Homelessness Reduction Bill

Debate between Lord Best and Lord Shipley

Order of Commitment discharged (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 10th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall be uncharacteristically brief at this late stage. I congratulate the noble Lord and the Government on proceeding with the Bill. It is very welcome. However, I hope that the noble Lord will take the opportunity after the Bill passes, which undoubtedly it will, to raise a couple of points with the Government—not immediately, perhaps. The Delegated Powers Committee published a report this week which, at paragraph 18, on the code of practice, raises a point about the method of revising the codes. I am not expecting any kind of formal response today, but perhaps the noble Lord will look at that. Perhaps he can also, in a relatively short time, invite the Government to say how they are going to approach reviewing the £61 million funding in the light of the possible increase in homelessness arising from the housing benefit issue which has been so controversial this week. I am not expecting the Minister or the noble Lord, Lord Best, to reply today, but those two points should be looked at in the next period.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

I add our thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for all his work on the Bill, which has been appreciated within Parliament and outside it. It shows that the amount of work done prior to the presentation of a Bill in the other place and here reaps rewards, because the Bill is very sound. I pay tribute to the work done on this by the noble Lord, Lord Best, which has got us to the position we are now in.

[Lord Best]

I thank noble Lords for their kind remarks. Bob Blackman MP in the House of Commons deserves the real credit for this Bill. I certainly undertake to speak with the Minister about the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. The review of whether the sum allocated to fund the Homelessness Reduction Bill is sufficient will happen after the end of the first year of operation and will finish before the end of the second year, so that before two years are up we will know whether enough money has been made available to really bring about the reduction in homelessness. If insufficient funds have been available, I shall be the first to say so. I beg to move that the order of commitment be discharged.

Renters’ Rights Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Best and Lord Shipley

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 18th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I extend strong support to my noble friend Lady Grender for this amendment and for her Bill as a whole. This amendment really matters, given the current state of housing supply. It was reported this week that in the last five years, local government spent £3.5 billion on temporary accommodation for homeless people. I declare my interest as vice-president of the Local Government Association. The main reason for that spending is the cost of accommodation. One of the contributors to it for individuals is the up-front costs they have to pay, which in very many cases have become too high. This creates a barrier to people moving into a home.

As my noble friend pointed out, because tenants in the private rented sector tend to move more frequently than in the public social housing sector, the costs can be more frequent and become increasingly unaffordable. Removing the up-front cost from the tenant is the right thing to do and I hope that whatever happens to this Private Member’s Bill, the Government will take on board how serious this issue has become. I understand there is to be a housing supply White Paper some time after the Autumn Statement next week. Whether that comes in December or January—perhaps the Minister can help us with that—who funds what in the private rented sector has to be addressed, and for that reason my noble friend Lady Grender has our full support.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for her work on the Bill, which highlights a number of key issues affecting the private rented sector. She introduced her amendment with one or two rather broader points about the private rented sector, which enables me as well to say something of a slightly broader nature.

At present, there is a real fear that as shorthold assured tenancies within the private rented sector, to which the noble Baroness referred, gradually terminate, tenants in receipt of housing benefit or universal credit will be rejected by landlords who will find a gap between the amount the tenant can pay using their housing benefit or universal credit and the market rent which the landlord can easily obtain. While that gap exists, landlords will want to see tenants currently in receipt of housing benefit or who in future will be on universal credit out of their accommodation. This is not simply cruelty; this is the market. It will be unwise for a landlord to continue to let to people who have a big shortfall between the amount they receive to pay their rent and the actual rent they are being asked to pay. Even generous landlords who are prepared to go half way will still find that they are in a very uncomfortable position if they know that the people from whom they are asking the rent do not have the money to pay it. They know that there will be trouble over time, so how much better to take a couple, both working, who can afford the rent?

I see a position in which, gradually over a period, virtually all those in high-pressure areas such as London who are currently letting to tenants on housing benefit will wish to see those assured shorthold tenancies terminated, so those tenants will be outside the private rented sector. Sadly, I fear that the social housing sector will find it very difficult to cope with the pressure that that will bring as all those tenants are shed. We are sure to see homelessness grow. I am indulging in some broader comments before addressing some aspects of Amendment 1.

