Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests, as on the register, and I have three points to make on the Bill. I preface these comments with the overarching observation that it is admirable for the Government to be bringing forward a range of measures with the ambitious goal of levelling up geographic inequalities, health inequalities and other disparities in society. I commend the honourable intentions of the Bill.

My three Second Reading points all relate to the housing agenda, since the levelling up of housing opportunities and outcomes is so fundamental to addressing all the other inequalities in health and well-being, as well as in productivity and economic success. First, although “regeneration” features so prominently in the Bill’s title, the proposed legislation’s housing content is concerned almost exclusively with the building of new homes. For social housing, Homes England has pursued a policy over recent years of funding only projects that add extra homes, not those that upgrade the existing stock. But many areas need a big injection of funding—a second decent homes programme—to modernise down-at-heel social housing. The recent Rochdale tragedy demonstrated the urgent requirement to improve outdated ex-council housing.

In the private rented sector, with more landlords now looking to exit the market after the interest rate rises, this is surely the time to support social housing providers to step in and acquire and modernise low-grade rented housing stock. For substandard owner-occupied housing, mostly owned by older people with few resources, we have not yet made progress in achieving greater energy efficiency and decarbonisation while addressing fuel poverty and tackling miserable conditions.

Secondly, in terms of new development, the Bill has provoked huge anxiety in the world of housing, as we have heard already in this debate, about the way that obligations on housebuilders to provide affordable homes will be affected by the switch from Section 106 agreements to the new infrastructure levy. The Government clearly wish to see at least as much affordable housing after this Bill is enacted, particularly for social housing at rents affordable to those on lower incomes. We need to strengthen the legislation to underpin that intention. It would be a tragedy if “levelling up” led to a diminution of the already hopelessly low level of supply of truly affordable housing. There will be some important amendments here.

Thirdly, and finally, is this to be the Bill that goes a step further and achieves some fundamental change to our housing system, which for decades has failed to meet the nation’s needs? It will not make sufficient difference just to improve the ways in which we coerce reluctant housebuilders to develop the housing that our communities require. Could this be the Bill that enables local councils themselves to take back control and achieve what their locality needs in terms of quality, affordability, speed of build-out and more?

The bold step to achieve that would be to adopt the recommendations of the 2018 Letwin review, with development corporations established at arm’s length by councils with CPO powers and the capacity to borrow. Will the Bill enable these corporations to acquire sites, prepare masterplans and parcel out the land to fulfil locally determined objectives with a variety of development uses, from homes for first-time buyers to retirement developments, from social housing to green spaces and so on?

So, there must be more emphasis on regeneration, amendments to the Bill to bolster the vital affordable housing element in new schemes and, more fundamentally, government backing for development corporations that capture land value and return us to building what the nation actually needs.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

Finally, I offer our support for the remaining amendments in this group—on housing, from the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and on education, from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. All these things are important and should be in the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 15 in the names of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Watkins of Tavistock, and me. For this stage of the Bill, I draw attention to my housing and planning interests as in the register, including as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association and president of the Sustainable Energy Association.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London is not able to be with us on this Ash Wednesday, but I know she feels deeply about this issue, not least from her distinguished career within the health service. I hope that I can cover some of the points that she wanted to make, and I know the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds will join in the debate.

Amendment 15 would ensure that health disparities are included in the Government’s levelling-up missions by getting this issue into the Bill. Improving public health and reducing health inequalities was a centrepiece of the original levelling-up White Paper. Two of the original missions, seven and eight, were aimed respectively at covering the gap in healthy life expectancy between localities and addressing determinants of mental and physical ill health, but these ambitions do not feature in the Bill. Ominously, it now seems that the promised health disparities White Paper may not see the light of day. There seem to be delays, too, in producing strategies for tackling the so-called obesity epidemic and for smoking reduction.

However, health inequalities in the UK have grown worse over the past decade after centuries of increased healthy life expectancy. Gaps have widened: the Inequalities in Health Alliance of 155 member bodies, convened by the Royal College of Physicians, notes that there is now a 19-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the least and the most deprived communities, and health inequalities cost the country £31 billion to £33 billion a year.

I declare an interest as the chair of the Oxford University Commission on Creating Healthy Cities, which reported last year. We concluded that, if central and local government gave priority to achieving better outcomes for physical and mental health, they would simultaneously address wider inequalities in society, improve productivity, support efforts to tackle climate change, and reduce the escalating costs of the NHS and social care. The Oxford study, driven by Kellogg College’s Global Centre on Healthcare and Urbanisation and the Prince’s Foundation, recommends that health creation should be the key focus of efforts to level up. Our commission supported the Government’s White Paper and its health objectives, and these deserve to be incorporated into the legislation before us. The whole levelling-up agenda can be a massive contributor to improvements in health and well-being.

This amendment is a necessary precursor to later amendments that link specific policy measures for the built environment—for planning, housing, transport and the environment—to the core issue of health. These important amendments would be greatly assisted by a backdrop of the Bill having a clear focus on health inequalities as one of its key missions. This would match advances in Scotland and Wales, where the emphasis on the health dimension in public policy and guidance has been strengthened over recent years.

Finally, in support of the right reverend Prelate’s amendment, I add that using health as the touchstone for levelling-up policies increases wider understanding and public support for the varied local projects that will follow enactment of the Bill. What assurances can the Minister give that we will see a focus on health, and specifically on health inequalities, in the levelling-up missions? What can the Minister tell us about the missing health disparities White Paper? I support the amendment.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, at Second Reading, I remember applauding, broadly speaking, the ambitions of the White Paper. However, I share the concerns of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who of course brings to this much more experience than I do.

I am pleased that, already, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has alluded to the interconnectivity of all these different missions; they cannot be seen in silos or in isolation. For example, if you have children who are turning up at school unfed or living in poor housing, you can try teaching them what you will but it may not be very successful, and that has an impact not only on individuals but on communities and their flourishing.

I will speak to Amendment 15, tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, and briefly to Amendments 7, 30 and 31. Health disparities require discrete attention in the Bill. It is not an optional extra. The Bill as it stands states the missions but does not provide mechanisms for action or accountability. How will we be able to measure whether they are effective or not? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London has said that, although assurances by the Minister are very welcome, they are not enough; they have to be backed up in the Bill with measurable implementation gauges.

Good health is key both to human—that is, individual—and social flourishing. As I said, we cannot separate out such things as housing, education, health, transport and so on as if we can solve one without having an impact on the other. However, there are inequalities between the regions in many of these areas. I speak from a context in the north: the whole of west Yorkshire, most of north Yorkshire—but do not tell the right reverend Primate the Archbishop of York that—a chunk of Lancashire, one slice of County Durham and a bit of south Yorkshire. The inequalities are serious. The economic squeeze, in the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, is an incubator for inequalities, and we know the impact that inequality has across the board.

The White Paper rightly recognises the centrality of health to levelling up, but the actions by which this will be achieved could be argued to be lacking—and we certainly need long-term solutions and not quick fixes or slogans that sound good but do not lead to content. Can the Minister therefore offer assurances of the Government’s commitment to health within the levelling-up agenda in ways that can be measured and accountability upheld?

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Worcester]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford has added her name. She regrets that she is unable to be in her place today; I wish to make some points that undoubtedly she would have contributed had she been here.

As already indicated by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, the Government’s tabled Amendment 165 is very welcome. The review of Section 123 of the Local Government Act 1972, and the correction of the omission of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime—and of police and crime commissioners generally—are necessary and positive steps. However, there remain ways in which the general disposal consent 2003 could be improved to better allow public bodies to dispose of assets for less than market value for social, economic or environmental benefit. We believe that such measures would be very much in line with the Bill’s desired outcome: levelling up communities across the country.

Noble Lords will be well aware of the significant variation in land value across the nation’s regions. The introduction of a percentage value discount would help ensure that local authorities, no matter where they are in the country, could offer the same level of discretion when selling sites for community good. I hope that the Minister will therefore accept the proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for an adjacent percentage value to take into account varying land prices in different regions.

I also echo calls for the Minister to confirm today that the Government commit to launching a consultation on a new directive to update the current consent order on the disposal of public land. I am aware that Munira Wilson MP, who has been active in these matters in the other place, has received a letter from the new Housing and Planning Minister in which Mrs Maclean confirmed that the Government will take forward a consultation on a new direction with higher thresholds after the passage of the Bill. Is the Minister able to reiterate this commitment on the Floor of the House?

I also hope the Minister will accept the call by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for a new disposal consent order increasing the cash value amount in line with inflation in land prices. In her letter to Munira Wilson MP, the Housing and Planning Minister recognised that the current threshold of £2 million was provided in 2003 and that land values have increased over the last two decades. Amendment 174 would increase the cash value amount that public authorities can give a discount on to £3 million. It should be noted that this is in fact a conservative estimate of the inflation in land prices over the past 20 years.

To conclude, I repeat my welcome for the government Amendment 165 and urge the Minister to reiterate the Government’s commitment to consult on a new directive, create such a directive and accept Amendment 174’s provisions for an adjacent percentage value. I hope that we can continue in this spirit of co-operation truly to level up our country.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 312A in this group, which would insert a new clause with the heading:

“Duty to optimise the use of public land”.


As this implies, the amendment attempts to ensure that the precious asset of land owned by public bodies is put to “optimal use”. The amendment tries to do two things. First, it would place a duty on local authorities to have a land use management plan for sites in their ownership to ensure that developments are brought forward for the public good. Secondly, since the duty to optimise the use of public land would very often be exercised by disposal of the land to others, the amendment also seeks to define the meaning of the phrase “best consideration reasonably obtainable”, which governs sale of publicly owned land at present.

Earlier amendments in this group would extend the current disposal regime to cover police and crime commissioners, the NHS, importantly, and all other public bodies. This amendment seeks to resolve long-standing complexities and arguments over the treatment of landholdings by public bodies. I pay tribute to the land economist Stephen Hill, who has studied this question for many years, for his preparation of the amendment. He has been aided by Keith Jenkins, the property lawyer, alongside distinguished real estate experts, academics and leading practitioners who all have my thanks for their work on this subject.

An essential feature of the levelling-up agenda is the need to improve the built environment to create better places to live and work. Securing the land for improved conditions—for affordable homes, green spaces, local amenities, et cetera—is the key to this. The amendment’s first objective, therefore, is simply to bring more public land into play. It would do so by requiring local authorities to prepare a land use management plan, demonstrating how use of their land will be optimised.

This approach was advocated by your Lordships’ Land Use in England Committee, chaired by my noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington. Several local authorities are showing the way with land use plans. For example, the West Midlands Combined Authority has set out what is expected of public landowners; its public land charter requires those landowners to

“apply a consistent, joined-up approach to best consideration”

that aims to achieve “sustainable long-term” value for their land. Amendment 312A would spread this good practice everywhere.

However, securing the best economic, social and environmental uses when public land is sold has been constantly thwarted by public bodies’ acceptance of a higher price offered for the land by other bidders for what is often a less than optimal use. We all have stories of hard-pressed providers of public services understandably wanting to secure as much hard cash as they can from disposing of their land assets, even though doing so conflicts with efforts to improve the quality of life for local citizens.

I will use NHS land to illustrate this point. I have been involved in negotiations to acquire a redundant hospital building for an extra care housing development for older people. This use of the old building and surrounding land would lead to substantial annual savings for the NHS and care services, keeping people out of hospital and residential care as well as reducing loneliness and care needs. But the NHS trust was adamant that the sale must be to the highest bidder— in this case, a developer of luxury flats for overseas buyers—irrespective of the benefits to the NHS and care services that our extra care housing project would achieve. Very often, the reason cited by the public body for taking this line is that there is an obligation on it to secure the highest price, which gets equated with the “best consideration reasonably obtainable”. This is likely to mean the land is valued so highly that it prohibits a development that would achieve important social objectives.

