should be a review of their operation within five years, to ensure that they continued to achieve their objectives. The accompanying sunset clause meant that no action would be required if it was decided that the regulations were no longer necessary. I am pleased to confirm that the review was undertaken in 2017 and the outcome report laid before Parliament in December 2017. The review concluded that the 2012 fees regulations had achieved their objective. It confirmed that they ensured an effective planning application fee regime, which benefited both applicants and local planning authorities in providing for the proper consideration of planning applications. It is therefore appropriate that I bring these regulations before the House, to ensure that the planning application fees regime continues. The regulations will also ensure that those wishing to take forward development pay a fair fee and that local planning authorities have the resource and capacity they need to make high-quality and timely decisions.

Secondly, the regulations introduce a £96 fee for applications for prior approval for existing permitted development rights for a larger single-storey rear extension to a house. The prior approval process means that a developer has to seek approval from the local planning authority that specified elements of the development are acceptable before work can proceed. The matters for prior approval vary depending on the type of development, and those are set out in the relevant part of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015. A local authority cannot consider any other matters when determining a prior approval application.

The permitted development right for a larger single-storey rear extension to a house was made permanent by way of amendments to the general permitted development order on 25 May, but currently the associated application for prior approval required to exercise this permitted development right attracts no fee. Now that the right is permanent, it is appropriate that we should enable local planning authorities to charge and receive a fee for the work they undertake to process and determine the applications they receive.

Other comparable applications for prior approval have a £96 fee, and we consider that that would also be an appropriate fee for a larger single-storey rear extension to a house, as the cost to the local planning authority of handling these is similar. Although a fee of £96 is an additional cost on homeowners wanting to extend their homes, it is not considered fair that the cost of the applications should continue to be subsidised by all taxpayers. The fee is modest, at less than half of the £206 fee that would be required for a planning application to carry out works to a house were it not for the permitted development rights. It will provide local planning authorities with resources that may otherwise have been diverted from other planning applications.

In line with existing fees for planning applications to alter or extend a home, the draft regulations provide that the fee will not apply where the application is for development designed to provide means of access for a disabled person or facilities designed to secure that person’s greater safety, health or comfort. That will mitigate the potential direct impact of the new fee on disabled persons, who might be considered more likely to make use of the permitted development right for larger home extensions.

We continue to keep the resourcing of local authority planning departments and where fees can be charged under review. We announced in the spring statement that the accelerated planning Green Paper, to be published later this year, will look at new approaches for local authorities to meeting the costs of their planning service and delivering improved performance. In the meantime, the draft regulations will ensure that local authorities can continue to charge planning fees after 21 November, including the new prior approval fee, thus providing them with the important resources they need to consider such applications. I commend the regulations to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her remarks. I accept the challenge that if we are to hit 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s we need to find a way to get more resources into local planning departments. It will be one of the constraints on volume, and we are looking at what we can do to enhance their ability to deal with planning applications swiftly and in volume. When we bring out the accelerated planning Green Paper later in the year, no doubt that will be included.

I also recognise the hon. Lady’s longstanding opposition to permitted development rights, although I fear she may be wrapping what is generally a domestic extension by a householder—normally in non-contentious situations —into her general opposition to PDR across the piece. The PD rights for domestic extensions have proved to be successful, and of course we made them permanent earlier this year. I note that when we did so—the hon. Lady and I were both present for that SI—she did not divide the Committee and oppose it.

I recognise the issues that the hon. Lady raises, but £96 will help to mitigate some of the impact of PDR on local authorities and we therefore think it judicious to introduce it in line with many other PDR charges that local authorities are interested in. I commend the regulations to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the draft Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2019, which were laid before this House on 10 June, be approved.

Intentional Unauthorised Development

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) on securing this debate. He has been a persistent and formidable champion for his constituents, and has raised this issue with me on a number of occasions. I am pleased that we are now able to address it in the open air.

The Government take unauthorised encampments extremely seriously, and a lot of work is ongoing in this area. Both I and the Secretary of State have listened extensively to views from across the House on this highly important issue, and recognise the strong feelings and concerns that have been raised in recent debates and discussions. As both I and the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), have stressed before in this Chamber, the Government are listening and taking action. We have listened to concerns raised in debates, discussions and correspondence, and we have sought evidence on the issue through consultation.

In February this year, we published the Government’s response to the “Powers for dealing with unauthorised developments and encampments” consultation, working with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. Since then, ministerial colleagues and officials have been working together closely towards delivering on the commitments made in that response. Among the concerns that have been raised by colleagues in the House and members of the public, there were particular concerns over fairness in the planning system, illegal activity and the wellbeing of travelling communities. Indeed, I can understand the frustration that is felt when it appears that the law does not apply fairly to all. We want to ensure that the system is fair, so we must take into account the concerns being raised—whether those concerns are from the travelling community or members of the settled community. This means ensuring that all members of the community have the same opportunities and are free from the negative effects of those who choose to break the law.

The responses we received to our consultation on unauthorised development highlighted several aspects that we need to improve on in order to address this issue. Our response put forward a package of measures, including consultation on stronger powers for the police to respond to unauthorised encampments, practical and financial support for local authorities to deal with unauthorised encampments, support for Traveller site provision and support for the travelling community to improve their life chances. My colleague the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks), recently provided a summary to the House on some of the work that the Government will be undertaking as a result. For the benefit of everybody here today, I will briefly reiterate some of these points, with consideration to what has been brought up by my right hon. and learned Friend.

