Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Kerslake Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak specifically to Amendments 47 and 48C. I will not be anything like as eloquent as the noble Lord, Lord Best, but I will do my best.

I believe that the Government’s concentration on starter homes to the exclusion of other tenures is extremely damaging to the housing market and to the aspirations of those looking for a home of any sort. There are those, as we have heard, who will never be able to afford or be eligible for the Government’s starter home programme. There are those who struggle to pay market rents, never mind repayments on a mortgage, and those who will be excluded from renting from a private landlord due to the rents being levied. These people are not to be cast aside as though they are of no importance. Each and every one of them deserves the dignity and security of a decent home in which to live and bring up their children.

Crisis has produced a brief that indicates that starter homes, as we have heard, will primarily help couples without children and on average or above-average salaries. Starter homes will be inaccessible to families on or below the national living wage in all but 2% of council areas. There are only six local authority areas where single people on an average wage or less will be able to afford a starter home. By requiring councils to prioritise starter homes for higher earners, the Bill reduces the scope of local authorities to meet the full range of housing requirements that councils have identified through their planning processes. Thus, the housing needs of low-income groups will go unmet and homelessness is likely to increase.

It is essential that local authorities can retain their flexibility to provide a full range of housing tenures and requirements, including social and affordable housing, to meet the needs of their residents. Starter homes do not do this. The Government should accept this and allow councils to make provision to meet the gap in the market that the starter home policy will create. This is essential to a buoyant housing market in the country and to meet the needs of those at the lower end of the income spectrum.

On Amendment 48C, local authorities do not carry out their planning processes and housing functions in the dark. They do not produce a map and, with a blindfold on, attempt to pin the tail on the donkey, as we did when we were children at birthday parties. No, they have detailed information which they have gathered from officers, residents, parish councils, surveys, census figures, voluntary organisations, developers, Age UK, Citizens Advice and so on. All this assists them to build up a picture of what housing is needed and where. They are able to calculate what is viable in which location and what is not.

It is all very well for the Secretary of State to require from on high that a starter home requirement must be met, but if there is no need for starter homes in a particular area but homes of a very different nature, this would seem to be a false requirement. Surely it is for local authorities using the information they have collected through their local planning processes to determine what is needed to prevent homelessness and provide for their residents in any given area. That is what their councillors have been elected to take responsibility for and which they have a burning desire to fulfil. Local authorities must be allowed to do just what it says on the tin—decide locally what is needed for their local communities.

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in favour of the amendments in this group—in particular Amendment 48C in my name and Amendments 48A and 48F which I have supported. This group of amendments addresses two issues which concern me most about this section of the Bill. The first is that starter homes will come ahead of and instead of affordable rented accommodation. There is no doubt about that in the way this will play out. Secondly, the Government will dictate to a level I have never seen before the proportion of starter homes that are built, down to individual schemes. This is quite extraordinary.

The Bill gives local authorities a duty to promote starter homes. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, this is a manifesto policy. I acknowledge and accept that point, but it gives them an absolute duty. It does not say, “Promote starter homes as part of your wider housing plans”. Had it said that, we would now be in a different conversation. It simply says, “You will promote starter homes”. It does not say anything about any other tenure. So, yes, the manifesto does say that the Government can ask and indeed require local authorities to promote starter homes, but they should be asked to do it in the context of their primary role, which is to assess housing need and provide for it. That is the first point I really care about in this Bill.

The second point, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, has made very clear, is that we have now a well-established process through the NPPF of housing market assessment followed by a local plan and the identification of the necessary land. It is not an easy process. Local authorities go through a lot of heart-searching before they come up with their local plan. Crucially, they think about the local needs in their area before they agree that plan. What we have here is the superimposition of a government view about one tenure or even one product—it is not even a tenure—ahead of other products. It makes much more sense, as the amendment seeks to put forward, that they consider their local plan and have a duty to promote starter homes but that they do it in the context of a plan that they have already developed and are seeking to promote. If starter homes are such a popular and well-regarded product, it would be very surprising if local authorities do not rush to put it in.

I touched earlier on the requirement for starter homes in individual applications. One thing we do know is that we have massively different housing markets in this country. I will say a few words about, and declare my interest in, the London Housing Commission in a minute. Where housing markets can vary literally over two or three miles, never mind between the north and south of the country, having the Secretary of State judging the proportion of housing that needs to be starter homes in each application before that application is approved is asking for trouble. The one thing that we can be sure of is that he will get the number wrong for some part of the country. He may get it wrong for every part of the country, but he will definitely not get it right everywhere. It is in many ways the worst kind of centralism.

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[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, this might help the Minister. I think it is the case that the Government’s figures on what is a median income, and therefore the affordability of a starter home, are different from the figures given by a number of the other agencies—for example, Shelter—that are giving evidence to those engaged in this debate. It would be very helpful if the Minister could, before Report, write to noble Lords who have been engaged in this debate with a clear explanation of the figures which the Government are using to sustain their case.

[Lord Kerslake]

To add to that, it is not good enough simply to look at national averages on this issue. You absolutely need to see the figures broken down by region.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

When the Minister writes, can she specifically say how many residents in Stockport, which is the borough in which I live, have the two full-time incomes to which she refers? That would be quite a handy ready reckoner for us as regards assessing the information she intends to give us.

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[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I think the point that the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, made was that this was money agreed in 2015 that covered 2015 to 2018. The noble Baroness said that the money is in the Budget. Is she saying that there is money available for future years? Is that correct, or are we talking about money that will finish in 2018 and we will then decide what will happen post that?

[Lord Kerslake]

Perhaps I may say a few more words. The way the process works for affordable housing is that there is a bidding process through housing associations, which bid in effect in 2014-15 for the funding for a programme from 2015 to 2018. That is how they bid. What we are seeing now between 2015 and 2018 is essentially the completion of a programme that was bid for and allocated largely prior to the election. If noble Lords look at the numbers for the last Budget—this is all in the public domain—they will see that the grant funding beyond the 2015 to 2018 programme, which effectively was committed, ends, or largely ends apart from specialist housing. That was the point I was making. There is no continuation of that policy beyond what was already bid for and largely allocated.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank the noble Lord. That is a very interesting point. I am sure we will return to it when we consider the rest of the Bill.