Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

I took part in a meeting with Ministers just after the rural housing review was published. I believe that they understood the issues raised. I simply say that this is not just about the AONBs and the national parks but is about giving assurance to communities or villages that may go through the neighbourhood plan route, or may simply have a parish plan, working with landowners and their local planning authority, to allow them to take that decision about those housing needs and to address them. I believe that Ministers understand that. I believe that it unites the House, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give some reassurance now.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and others. The arguments have all been very well made, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Best, with his great experience, so I want merely to emphasise a few facts.

First, as we all know, the need for affordable homes is as great in the countryside as anywhere, because on average houses are more expensive and average wages are lower. The largest long-term black cloud hovering over nearly all less well-off rural families is the issue of, “Where on earth are our children going to live?”. Secondly, rural areas currently have less than half the number of affordable homes per population than urban areas. I say “currently” because without this amendment, or something like it, the situation is about to get very much worse. The third fact—and this is really important and has been raised by all speakers— is that Section 106 homes on sites of fewer than 10 houses provide more than 50% of all affordable homes in the countryside.

I know that the Government have blundered into this now legal cul-de-sac and left themselves with few means of a U-turn, but I hope that they will somehow find a way out of this most unfortunate and ill-considered situation and turn it into something that is at least tolerable.

I believe that during the passage of this Bill the Government have grasped the seriousness of rural housing problems and genuinely tried to help—I thank the Minister and the Secretary of State for their parts in that—but in many ways this amendment covers the most important issue that we have dealt with because of the high percentage of affordable rural houses at stake here. There are not many opportunities to build houses in the countryside because of the lack of sites available; but when and where it is possible, it is crucial that we grasp the opportunity to add to the number of affordable houses available for locals.

I will spare your Lordships my thoughts on how all Governments, without exception, seem to drift from their early ideals of localism to ever-stronger central government controls, but it should be up to local councils to decide whether they need to support their local small builders, which is the case being made here by the Government, or, alternatively, the numerous young families living in crowded accommodation housing sometimes two or even three generations. I hope the Government will find a way of accommodating the very important intentions behind this amendment and genuinely satisfying us all that they will change their current approach.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I rise to support the second amendment in this group, Amendment 128YAR, on the duty of care where compulsory purchase powers are involved. I do so from personal experience. Some 25 or 30 years ago, I had the Ilminster bypass through my farm. It was part of the improvements to the A303, which I strongly supported. I still strongly support more improvements to the A303 and hope we shall get them. As a supporter, I expected to be an equal partner in the process, the scheme and the negotiations, but I was left in no doubt that, it being a compulsory purchase, I had little or no say in the way the project was developed over my land. I am talking not about engineering schemes, although I disagreed with it being downgraded from a dual carriageway to a very dangerous three-lane single carriageway, but about things such as on-site planting and off-site planting, where, as a fairly knowledgeable forester, I was definitely considered inferior to their expert and largely ignored. There needs to be rebalancing with an obligation on the purchasing agents and the acquiring authority to treat their customers with care. There is a very real danger of property owners, who include householders, businessmen, farmers and others, being bullied and bulldozed by the acquiring authority. It is not necessarily always an agent of the state; it can be a privatised authority. In essence, as an owner, you are over a barrel. Everyone knows it and that whatever the acquiring authority wants, it can pretty well get, whatever the views of the owner or householder involved. To avoid the acquiring authority riding roughshod over those it should be treating as customers, we need this duty of care to be introduced.

[The Duke of Somerset (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, support these amendments in the name of my noble friend. I thank the Minister for making some good progress with the arguments I put forward in Committee. We are going to see that in the amendments that are about to be moved. On interest rates for late payments, it would be good if the Government could commit to monitoring the success of the penal rates of interest for securing payment of compensation before entry. That would be very helpful.

These concessions still leave two topics unresolved from the group that I spoke to in Committee. First, on NSIPs, which are covered by the first amendment in this group, the Government are arguing that the landowner will get only current use value rather than development value for up to 500 homes with no functional link to the project but situated within one mile of it. This is confiscatory. I again ask the Government: who will benefit from this largesse? Is it the house purchaser or, probably more likely, the infrastructure provider? If it is the latter, this surely demonstrates the unfairness of the idea. The principle of equivalence loses coherence when applied as I have just mentioned. A farmer or landowner may have several tens of acres removed from his holding by this means, leaving his business unsustainable as a result. Existing use values would be unlikely to allow him to purchase elsewhere to rebuild his business, especially after the considerable costs he is bound to incur. In effect, the acquirer is giving himself planning permission to take land at lower value, develop it and gain a large financial uplift at the expense of the original owner. At the same time, it would ignore local plans and local neighbourhood plans.

I turn to the second amendment in this group, relating to a duty of care. In Committee, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, on behalf of the Government, said that,

“claimants should be treated with fairness … and kept up to date”,

and that,

“competent professionals should be advising their clients to act in this way”.—[Official Report, 23/3/16; col. 2451.]

The word “should” appears again and again. This is not the same as “must” or “shall”. Similarly, to my mind the word “urges” in this context is not strong enough.

I do not really understand why the Government should wish to deny Amendment 128YAR, which would merely strengthen and make mandatory the points that the Minister advocated in Committee. Clear guidance would not give those people subject to compulsory purchase orders the comfort that a compulsory duty of care, as incorporated in this amendment, would deliver. It would also provide a benchmark by which to judge whether an acquiring authority was behaving fairly and reasonably. I ask the Government to consider carefully accepting both these useful amendments.