First, let me address the concerns raised by my right hon. and learned Friend about intentional unauthorised development, and, in particular, how this type of development is taken into account when planning permission is sought retrospectively. The Government do want to ensure that fairness and confidence exists in the planning system, and I believe that this can be partly achieved through the strengthening of policy in this area. In 2015, the Government introduced a policy that made intentional unauthorised development a material consideration in the determination of planning applications and appeals. As set out in our response, we are concerned that harm is caused by the development of land that has been undertaken in advance of obtaining planning permission. We will therefore consult on options for strengthening our policy on intentional unauthorised development so that local authorities have the tools to address the effects of such developments. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will contribute to that consultation.

We know, however, that this is not only about having the necessary policies and regulations in place, but about local authorities having the powers and resources to enforce them. There is already an extensive range of powers in place, as set out in the 2015 guidance, to allow local authorities to clamp down quickly on unauthorised encampments. The Government expect authorities, working with the police as necessary, to use these powers to take swift and effective enforcement action. The responses to our consultation on unauthorised developments and encampments demonstrated that local authorities generally believe that the powers available to them under sections 77 and 78 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 are adequate. Local authorities have extensive planning enforcement powers under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The Government believe that, if used effectively, these are sufficient to tackle unauthorised development and reduce the risk of it occurring.

We note, however, that some local authorities may deal with unauthorised encampments less frequently than others, and the Government have heard that it can be difficult to develop expertise and good practice in all areas. We recognise that resourcing, training and skills are a concern in relation to planning enforcement. That is why we have committed to practical and financial support for local authorities, including new good practice guidance and funding for planning enforcement to support local authorities to deal with unauthorised encampments more effectively.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

There has recently been a meeting of every single local authority in Surrey. The Chancellor set it up and a number of other MPs went there. They would disagree totally with the Minister that we think that the legislation is adequate. It is inadequate.

[Kit Malthouse]

I hear my hon. Friend’s view of the legislation, but, as I say, it is not the generally accepted view that came through in the consultation. I am more than happy to take a submission from the local authorities in Surrey if they believe that there are lacunae in their powers that mean they are unable to enforce successfully. However, there are local authorities across the country that do successfully enforce in this area. I would be more than happy to put his local authorities in touch with those local authorities who are successful in this regard, particularly the one that is always held out as an example—Sandwell in the west midlands, which has a particularly assertive and successful policy in this area, and might, I am sure, be able to offer some tips and tricks on what is available in the armoury of legislation for local authorities to use.

We want to ensure that local authorities use their powers to full effect and, as I say, draw on good practice across the country, at county or district level, in the ways that they can work more effectively with police and neighbouring authorities.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way and for the discussions we have had. However, what about the point that a person who is in breach of an enforcement notice is still able to apply for retrospective planning permission? Surely, he should remedy the breach before he is allowed to do that. What about the point on the local plan where a council goes to the trouble of surveying the need and getting the thing looked at by the planning inspector, it is signed off by his boss and the Secretary of State, and then, two or three weeks or a month later, it is being argued that it does not adequately reflect the need?

[Kit Malthouse]

On my right hon. and learned Friend’s first point, those are very pertinent issues that should be submitted as part of the consultation on how we can strengthen measures against intentional unauthorised development. I am very focused on this issue. In particular, during the Department’s work, I was keen that we should enforce against that, because I agree that people need to have confidence in the planning system and know that there is a level playing field. If someone intentionally breaches the rules, there should be a higher bar for them to pass. However, we should bear in mind that a planning system with too much rigidity can often cause problems for those who stumble across the line or did not necessarily understand the rules in the first place, which can happen with ordinary domestic planning applications. I would be more than happy for him to submit that as part of the consultation. His second point has slipped my mind.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

It was about the local plan having considered need, been approved and then, within weeks, been impugned.

[Kit Malthouse]

I will come on to this in a moment, but, as my right hon. and learned Friend will know, along with all elements of a local plan, five-year supply is often the subject of legal challenge and challenge through the planning appeals process. I have consistently said to local authorities on all types of housing that if they want to be bulletproof on planning, they should aspire to a supply beyond five years. Too many authorities spend a lot of time in court arguing about whether they are at 5.1 or 4.8, but if they plan their area with authority and perspective—even as far out as 10 or 15 years—there is no argument to be had, particularly if it has been evidenced through the local plan process and supported by a planning inspector.

We want to ensure that local authorities use their powers to full effect and draw on good practice across the country and at county and district level. That can include ways in which public bodies can more effectively work with the police, neighbouring authorities and the travelling and wider communities—for example on welfare issues and clarifying roles and responsibilities, to move unauthorised encampments on efficiently and successfully.

We will in due course create a power to place this guidance on a statutory footing, to ensure that all local authorities are following this advice and using their powers effectively. Our package of support for local authorities includes a commitment to make up to £1.5 million of funding available to local authorities to support planning enforcement. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will publish details of the fund and how to bid shortly. Alongside that, the Government will continue to keep local authorities’ powers in this area under review, following the proposals to reform police powers where there are deliberate and repeated breaches of planning.