Amendment 312A addresses this issue by creating the duty to go for the optimal use of the land, not the highest price offered, defining “optimal use” and interpreting “best consideration” by reference to constraints on the use of the land from predetermined local and national requirements. It spells out that this means fulfilling four imperatives: first, the requirements of the local development plan and the neighbourhood plan, if there is one; secondly, any national development management policies that will follow from the Bill; thirdly, the environmental principles in the Environment Act 2021; and fourthly, any other objectives or requirements determined by the Secretary of State.

In other words, securing the optimal use of publicly owned land must simply but definitively accord with national and local government requirements. The value of the land is thereby constrained and moderated by the need to comply with these legislative and administrative requirements. In this way, the value of the land is captured by the planning system for economic, social and environmental uses.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 441, 443, 444 and 446 on the theme of short-term lettings, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, the esteemed chair of your Lordships’ Built Environment Committee, on which I am honoured to serve. I also support the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, on data sharing and safety.

I share the worries relayed very forcefully in submissions to our Built Environment Committee over the loss of long-term rented homes because of landlords switching to short-term lettings—propelled not least, it seems, by a tax and regulatory regime that favours the latter. As the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has said, our debate last Monday covered a lot of the issues that have been debated in our committee and are now the subject of these probing amendments. Noble Lords gave much support on Monday to earlier amendments that advocated a registration or licensing scheme—the two could look very similar. The Built Environment Committee favoured local discretion in introducing a national scheme locally, since some places have virtually no short-term lettings. It would be very bureaucratic to have a scheme applied there. The Government are also committed, as well as to a registration scheme, to taking a regulatory arrangement forward, and I hope that we can hear news from the Minister of a timetable in this regard.

In addition, there was support on Monday for the proposition from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the noble Earl, Lord Devon, endorsed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, for new use classes, which would enable planning powers to be used to control numbers of short-term lets in each local authority. The Government are consulting on that proposition, which personally I would favour; it deserves attention, alongside some tweaks to remove perceived incentives in the tax and regulatory frameworks, which currently appear to encourage landlords to end longer-term lets and switch to Airbnb-style short-term rentals.

I add to the debate one extra ingredient: the international dimension. In this digital age, the Airbnb phenomenon for accommodation, like Uber for transport and Amazon for retail, is ubiquitous and has caused concern in sectors in most other advanced economies. Many different regulations have been applied in other countries, particularly in tourist hotspots. A report from the Property Research Trust last year, Regulating Short-Term Rentals: Platform-based Property Rentals in European Cities, describes numerous efforts to face this challenge. Amsterdam has a strict permit system, with fines of about £20,000 for failure to comply. Barcelona has banned all short-term rentals, even in private homes. In Ireland, those areas of the country designated as rent-pressure zones have tough restrictions. In parts of the United States, such as San Francisco and Boston, only properties with the host living there during the stay are allowed to be operated as short-term lets. This international perspective demonstrates that we are not alone in facing this problem. We have a greater problem of scarcity of rented housing than most of our neighbours, which suggests that an effort to get to grips with the downside of short-term lets may be overdue here.

I have one final point. Amendment 444 reflects the Built Environment Committee’s firmly held view that new arrangements should not deter any home owners from letting spare rooms on a short-term basis. The current tax-free position, allowing up to £7,500 per annum, encourages the use of underutilised assets and brings extra income that can help with rising mortgage costs. The amendment emphasises the value of continuing that favourable tax regime for owner-occupiers in underoccupied homes.

I hope that the Government will be bold in following the lead of many other countries. We need to address the pain and disruption being caused in particular locations by the growth of short-term lets that replace badly needed longer-term rented homes. I support the amendments.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, I too support these amendments, particularly the lead amendment in this group, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, about the gathering of better data. I will try not to repeat what I said last time, other than that I have some skin in the game here in the sense that I jointly own properties that are let on assured shorthold tenancies, as well as short-term holiday let properties.

This is a multifaceted issue. Second homes may, at other times, be part-time holiday lets. Holiday lets may be for leisure trips one minute and for business purposes another, and they may alter from season to season. They may be for a couple of days at one point, or a couple of weeks or three months at another point. It is very difficult to make a one-size-fits-all assumption when you are dealing with short-term lets, holiday lets or even assured shorthold tenancies.

The platforms are also equally variable: it could be booking.com—a very common one—Airbnb, an owner’s own website, word of mouth, a card in the window of the local convenience store, or a repeat booking. They are all means of people getting in contact. I know this for a fact, because the only one that does not affect the properties that I am involved with is Airbnb as we do not use that platform, but I know lots of people who do. In respect of what the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, the thing about a platform such as Airbnb is its slickness and convenience for users—both lessors and prospective occupiers. That has really made it a benchmark worldwide phenomenon and has driven its operation and popularity as much as any wish to shift from one to the other.

I contacted a local estate agent down in the West Country—not one I use but I knew somebody in the place—and asked them what was happening with short-term lets as against assured shorthold tenancies, for example. They deal with a lot of such tenancies; they are one of the main agents in that area. I was told that, while there is considerable demand for assured shorthold tenancies—often 20 or 30 applicants for each—there were very few cases of an AST being terminated for the purpose of moving the property to a short-term letting. There was nearly always some other reason for ending the AST: it was a pot of money that the owner wanted to put into some other investment, such as extending another house or helping a child with a house purchase in another part of the country.

I do not know, therefore, how frequent this supposed transfer is. Organisations such as Shelter say that they have lots of people coming along saying that they have been kicked out because the owner wanted to do an Airbnb-type letting, but I do not know whether that is an essentially urban phenomenon—it may be—or more general. I just do not think that we have the data. That goes back to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Foster, made: we need better data.

I would worry about attempts to jump to conclusions about what we do here. I follow the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, the chairman of the wonderful committee of which I am a former member, but I worry about attempts to jump to conclusions, particularly because we have not had the results of the Government’s own thinking on this, and particularly when applying these user types to a range of properties that equally has a very considerable breadth—from a shepherd’s hut at one end through to a static caravan and to a permanent dwelling. Some may be suitable only for seasonal use: I think of the very large caravan parks that—“decorate” is the wrong word—“appear” in places such as the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. I cannot say that I regard them as beautiful or a benefit to the environment, but they clearly fulfil a seasonal requirement.

There are some settlements—some seaside places and holiday hotspots—that are built on tourism. That is what they are there for, almost, and the fact that they empty themselves for parts of the year is not a particularly modern phenomenon. I remember when as children we used to go on holiday to a part of Cornwall on an annual basis, and just about every other house was advertising bed and breakfast. Those bed and breakfasts may have morphed into Airbnb, or a short-term let on some other platform. Noble Lords have mentioned that there are clearly problems associated with an imbalance of property uses, but as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, confirmed—I raised this point on Monday —these are not consistent, geographically or by type. They tend to be associated with hotspots of one sort or another. We need to understand the dynamic.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, picked up on the point I made that we need to flesh out a great deal more what is happening here. If we do not know the purposes and drivers behind what is happening in any given instance then we are not going to get near to creating viable policies for the purpose. Let us make no mistake: this phenomenon is undoubtedly causing problems in certain areas. We had evidence of that in the Built Environment Select Committee when I was privileged to serve on it. What is required here is a degree of localised assessment, but based on consistent, nationally accepted data-gathering principles and analysis, so that we get a proper basis for dealing with this, and can look at and compare like with like and not be comparing apples with pears.

I entirely endorse Amendments 445B and 447, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, because I know for a fact how very important safety is within a property, particularly where there is short-term turnover of occupancy and people are not particularly familiar with the property. It is absolutely important that they are safe, and that things such as batteries in smoke detectors are checked annually and that combustion appliances have proper tests and are serviced. They should be safe and safety checked at regular intervals.

The noble Lord, Lord Foster, referred to the business of trying to get at the data on this through council tax records. He is absolutely right that this is a pretty deficient way of dealing with it. I am going to tell a tale out of school here. My wife has written on numerous occasions to the billing authority in relation to a property that has been used for holiday letting for many years, saying, “Look, this is being used pretty much year-round as a holiday unit. Should it continue to be in council tax?” To which answer there came none, and why would there? Why would any clever finance officer of a local authority decide that he was going to forgo council tax—which he collects and keeps in his kitty, thank you very much—and be the collecting agency for business rates for central government, to be redistributed according to whatever the normal formula is? The noble Lord, Lord Foster, mentioned one area where the thing is skewed; that is a second area where there is a perverse incentive not to get things in the right slot.

It gets worse. Under the “check, challenge, appeal” process that business rates operators have to deal with when dealing with the Valuation Office Agency, someone has to formally claim the property for the purposes of being its agent before they can even get the process in train to change the assessment. That is not a sensible way of doing it either. We are completely at sea on this and really need to sort it out.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

I could make an exceedingly long speech on this matter, but I suspect your Lordships would like to move on a bit. When we get to Report, we have to get clear exactly where this House is headed on this matter, because the centralisation of power in the hands of the Secretary of State—it could be any Secretary of State of any political party in government—seems to me distinctly unhelpful, and I think the Bill will need significant amendment on Report.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I am speaking to Amendment 221; I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for adding their names. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, gave a brilliant exposition of many of the things I was prepared to say, and this amendment is really a prelude to later Amendments 207 and 336. For those two reasons, I will be very brief and save some powder for later debates.

I speak as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People, and this is about older people’s housing and the local plan. The amendment enables the Secretary of State to require local authorities to bring forward an assessment of the local need for housing for older people as part of the documentation in preparing their all-important local plan. Sadly, such an assessment is currently a rarity in local plans, despite the ever-increasing number of older people, for whom opportunities to downsize, to rightsize, can meet so many health, care and social needs.

Tailor-made housing for older people preserves independence, prevents or postpones the need for residential care, helps people to maintain fitness, combats loneliness and isolation, keeps people out of hospital, saves the NHS and care budgets, frees up family homes for the next generation and more. But we have a national shortfall in homes being built specifically for the older generation. Production is running at fewer than 8,000 homes per year, but demand is estimated at 30,000 to 35,000 homes a year.

The trouble is that the volume housebuilders are not interested. Given the choice, they will stick to building for the less discerning, more profitable market of young buyers and will avoid having to organise the ongoing management arrangements necessary for developments for later living. Since these housebuilders dominate the industry, nothing will change unless there is some pressure on these developers to do better. This amendment would start the process of getting on top of this key issue and is very much part of levelling up in extending healthy life expectancy and reducing health inequalities. It represents a key step in getting greater momentum behind a national effort to see local plans incorporate requirements for older people’s housing of different sorts.

I hope to build on this case in subsequent amendments but, in the meantime, I give notice that I will pursue the question asked by my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, about the task force on housing for older people. It would be great to hear what progress has been made in that direction. The task force was announced on 25 May 2021 by Chris Pincher, the then Housing Minister, at my all-party parliamentary group meeting. It would be great to hear how that is going, having been launched some two years ago. On that note, I commend this amendment.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I support Amendment 221 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, to which, as he indicated, my right reverend friend the Bishop of Chelmsford added her name. She apologises for being unable to be in her place today; in my own brief remarks, I will make a number of points that she would have contributed had she been here. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who, like the noble Lord, Lord Best, has a long and honourable history of leading the thinking on housing matters in this land.

I declare my interest in housing for older people: as set out in the register, I am a board member of the Wythenshawe Community Housing Group. In fact, it is more than an interest; it is a passion. In my time as chair of the association, we have opened a flagship development of 135 apartments for older people with mixed rental, shared ownership and outright purchase. Developments such as this enable local people to live in dignity in old age. They provide social space as well as private dwellings. In many cases, they allow residents to remain close to their family networks and former neighbours—the support networks that they need in later life. We can do well for older people but that should not have to rely on episcopal passion or potluck. It needs to be part of how we plan housing provision at a strategic level.

Research by BNP Paribas Real Estate published late last year found that there is a shortfall of more than 487,000 senior living housing units. As our population ages and the housing crisis continues, this housing shortage is set to grow. The 2021 census confirmed that there are more people than ever in older age groups. Some 18.6% of the total population, more than 11 million of us, were aged 65 years or older—an increase from 16.4% at the previous census a decade earlier. There is expected to be a 31% increase in those aged over 65 over the next 15 years. I reached that milestone myself a few months ago; I have a real interest in remaining part of these statistics for many years to come.