I declare my interest as chair of the Property Ombudsman Council as well as my other interests as set out in the register. I fear that chairing the ombudsman service, which looks after complaints about agents and therefore about fees and the transparency issue that is being debated, prohibits me from using this platform to comment today.

I shall draw attention to one way in which this issue may be taken forward, if the Government feel unable to accept Amendment 1 today. I am leaning on the precedent created by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, who, during the passage of the Housing and Planning Bill pressed for an amendment that would place a requirement on managing and letting agents to take out client money protection insurance—this being a proxy for being a respectable body in many cases. Her amendment to place a requirement on agents was not accepted in the context of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, but the Government agreed to take the issue away and create a working group to look in depth at the issue. I suggest that if the Government feel unable to accept Amendment 1, they might think that that excellent precedent, which has now been brought to fruition with DCLG civil servants hard at work looking at these issues under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, might be repeated in this context—in which case I hope very much that the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, could play a leading role in such a working group and I ask the Minister to consider it.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Best and Lord Shipley

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment, to which I spoke at greater length in Committee. I shall summarise my earlier points. This proposal for a parish council or neighbourhood to be able to appeal against a planning approval that cuts across an emerging neighbourhood plan was raised in the other place by Nick Herbert MP, with support from Sir Oliver Heald MP and Andrew Bingham MP, all Conservative Members, whose views were shared by Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods MP for the Opposition. Mr Nick Herbert said,

“speculative developers try to get in applications ahead of the completion of neighbourhood plans or even after they have been completed … either they are upheld by the local authority, which is fearful of losing an appeal, or the developer makes an appeal that is upheld by the planning inspector. The development is then allowed to go ahead”.

This totally undermines all the hard work of the volunteers who have spent endless hours gaining support for the neighbourhood plan before, to quote Sir Oliver Heald, it is,

“trashed by an application by a speculative developer ”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/1/16; col. 222.]

This is a deficiency in the otherwise sensible arrangements for neighbourhood forums and plans which were devised and introduced by Greg Clark, now the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

I have declared my interest in the excellent neighbourhood plan for the Cerne Valley in Dorset, where I own some land within the area covered by the plan. I followed the progress of the local volunteers who brought together this neighbourhood plan from the summer of 2011 until its approval in a public referendum on the plan in January 2015. The nerve-racking hazard facing all the local people involved was that their hard work was at risk from a developer putting in an application which in no way accorded with the emerging neighbourhood plan. Had this happened, neither the parish council or the neighbourhood forum would have had any way of appealing and the council itself would not have been able to use the neighbourhood plan to determine the planning application until the referendum on it was done and dusted. For all the 1,800 neighbourhood forums currently preparing neighbourhood plans, and all those to come— the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, tells us that 9,000 could come down this route, and I hope there will be many more—this amendment would overcome the problem.

If the Minister wanted to modify this amendment so that the neighbourhood right of appeal applied only once the emerging neighbourhood plan had reached a later point in its progress—as was suggested earlier by some noble Lords—I feel sure that this would be acceptable to the proposers. I hope that the Minister will indicate a move in this direction. I support this amendment.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. Noble Lords may recall that we had two different amendments in Committee. Although they were different, they had a very similar intent. We now have one amendment supported by the National Association of Local Councils and Civic Voice. I hope that the Minister will understand the importance of this, because if we are to encourage groups, parish councils and neighbourhood forums to create neighbourhood plans, they have to feel that the effort being put in is worth while.

As we have heard, neighbourhood planning is growing in strength. However, missing from the statutory powers of those bodies with neighbourhood plans is that right of appeal for a neighbourhood planning body against the granting of a planning permission by a local authority which conflicts with that neighbourhood plan, whether it is in place or well on the way to being approved. Of course, as Amendment 102ZA makes clear, the right of appeal would apply only in relation to housing.

We have heard that this amendment has broad cross-party support. I hope that the Government will understand the need to support it as the power to overrule a neighbourhood plan would be a serious disincentive to all those bodies—up to 9,000, apparently —that are considering introducing neighbourhood plans, given that only a little over 100 have actually been put in place.

The amendment is limited to the powers of a parish council or a neighbourhood forum. As such, I agree entirely with what previous noble Lords have said—namely, that this is a reasonable proposal. If we want to give a boost to neighbourhood planning, it should be supported by the Government.