While we acknowledge that Government still have work to do on the issues associated with unauthorised encampments, I would like to reiterate the importance of appropriate levels of site provision provided by local authorities. The planning policy for Traveller sites requires local planning authorities to produce their own assessment of needs for Traveller sites in their area, to meet the needs and expected needs of the travelling community in the same way they would for the settled community, as my right hon. and learned Friend pointed out. However, when assessing the suitability of sites in rural or semi-rural settings, local planning authorities should ensure that the scale of such sites does not dominate the nearest settled community. The Government have committed to produce guidance on the concentration of sites and have made clear that the Secretary of State will be prepared to review cases where concerns are raised that there is too high a concentration of authorised Traveller sites in one location.

I would like to relay to the House our ongoing work on enforcement against unauthorised encampments, as I am aware that this has been an area of particular concern to many Members across the House, including those who have attended previous debates. As I mentioned, the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks), has outlined this in previous debates, so I will try to keep my summary brief.

From listening to our consultation responses on the matter, we have identified a set of measures to extend powers available to the police, to enable unauthorised encampments to be tackled more effectively. Those include our commitment to seek parliamentary approval to amend sections 61 and 62A of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. The Home Office will soon launch a public consultation on the specific nature of these measures, to take the proposals forward.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

The Minister is being very generous in giving way. I was on the Committee in 1994 that considered the Bill, which introduced the five caravan rule. That has been excellent, and the Government might want to reduce it to three. But of course, that is all about moving on trespassers in encampments that are unauthorised for that reason. This debate is about land that is owned by the developer where all the planning laws are being ignored. Is there anything more he can say about toughening up on that and ensuring that people cannot drive a coach and horses through the planning laws?

[Kit Malthouse]

As I said earlier, I am keen for us to strengthen the measures that can be taken against intentional unauthorised development, on which my right hon. and learned Friend is very focused, and rightly so, but the process by which we get there means that we have to go through a consultation, which we will be doing shortly. I hope that both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) will submit to that consultation whatever measures they think are appropriate.

I think it fair to say that on this issue, given the interest of a large number of Members, the Government have listened and announced a comprehensive package, which will be implemented over the next few months—as my right hon. and learned Friend will know, the wheels of Government often grind slowly—so that in time for next summer, when there will be an uptick in activity, we will have measures in place that will not only allow local authorities to enforce sensibly, but encourage them to provide more transit sites to which Traveller communities can legitimately be moved.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

As part of the consultation, will the Minister take it from me that we would like him to consider the ability for local authorities to step in quickly and put in place a legally binding stop notice on the development as the trucks are driving in, the caravans and kids are arriving and the green belt is being destroyed?

[Kit Malthouse]

I certainly share my hon. Friend’s aspiration for local authorities to be able to move extremely quickly in these circumstances, and a lot of the measures that we are putting in place are intended to encourage them to do exactly that, with authority and in the safe knowledge that they are acting within the law. However, it is also critical that they have a legitimate place to which they can move Traveller communities, so in my view the provision of transit sites is one of the key issues. In my constituency, where we have the same issues—not necessarily with encampments, but certainly with summer visitors—unfortunately we do not have a transit site, and I have talked to my local authority about providing one so that those people who do arrive in Andover every summer can be moved somewhere legitimately and swiftly. I think that the two issues go together.

I would like to end by briefly updating Members on the work that the Government are doing on outcomes for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, which my right hon. and learned Friend quite rightly raised. We are committed to continuing to address the serious disparities faced by these communities. On almost every measure, those communities are significantly worse off than the general population. The Government have been working to improve their outcomes, but we recognise that we need to go further. That is why we recently announced that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will lead the development of a cross-Government strategy to improve their outcomes. We will work closely with other Departments, including the Race Disparity Unit within the Cabinet Office, the Department for Education, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Home Office, to develop the strategy. The strategy will seek to tackle the inequalities faced by these communities across a range of outcomes highlighted by the race disparity audit, including housing, education and health.

I would like to conclude by thanking those Members who have participated in this important debate. The Government have listened to Members’ concerns and are progressing on the commitments made in our response to the consultation and on the wider issue of unauthorised development and encampments. I hope that over the next few months all those Members will participate in the various consultations that will appear, so that we can reach a settled policy around which we can unite in solving the problem, while improving the lives of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.

Question put and agreed to.

Draft Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment) (England) (No. 2) Regulations 2019

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 General Committees

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment) (England) (No. 2) Regulations 2019.

The regulations were laid before the House on 4 June 2019. If approved and made, the regulations will help local authorities to collect contributions from developers more effectively, and to use them to fund infrastructure. The regulations will remove unnecessary restrictions that prevent authorities from using funds effectively. They will ensure fair charges so that self-builders do not face a £30,000 charge if they hand in their paperwork late, and will increase transparency and accountability, so that local people know exactly what contributions their local authority has secured.

The community infrastructure levy regulations first came into force in April 2010. They enabled local planning authorities and the Mayor of London to raise a levy on new developments in their local area. The levy can be used to fund a wide range of infrastructure to support development. Some 150 local planning authorities now charge the levy, and £855 million was raised by March 2018, which has been used to fund infrastructure, including road schemes, green spaces and flood defences. In London, the levy has raised an additional £490 million towards Crossrail.

