Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I do not agree with much of what the noble Lord said. Obviously, the mix of tenures is essential, whether it is starter home level, shared ownership, affordable rents or social rents, and a number of funding streams are available for the different types of tenure. I think that the noble Lord and I may be saying the same thing but in a different way. I hope that the noble Lord will feel happy to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Greaves]

Before the noble Lord does that, and I have no doubt that he will, the Minister made some interesting remarks about the importance of neighbourhood planning in relation to starter homes. At some stage in Committee, she said that there are now 1,600 neighbourhood plans at some stage of gestation. A few of these have been adopted but none of them will be busying themselves at the moment with starter homes, because starter homes are still being discussed in this Committee. What will be the process of neighbourhood planning in relation to starter homes? Will starter homes be put into the mix of that large number of neighbourhood plans that are still being worked out and will go to inspection and referendum, et cetera? Or will it require a process of amendment and change in adopted neighbourhood plans to cater for starter homes, which is, of course, a time-consuming and bureaucratic process? Will there be a presumption that in areas with neighbourhood plans, which are strongly biased towards rural areas and places with parish councils, there will be no starter homes until the neighbourhood planning process has dealt with how many there should be and where they should be?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I think it will be done through amended neighbourhood plans. It also may be done through the NPPF. I will need to come back to the noble Lord on that, because the mechanism is important. I probably would have known the answer about six hours ago but, at this time of the day, I do not know.

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[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, I generally support both amendments, up to a point. On Amendment 50F, so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, the question of infrastructure clearly goes beyond starter homes alone. For example, in certain coastal towns along the south coast it has become evident from my travels to and fro that the amount of development in what I call the suburban areas has now produced difficult traffic conditions—not because of the development process but because of the subsequent use which is causing an overload on feeder roads. This, I fear, will become an increasing problem because alternative forms of transport for journeys to work have not had the necessary investment and it does not look like they are going to get it any time soon. For instance, the high-quality rapid-transit type of bus such as you have in large parts of central London—where you can see when the next bus is coming and where it is going to—is not there. It is a considerable problem.

We know that doctors’ surgeries, schools and other infrastructure are not keeping pace with the state of development. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, is right that we have to look at the broader picture of the setting—otherwise we will be creating the latter-day slums of tomorrow while we are trying to create high-quality homes. I say high-quality homes because I had the privilege of serving on the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment, which looked particularly at the need for decent quality and not just building anything at any price with all that that means.

On the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, I understood her to be referring to what I know as post-occupancy evaluation. I hope I have not used the wrong term. Some years ago, an All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Built Environment—which is not the same thing as a Select Committee, I hasten to add—on which I also had the privilege to serve, produced a report on procurement. It identified various shortcomings in the procurement process. First, the people who were doing the procuring—they might have been a particular subsector of local government, school governors or parish councillors—did not have the tools or the ability to deal with the procurement themselves and were not bringing in the necessary skills required to do that properly. What they were procuring ended up not serving its proper purpose, not having any reuse value, being over budget and not being properly controlled. That failure, in particular, identified a complete absence of post-occupancy evaluation—in this respect, it pointed the finger rather pertinently at many government departments. You did not have any feedback as to where you were going wrong and so you made the same mistakes all over again the next time round. We have got to do better with this.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, referred to the scarcity of the precious space that is available for development without impinging on the green spaces outside. I say hooray to that. However, the process is getting much more demanding than it used to be. If you do not want to create cramming, if you want to create greater density and the best use of urban, previously developed land, then we have got to be smarter about how we do it. The two amendments seem to address aspects of being smarter about it and I support the principle that lies behind them. I hope the Minister will consider them in that tone.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I support a great deal of what the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, has said about the importance of infrastructure in relation to housing. I am greatly worried that there is now such a housing crisis in this country that we are doing exactly what the noble Earl suggested and failing to learn the lessons of the past. At times in the past in the post-war years, large numbers of houses were built but infrastructure and services were not put in and local authorities spent a long time playing catch-up. In some cases they did not succeed because of the problems which existed on those estates. So what has been said is absolutely right. There is a huge danger that under the pressures to find ways of building more and more houses the proper overall planning of houses as part of future communities is being forgotten in too many areas.

