Self-build and Custom Housebuilding (Time for Compliance and Fees) Regulations 2016

Lord Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I will start my brief remarks by making my usual declarations that I am an elected councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I fully support the regulations before us today. They are a welcome boost to increasing the amount of self-build and custom-built homes in the UK. We have a number of self-build plots in Lewisham and I support them. I like the idea of new homes and innovation and it is very good if people are able to build properties themselves if they want to. Being able to double the number of plots and houses available would be very positive.

A week or two ago, we had a very interesting debate on housing. More generally, I hope we now all accept the need to increase the number of houses built for various tenures. It irritates me when people sometimes suggest that it is councils that hold back planning permission for property generally. In fact, we often agree permission for housing and then nothing happens. I hope that, in agreeing these regulations today, and looking for more plots, the Minister will also take a wider look at the whole question of planning and what we can do about plots of land with multiple permissions but on which nothing ever happens. Perhaps we can make some of those plots available for someone else to build more self-build houses. The real problem we need to look at is building more houses of different types. However, these regulations are very good and I am happy to support them.

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, for the clear and resonant tones in which he spoke to the instrument. These were, no doubt, honed in the Wales Assembly—where he had a distinguished role and no little success—and a Welsh university.

My first brief question, with which, perhaps, his officials can help, is: how much self-building has occurred in previous years in England? Is there a record of self-builds for England in a recent year? Secondly, what sort of fees are paid individually on a self-build in England in a reasonably modest location? Is it possible for him to respond to those two questions? My third question, which I suspect he will not be able to advance on, is regarding any details concerning Wales.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for participating in this debate and for the support that they have given to these regulations. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his support and that of the Official Opposition in the House of Lords. I recognise that his borough of Lewisham is doing some innovative work in this area, as are other London boroughs and other areas in England. I will respond to the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and the noble Lord, Lord Jones. I thank the latter very much for his kind remarks about my honing of skills in the National Assembly for Wales, of which I have very fond memories. I met with the First Minister in the House of Lords yesterday. We were in danger of being in our anecdotage discussing the National Assembly last night, but that is another issue.

Self-builds in England are currently running at about 10,000 a year. They have been somewhat higher than that—it varies from year to year. As I have indicated, our aim is to double that figure by 2020. In the whole of the United Kingdom, they are running at about 12,000 a year. On continental Europe, the figures are much higher. About 7% to 10% of our housing completions are self-build. At the other end of the scale, about 80% of housing completions in Austria are self-build. In Sweden, it is around 63%; in Germany and France, about 60%; in the Netherlands it is also high. We are very different from continental Europe. There is a desire on the part of people in this country to design and build their own home, partly no doubt engendered by television programmes such as “Grand Designs” with Kevin McCloud. One of the side effects of this is it will improve the design of the houses that we have. If people are designing their own homes, they will be keen for that design to contribute to the general ambience and be of a high standard. I do not have an average cost for self-build—that will vary enormously from area to area and from house to house—but it is competitive with normal build, which is obviously in response to the desire people have to build their own home.

On a more general point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, he will know that we are bringing forward a housing White Paper this autumn that will address some of the issues we need to address to build more houses in this country. He will know that the Prime Minister is making this a high priority for the Government, which has already been indicated by the commitment of resources and the recent announcement by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, Sajid Javid, of £3 billion for housebuilding, £1 billion of which could be directed in this area. Therefore we have committed resources to this and we regard it as important.

Once again, I thank noble Lords for their support and I commend these draft regulations to the Committee.