Local planning authorities are also able to negotiate individual planning agreements with developers, which secure contributions towards infrastructure and affordable housing. Unlike the community infrastructure levy, those section 106 planning obligations must be directly related to the development in question. In 2016-17, local authorities levied around £5 billion through section 106 planning obligations, £4 billion of which was for affordable housing and £1 billion of which was for infrastructure.

The regulations before the Committee introduce reforms to both the community infrastructure levy and section 106 planning obligations. They have been developed through extensive consultation with industry and local authorities.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

The section 106 agreements have been really useful in communities like mine. Will the Minister confirm that we will lift the cap and enable as much pooling as communities think appropriate to deliver vital local infrastructure, such as walking and cycling pathways?

[Kit Malthouse]

I can confirm that we will be doing so, and I will come to the details shortly.

We are making changes to make it easier for local authorities to introduce the levy. Currently, before a local planning authority can introduce or update the levy, it must consult twice on its proposed schedule of charges. That schedule is then subject to examination in public to ensure that the proposed rates will not make development across the area unviable.

Although safeguards are important, the current system is too slow and bureaucratic. Local authorities can take a year or more to introduce the levy and may take as long again to update their charging schedule. We have therefore reduced the consultation requirements to a single round of consultation followed by an examination in public. That will make it easier for local authorities to introduce the levy and to update their levy rates when economic circumstances change.

We are also making the levy fairer. Local authorities’ charging schedules are indexed to a measure of building costs, meaning that levy charges do not rapidly become out of date. Complications can arise when a developer changes their development in a way that changes their levy liability, for instance by increasing or decreasing the floor space. Our reforms ensure that when an amendment to a planning permission increases the developer’s liability, the increase is charged at the latest indexed rate.

If a permission to increase floor space is increased, it is right that the latest levy rate is paid on that new space. On the other hand, decreases in levy liability are charged at the original indexed rate. If the original levy liability was £100 per square metre, for example, any reduction should also be at a rate of £100 per square metre, rather than £120 or whatever the latest indexed rate is. That way, we ensure that charges remain fair.

A further complication occurs when a development is granted planning permission before the levy is introduced to an area, but is changed after the levy has been implemented. Under the existing regulations, that can generate perverse outcomes for developments that are built in phases, over time. For example, when an amendment increases floor space in one phase of development, that rightly creates a new levy liability for the new floor space. However, when an amendment to another phase of the development reduces floor space, there is no corresponding reduction in liability. That is because the development was first granted permission before the levy was in place, so there is no levy liability to reduce. That creates a ratchet effect; amendments that create new floor space create new liabilities, while amendments that reduce it do not. Developers may end up paying the levy on more floor space than they actually build. The draft regulations will allow reductions in floor space in one phase of the development to be offset against increases in floor space in another phase of the development. That is much fairer, and ensures that developers are charged only for what they build.

The 2010 regulations allow for some developments to be exempt from the levy. That includes residential extensions and self-build housing, but for exemption to be valid, a commencement notice must generally be submitted before work is started on the site. If the paperwork is not completed in time, the developer must pay the full levy liability. I am aware of circumstances in which people building their own home have found themselves subject to a £30,000 charge or more simply for late paperwork. That is disproportionate and it is distressing for those involved. Under the reforms, the penalty for a late commencement notice will now be reduced to 20% of the full levy amount, capped at £2,500. Again, the aim is to improve fairness.

My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth will be pleased to hear that we are also introducing new freedoms for local authorities to spend funds raised through the levy and through section 106 planning obligations. The existing regulations prevent local authorities securing more than five section 106 planning obligations on a single piece of infrastructure. That is known as the section 106 pooling restriction. For example, if six developments in an area collectively require a new school to be built, only the first five can be required to contribute. That can prevent otherwise acceptable development from being built. It also means that developers and local authorities waste time and resources developing workarounds so that all developments contribute fairly to the required infrastructure. We are removing that restriction to give local authorities the freedom that they need to fund infrastructure.

The existing regulations also state that section 106 planning obligations cannot be used to fund infrastructure that a local authority intends to fund partly through the levy. If the local authority wants to fund half the cost of a school through the levy, therefore, it cannot use planning obligations—for example, from those developments in the immediate vicinity—to pay for the other half. That restriction makes it harder for local authorities to fund infrastructure so we are removing it.

It is not enough to give local authorities more freedom on how they use the levy and planning obligations; it is also important for local people to know what is being secured on their behalf. For that reason, we are introducing new reporting requirements for local authorities. Each year, they must publish an infrastructure funding statement detailing revenues from the levy and from section 106 planning obligations, and setting out how those funds have been allocated. To ensure that local authorities are able to resource that, the new regulations will make it clear that they may seek proportionate monitoring fees through section 106 planning obligations. Authorities are already able to use up to 5% of the levy to fund that administrative work.

We have also created a new requirement for authorities to consult if they want to stop charging the levy. That will ensure that they consider the funding impacts of their decisions and that they can be held accountable for them by local people.