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[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I do apologise—I was trying to give him credit because I disagree with him on quite a lot of things. But he knows what I mean.

[Lord Greaves]

I think that the Minister was trying to stir up trouble on these Benches—I would not dare to contradict my noble friend Lady Grender.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I was not trying to stir up trouble—honestly, my Lords, it is getting a bit late for that. Amendment 50F is, I think, the appropriate one, which the noble Lord articulated very well. It would seem to be quite strange for the Secretary of State to produce an infrastructure plan as part of the starter-homes programme.

We particularly want to see local authorities and infrastructure providers planning positively for the broad infrastructure needs of their areas as part of local plan-making, and our starter homes reforms will not change this. In particular, local planning authorities will still be able to secure Section 106 contributions—which we spoke about earlier—for site-specific infrastructure improvements required for development, including new roads or financial contributions to local schools. Finally, we have announced a £1.2 billion fund to ensure that sites are prepared and have suitable infrastructure on site. This will support delivery of starter homes on brownfield land.

A couple of noble Lords talked about design, and I wholeheartedly agree about innovative and energy-efficient design. The Government have a design panel looking specifically at avoiding, I suppose, some of the mistakes of the past and providing far more innovative designs for the huge number of houses that we are expecting to deliver.

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy, Lord Beecham, Lord Kerslake, and Lord Best—in fact, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has gone so I will not thank him—for explaining why they have concerns about Clause 6. This direction would state that the incompatible policy must not be taken into account when certain planning decisions are taken. The remaining local development documents would not be affected and the local planning authority may still have regard to these in its decision-making in the usual way. The compliance direction would not apply to policies forming part of neighbourhood plans and the local plan. Communities would continue to shape development in the area. This is a reasonable and balanced approach.

The compliance direction must set out the Secretary of State’s reasoning for making the direction and must be published. A copy must be given to the local planning authority and the compliance direction would remain in force until revoked by a further direction given by the Secretary of State. We will set out very clear guidance on the operation of the duties so that all local planning authorities are fully aware of what they need to do to comply with them. I will reassure noble Lords at this point that the compliance direction is a backstop provision. It will only be used in limited circumstances where the local planning authority is in breach of its starter-home duties and we envisage that it would be rarely used

The Secretary of State will decide whether to issue the compliance direction based on information within the monitoring reports that local planning authorities are required to produce under Clause 5. There will be the opportunity for councils to submit further evidence to the Secretary of State and any exceptional circumstances could be considered at this point. It will only be revoked by a further direction if the Secretary of State is satisfied that the local planning authority has taken adequate steps to meet its duty.

Turning now to the amendment to Clause 7, Amendment 53D seeks to place a duty on the Secretary of State to publish a strategy that includes targets for reducing the number of children living in temporary accommodation with their families. Under the Homelessness Act 2002, all local housing authorities must have in place a homelessness strategy and must consult public or local authorities, voluntary organisations or other persons, as they consider appropriate.

Each housing authority records information pertaining to its statutory homelessness activities under Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996. This includes the number of households and children in different types of temporary accommodation on a quarterly basis. The data are published on the GOV.UK website and allow comparison at a local authority, regional and national level. I think that it is unnecessary. Local housing authorities already record the number of children in temporary accommodation. They have clear duties to secure settled accommodation for them and must produce a homelessness strategy setting out how they will tackle the issue.

To conclude, I think that the Government’s current proposals strike the right balance. At this stage, I hope that the noble Lord will be happy to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Greaves]

Before the noble Lord speaks, I have a question for the Minister. I am trying to work out how the compliance directions will work. Are they intended to apply to future development plan documents, including the core strategy or whatever and site allocations, or retrospectively to development plan documents that have already been historically agreed and which have things in them that conflict with the concept of starter homes?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I think that they will be for future plans, because they will include starter homes, but I will correct that if I am wrong.

[Lord Greaves]

In that case, why is it necessary to do this? Why cannot any defect in relation to starter homes be dealt with during the inspection?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, that is a very good question. Can I come back to the noble Lord on that?