Furthermore, as has been indicated, housing is not just for fully able people. Some 91% of homes in England fail basic accessibility standards. Not only do we need more housing but we need to work to improve the suitability of our existing and new housing stock. In doing so, it is important to note that, as the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, reminded us before the dinner break, older people are not a homogenous group so needs will vary.

The recent Mayhew review suggested that 50,000 homes are designed for older people annually. Providing suitable housing for seniors not only addresses their housing and care needs but reduces demand for NHS services, as people stay healthier for longer, and frees up housing and surplus bedrooms for younger families. Amendment 221 would facilitate an important part of the solution to these issues, enabling the Government to consider older people’s housing needs in drawing up plans. These should include more integrated retirement communities, such as the one that I referred to in Wythenshawe. They foster social connection, especially for people living alone in the latter years of their lives. This would help to counter the epidemic of homelessness, since over 6 million people will be living in single person households by 2040, half of them over the age of 80.

There is a real opportunity in this Bill for His Majesty’s Government to work more comprehensively to address the housing needs of our ageing population. I urge them to take it.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 484. I thank my supporters: the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Stunell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I also declare my interests as a director of Peers for the Planet, and as a project director working for Atkins.

It would be helpful if I started with some definitions; I hope I am not teaching too many noble Lords to suck eggs. There are two types of emissions from buildings: operational carbon, which is those emissions due to energy and water use; and embodied carbon, which is those emissions related to construction materials. Operational carbon emissions are already limited by Part L of the Building Regulations, but there is no such parallel regulation limiting embodied carbon emissions.

For a long time, operational carbon emissions have accounted for the majority of buildings’ emissions. However, with decarbonisation of the grid, operational carbon has reduced in recent years and that trend is set to continue, particularly with the introduction of electric heating. As such, the embodied carbon emissions in construction contribute an increasing proportion of the whole-life carbon emissions for most buildings, with one study indicating that over two-thirds of a low-energy new building’s emissions are embodied.

UK embodied carbon emissions represent some 50 million tonnes of emissions per year, which is more than aviation and shipping combined—a huge quantity of emissions that is completely unregulated and has increased in recent years. We think of the huge effort that is going into mitigating the carbon emissions of aviation and shipping: we have a sustainable aviation fuels plan, jet zero and plans for corridors for emission-free shipping based on ammonia and hydrogen. But for embodied carbon the current plans in place are sparse—although industry is making some good progress in reporting—so we have a problem.

Lord Boyce, who sat on these Benches but passed away, sadly, late last year, had a saying which went something like, “There is no such thing as problems, only solutions in disguise”. The solution here is a fantastic campaign, which has been under way for a number of years, to add a new part, Part Z, to the building regulations; this would start with reporting and then move on to regulation of embodied carbon emissions. It has wide support across industry; 200 of the country’s leading developers, clients, contractors, architects, engineers and institutions have written statements of support. These include organisations such as British Land, Willmott Dixon, Sir Robert McAlpine and Laing O’Rourke—I could go on—and industry bodies such as the Construction Industry Council, the Concrete Centre and the Steel Construction Institute; so there is wide support right across industry.

Industry already has the tools necessary to respond to Amendment 484 and, indeed, is voluntarily using them. Regulation would simply unlock the final door to enable the existing mechanisms to run smoothly and to ensure a level playing field. It has already been the subject of a Private Member’s Bill put forward by Jerome Mayhew in another place, which has enjoyed wide cross-party support.

Many countries in Europe are already proceeding with the approach outlined in the amendment. These include France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark and Norway. It is not only about the emissions cost; we risk being left behind in the opportunities that the amendment will unlock if we do not proceed with it soon. These opportunities include the benefits of a standardised approach to reporting—rather than the patchwork quilt of the many approaches that exist currently—which would reduce overall costs to industry, and the treasure trove of data that would be generated and could then be used to inform further decarbonisation efforts, both in voluntary targets and in leading towards eventual regulation.

To add to this, the policy signal provided by this amendment would mean that the UK could then develop in growing markets such as steel recycling, an important area that could be developed in the UK. Rather than exporting scrap and importing recycled steel as we currently do, we could invest in that industry in the UK, as is currently done in the US and Europe. Low-carbon cement is another example; if the signal were given, attracting investment and moving that from lab scale to implementation would be much more of a priority—likewise, low-carbon building materials such as non-plastic insulation and the retrofit and reuse market.

So what is currently going on within government? The Government’s construction playbook calls for carbon assessments on all public projects. However, it provides no details as to how that should take place or what an appropriate carbon emissions level is. This leads to many inefficiencies in differing approaches to assessments, increasing overall costs to the taxpayer.

The key ongoing activity is a DHLUC consultation on embodied carbon reporting, which is due to report later this year. Our amendment has been drafted to align with that consultation; it states that regulations must be made within six months of the Act being passed. This amendment would give the Government a ready-made legislative vehicle to implement these regulations once the outputs of the consultation have been defined. All the pieces of the puzzle would then be in place; otherwise, I fear that we would have much longer to wait to make parliamentary time available—we need to move quickly and seize the opportunity here.

Working in business myself, one area of concern that I am very conscious of is to avoid placing additional burdens upon small and medium-sized enterprises. Whole-life carbon assessments will involve some additional costs to businesses, at least initially while tools and approaches are being refined. This is why we have placed limits within the amendment; it applies only to building works with a total useful floor area of 1,000 square metres or over and to developments with more than 10 dwellings. This shields smaller developers from the initial costs of undertaking whole-life carbon assessments.

Finally, I will go into a little more detail on how the amendment would work. The overall strategy is to “report first, limit later”. This follows the precedents set elsewhere in Europe and makes the transition towards zero-carbon construction easier, while sending a clear signal that legislated limits are coming. The amendment deals with the initial reporting aspect, with the intent that later regulations would cover embodied carbon limits, which would in themselves be informed by the initial reporting phase. As I alluded to earlier, approaches to many of the aspects in the amendment have already been developed and are being used voluntarily by industry; for example, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has defined a methodology for calculating embodied carbon.

The emissions footprint that embodied carbon represents means that we need to move forward with urgency and help to enable industry to bring forward solutions. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill is an ideal and timely enabler to make this happen.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 484 in the name of my noble friend Lord Ravensdale, which was so comprehensively and expertly laid out before us. I declare my interests as president of the Sustainable Energy Association and a member of the Peers for the Planet coalition.

This amendment would require housebuilders and other developers to produce an assessment of the amount of carbon for which the construction of a proposed project would be responsible over its life. This includes the carbon embodied in the building materials used and the construction processes deployed.

Everyone recognises the necessity of building in ways that limit carbon emissions once the building is constructed, but that is only half the story. Half of total emissions—possibly more—associated with new building come from the carbon embodied in its construction. Concrete, steel and other materials use vast quantities of fossil fuels, as does transportation, sometimes across continents, of heavy building materials.

The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee has shown that—as the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, said—the embodied carbon in new buildings accounts for more emissions than aviation and shipping put together; that is a great statistic. Yet this huge contributor to climate change is virtually invisible. Measuring and assessing embodied carbon alongside the subsequent emissions over a building’s lifespan should make all parties think harder when choosing building materials. There are many alternatives to the worst-offending components. This amendment will provide the basis for eliciting the evidence for more sophisticated decision-making.

The amendment could also lead to greater priority being given to making the best use of the buildings we already have before demolishing and replacing existing structures and adding to landfill. Demolition and construction also create dust and air pollution on a massive scale, amounting to some 30% of harmful particulates in urban areas. Retaining—rather than clearing and replacing—existing housing can also have social and community benefits. Demolition of Victorian terraced streets in the 1960s and 1970s is now seen to have been, in many cases, an unfortunate mistake. The amendment forces us to pay more attention in the wider levelling-up agenda to the regeneration of the homes we have today, rather than concentrating, as the Bill does, on the planning and delivery of new homes.

Action to upgrade existing properties—with green grants, regulations on energy efficiency for lettings, tax incentives and more—does not only address the decarbonisation challenge, it improves quality of life, reduces fuel poverty and saves NHS budgets. Recent research by the Building Research Establishment found that excessively cold homes, for example, are costing the NHS £540 million a year. The improvement of existing housing would also be accelerated, and the stock of available affordable homes increased, by the introduction of a national housing conversion fund to finance acquisition and modernisation of poor-quality, privately rented properties.

As the levelling-up programme moves onward, these regeneration measures will demand more of government’s attention. In the meantime, this amendment would achieve a more credible basis for judging the environmental impact of building practices and I strongly support it and the creation of a new Part Z to the building regulations.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th April 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Best]

207: Schedule 7, page 290, line 3, at end insert—
“(ha) the assessments of need for older people’s housing carried out in respect of the authority’s area, and”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that local authorities consider the needs for housing for older people when preparing local development plans.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for adding their names to Amendment 207. Indeed, when this House had a dress rehearsal for this amendment, discussing the related Amendment 221 last month, the noble Lord, Lord Young, expertly outlined the case for the planning system to do more to reflect our ageing population, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester—in place of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford—gave invaluable support to this theme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I want to clarify just one thing. I understand the balancing act between not wanting to impose on local communities and, as the Minister has indicated, the one-size-fits-all approach. However, what is confusing about the issue of targets versus localism is that the national housing targets were set by the Government, who then backed off in the other place. At one point, they thought it worth having national housing targets, so it cannot always have been some sort of communist plot to impose a national plan. The Government thought that this was a good idea and then backed off.

There is a second important point that people have made. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, used a quotation I had also wanted to use—he used it the other evening as well—from Theresa Villiers MP, when she boasted that the success of the amendments in the other place was leading to less housing being built locally. We have seen recent figures on the front page of the Times indicating that fewer homes are being built—that there is a hold-up. What do the Government suggest one does in a situation where local councils, for whatever reason, are not building the homes and there are no targets to hold them to account? These amendments at least try to rectify that situation.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for joining in and for nearly everyone commending the amendments that would lead to more housing for older people. I am extremely grateful for all those contributions. This has been twinned with a separate, and in some ways rather bigger, debate on the whole question of whether we should have national targets for the number of homes that we build, or whether that should be left to local authorities to determine. That huge question of the balance between those two things will run and run, and there will be more to follow.

I want to pick up one or two of the points which relate more to the needs of older people. I was delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, championed that cause too, and I liked his statistic that there will be another 500,000 more people aged over 75 in the next five years. It is an extraordinary phenomenon that we are getting older in such numbers. He advocated tax breaks to stimulate the production of new homes to meet this need. My all-party parliamentary group has advocated stamp duty relief for those who downsize because of the impact in terms of those homes that are left behind and then occupied by families. In fact, although the Treasury has resisted any attempts to reduce stamp duty—one can understand that—the net figure for the Treasury would rise, because once an older person has moved out of their home, a chain reaction follows. Two and a half or just under three sales would flow from that, from which the Treasury picks up stamp duty, so this would be a very sensible contribution to the national coffers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, raised one or two points. In relation to housing for older people, she made the point that there are cases where those managing these properties are not behaving well—for example, service charges are being abused in some way. I am afraid that I have had to repeat this many a time, but this is where we need the regulation of property agents, estate agents, letting agents and managing agents of leasehold property. The report on RoPA—the regulation of property agents—was delivered to the Government in 2019 and acclaimed as the way forward, but we are yet to see progress. We may see some progress in either the renters’ reform Bill or the leasehold reform Bill; I certainly hope so.

The noble Lord, Lord Bradley, mentioned the problems facing students. In a way, you can list almost every category of need and discover that the overall shortages we are suffering from as a country are hurting the people in that category, and students are no exception. They need to be taken fully into account.