Lastly, the draft statutory instrument makes a small number of minor clarifications to the regulations to deal with issues identified during and after the March 2018 public consultation. The parts of the regulations dealing with calculating the levy have also been consolidated into a single schedule to make them easier to use.

Contributions from developers play an important role in delivering the infrastructure that new homes and local economies require. If the draft regulations are approved and made, they will ensure that the levy and section 106 planning obligations can better fund vital infrastructure in local communities. They will give more freedom to local authorities over how they use this funding, and will also make that more transparent to local people. Finally, they will ensure that levy charges are transparent and fair for developers. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to Members for their detailed consideration of the regulations. I will attempt to address the various points that have been raised on what I admit is a fairly long SI by SI standards, but I am pleased that there seems to be general support for it, notwithstanding one or two of the omissions that the hon. Member for Bassetlaw raised and that I will have to consider.

It is absolutely the case that the regulations are designed to provide certainty and transparency to local people about what has been collected and how it will be deployed. All of us no doubt have experience in our constituencies of an air of mystery about section 106 in particular and where the money may go. I had a particular experience in Andover in my constituency. I along with other local councillors was campaigning for a crossing outside a school where a particular road had become very busy because of development at the end of the road. It became clear after a while that there was a section 106 reserve for exactly that purpose. A little pressure and help from the county council managed to get that released and lo and behold a brand new pelican crossing appeared.

Providing that transparency and certainty is exactly what we are aiming to do with the statements, not least because the lifting of the restriction on pooling requirements may mean that local authorities are able to combine section 106 and CIL in a way that can point towards much larger infrastructure projects that may be some time off. For example, a new school might be needed in three or four years. At the moment, section 106 has to be deployed almost immediately on a new coat of paint for the village hall or whatever it might be. With pooling, it can be put in the piggy bank for bigger things, which will broadly make people happier. There are still some restrictions on section 106. It has to be more directly related to the locality from which it emerges than CIL, but the lifting of the restriction will mean that local authorities can be more ambitious, and there is a clear requirement for them to be more transparent.

Obviously, the report will require some funding in its production. We are not introducing a new bureaucracy tax. It is already the case that local authorities can use 5% of CIL for this purpose. In the regulations, we are saying that they can use a proportionate amount—effectively, they can cover the costs from section 106 and CIL to produce the report. It is not something we are introducing. Critical, we think, to the growing acceptability of large-scale development across the country will be transparency and clarity for local people about what has been collected and deployed. Frankly, they will be able to compare the performance of their local authority with neighbouring authorities. We see differential performance in section 106 negotiations between local authorities.

[Craig Mackinlay]

On the point of the 5% charge, is there any system within what is being proposed whereby an agency—perhaps the external auditors—would check whether the 5% had been properly used? Are we somewhat fearful that every authority will go, “Great. It is 5%. Let us make it fixed and do some internal wooden dollar accounting”—that can feature in some local authorities—“to ensure that we always get our 5%.” That could be a substantial amount of money in areas that are growing rapidly. It might be less in others.

[Kit Malthouse]

As I am sure my hon. Friend knows, there are controls within the local authority environment, such as the section 151 officer and, of course, the district audit function, which make sure that local authorities comply with the rules, particularly where cost recovery is the restriction. We are saying that their use of funds should be proportionate to the output that they produce. However, it is important that we invest money in transparency. If we are going to have credibility in the system, it is important that we take those steps.

The hon. Member for City of Durham asked how things would work in two-tier authorities, and we think we can address that point in guidance rather than through regulations. It will obviously vary from area to area. We have some two-tier authorities and some that are unitary, and we will address that through guidance.

The hon. Lady asked about the strategic infrastructure tariff. I think I am right in saying that, as the strategic infrastructure tariff is not enabled under the same planning Act, it has to come in by separate regulation. When a combined authority requests such, it is our intention to bring forward regulations.

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw and the hon. Lady both raised the cap on self-build on what I said in my speech were ordinary people—I hate using that phrase, because I do not think anybody is ordinary. We have seen perverse situations in the media where a delay in the submission of paperwork for a commencement order means that somebody building a home for their own occupation suddenly gets a huge charge, sometimes up to £100,000. The regulations cap that surcharge at £2,500, which is the figure that seemed to be acceptable from the consultation. We are also saying that it is a surcharge rather than a penalty, and we are giving local authorities the discretion to collect it or not. We recognise that for some local authorities the cost of collection may exceed £2,500, and, therefore, whether they collect that will be at their discretion.

The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse raised section 106 money for London. There is a separate figure. I do not have it with me at the moment, but I will write to him with it.

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw asked whether Traveller sites and park homes were exempt. It is essentially up to the local authority to determine its CIL charging policy. It will vary from area to area. Fundamentally, it is for his local councils to decide whether they want to charge it on park homes or Traveller sites or showman sites.

The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse raised a good point about the likelihood of local authorities combining section 106 and CIL. Obviously, the removal of the restriction will allow them to do that. However, as I said earlier, there are still greater restrictions on section 106—it has to have more of a connection to where it comes from— but we think there is merit in allowing authorities to combine the two for larger infra- structure projects when it is required.

I think that I have broadly covered all the issues that have been raised.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The Minister has not covered consolidation. Paragraph 49 of the Government’s response to the technical consultation on reforming developer contributions says that the Government will look at further consolidation. Is that likely to happen?

