Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, in the context of this group of amendments I should also declare my interest as a vice-president and the immediate past president of the Local Government Association. I shall speak to Amendments 48A, 48F, 50B and 50D. All these amendments are about the absolute priority being given to 20% discounted starter homes even though such housing may not be addressing, and therefore should not be replacing, the accommodation which an objective assessment by the local authority has demonstrated that an area needs.

As other noble Lords have pointed out, guidance in the National Planning Policy Framework gives local planning authorities the job of preparing a strategic housing market assessment. This is intended to ensure that their local plan is based on clear evidence and will meet the needs for different kinds of housing in a mix that takes on board demographic factors and market trends, is reflected in the size, tenure and range of homes in particular locations and includes the requisite measures for meeting affordable housing need. This NPPF framework, devised after much consultation, replaced a plethora of planning guidance and is not, course, repealed by this Bill. The noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Shipley, wondered whether the NPPF would now be overturned, and the Minister may like to confirm, as I have been reassured, that this planning policy framework remains firmly in place.

This means that there is now a conflict between the NPPF guidance and the new requirement for a proportion of starter homes to be given the highest priority in future local plans. The new stipulation in the Bill cuts right across the NPPF guidance. In effect, it says, “Thank you, local authority, for bringing together all the evidence on local housing need and demand as the Government have asked of you. You are now to set this aside and make way for our new initiative that may or may not meet the objectively assessed housing requirements you have set out. In particular, if the evidence demonstrates a priority need for affordable housing for rent or shared ownership, you should ignore that. Instead, wholly or partially in place of using Section 106 agreements to secure those affordable homes, you should require housebuilders and housing associations to build the 20% discounted starter homes which we in Westminster or Whitehall have decided are the real requirement for your area”.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, quotes colleagues who said that there are 100 local housing markets, each of which has its own special needs. For one illustration I will follow the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, in drawing on the excellent example of Bristol City Council to illustrate my point. Bristol, working with South Gloucestershire and North Somerset councils, published its Wider Bristol HMA Strategic Housing Market Assessment, which shows the need for 85,000 new homes over the next 20 years. Of these 29,000, about 35% are required for people who will need affordable housing as currently defined, in a ratio of 80% affordable rented and 20% shared ownership. However, government diktat will now stipulate that a large proportion—perhaps 70%, if the figures the noble Lord, Lord Horam, mentioned, are correct—will be replaced in future by the need to build new starter homes. This is the downside of the Bill: the potential loss of desperately needed new homes for people who cannot get a starter home.

Some of those who would have been helped under the current arrangements have incomes high enough to purchase a starter home. These young buyers will be fine. Sadly, however, there are not many of them. Savills, the property agents with the best research skills, has done the sums with the LGA. To quote again what must become the statistic of the day, discounted starter homes will not be affordable to any of those assessed as needing affordable housing in 67% of local authority areas. Therefore, in 220 council areas, none of those who could have benefited under the present system of securing a proportion of affordable rented or shared ownership housing through planning agreements would be helped in the future under the starter homes scheme. Of the remaining 100 or so council areas, in 80 cases less than 10% of those needing affordable housing could be helped by the starter homes initiative—they just could not afford to buy even with the discount. Therefore, starter homes cater only very rarely for the same people as those whom the local authority planned to assist through its published planning authorities. When placing this cuckoo in the nest, displacing the housing needed by those on lower incomes, surely the Government should support councils who have analysed their local housing requirements and markets and yes, include provision for starter homes, but only where that clearly accords with the very varied local demands.

In considering an amendment I moved earlier today which sought government support for a national scheme to help vulnerable tenants, the Minister said that local authorities were better placed than central government to introduce such schemes. In that case a very modest and inexpensive guaranteed national scheme for tenants was at stake. In the case of starter homes, the national scheme—to be implemented in every locality in the country—is in every way a far more intrusive and expensive arrangement. Where now are the arguments for local discretion?

Different groups are mentioned in each of these amendments, and all of them need to be taken into account before they are set aside to make way for the first-time starter home buyers: those over pension age, those on below-average incomes, and of course, those whom councils have a statutory duty to help because they are homeless. There is also supported, specialist housing and housing for people with disabilities. Each group deserves a lengthy defence, which I do not have the time to set out tonight. However, perhaps I can say something about one of these groups, which will not be helped at all by the starter homes initiative. This is older people, covered by Amendment 50D, for whom retirement housing, housing with care, downsizer homes and other forms of age-exclusive provision can be made. If starter homes were simply to take the place of other groups who are in housing need, this would be among the worst tragedies. Here the cuckoo in the nest is displacing not only the other youngsters but their parents as well.