The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, talked about slow buildout. I am a great fan of Oliver Letwin’s report, which addressed a lot of those issues. I think the noble Earl knows this, but water neutrality, nutrient neutrality and biodiversity net gain—all these issues which are affecting the housebuilders’ willingness to build—are being explored at present by the Built Environment Committee of your Lordships’ House. The committee is having a good look at the impact of this accumulation of different environmental requirements and how best we can handle that, so your Lordships should watch that space.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich reminded us of Professor Mayhew’s recent review of housing for older people. Professor Mayhew got to a figure of 50,000 homes being required every year, which is further than others have taken this. That was a seminal and very important report, and he made the fundamental point—which is in my original amendment that started this debate—that the local plan needs to incorporate a requirement for a proportion of housing for older people.

The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, really got us going on the government retreat from the requirement on local authorities to deliver the 300,000 homes that the Government still stand by, quite properly, as a national target. He also reiterated his support for housing for older people, which I much appreciated.

The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, raised an issue which he has raised before—and rightly so—that we can boost housing supply in various ways, one of which would be to give a lot more money to housing associations and social housing providers in grants. However, another would be to have more emphasis on neighbourhood plans, because when people get around and talk about these things, some of the resistance we have been hearing about evaporates. I must admit that I am one of the people who have been surprised by this, but neighbourhood plans are producing more homes for development, not fewer, in the end, when they have decided what is needed for their neighbourhood.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, made the point—and reiterated it—that these were all wise and helpful words, but the developers will find a way—they have done so far—to evade responsibilities and plead feasibility and other excuses for not doing the things that everyone knows that they should. This means having a very clear requirement in a local plan, sticking by it and ensuring that there is no retreat from what is in it on those various spurious grounds.

I was delighted that the Minister was able to say soothing words that the NPPF will take further the Government’s commitment to achieving more diversity of provision for older people, and indeed will be about boosting supply. I hope the taskforce that the Government have now established will help promote that and put some flesh on the bones of it, and that guidance—which will be statutory—will be helpful in pressing the case. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 207 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support all four amendments in my colleagues’ names, because it is very important to follow up the housing issue of “small is beautiful”. It comes when we have small builders doing rather more interesting things than some of the big ones. Living in Cornwall, I was particularly surprised by some statistics I got from the county council recently, showing that 6,000 affordable houses had received planning permission but only 600 were being built. I know that it is a timescale thing, and we can go on about that, but it is another example of what many noble Lords have talked about: builders holding things back and going for the properties that make the most money. In my little village of Polruan, there is nowhere for someone who wants to retire from running the shop to go to live. What do they do? They cannot afford to buy, the county council does not really help them very much, but they do not want to leave. So it is very important that we encourage small builders to develop small sites. It might cost a bit more, but it is something that councils must do.

I am particularly keen, as a member of the Built Environment Committee, along with several noble Lords who have been speaking today, to think about the issue in Amendment 504GJA—I think that is right—of a database of rogue landlords. It is a serious problem, and it goes back to the reason why, 30 or 40 years ago, Margaret Thatcher and others wanted everybody to be part of the property-owning democracy—because the rental market was so awful. Now people cannot afford to buy, and the rental market may have got better, but it has not got very much better. We have compared it with the situation in cities in France, Belgium, Germany and other places, where many more people rent, because they are professional people who think it is the right thing to do and do not have to worry about the landlords. Here, there are many too many cases of rogue landlords. I hope the amendment will deliver what it needs to—perhaps it needs a bit more detail before Report, but it is time we put the whole thing on a proper, reputable financial basis so that people feel happy to rent and the renters feel happy to let them. I support all the amendments.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 274A on small sites in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. Mine is slightly qualified support, but I am supportive. The amendment has been devised by the innovative people at Pocket Living, a company that specialises in imaginative developments on small sites, which are always difficult to develop. The amendment proposes a fast track through the planning system for smaller operators of this kind working on smaller sites—a quarter of a hectare and smaller—in return for delivering 50% affordable housing in every case.

It is a tempting proposition. We certainly need a boost for SME builders. In their evidence to your Lordships’ Built Environment Committee last year, the Federation of Master Builders explained that the output of SME firms had declined from about 40% of all new homes in the 1980s to around 10% today. One clear reason for this loss of their input has been the time and expense of trying to secure planning consents. My reservation is that the 50% affordable housing offer is not quite so tempting if all the homes are for shared ownership or the 80% of market rents of the so-called affordable rent variety. I would want to see half these new properties being for truly affordable social renting. Then we would have a really exciting proposition from the sector. With that reservation, I support Amendment 274A.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

First, I will respond to the first remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. Yes, I think everybody in this Chamber who has taken part wants the same thing: we want more of the right type of housing across our country. The difference is on how we deliver that, and that is what we are taking many hours and days to deliberate on—but it is important that we do that, because it is a really important issue for the country well into the future. The way the Government see it is that we need to give clear guidance on the big issues that need to be taken into account, but that we must ensure that local planning authorities start producing local plans that no longer need to take into account the national guidance, because that will be there anyway, but that work with all the data in their local area to ensure that what is in their local plan is what is required. That is not just numbers; it relates also to the view of the noble Lord, Lord Best, and others that we need to look at demography and the types of houses that we want to deliver.

If a local plan has strong evidence, I think it is then up to local leadership to stick to that plan. There may be some government work that needs to be done on the Planning Inspectorate, but we must stick up for what the evidence shows is required in our local area, reflected in our local plan. That is the way I see it; I wanted to get that off my chest.

I turn to the amendments in this group, which relate to planning and housing, starting with Amendment 208, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, and Amendment 274A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. These amendments both relate to the provision of small housing sites and are therefore considered here together.

The National Planning Policy Framework already sets out that local planning authorities should identify land to accommodate at least 10% of their housing requirement on sites no larger than one hectare, unless it can be shown, through the preparation of relevant plan policies, that there are strong reasons why this 10% target cannot be achieved.

The framework sets out that local planning authorities should use tools such as area-wide design assessments and local development orders to help bring small and medium-sized sites forward; and to support the development of windfall sites through the policies and decisions in the local plan, giving great weight to the benefits of using suitable sites within existing settlements for homes. Local planning authorities are asked to work with developers to encourage the subdivision of large sites where this could help to speed up the delivery of homes—we heard about that earlier.

The framework also sets out that neighbourhood planning groups should give particular consideration to the opportunities for allocating small and medium-sized housing sites. However, we have heard views that we could strengthen these policies to further support the Government’s housing objectives. This is why we invited views, as part of our recent consultation on reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework, on how national planning policies can further support developments on small sites, especially those that will deliver high levels of affordable housing and, particularly in urban areas, to speed up the delivery of housing, giving greater confidence and certainty to smaller and medium-sized builders, and to diversify the housebuilding market. The consultation ended on 2 March and responses received will help to inform our policy thinking on this important issue, as will this debate. We will look at the ideas that have been put forward, together with the responses. This is something on which there will be further consideration.

Amendment 213 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, seeks to create a legal requirement for local authorities to set policies in their local plans which ensure that housing needs are met in a way that secures the long-term health, safety and well-being of local people and ensures that such housing is affordable to those on average and lower incomes. We have, as she rightly said, debated this quite a lot. While I entirely understand the sentiment behind this, as I have said on previous groups, and consider the goal to be laudable, the Government are already committed to ensuring that new development, both market and affordable, meets high standards of quality. The National Planning Policy Framework is clear that planning policies in local plans should aim to achieve healthy, inclusive and safe places, and local authorities should ensure that they properly assess the needs of different groups when planning for new housing.

Ensuring that a sufficient number and range of homes can be provided to meet the needs of present and future generations is part of achieving sustainable development. Local planning authorities should set out an overall strategy for the pattern, scale and design quality of places, and make sufficient provision for housing. Furthermore, the framework is clear that planning policies and decisions should promote an effective use of land in meeting the need for homes, while ensuring safe and healthy living conditions. Local authorities are empowered to ensure that developers deliver a defined amount of affordable housing, including social housing, on market housing sites, unless exceptions apply. Our initial consultation on revisions to the NPPF seeks views on whether the role of social rent should be strengthened and whether we could go further to promote the delivery of housing for older people, as we discussed earlier.

Finally, under the community infrastructure levy, we will introduce a new “right to require” through regulations, in which local authorities can require that a certain amount of affordable housing is delivered in kind as a levy contribution. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, asked why the Government are not doing more to deliver this affordable housing. The Government are totally committed to increasing the supply of affordable housing. That is why, through our £11.5 billion affordable homes programme, we will deliver tens of thousands of affordable homes, both for sale and for rent, right across the country. The levelling up White Paper made a commitment to increase the supply of social rented homes. The affordable homes programme will respond to that commitment by increasing the share of social rent homes that will be delivered through the programme, helping those most in need. Since 2010 we have delivered over 632,000 new affordable homes, including 441,000 affordable homes for rent, of which 162,000 are homes for social rent.

Although there is a comprehensive legislative code within which local plans and decisions are made, the content of local plans is produced on the basis of national policy, which is flexible to allow updates to be made without new laws being passed. I hope this provides the noble Baroness with the clarification and assurances she needs to not press this amendment.

Amendment 504GJA tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would require all local housing authorities in England to publish the contents of the database of rogue landlords and property agents. The Government have stated their commitment to improving standards in rented accommodation and driving out rogue landlords. We will legislate to amend the Housing and Planning Act 2016 and make certain landlord offence information public as part of the forthcoming renters reform Bill. Opening up this information will ensure that tenants can make informed rental decisions, leading to a better rental experience, as was asked for by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 20th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I think the spirit moved. It is good the right reverend Prelate spoke first in this case.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak particularly to my Amendment 438, but I will preface my remarks by saying how much I have appreciated this debate and the contributions from the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds. We have explored this issue in a comprehensive and useful way, and I greatly appreciate that.

I draw noble Lords’ attention to the Affordable Housing Commission report, which came out in the middle of Covid and was therefore buried and forgotten by everybody. The AHC report, which noble Lords can find via Google or their favourite search engine, was a pretty big effort, thankfully funded fully by the Nationwide Foundation—the Nationwide Building Society’s foundation—with a secretariat from the Smith Institute; I had the honour of chairing this. The report is a pretty meaty document and worth those who are interested in this subject following through, but that was a great debate on those amendments, and I support the essence of all of them.

My amendment 438, to which the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has kindly added his name, seeks to remove from the statute book an obnoxious, offensive legislative measure which has hung over local authorities since the passing of the Housing and Planning Act 2016. I reiterate my declaration of interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Back in 2016, I was the LGA president and along with allies from all parts of the House, including the noble Lord, Lord Porter, with his local government expertise, and the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, we fought—unsuccessfully—to remove these awful sections from the 2016 Act.

What does this part of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 say, and why is it so troublesome? The key section imposes obligations on local authorities to sell their most valuable council housing when tenants move out, rather than reletting the property. It does so by requiring local authorities to pay a levy to the Secretary of State equivalent to the market value of the best council housing when it becomes vacant, multiplied by the estimated number of vacancies for the next year. To raise the money to pay this levy, local authorities would obviously have no option but to sell their most valuable homes. Most of the proceeds from these compulsory sales go straight to the Secretary of State, who, in a convoluted twist, would use the money to compensate housing associations for selling properties at large discounts to their tenants under an extension of the right to buy.

The effect of this extraordinary measure, had it ever been implemented, would have been highly damaging both for local authorities trying to meet the acute need for social housing in their areas and for the families desperately waiting for a home. Council housing would be further stigmatised and labelled as only for those with no hope of anything better, and with fewer re-lets, pressure on the remaining council stock would be even more intense than it already is.

Buyers of the housing which councils would be forced to sell would very often be private landlords who would let to similar occupiers but would charge market rents, thereby imposing twice the burden on the Exchequer for tenants in receipt of benefits. I was glad to catch up with the latest statistic from the noble Lord, Lord Stunell: that 50% of properties sold under the right to buy have been moved into the hands of private landlords and, obviously, let at rents that are twice as much, if not more.

To add insult to injury, the 2016 Act also empowered the Secretary of State to top up this raid on council resources by requiring local authorities to raise the rents to market levels for any tenant foolish enough to increase their income above a fixed level. The extra rent would not go towards management and maintenance of council housing but instead would be remitted to the Secretary of State as a windfall for the Government.