[Kit Malthouse]

Yes, it is likely to happen. We will look at further consolidation. As the hon. Lady will know, much of the thrust of policy coming out of the Department has been to create certainty and transparency both for local people and for the development community. Although the regulations appear complex in their formulation, they are actually designed to simplify and to make the levy more predictable and less perverse.

There were a number of questions about whether the regulations will result in more money for the local authority or less. On balance, my guess is that it will result in more, not least because there will be more certainty and the perverse disincentive for development will be removed. Greater certainty reduces risk, which should in the end result in more development, but I am more than happy to look at what more we can do for clarity’s sake.

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw raised a very good question about bringing derelict property into use. I think he is right that in the regulations such properties will not be exempt. However, there is a wider policy issue for the Government to address about the general disincentives in the system for investment in a property to bring it back into use. For example, in my constituency there is a very good pub called the Wellington Arms in Baughurst, which was a derelict pub for many years. It was bought by a couple of guys who brought it into use. It is now one of the best restaurant-pubs in the area. I try to eat there on a regular basis—I have to save up to go, but it is brilliant.

Of course, the immediate impact of the new owners’ investment was that they saw the rateable value of their pub rose from £12,500 to £55,000, with a commensurate effective taxation penalty for the investment that they had made and the employment that they had created. There is a wider question for us, as we move into a new phase, if you like, of government, about where we want the balance between incentive and disincentive for investment to sit.

I am grateful to the Committee for considering the regulations.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment) (England) (No. 2) Regulations 2019.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

8. If he will discuss with the Home Secretary the effect on (a) communities and (b) local planning policy of the operation of the Licensing Act 2003.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I am in daily receipt of advice from colleagues from across the Government—indeed, from across the House, local government and the nation—on the efficient and effective operation of the planning system.

[Christian Matheson]

Will the Government agree to change licensing laws to give local councils the authority to issue licences—for example, to events in their area—only if the applicant agrees to use recyclable or biodegradable plastics?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Gentleman, typically, raises an extremely important issue. As he will know, the proliferation of single-use plastics—or, indeed, the restriction thereof—is a matter for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. We have made other progress, on top of the ban of microbeads, with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs having recently announced the ban on the distribution or sale of plastic straws and stirrers and plastic-stem cotton buds. The hon. Gentleman nevertheless raises an interesting point, particularly in respect of events, that we will ponder further.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

More and more licensed premises are being granted extended opening hours, even when it has hugely negative consequences for local residents. Councils report that trying to stop there being too many licensed premised in an area through the use of cumulative impact assessments is too slow, burdensome and costly, as well as being ineffective. Will the Minister agree to work with his colleagues to amend the Licensing Act 2003 to ensure that there is a much greater community voice in licensing and greater alignment with planning policy?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady addresses a significant issue that I had to address regularly in my previous life as deputy Mayor for policing in London. I recognise the impact that the proliferation of licensed premises in a particular area can have, not only on the community but on crime generally. It is incumbent on local authorities to have an authoritative and assertive licensing policy that sits alongside their local plan and planning policy, such that they can defend their policies in court or under judicial review, if that is the case. If the hon. Lady is concerned that that is not happening in particular authorities, I am more than happy to look into them and offer advice, where possible.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

9. What assessment he has made of the potential merits of extending the Bellwin scheme to include the exceptional costs of social care packages for vulnerable children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Grant (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Con)]

T4. Noting that the right to buy has been abolished in Scotland, what efforts is my hon. Friend making to re-energise home ownership throughout the United Kingdom, particularly for first-time buyers?

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

It is very heartening to hear at least someone from Scotland standing up for aspiration and, in particular, home ownership. My hon. Friend is an example himself—a living embodiment—of the social mobility that home ownership can produce, and I congratulate him on his question. He is right that this Government have done quite a lot on home ownership, putting 542,000 people into home ownership who were not there in 2010, and through Help to Buy there is much more that we can do. I urge him to advertise north of the border that help to buy ISAs and lifetime ISAs are available across the whole of the UK, notwithstanding the barriers that are put in the way of home ownership in Scotland.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant) amply warrants the panegyric that the Minister has just lobbed in his direction, so I hope he will not take offence when I say that at this sensitive time it might also be prudent to bear in mind that he is, in all likelihood, being lobbied.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

T6. Residents in my constituency village of Burwash have raised concerns about the transparency of the planning appeal process—namely, that the developer seems to have access to information that perhaps residents do not. Does our excellent Housing Minister have any plans to reform the planning appeal process so that my constituents have more comfort and can be more involved in the process?

[Kit Malthouse]

Forgive the love-in, Mr Speaker, but my hon. Friend is a constant and persistent champion for his constituents in the many beautiful villages that he represents. He is quite right to identify an issue that a number of people have raised with me across the country—namely, the transparency of the Planning Inspectorate. That organisation is in the process of implementing the measures outlined in the Rosewell review in order for planning inquiries to provide more transparency. We are, at the moment, procuring a new online IT system—dread words in Government, I know, but nevertheless we are—that will allow progress of appeals to be tracked, providing exactly the sort of transparency that he is looking for.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

T3. Since doing a constituency survey on leaseholds, I have been continually shocked by case after case of unfair charges and rises, such as sinking fund costs going from zero to £250 without any warning. I therefore welcome the Competition and Markets Authority’s investigation into leaseholds, but what assurances can the Minister give to current leaseholders who face increasing costs? Will he put a moratorium on new leaseholds while the CMA does its work, to ensure that there are fewer victims?

