Local Housing Need

Lord Best Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as vice-president of both the Local Government Association and the Town and Country Planning Association. Earlier, I welcomed the Government’s White Paper, not least because it reversed some of the worst bits of the Housing and Planning Act, as it now is, but also because it was entirely positive about trying to build more homes. I believe the Government are absolutely sincere in wanting to up the numbers and achieve some of these targets. I welcome the objective assessments regime, announced today, and recognise its intention to see more homes built. That is exactly what we want.

I think the two anxieties that people have are on the affordability and the quality of the new homes that are built. We need to express an interest not only in quantity but in affordability and quality as well. Earlier in your Lordships’ Chamber we made a good deal of mention of affordability when we discussed the fact that those on the lowest incomes are no longer able to afford rents, even those produced by the housing associations in their homes, because housing association grants have been cut. That has pushed up the rents but housing benefit has not taken the strain after the succession of cuts that have reduced it. I recognise that I am talking to the wrong government spokesman on those issues, as this is a matter for the Department for Work and Pensions, but those issues are extremely serious and it is very troubling that the housing associations set up to house the poorest in society are saying that they are having to turn the poorest away nowadays. Of course, the private landlord will not step into the breach, meaning, we fear, that homelessness is bound to rise.

The other issue, which comes squarely within the Department for Communities and Local Government’s remit, is that of quality, which goes alongside quantity. Our front line in trying to achieve quality—with the largest proportion of all new homes being built by housebuilders and private sector developers—is the planning system. We have watched that system become increasingly underresourced and unable to hold its own in the negotiations with housebuilders that followed. We consistently get complaints that housebuilders do not come up with the quality that local communities deserve; that they come up with poor design; that they do not always build out the schemes for which they have planning consent; that they negotiate rather too successfully to keep down the amount of affordable housing they can build; and that often they attempt to renege on the agreements they have made with local authorities to produce affordable homes at the end of the process.

We need a strong planning system as our front line to ensure quality under those different headings. Can the Minister assure us that in the package, as well as getting more help under the quantity agenda, we will get more help under the quality agenda by ensuring that planning departments are better resourced and better able to hold their own against the housebuilders and developers of tomorrow?