I moved an amendment opposing the measure and it was carried by a huge majority in this House. I even featured on the BBC documentary on the work of the House of Lords. Although it remains in law, it is another ingredient in the 2016 Act that thankfully has not seen the light of day.

Returning to the compulsory sales of higher-value council housing, as is addressed by the amendment, we can now see what a disaster this would have been—but the offending measure remains on the statute book. In reality, this sword of Damocles hanging over councils is no longer a major threat since Government Ministers have made it clear that they have no intention of using these draconian asset-stripping powers. Indeed, I am confident that Ministers understand the imperative for more, not less, social housing provision.

It was, no doubt, the work of an enthusiastic but naive special adviser coming up with a cunning wheeze to extract the cost from local authorities of securing new right-to-buy sales by housing associations. Today there would be little appetite for such shenanigans which would reduce the stock of available social housing, following the right to buy’s removal of 2.8 million council homes and the subsequent higher costs of using the private rented sector instead. Indeed, the right to buy has now been abolished in Scotland, and Wales is following suit.

Councils have welcomed the Government’s recent move enabling them to retain 100% of right-to-buy receipts for 2022-23 and 2023-24. With long waiting lists for social housing and the private sector becoming more and more unfeasible for many households, that announcement should support councils trying to replace the homes sold through right to buy. It would be helpful if the Government completed this change and made it permanent rather than just for two years. On this theme, I hope that the Government will finally agree to councils having the ability to set right-to-buy discounts locally as part of the Bill’s emphasis on devolution.

The time has surely come to be rid of this 2016 misguided measure to strip local authorities of their best housing assets. The LGA and others have been waiting for a legislative opportunity for the Government to enact their clear intention to have nothing to do with this defunct legislative device. The Bill provides that opportunity, and I think everyone in local government and in the world of social housing will breathe a sigh of relief to see this expunged from the statute book. I commend this amendment.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to intervene briefly to put this debate in an important context. Before I do so, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Best, on eventually achieving the victory which he sought when the 2016 Act was going through; it was not the best piece of legislation on housing that Parliament has seen. I agree with what the right reverend Prelate said—that we should unfreeze the local housing allowance or, if we cannot, increase the discretionary housing grant, to enable those who find that they cannot meet the rent to have more support.

I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that “affordable” is a misnomer, but there is a fundamental choice that we have to make, which is: the higher the rents, the more social houses you can build; and the lower the rents, the fewer social houses you can build. That is simply because of the way that social landlords are funded. A Government decide to have a capital fund available for new builds. A Government of a different persuasion may have a higher figure than the current one but, whatever that figure, the number of houses that can be built is dependent on the rent levels which the social landlords can charge.

A Housing Minister has a choice: you can have lower rents, social rents or genuinely affordable rents, but you will get less output. When I had responsibility and was faced with this spectrum, I went for slightly more output but slightly higher rents, to meet the demand for new houses and to build more houses that would last 60 years. I recognise that others may choose to go the other way on the spectrum, but you cannot get away from the fact that this is the choice. If you want to have affordable rents reduced to social rents, the consequence is that you will have fewer houses. I make this intervention at the end of this debate just to put it in a slightly broader context.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 24th April 2023 Lords Chamber

Debate on Amendment 261 resumed.

[Lord Best (CB)]

I think it falls to me to intervene at this point. I will speak to Amendment 269, which concerns the development of larger housing sites. I reiterate declarations of interest: I am vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association and of the Local Government Association. I thank the CPRE, whose excellent legal advisers devised this amendment. I am delighted to see the good work being done by the CPRE in partnership with Shelter, the TCPA and others, to improve decisions on what and where new development takes place.

Amendment 269 seems a fairly innocuous and technical one, but actually it fundamentally changes the dynamics of new development on larger sites. It seeks to bring into play some of the recommendations from the 2018 review of housebuilding practices by Sir Oliver Letwin, who was working on behalf of the Government. The amendment addresses issues of diversification of housing and infrastructure on larger sites, as advocated by Sir Oliver. Diversification of providers and provision would replace the housebuilders’ model of one developer cramming in the maximum number of homes of the same house type for the same house buyers and selling them at the very slow but profitable buildout speed that the market will absorb. Instead, larger sites, said Sir Oliver, should be subject to a diversity of housing provision, where a number of different developers, including SME builders, housing associations, self-builders and so on, would build a variety of different sorts of housing for families for rent and for sale, perhaps student housing and certainly accommodation for older people, to which we have made reference under other amendments, with green spaces and infrastructure, as well as transport links for walking and cycling and public transport, not just private cars.

Those other providers would work together at the same time, building out the total development at a much faster rate than with single ownership by one volume housebuilder. That approach would diminish the dominance of the oligopoly of volume housebuilders, which have failed to deliver what society needs. Instead, the variety of developers and housing providers would work simultaneously in meeting the needs of the locality. The detail of the diversity of types and tenures of the new housing, including social housing, would be enshrined in the local plan—now the local development plan.

Sir Oliver saw much merit in local development corporations, at arm’s length but wholly owned by the local authority or combined authority. They could acquire sites and parcel them out within a master plan. In cases where the development corporation is unable to reach agreement with the landowner on the site’s value, compulsory purchase may be the only way forward. If so, the terms for the CPO would be set by the same requirements to meet the obligations laid out in the local development plan and national policies. The value of the site is thereby moderated by the necessity of complying with local and national mandates.

Where no development corporation is involved, and, indeed, whether or not a CPO is needed, a similar outcome could be achieved if this diversification and specificity was required for planning permission to be granted for any development of a site of more than 500 homes. In these cases, the value of the land would always be deeply affected by the insistence, built into the system by this amendment, that the local plan and national policies must be adhered to.

This amendment is one of a pair with my Amendment 312A, which we debated earlier in Committee. Both amendments seek to capture land value and enable a real shift in the social benefits that can flow from development of new housing in the UK. Amendment 312A was concerned with land in public ownership, seeking to ensure that it was made available for optimal economic, social and environmental use rather than being sold off to the highest bidder. This amendment is concerned with land in private ownership; again, to enable its development to serve the public good, not simply to achieve the maximum profit for the developer. The amendment will also secure in law clarity on the long-standing arguments around “viability”. It would make it clear that compliance with the requirements of the local plan and national duties is an essential part of the basis for valuing the land. Developers would no longer be able to claim that they are unable to meet the local authority’s demands for affordable housing or other amenities simply because of the price they paid for the site.

In fact, the courts have already made it clear that this argument must prevail. The now famous Parkhurst Road planning case concerning a site in Islington shed light on the legal position last August. The developer argued that because of the price it had to pay for the site, it could not afford to provide the affordable housing sought by the council, but the judge, the honourable Mr Justice Holgate, ruled that this excuse could not stand. Indeed, he took the RICS to task for not providing clearer guidance on such matters.

This amendment is intended to radically improve the development of all larger sites. It seeks to take back control from the housebuilders and developers which propose and build developments that do not make optimal use of land. The amendment would mean that all new developments would at last have to meet the policy objectives contained in local and neighbourhood—if they exist—plans, specifying the social affordable housing requirements and the mix of types and sizes of accommodation, and taking account of national policies. Land values would have to reflect these realities.

I realise that, as with my amendment on publicly owned land, the approach of this amendment is dependent on local authorities having and finalising local plans, but when they do this, when they have those plans, this makes them much more meaningful. The Minister may feel unable to accept my amendments, but perhaps consideration of this way forward, the follow-through of the admirable work of Sir Oliver Letwin, could start us down a path that achieves the same desirable outcome. I commend the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Best (CB)]

I am encouraged by the tone with which these issues are being approached. As regards the placing of penalties upon those who are not getting on with the job by refusing future applications from that firm, I can see some hazards here, not least if the delay is happening in one area and the applications for further schemes are somewhere completely different. Is this new power of withholding permission for new applications because you have been so slow in building out the ones you already have to be transferred from one local authority to another, or is it confined to a local authority acting only with regard to interests within its own boundaries?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I believe it is in one local authority, but I will check that. I will let the noble Lord know and make sure that everybody else in the Committee is aware.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 24th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak also to Amendments 281CB to 281CE. These amendments are aimed at creating greater opportunities for those people who want to build their own home by ensuring that local authorities make sufficient provision for self- and custom-build sites in their areas.

The Government believe that self- and custom-build housing can play a crucial role as part of a wider package of measures to boost home ownership and diversify the housing market, as well as helping to deliver the homes that people want. Self and custom build improve the design and quality of homes as they are built by the people who will live in them.

We are aware that, under the current legislation, some development permissions that are not necessarily for self- and custom-build housing are being counted towards a local planning authority’s statutory duty. This has meant there is an incomplete and inaccurate picture of self and custom build at a local and national level, which can distort the market and have wider impacts on small- and medium-sized enterprises and developers.

In the other place, the Government introduced Clause 115 to ensure that a development permission will count in meeting the duty only if it is actually for self-or custom-build housing. The Government have brought these additional amendments forward to further tighten up the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015 to ensure that the intended policy aim of the original legislation is being met in practice.

Amendment 281CB ensures that only land made available explicitly for self-build and custom housebuilding qualifies towards the statutory duty to grant planning permission et cetera and meets demand for self and custom build. We have tabled the amendments to give the power to the Secretary of State to define in regulations the descriptions of types of development permissions that will count towards meeting this duty. This will ensure that only development permissions that are intended to be built out as self or custom build will be counted. The regulations are likely to require any permissions granted for self and custom build to be characterised by a condition or planning obligation making that requirement explicit. Amendment 281CE specifies that any regulations made under this new power will be subject to the negative resolution procedure.

Amendment 281CC ensures that any demand that a relevant authority has accrued for self and custom build through its self and custom build register that has not been discharged within the three-year compliance period will not dissipate after this time, but will roll over and remain part of the demand for the authority to meet under Section 2A of the 2015 Act. Amendments 281CA and 281CD are consequential, minor and technical amendments that amend the 2015 Act to ensure that Amendment 281CC works in practice. Overall, the amendments proposed ensure that the 2015 Act works as intended, without ambiguity.

These amendments, accompanied by our other interventions, including the launch of the Help to Build equity loan scheme and the Government’s response to Richard Bacon MP’s independent review into scaling up of self-build and custom housebuilding, will help to mainstream the self- and custom-build sector. This will allow more people to build their own home, help support SMEs and boost housebuilding. I therefore hope that noble Lords will support these amendments. I beg to move.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support this group of government amendments aimed at increasing the number of homes built or commissioned by their future occupiers. I had the pleasure of piloting the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015 through your Lordships’ House. It started as a Private Member’s Bill from Richard Bacon MP, who has tirelessly—I would say relentlessly—pursued his campaign to get the sector to scale up. Most recently, he has produced an independent review to boost the building of self-commissioned new homes across all tenures, and these amendments flow from the Bacon review to which the Minister referred.

In countries as diverse as Germany and New Zealand, much of the new housebuilding is done in partnership with its future occupiers who, if not actually building the homes, are specifying the form they take and working with an SME builder to meet individual requirements. The result in other countries is that homes are more varied, personalised, affordable and energy efficient. These amendments attempt to give this still fledgling sector further impetus by helping self-builders and custom housebuilders to get their hands on the land on which to build, rather than leaving the volume housebuilders to gobble it all up. The sector would be an important beneficiary of my earlier amendment on diversification on larger sites, but a shift to that Letwin-inspired development model is not going to happen immediately. Bolstering the existing means to get local authorities allocating land for self-build and custom housebuilding is eminently sensible. I congratulate Richard Bacon on his continuing tenacity, the Right to Build Task Force on getting the Government to take forward these amendments and the Government on accepting them.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Bull) (CB)]

I remind the Committee that we are still debating the group beginning with Amendment 313, if any noble Lord wishes to speak on amendments within that group.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I am sorry to move ahead of my noble friend. The amendments in this group go to the heart of an issue that has been of much concern among providers of social housing: will the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill lead to more affordable housing—in particular, more social rented housing—or will the replacement of Section 106 agreements with the new infrastructure levy mean fewer new affordable homes? As the Minister has noted, the Government hope and expect the new infrastructure levy regime to result in

“at least as much, if not more”—[Official Report, 17/11/22; col. 1076.]

social housing. Most of the amendments in this group are trying to make sure that this aspiration becomes a reality.