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

North Lincolnshire Council recently refused a planning application for a housing development in the village of Goxhill, and North East Lincolnshire Council subsequently refused an application in the village of Waltham. Both were overturned on appeal. The reason for the councils’ refusal was based on a lack of infrastructure, access to public services and the like. Will the Minister consider giving better guidance to inspectors, so that they take more notice of local opinion?

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. He will understand that I cannot comment on specific planning applications, but he is right to identify that local communities often feel excluded from the planning process. The solution is for them to put in place a neighbourhood plan. The Government have pledged—and I have pledged, for however long I remain in this job—to strengthen neighbourhood plans, so that local people do not feel like victims of the planning system, but its master.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

There is no point building thousands of new houses in greenfield areas unless we have the requisite infrastructure to go with them. A recent report shows that North Northamptonshire faces an infrastructure deficit of over £300 million in delivering the houses requested by central Government. What can the Department do to ensure that the infrastructure comes to North Northamptonshire?

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend is quite right: one of the problems with housing development in the past in this country is that we have tended to build the houses first and cope with the infrastructure last. We have attempted to reverse that equation, and we now have £5.5 billion dedicated to housing infrastructure, which is specifically designed to release land to build the houses the next generation needs. I would be more than happy to meet him to discuss the possibility of a North Northamptonshire bid to the housing infrastructure fund either now or in the future.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

When the Secretary of State meets the Chancellor to do the spending review, will he stress to the Chancellor that while a lot of money has been put into local government, it is inadequate to prevent the closure of libraries, or to cover issues such as social services and particularly youth clubs? Will he ensure that the Chancellor has a look at that and, more importantly, at social care in the community?

Social Housing

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I commend the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) for securing this important debate. I agree with him that above all else, it should be the collective mission of the House to build the homes that the next generation needs.

I agree with other Members that the attendance across the House for the debate has been disappointing. I am sure none of us will take any pleasure from the fact that there was not a single Liberal Democrat in the Chamber to talk about this very important issue. It is indeed important, because since taking up this role last year, boosting the supply of housing of all types has been my night-and-day obsession as Housing Minister, so a largely useful and constructive debate such as today’s certainly helps.

For the most part, I am grateful that Members have come forward with constructive suggestions, and indeed questions, which we will try to answer—in written form if I cannot answer them today. I want to pick out one or two.

I agree with the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington’s basic assertion that bad housing leads to lots of other bad things and that good housing sits at the base of a fruitful and happy life. A secure home is something to which we should aspire for all the people whom we serve, and it is certainly a central part of our mission. I was very affected by his specific point about a veteran whom he called soldier Y. I hope that he is engaging with the Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire armed forces covenant partnership, which I understand does a fair amount of work in his region in connection with the covenant and the housing rights that come with it.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving such a balanced view of the last three or four decades of house building and the part that Governments of all types have played in producing an under-supply. Both my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), who has sadly had to go and do his duty in Westminster Hall, and the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) referred to the complexity of the issue and suggested that there should be a cross-party effort to reach some kind of general solution.

Let me now issue a gentle reminder to Members. I understand that, in these circumstances, it is the role of the Front Bencher to point to a utopian future in which everything will be easy and simple and it will just be a matter of writing cheques and handing out shovels and houses will appear. However, this is a problem and a crisis that has been decades in the making, and I think we all have a duty to share some sense of responsibility.

Back in the days when I was a Westminster councillor, we were induced out of council house building and owning by the then Labour Government, who would only give us our decent homes money if we got rid of our council housing stock. A number of Members, not least the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), tried to dredge up ancient history and point to some kind of ideological opposition to social housing among Government Members. In fact, more council houses were built in the last year of Margaret Thatcher’s 10 years as Prime Minister than were built in the 13 years of the new Labour Government.

The shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), has often nodded in agreement about the lack of council house building during the years when he was part of the Government. I think that only about 2,500 council houses were built during those 13 years. Much has been said about the right to buy, but during all those years not a single finger was lifted against it. The policy persisted throughout the entire period, and is still popular with those who can benefit from it.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) rightly raised the issue of supply. The Government are committed to increasing the supply of all tenures of affordable housing, helping to meet the housing needs of a wide range of people including those who are on a pathway to home ownership. I am pleased to say that we are already delivering on our commitments: since 2010, we have delivered more than 407,000 new affordable homes, including more than 293,000 for rent. In fact, more affordable homes have been delivered in the past eight years than in the last eight years of Labour government. More than 481,000 households have been helped into home ownership through schemes such as Help to Buy and right to buy.

We are not complacent, however, and we are certainly not slowing down; far from it. Housing remains our top priority, and we are championing the delivery of more affordable homes. We want to see local authorities deliver a new generation of council homes across the country. That is why we scrapped the housing revenue account borrowing caps last October, freeing up councils to double their delivery and, we hope, to exceed that level. Removing the borrowing caps will also help to diversify the house building market, with councils more able to take on projects and sites that private developers would consider too small.

