Deregulation: Public Services and Health and Safety

Lord Best Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for securing this debate and for her excellent opening speech. I would add that allowing us 11 minutes in which to speak does produce some superb speeches—I have already learned a great deal this morning. I know that the noble Baroness was deeply affected by the terrible tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire, as were so many of us. But she also encourages us today to broaden the debate on deregulation, and I want to look at this issue in the wider context of the UK’s housing scene.

I declare my interests as a vice-president of three bodies: the Local Government Association, the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, and the Town and Country Planning Association. These three national bodies all represent organisations at the local level that are concerned with regulation, not least in the housing arena. All three stand up for higher standards and all know the effects of under-resourcing the people whom we expect to enforce regulations: building inspectors, environmental health officers, trading standards officers, and town and country planning officials. All these services have faced significant cutbacks in their budgets over recent years, seriously weakening the ability at a local level to enforce regulations that aim to ensure decent standards for the nation’s housing.

Other noble Lords have noted that deregulation has been the mantra for the past two decades. Certainly, unnecessary regulatory measures are costly and wasteful. However, the conclusion from recent events, in combination with a more general apprehension that the pendulum has swung too far in the removal of important regulations, surely means we are now ready for a less negative attitude to proper regulation and to pay for the people who ensure that regulations are adhered to.

The case I want to make today is that requirements for higher housing standards actually represent a cost-effective approach, quite apart from enhancing the health and safety of the occupiers. My contention is that cutting costs seldom pays in the medium to longer term, yet housebuilders and property developers are very likely to go for the short cut and the cheaper option, unless compelled by regulations to do otherwise.

Although it is excellent that the Government and opposition parties are all committed to increasing the quantity of homes built in the UK, quality—the subject of regulations—gets much less attention. In this country we rely very heavily on a small number of volume housebuilders to construct the bulk of our new homes. Governments have hoped that market forces will mean that all developers will achieve good design, high physical standards and a good deal for local communities in affordable housing provision with amenities like play areas and green space. But, sadly, once a developer has acquired a site, the element of competition is all about who can build most cheaply, who can most cleverly renegotiate the planning conditions, and whose marketing can secure the highest price for the lowest standards. Enhancements to the building regulations often meet with opposition from the building industry, but whenever an upgrade in the regulations is finally imposed universally across the industry, the complaints evaporate and the builders toe the line, knowing that there is a level playing field and all their competitors must do the same.

At the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the 1990s, we brought together a set of lifetime home standards for improved accessibility: removing the steps up to front doors which debar not only those in a wheelchair or using a Zimmer frame but parents with buggies; ensuring space inside for those with a mobility problem; and making adaptations to the property as easy as possible if they are needed in the future. We demonstrated how building all homes to lifetime homes standards would support anyone with a temporary or permanent disability and would mean significant savings to health and social care budgets, with fewer accidents in the home, possible earlier discharge from hospital, the postponement or prevention of the need for a move to residential care and more. Our efforts to amend the relevant part of the building regulations, Part M, were opposed by the housebuilding industry, but after these changes were accepted by government and incorporated into the building regulations—before deregulation became the order of the day—the housebuilders got on with it and learned swiftly how to produce more accessible homes with minimal fuss. Today, tens of thousands of families benefit from enhanced accessibility standards because of more exacting regulations. I should add that the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, championed these standards when she was a Housing Minister in your Lordships’ House, producing the excellent 2008 report, Lifetime Homes, Lifetime Neighbourhoods.

Noble Lords have only to visit good-quality housing built 100 years ago like Joseph Rowntree’s garden village of New Earswick, Cadbury’s Bournville or the beautiful Whiteley Village for older people, where I was last week, to see how the economics works out. The 100 year-old homes in these places remain highly sought-after and the initial investment has been repaid many times over: quality pays. We have to ensure that the 1.5 million homes to be built before 2022, including I hope many new garden villages with proper master planning, achieve really decent standards not just for fire and safety but for health and well-being. The international architect Sir Terry Farrell’s 2014 report brought together all the necessary components for excellent urban design, but it never gained traction. Perhaps the next president of the RIBA—I declare an interest as an honorary fellow—might take up this cause and make things happen rather than piously hoping that guidance will do the trick. The Government need to set out clear, tough building regulations and ensure that they be fully enforced. This is certainly the time for a wholesale review of the current building regulations.

As a concluding point, perhaps I may mention a recent regulatory enforcement success story. We all know that some private sector landlords—a minority—exploit their tenants and fail to observe health and safety regulations. To enforce the current requirements on landlords, the London Borough of Newham under the leadership of the mayor, Sir Robin Wales, has established a comprehensive licensing scheme. This has led to 1,100 criminal landlords being prosecuted, £2.6 million in unpaid council tax being recovered and substantial tax bills being issued by HMRC. I joined one of Newham’s dawn raids to witness the work of this borough in uncovering the alarming abuses in its private rented-sector stock and driving out bad practice. This is just the kind of enforcement of standards that needs to be replicated and extended elsewhere.

One genuinely positive outcome from the dreadful Grenfell Tower tragedy would be a recognition that raising and enforcing standards need not be a negative matter of adding bureaucracy, let alone costs, but instead can be a truly positive means of securing long-term value and enhancing quality of life and happiness for hundreds of thousands of us over the years to come.