The big picture is that the Government have maintained their overall target of 300,000 homes per annum, and repeated studies maintain that about a third of this total should be social housing—that is, housing affordable to the half of the population on average incomes and below. At a time of widespread concern that poverty and health disparities have worsened, housing policies can cause wider inequalities in society or be a means of reducing them.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Grand Committee

I very much look forward to hearing the contributions of other noble Lords on these amendments. I beg to move.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I support the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol. I will speak to Amendments 485, 505, 510 and 512 in her name and mine, and those of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. I declare one or two interests that have not been relevant before: until last year I was a Church Commissioner, and my wife is a member of our local parochial church council.

The amendments would clarify a grey area of the law and ensure that local parish and town councils can make grants, if they wish, to projects that involve ecclesiastical buildings. At last, we have an amendment that costs the Government nothing, does not require anyone to do anything they do not want to do, helps build and sustain local communities, chimes with the principles of devolved decision-making, involves no political controversy and deprives lawyers of undeserved fees for pointless legal cases.

The amendment addresses the situation facing a local council that wishes to support a local initiative by an ecclesiastical charity. Making grants to such bodies toward building works of any kind was prohibited by Section 8 of the Local Government Act 1894. It is believed that the Government intended to remove this barrier to local grant-making through Section 215 of the Local Government Act 1972, but doubts remained as to whether the 1972 Act achieved this intention.

On behalf of its 10,000-member local councils, the National Association of Local Councils obtained legal advice which it has been obliged to share. The advice was, unfortunately, that the 1894 Act still stands because it is a specific prohibition, despite the intentions of the 1972 Act, which addresses generalities. There is no point anyone blaming the messenger; the fact is that the legal position appears to be clear: parish and local councils cannot give grants toward works by ecclesiastical charities.

As a result of this interpretation of the legal position, some church bodies, of different denominations, have had grant applications rejected by local councils and many more are put off making applications, even though those councils may be keen to help. Often, the applications have been for small but locally significant initiatives. Typical examples collected by the Historic Religious Buildings Alliance of church-based projects where support was refused include the funding of a disabled toilet in a church hall not used as a place of worship but by a range of secular groups. Support could also not be offered for a nonconformist hall creating a meeting place for Guides and Scouts.

Many local church organisations have converted church buildings into centres for community activity—for classes, a café, food banks, youth clubs, et cetera—often while retaining use of the building as a place of worship. Similarly, ecclesiastical charities have modified their church halls for the benefit of local people. Grants for the retention of what is often a landmark building, frequently in the centre of town, for a renewed or extended purpose, give new life to places that have served local communities for sometimes hundreds of years. The alternative of demolishing a redundant church building not only loses this opportunity for the benefit of the locality but takes away a visual asset that can enhance a sense of place and belonging.

It has been suggested that local councils should take cases to the courts, as the right reverend Prelate has mentioned, to test the legal position. If it then becomes clear that no such grants can be made, new facilitating legislation could be introduced. However, this forgoes the opportunity to act now through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. There might be a very long wait before another legislative opportunity arises. Anyway, it seems unfair that Parliament should pass the buck to the courts to decide this matter instead of expressing its will clearly and definitively. Moreover, going to law is a costly business and should clearly be avoided if at all possible.

The wording of these four amendments may well be imperfect; I am sure the right reverend Prelate and all of us supporting them would be more than happy with a government amendment that achieves the same outcome more elegantly. There are only winners here. I look forward very much to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Best. I agree with everything they said. I begin with an apology to the Committee; I have not played the part in debates on this Bill that I would like to have done because I have been caring for a wife recovering from an operation and have not been able to be present late into the night. I am grateful that things came to a halt in the Chamber on Monday, which enabled us to be here today.

I declare an interest in that I have been a church warden of three churches for a total of 36 years, in each of which I had to be in charge of or strongly supporting an appeal. I remember being church warden in the early 1970s in the village of Brewood in Staffordshire, when we suddenly discovered dry rot. We had to raise some £40,000 very quickly, and we did it. When I was church warden at St Margaret’s, Westminster, we had to raise £1 million in the early 1980s, and we did it. At Enville, in Staffordshire, where I was warden for some 16 years, we had to raise something like £250,000, and we did it—but with great difficulty. As one who has been a trustee and then a vice-president of the National Churches Trust for well over 40 years, president of the Staffordshire Historic Churches Trust for some 20 years, and vice-president of the Lincolnshire Churches Trust for a very long time, I speak with a little knowledge and great feeling.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I apologise that I have to leave before the end of the session today. The late setting of the time for this session means that I have another engagement at the same time.

The LURB has become a bit of club, albeit niche, over these 15 days of Committee. There will be time to thank other people working on the Bill in due course, but, as she steps down from her Front-Bench role, I thank very much indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, for her courtesy, diligence and good humour during the days spent on this Bill.

Our Amendment 492 refers to the topic of no-fault evictions—much discussed in your Lordships’ House—and suggests putting provision in the Bill to cease this practice. At present, landlords can evict tenants without giving a reason and by issuing a Section 21 notice. This gives tenants just two months before their landlord can apply for an eviction order. Last year, research by Shelter said that nearly 230,000 private renters had been served with no-fault eviction notices since April 2019.

The utter misery and fear this creates for people in rented property is untold. I deal with so many cases of this as a local councillor. There is disruption when people have to move schools, particularly for families that have children with special educational needs and have to be moved away from one school but may not have the provision they need in another school. It disrupts work, childcare and people’s social lives and contacts. We have to think about how we address this issue.

We appreciate that there have been recent announcements from the Government about the Renters (Reform) Bill that may address this practice. However, surely the quickest and most effective way to end this practice, which has caused so much distress to renters—including the disruption to family life that I mentioned—and, importantly, adds to the homelessness burden on local authorities, is to put this measure into the levelling-up Bill.

We understand that, under the proposed reforms, landlords will be able to evict tenants only in certain circumstances, including when they wish to sell the property or when they or a close family member want to move in, and only after a six-month notice period. However, we believe that after three months they will be free to put the property back on the rental market. We also point out that, under the current proposals, renters who receive a possession notice will no longer have the right to immediate help from their council to avoid homelessness. Shelter is calling for these time periods to increase and for the notice period for evictions to increase from two to four months. In areas of high housing demand where supply is limited, it can take months for a family to find a new property suitable for their needs. These short time periods for evictions cause untold stress and harm to the families affected.

Our Amendment 504GJF in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman and the noble Lords, Lord Young, Lord Wasserman and Lord Best, refers to the long-standing issue of the Vagrancy Act 1824. It asks Ministers what impact they think the continuing provisions of this ancient Act will have on levelling up and regeneration. As recently as 17 May, my noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley raised this issue in your Lordships’ House, pointing out that

“the delay in commencing the repeal of the Vagrancy Act has left this matter unresolved for more than a year. In that time, more than 1,000 vulnerable people have been arrested under its provisions”.

In response to the Minister’s Answer that

“we will repeal the Vagrancy Act when suitable replacement legislation is brought forward”,

my noble friend pointed out the concern that the Government are seeking

“to recriminalise homelessness through new anti-social behaviour legislation … contrary to the principles established in the Government’s rough sleeping initiative. That is, in effect, the Vagrancy Act by the back door.”—[Official Report, 17/5/23; col. 240.]

We believe the Government could now move past criminalisation as a response to homelessness and offer genuine, workable support. It is simply not acceptable as we move rapidly forward towards the second century of this punitive Act being in place that we are waiting to repeal it until we can find a similarly punitive alternative. The levelling-up Bill could and should be the place to address the issues of those who are street homeless.

Look at projects such as the Finnish Housing First, where packages of support for people with complex needs are delivered alongside housing. We have delivered some of this in my borough, using modern methods of construction homes. They make a real difference; four out of five of the people supported in this way end their homelessness for good and get themselves on a different path in life. The levelling-up Bill would really be doing its job properly if it addressed issues such as that. Our amendment would start the process of making sure that we consider street homelessness a levelling-up challenge. I beg to move.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 504GJF from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, also supported by the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Wasserman. However, this is not the amendment I would have liked to see. That would read: “The Vagrancy Act 1824 is hereby repealed”. That amendment was ruled to be outside the scope of this Bill. This amendment is a tentative step in the right direction and the very least we should be taking forward at this stage.

Your Lordships’ House played a crucial part in getting the repeal of this antiquated Act into the House of Commons’ version of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. This House passed the repeal amendment on a cold February night, at 25 minutes past midnight, earning the thanks of the coalition of homeless charities, led by Crisis, that had campaigned for this change over many years. In the Commons, Nickie Aiken MP and the right honourable Robert Jenrick MP helped secure this repeal, and all that remained was for the commencement date to be set. But the Government postponed the repeal for well over a year, pending the results of consultation on whether losing the 1824 legislation would deprive police forces of powers they need to address “aggressive begging”.

Those of us involved in the efforts to get rid of this archaic Act have emphasised two points. First, the criminalisation of people sleeping rough not only sends out all the wrong messages in a civilised society but directly undermines efforts to help people off the streets and provide them with the support—for example, to tackle alcohol and substance misuse and mental health problems—that they desperately need. Many homeless people, knowing that homelessness is itself illegal, will not come forward, even if they are abused and harassed by obnoxious bullies. The police have a role not in arresting the homeless but in supporting them to receive the help they need. Indeed, it would seem a step forward if the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017—which requires certain public bodies, including prisons, to notify local authorities when they know of people at risk of homelessness—could be extended to embrace the police as well.

Secondly, there is the objection that powers need to be retained from the old Act—invented or included in a new Act—to protect the public from anti-social begging. We considered this point when discussing the repeal of the Vagrancy Act with Ministers. We were not convinced that there are gaps in existing legislation that need new laws. The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 provided a range of powers to deal with nuisance of this kind. Other legislation, including the Modern Slavery Act 2015, addresses cases where criminal gangs are involved. Drawing upon the expert legal advice of the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, we concluded that it was entirely unnecessary to create new legislation to supplement all of the existing police powers. Indeed, only a very small minority of police forces currently make use of the Vagrancy Act, strongly suggesting that, since the others are operating without recourse to the penal measures in the old Act, a new Bill is quite unnecessary.

I recently asked the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, for news of positive action by the Government to end street homelessness, which they aspire to do by the end of 2024. It was good to hear the positive measures being taken to fund local initiatives and support multiagency working. There is much more to do, and I encourage the Government to step up the important positive work to ease the miseries of those sleeping rough on our streets. In the meantime, let us have all the evidence that government has collected on the Vagrancy Act, including its damaging impact. Let us move forward as quickly as possible towards the repeal of this dreadful relic of the Napoleonic Wars, before its 200th anniversary.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I am sure that we are all disappointed that we will not hear from the noble Lord who also sponsored these amendments—

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 18th July 2023 Lords Chamber

My amendment simply seeks to remove the veil of commercial confidentiality which is drawn, without exception, over the negotiations taking place between developers and planners, and which result in a reduction in the number of affordable homes to which they are committed. My amendment would disapply Section 43 of the Freedom of Information Act, so that commercial confidentiality cannot be used as a cloak of concealment. I very much hope that the Minister can see that this too is in exact alignment with the Government’s own objectives of securing more affordable homes, and that he will therefore willingly accept my Amendment 94, which I also commend to the House.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 71 in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornhill and Lady Warwick of Undercliffe. I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and chair of the Devon Housing Commission, as well as my various housing interests as set out in the register.

Following the speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, your Lordships will note that some doubt hangs over the future of the infrastructure levy. We have heard that representations have been made to the Secretary of State from some 30 significant organisations, which all feel that it would be better to stay with the current Section 106 regime. Those bodies argue that it would be better to stay with the devil we know, even though the system is not perfect—after all, the current system has been achieving half the affordable housing built each year, and no one wants to reduce the numbers. However, our Amendment 71 supposes that the infrastructure levy persists, and it seeks to ensure that the new arrangements do not lead to fewer genuinely affordable homes. Before saying more about Amendment 71, I offer support to Amendment 77 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and Amendments 70 and 94 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell.