The abolition of the caps means that stock-owning councils such as Warwick now have the financial flexibility that enables them to borrow to increase council house building. Even councils that do not own housing can get on with building homes. They have the flexibility to borrow to build up to 200 without opening a housing revenue account, subject to obtaining a direction from the Secretary of State. I am keen for all councils to seize the opportunities available and quickly start ramping up delivery to meet local housing need. I am considering what assistance we can give councils that do not have HRAs, either by providing advice and expertise or by pairing them with councils that do have HRAs to help them to act quickly.

We support councils and housing associations with grant funding for the construction of new affordable homes. We have made over £9 billon available through the affordable homes programme, which will deliver 250,000 additional affordable homes by March 2022. We listen constantly to the affordable housing sector and work to create a stable investment environment to support the delivery of more affordable homes across the country. We have introduced strategic partnerships to offer housing associations greater flexibility, ensuring funding can be allocated where it is needed across multiple projects while still meeting overall delivery targets.

This funding certainty also makes it more viable for larger housing associations to take risks and invest in more ambitious projects, with greater delivery flexibilities and funding guaranteed over a longer period. And we have gone further, providing the sector with longer-term certainty of funding. In September last year, the Prime Minister announced a £2 billion long-term funding pilot starting in 2022, which will boost affordable housing by giving housing associations long-term certainty and moving away from the stop-start delivery that characterised previous approaches to funding. For the first time in their history, housing associations can now bid for funding up to a decade long.

This unprecedented approach will deliver more affordable homes and stimulate the sector’s wider building ambitions. Strategic partnerships and our 10-year funding commitment mark the first time any Government have offered housing associations such certainty. They will also allow them to explore the use of greater technology in house building. I visited a factory in Walsall in the west midlands recently where Accord Housing will be producing 1,000 homes for affordable and social rent out of the factory, and so good are the environmental standards of these new homes that there are lower arrears because people can afford to heat and light them more cheaply. There are huge opportunities coming out of this programme that I hope associations will take. We have also set a long-term rent deal, announcing that increases to social housing rents will be limited to the consumer price index plus 1% for five years from 2020. Through all these measures, we are creating an investment environment that supports both councils and housing associations to build more.

As set out in our housing White Paper, we are determined to support households who are locked out of the market, and therefore we are also funding affordable home ownership. I am pleased to say that through our affordable homes programme we have delivered 60,000 shared-ownership homes since 2010. We believe that shared ownership has an important role to play as part of a diverse and thriving housing market in helping those who aspire to home ownership but may be otherwise be unable to afford it.

This Government pledged to address overall housing supply in our 2017 housing White Paper and our ambition to deliver 300,000 homes per year on average by the mid-2020s was set out in the autumn Budget of 2017. The Government agree that affordable housing will play a vital role in reaching this target, which is why we have created stable investment for the sector; now it is time for housing associations and councils to step forward and build more.

We recognise the need for more social rent homes, which is why also in 2017 we announced an additional £2 billion of funding for the affordable homes programme to deliver social rent homes in areas of high affordability pressure. This funding should deliver at least 12,500 social rent homes in high-cost areas, in a move to support families struggling to pay their rent. This represents a real change in how we focus the Government’s grant funding, targeting our most affordable homes to the areas where they are most needed. I want to stress that a mix of different tenures is vital to meet the needs of a wide range of people and allow the sector to build the right homes in the right places.

Alongside affordable home ownership to help those struggling to purchase their first home, our expanded programme offers two rental products. Affordable rent enables us to maximise the number of homes built with any Government investment, while social rent will meet the needs of struggling families and those most at risk of homelessness in areas of the country where affordability is most pressured. We will continue to provide opportunities for more people to afford their own home and seek to build on the progress made in building new social homes as we approach this year’s spending review.

This Government are committed to delivering more affordable housing, as I have outlined. We want to support the delivery of the right homes, whether for rent or ownership, in the right places. We have listened to the sector and introduced a number of measures to create a more stable environment. We have increased the size of the affordable homes programme, reintroduced social rent, removed the housing revenue account borrowing caps for local authorities, announced £2 billion of long-term funding for housing associations through strategic partnerships right through a decade, and we are setting out a long-term rent deal for councils and housing associations in England from 2020.

The hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) raised the issue of Grenfell—as did the hon. Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad)—and she will know that much of my time has been focused on building safety. While we are committed to increasing supply across the country of all types of housing, not least for social rent, the hon. Member for Croydon Central is right to continue to challenge us on the work we still need to do to make sure those buildings are delivered and built in a safe environment. I am pleased that we managed to get our response to the Hackitt inquiry out last week. We have accepted all the recommendations and, indeed, gone further on them, but there is definitely more work to do. The House has my commitment that, however long I am in this job, and I am now coming up on 12 months—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Thank you. The House has my commitment that this will be one of my primary focuses. Many of us will attend memorial events tomorrow to commemorate the second anniversary of that appalling tragedy, and while it is a point at which we will remember the 72 lives that were lost, it is also a reminder to us all in this House that the system that was built up over a number of decades that resulted in that awful tragedy has to change.