I am grateful to the coalition of housing bodies that constitutes Homes for the North for their expert help in drafting Amendment 71. In Committee, we considered a range of amendments which all had the objective, in effect, of holding the Government to account for their own promise that the new infrastructure levy arrangements will lead to

“as much—if not more”

affordable social housing.

In Committee, the Government responded to our proposed amendments with various counter-arguments, the first of which was that this issue would be better dealt with in the regulations that will follow enactment and appear in the revised version of the National Planning Policy Framework. However, the affordable housing element is a fundamental part of the planning system. Currently, 78.5% of the funding via Section 106 obligations on housebuilders goes to affordable housing. This current priority needs legislative protection in the face of endless competing claims for the new levy proceeds.

Secondly, it can be argued that local authorities should be entirely free to decide for themselves how to spend infrastructure levy proceeds, with no obligation to give priority to affordable housing. However, the infrastructure levy represents a significant new tax-raising power for local authorities, and it would surely be expected that the Government would impose some limitations on its use.

Thirdly, the Minister told us that the relevant clause in the Bill already protects affordable housing provision. We responded that the relevant clause simply required local authorities to

“have regard … to the desirability of ensuring that”

the provision of affordable housing

“is equal to or exceeds”

the output achieved under the Section 106 system. This is a very weak provision, enabling funding for affordable housing to be used instead for any number of other spending opportunities.

Amendment 71 addresses these points and substantially strengthens the wording of the Bill, covering both the way the levy is set and how the money is subsequently spent. It removes the lightweight

“have regard to the desirability of”,

leaving “must ensure”, thereby prioritising affordable housing as identified in the local development plan and the infrastructure delivery strategy.

The Minister has followed through from Committee stage in an exemplary manner. She has reconsidered the position, held meetings with interested Peers and brought forward amendments that address the same issue as our Amendment 71. Her Amendments 72, 73, 74 and 75 alter the offending words in the original version, leaving out

“to the desirability of ensuring”

and inserting the much more direct “seek to ensure”. I am grateful indeed to the Minister for bringing forward these changes in wording, which tighten up the requirements on local authorities to do the right thing in respect of social housing provision.

However—is there not always a “however”?—the new Amendment 76 provides the local authority charging the infrastructure levy with a “get out of jail free” card. It allows the charging authority to drop the obligations on developers where compliance with its requirements for affordable housing would make the development in this area “economically unviable”. It lets developers off the hook where, not for the first time, they plead the case that they cannot achieve the affordable housing identified in the local plan. It is these arguments about viability that have made Section 106 so fraught, usually with local planning authorities losing the argument against the developers and their consultants and solicitors.

This extra clause, which promotes viability on the face of the Bill, undermines the good work being done by the four preceding amendments from the Minister. I may be interpreting this unkindly, but the amendment seems to provide the opportunity for the powerful volume housebuilders to claim—probably because they have paid too much for the land—that providing affordable housing will reduce their profits excessively.

We now have the report of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Select Committee of the House of Commons, which looks at planning policy and comments on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. The Select Committee welcomes these government amendments, which would strengthen the duty on local authorities to deliver at least as many affordable homes; but the committee warns that the additional proviso that this duty would be redundant if it could make the development “unviable” puts fulfilment of the Government’s ambition at risk.

The Commons committee concludes that the new infrastructure levy

“may not deliver as many affordable homes as the current regime”.

That outcome would be a disaster. We desperately need more, not fewer, affordable homes. This leaves me welcoming the government amendments, which attempt to do the same job as our Amendment 71, which need not now be pressed. But I will oppose the new government Amendment 76 unless it can be justified by the Minister when she responds.

This country desperately needs more housing for those on lower incomes. We must do everything we can to ensure that the new infrastructure levy regime does not diminish supply from the all-important obligations on housebuilders. There is a clear and present danger here, and I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Best, who has rightly commended my noble friend the Minister for the careful way she has responded to some of the points made in Committee on the infrastructure levy, and indeed on some of the further discussions we have had and the responses to the technical consultation on the infrastructure levy. That is rather important to take into account.

I confess that, listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I felt that she was making a speech that would have been relevant at the time the technical consultation was published but not at the point at which the Government had clearly responded to that consultation, brought forward amendments and written to us, as the Minister did on 4 July, about those amendments and other factors.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

This Better Planning Coalition amendment protects the right of the public and Parliament to have a say in planning policy and aligns the Bill’s planning powers with existing processes. I was delighted to get support from the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Carrington, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, for her support from the Labour Front Bench. If there is no significant reassurance from the Minister, I will put this matter to a vote of the House.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 190 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, and the noble Lord, Lord Carrington of Fulham. As we have heard, this amendment has the support of the Royal Town Planning Institute and a whole range of other distinguished bodies with planning expertise. Actually, the amendment is relatively modest and pretty straightforward. It does not reject the idea of creating national development management policies. What it does is simply ensure that these new planning policies result from thoroughgoing consultation, after due publicity, and are subject to proper parliamentary scrutiny. Such a consultative process, with accountability to Parliament just as for the national planning policy statements, would mean that these new NDMPs will have the authority and credibility that otherwise they are likely to lack. I hope the Minister will agree.

[Lord Carrington of Fulham (Con)]

My Lords, I too rise to support Amendment 190, to which I have added my name. Your Lordships will be delighted to know that I do not have to speak for very long as everything I was going to say has already been said. The House sounds as though it is unanimous in the view: that there needs to be some sort of constraint on the proposal in this clause, to ensure that there is consultation; that local communities should have primacy in deciding what happens in their area; and that the policy that general consultation should be in the hands of Secretary of State, without the definition of what that consultation should be, is one that no parliamentary assembly should readily accept.

I believe there is a principle in this amendment, that we can trust my noble friend the Minister, and we can probably trust my noble friend the Secretary of State in the other place; but, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said, they will change. They will inevitably change. They may change for the better or for the worse; we do not know. But one thing is certain: if you give a power to centralise decision-taking, sooner or later that power will be abused. It is essential to make sure that we do not pass legislation in this House that allows the abuse of power—particularly, the forcing on to local communities of policies that they reject themselves.

It may well be—indeed, I think there is considerable evidence—that our planning laws do not work; we need only look at the problems over the environment, housing and so on. We should absolutely be looking at how our planning laws should be changed and how we should free up, speed up and make less expensive the whole planning process. But the way to do that is not by giving powers to the Secretary of State to override any consultation, any local decision-making and, indeed, the local power of other constitutionally established bodies such as local government.

I support the amendment for a lot of reasons. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will agree that this issue needs greater clarification, that it needs to be properly addressed, that this amendment almost certainly achieves all of that, and that, possibly with a few tweaks from the Government, this amendment could form part of the Bill to everybody’s benefit.

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The Committee on Climate Change recently reported, to use its words, that solar development is “significantly off track”. If we are going to reach the target of 70 gigawatts by 2035, the Government really do need to get moving. I believe they recognise this, because they have said that they want to go further and faster on solar. If so, I ask the Minister to accept the amendment and, in doing so, match what many other countries are already doing. Apart from the benefit to UK energy consumption, it would lead to supporting around 600,000 new jobs. That is not something to be sneezed at; it would be another very important benefit to this amendment being implemented. I hope to hear a positive response from the Minister to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, this a very full group of powerful amendments and I find them all very appealing. I particularly support the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, in his brilliant Healthy Homes campaign with the Town and Country Planning Association, but a completely convincing case has been made from all parts of the House for his amendment. I will concentrate on Amendment 280, to which I have put my name in support of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, on creating a road map for addressing embodied carbon emissions in buildings.

It has been a rather rude awakening for me to discover that, in concentrating on the energy efficiency of buildings once occupied and taking measures to cut their operational carbon emissions when in use, I have been missing the bigger picture: half buildings’ emissions come from the process of producing and maintaining the building—that is, from the embodied carbon generated by the whole construction process. Many of us in the world of housing have focused on improving energy efficiency in new homes and have failed to recognise that we could be doing far more to cut the carbon emissions that result from the construction of those homes.

Construction, which uses more raw materials than any other industry, is responsible for a quarter of all carbon emissions. Half of these come from embodied carbon, particularly in the production of concrete and steel. Half a million tonnes of building materials are used daily in the UK. Moreover, demolition and excavation generate no less than 62% of all UK waste, to say nothing of the consequences for landfill and the nasty impact of air pollution.

I am very grateful to Shaun Spiers and colleagues at the Green Alliance for their work on “circular construction”: reducing the type and quality of raw materials, reusing, recycling and regenerating, rather than demolishing and building anew. Their work shows that there are plenty of ways in which this huge driver of carbon emissions can be addressed without adding to cost. An example is British Land’s new headquarters in London, which went for retrofitting in place of new build and took less time, while cutting costs by 15% to 18.5%.

A new embodied carbon section in the building regulations, referred to as Part Z, would send the construction industry down the right road. The Environment Act 2021 gives the Government the power to take this approach forward. Some neighbouring European countries are already getting there: for example, the Netherlands is committed to reducing raw material consumption by 50% by 2030. But what is needed first in the UK is an agreed set of metrics—an approved methodology—as the basis for calculating the whole-life carbon emissions, both operational and embodied, of construction work. Big players such as Lendlease, Atkins and Laing O’Rourke stand ready to help in devising this. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, provides the basis for that essential first step, with proper regard to the need for full consultation.

Frankly, I have been pretty ignorant about the significance of embodied carbon in construction. I now realise that concentrating on energy efficiency in the use of buildings once built misses the point. Key players in the industry are ready to adopt new practices to cut embodied carbon emissions. This amendment would enable the Government to progress this change of emphasis, which is surely overdue. I strongly support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have an illustration—as ever, from Eastbourne—of what is going on with solar panels. We have in the middle of town about 400 hectares of grazing marshes. There is a proposal to build a solar farm on a chunk of that, right next to 100 hectares of industrial estate. None of the firms have solar panels and nor do their car parks. There is clearly a local demand for solar electricity and the grid connection needed for it, but nothing is happening to provide solar panels on the existing space, which could so easily be used for them.

The Government’s policy is pointing in the right direction, but it is inadequate. It needs reinforcing. They need to give a much harder shove to putting solar panels on existing commercial buildings and commercial space. I very much hope that, if the exact wording of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, cannot be accepted, the Government will commit to bringing something back at a later stage or finding another way of doing something about it, because where they are at the moment will not do.

Exactly the same applies to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, which I have great sympathy for. Therefore, I do not see the virtue in Amendment 191B, the wording of which seems very strange. I do not think that “should” bears the meaning that my noble friend tried to put on it; it is an imperative in legislation. Statements such as

“all new homes should be secure and built in such a way as to minimise the risk of crime”

mean that we would need to have eight-inch thick concrete blocks with tiny portholes for windows, because these are absolute words and not the much more open and discursive words employed in Amendment 198, which I therefore favour.

I also like the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. We need to look seriously at embodied carbon. If that involves new construction methods, we need to learn from the lesson of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. It was the miracle of its time, but that wonderful new method of doing things has not worked out. If we are going to introduce new methods and new structures extensively in housing and other buildings, we really must go back to not only testing them to destruction but monitoring how they are working in the environment. We used to do that with new building methods; we need to get back to it now.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 193A, in my name, would require local plans to spell out the housing needs of the locality and set out how, over time, those needs can be met and homelessness and the use of temporary accommodation can be ended. There is a clear problem in that, at present, local plans are not required to factor in homelessness and social housing waiting lists. This means that the extent of housing problems and true housing need in a local authority area are not always reflected. Surely, including provisions to address these housing needs should be a basic component in a local plan; that is common sense.

Without this, there is far less of an incentive for local authorities to address the true extent of housing need in their area. The Bill currently permits local plans to include, among many other things, requirements for affordable housing. This amendment would replace this somewhat vague and light-touch permissive approach with a duty to be clear, both on the scale of local housing problems and the housing provisions that will address them.

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Moved by

[Lord Best]

193A: Schedule 7, page 347, line 17, at end insert—
“(3A) The local plan must identify the local nature and scale of housing need in the local planning authority’s area and must make provision for sufficient social rent housing, to eliminate homelessness within a reasonable period as stipulated in the updated local plan, and to provide housing for persons registered on the local housing authority’s allocation scheme within the meaning of section 166A of the Housing Act 1996.(3B) Subsection (3A) applies in relation to social housing provided both by the local housing authority where it retains its own housing stock and by private registered providers of social housing.(3C) The information concerning the level of housing need recorded on the local plan must be updated at least annually.”

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to noble Lords for their support for this amendment. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, for their support, and for pointing out the urgency of the need for homelessness and those on waiting lists to be addressed, and the value of using the local plan to help in that process. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, for her eloquent support. She made the point that, unfortunately, things are getting worse for those in the most acute need. I am afraid to say that the urgency for doing more grows daily, and this would be a helpful step in the right direction.

The Minister, who I know believes that local plans are a very important instrument in getting things changed and done, said that she very much agreed that this deserved priority. Indeed, the government consultation currently going on may lead to greater prominence being given to the needs of those who are homeless, in temporary accommodation or on a never-ending waiting list. She hopes that local planning authorities will do their best by that and include those things in local plans, but there is no obligation on them so to do. It is that obligation that this amendment would put into place. I am grateful for the support of all those colleagues, and the moment has come for me to test the opinion of the House.

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[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, my name is down in support of Amendment 195, so brilliantly introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. It is also supported by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. The amendment would return us to the position whereby each local plan must be designed to secure enough homes to meet the target for the area set by government. I too see this as a matter of considerable significance.

In essence, this country needs to build at least 300,000 homes each year to ease the problems caused by acute housing shortages: overcrowding, homelessness, poverty and health inequalities. This national target will not be achieved by leaving the supply of sufficient homes to individual councils to determine. On its own, of course, the requirement on all local authorities to have local plans that together make provision for 300,000 homes will not mean that the planned-for number will necessarily be built. Market factors will affect private housebuilding. Insufficient government support will affect social housing output, and so on. If local plans do not plan for their share of the national total, it is certain that it will not be accomplished.

Many analysts suggest that the overall figure of 300,000 homes per annum is not enough. The Centre for Cities has explained that we would have another 4.3 million homes if we had matched the average rate of housebuilding of our European counterparts over recent decades. We have a massive catching-up job to do. The Centre for Policy Studies argues that 460,605 homes should have been added last year. The actual output was barely half this figure—235,000 net additions, including conversions of existing buildings. For the moment, 300,000 homes is a sensible, short-term target.

Why is it so improbable that this figure will be reached unless local planning authorities are obliged to meet housing targets? First, because a number of councils have already made clear that, if the decision on numbers is now in their hands, they will reduce the amount of development previously planned for. Even if only, say, a quarter of authorities opt to see fewer homes built, there will be a big undershoot of the grand total. Reducing acute shortages will then be even more difficult in future than it has been to date.

Secondly, nationally determined targets are necessary because—as I guess we all recognise—it is incredibly difficult for elected Members to champion new housebuilding in their areas. New housing is perceived as meaning more traffic, more pressure on services, disruption from construction and—although this may be an urban myth—a fall in house prices. It is also true that housebuilders have often singularly failed to create quality places. There is a long way to go in reforming that industry. These concerns do not mean that we can simply set aside the need for new homes.

The harsh fact is that where a councillor is likely to be voted out of office if they do not vociferously oppose new development, few will feel able to act in the interests of those who need a home but do not yet have a vote in that area. The structure of democracy at local level makes it nigh on impossible for representatives of local communities to act in the wider interests of those who do not live there.

Our planning system recognises that no one is keen to have a power station, airport or highways project on their doorstep. Nationally significant infrastructure projects are taken outside the remit of the local council. No one is suggesting the same approach for housing developments, even very large ones, but recognition should be given to what is in the national, rather than necessarily the local, interest. Securing sufficient new homes is a national priority and should be part of the national decision-making process.

This important amendment removes the unfair onus on local councillors to determine how many new homes their local plan should be designed to secure. It removes an unreasonable expectation that those who are—or hope to be—elected as local councillors will always do what is right for the next generation, the wider region and the country, rather than what the often vocal local electorate of here and now are demanding. I acknowledge that arguments can still rage over the methodology for setting housing targets and that there will rightly be lengthy consideration of exactly what gets built and where, but these are separate matters and do not affect the amendment before us. Rather, I warn that, without this change to the prevailing position, without decisions on overall numbers of new homes being taken at a higher level than the local planning authority, we will certainly not see 300,000 additional homes built each year. The horrendous housing shortage will get worse. I urge the Minister to accept this essential amendment.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 13th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Duke of Wellington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as may be relevant to this debate. I will speak in a minute to my Amendments 247YYAA, 247YYAB, and 247YYAC, but I must start by asking the Minister—I remain surprised by this—why she has, on Report, tabled such a large number of amendments that seek to reverse previous government policy on nutrient neutrality.

As the Office for Environmental Protection, set up by the Government in the Environment Act 2021, has stated—and I quote from Dame Glenys Stacey’s letter of 30 August—

“The proposed changes would demonstrably reduce the level of environmental protection provided for in existing environmental law. They are a regression”.


After a further exchange of letters with the Defra Secretary of State and a meeting, Dame Glenys wrote a second letter on 1 September. Again, I quote:

“What is certain is that the proposed amendments would amount to regression in law”.


She goes on to say:

“This is contrary to statements made in each House of Parliament on behalf of the Government”.


I have quoted from the Office for Environmental Protection to show that this is not in any way a political attack on the Government’s policy. The Office for Environmental Protection is the public body set up to protect and improve the environment by holding government to account. Ministers must therefore understand that any opposition to these amendments comes only from a desire by Members of this House, on all sides, to protect and improve the environment.

We all recognise the need to build more houses, and where possible to remove obstacles to achieving this, but surely none of us wishes this to be achieved at the expense of further damage to the environment. Ministers say this is fully mitigated, but that is not clear in the amendments. More houses create more sewage, and therefore there must be mitigation. But the Government appear to be relieving housebuilders from the cost of this mitigation and passing it to the taxpayer.

The announcement of additional money for Natural England is very welcome, but surely there must be a continuing requirement for housebuilders to contribute financially to mitigation. The Minister, in her letter to Peers on 29 August, said:

“The Government intends to work with the house building industry to ensure that larger developers make an appropriate and fair contribution to this scheme over the coming years”.

I must respectfully say to the Minister that that is not enough. There must be a legal requirement for housebuilders to contribute in each case to protecting the environment from further pollution created by new houses.

I now turn to the three amendments in my name. I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Parminter, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, for adding their names. I know also that the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, had wanted to sign but was pipped at the post by the noble Lord, Lord Randall. Noble Lords will therefore understand that these are cross-party amendments with no party-political motivation.

For the benefit of noble Lords who have not been able—or inclined—to get into the detail of this large group of late-in-the-day government amendments, I must quote from them. In government Amendment 247YYA, in new Regulation 85A(2)—inserted by paragraph 11 of part 2 of new Schedule 13—it reads:

“When making the relevant decision, the competent authority must assume that nutrients in urban waste water … will not adversely affect the relevant site”.


I am surprised that any Minister from any department—or any party—could propose to Parliament such a paragraph. It is instructing a planning authority to disregard the facts. By any definition, that would be bad law. In paragraph (3) of new Regulation 85A, which I also seek to delete, the Bill instructs the planning authority not even to assess any possible pollution and, in paragraph (4), the planning authority is again instructed to disregard any assessment made by third parties, even the appropriate nature conservation body. I hope that all noble Lords will agree with me that this is just too far.

Here, I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for various meetings in the last few days. I also received at 7 pm yesterday a long letter from the noble Lord, Lord Benyon. Ministers argue that all the government amendments in this group are a package and that we should not look at individual clauses in isolation. I regret that I do not accept that argument. I believe that the duty of this House is to improve and then approve clear and coherent legislation. The government amendments are defective in wording and contrary to science in intention. I cannot believe that any noble Lord of whatever party could vote in favour of such proposed legislation.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I speak to this group of amendments, which come under the broad heading of nutrient neutrality. I declare my interest as a member of your Lordships’ Built Environment Committee, under the distinguished chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. The committee will release a report next week on the impact of environmental regulations on development. As our report is still under wraps, I cannot quote from it, but it provides important insights into the issues before us regarding nutrient neutrality, and my comments today will not, I think, clash with any of the committee’s findings.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 23rd October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly, aware of the hour, to offer the Green group’s support for all the alternative amendments in this group and to reflect on how your Lordships’ House is still trying to fix some utterly extraordinary holes in this Bill. If you think of what the holes are that we are filling, they are related to climate but also to public health and the cost of living crisis—the issues that are of great concern to people all round this country, but particularly those in the areas that the levelling-up Bill is most supposed to be addressing.

I must note that at about the same time that we are speaking, in the other place there is a Statement on the impacts of Storm Babet. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, referred to this. We have had tragic deaths. Huge numbers of people have seen their lives torn apart by flooding. There are now 1.9 million people living in homes at significant risk of flooding. That figure will double by 2050. We have a huge problem with public health. We often hear in your Lordships’ House the concern about getting ill people back to work. We must get productivity up. These are issues that the Government are talking about all the time and issues that these amendments are trying to address.

So, once again, we are trying to help and we can only hope that the Government will listen.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Motion ZH, the government amendment in lieu of Lords Amendment 329. The intention of the earlier Lords amendment was to make local plans more specific in spelling out the housing needs of each locality and the ways in which those needs are to be met. This would identify how homelessness and temporary accommodation can be eliminated over a reasonable timescale. The amendment, devised by Shelter, detailed what the local plan should cover, including the needs of all those registered on the local housing authority’s allocation scheme. This would mean all local plans highlighting the need for, and the steps to provide, the homes sought by those now in increasing difficulty as opportunities to buy or to rent have become alarmingly scarce.

The government amendment seeks to take this on board in a somewhat condensed version. It requires the local plan to

“take account of an assessment of the amount, and type, of housing that is needed in the local planning authority’s area, including the amount of affordable housing that is needed”.

This takes us into the same territory as my amendment and would sharpen up local plans to provide more precision in identifying and addressing the need for housing for those who are homeless or in temporary accommodation or on the never-ending waiting list for a home that they can afford. What is on the face of the Bill will now need to be buttressed by guidance for local planning authorities, to put a bit more flesh on the bones of this legislative measure. It would be good if the Minister could provide an assurance that this ingredient will be incorporated in forthcoming planning guidance.

The government amendment in lieu also raises the thorny question of defining “affordable housing”, which has been debated in this House on numerous occasions and not resolved. The government amendment adds that “affordable housing” means social housing as it has been defined—very broadly and often misleadingly—since 2008. However, the amendment adds some new, encouraging words that “affordable housing” could mean housing of

“any other description of housing that may be prescribed”.

This is helpful. It opens the door for a new definition of affordable housing which, in the future, this or another Secretary of State may prescribe. It would be good to see whether agreement can be reached in the months ahead on a more satisfactory definition, to update the old one from 2008 in readiness for the first opportunity to substitute a better version.

With these comments, I say that I feel that the Government have made a serious effort to take on board the need to sharpen up the local plan in respect of meeting housing need. I am grateful to the Government, and to the Minister in particular, for this change that they are willing to make to the Bill.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I have one remark to make in support of Motion M1, put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. The noble Earl, with whom it is always so difficult to disagree, stated that the reason the Government are unhappy with the idea of climate change becoming more central is that it opens up a wide range of challenge. But climate change is going to be the central, existential issue of planning beyond our lifetimes. It is not an add-on; it is not planting a few trees in order to get planning permission. It is absolutely core, and dealing with that will make life very difficult for planning applications. I support this amendment so that climate change becomes central to the decision-making process, not an adjunct.