Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Duke of Somerset (CB)]

My Lords, I support the general thrust of all this group of amendments, but in particular Amendment 56 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. With this part of the Bill, the Government are in effect further transferring housing assistance from the rented sector to the owned, so any examination of it should consider whether housing associations will be in a better or worse position once the Bill is enacted.

We should remember that the housing associations have a social mission that is enabled by the philanthropic actions of many providers. In the past 30 years, 1.8 million properties have been bought through the right-to-buy scheme, and the number of council houses has thus reduced from 5.1 million to 1.7 million. This has happened both through the right-to-buy scheme and through the transfer of stock to housing associations. Historically, losses through the right to buy have not been adequately replaced in either quantity or location. It is estimated that 40% of such properties are now in the private rented sector. It should be noted that housing benefit awards here are on average £1,000 per annum higher than they are in the social rented sector, so this is hardly getting people to own their own houses.

Amendment 56 would protect rural areas from the adverse effects of the right to buy. It is needed because the Bill is not properly rural-proofed. There is an ongoing need for a balanced mixture of tenures; that is, not replacing rented homes for people on average incomes with homes to buy for the better-off. Such a right would gradually destroy the rural exception sites, in both their conception and purpose. We know that they have delivered successfully around 7,500 rented or shared ownerships up to the present day. However, if this right is granted, it is vital that houses sold are replaced on the one-for-one basis that we have been hearing about and in the local parish or area, as I think the Government intend. If the replacement is not nearby, the area’s stock of affordable housing will diminish or disappear. At present, only 8% of these are classified as affordable in the countryside, so we must not reduce that any further.

Delivery of this intention will be difficult, especially in the same area. I see, incidentally, that London is specifically excluded from the requirement. Difficulties are quite easy to see—planning permission, landowner acquiescence, the greater expense of building in rural areas, building capacity, even the revenue from the sale of council properties may well be insufficient. Those are just some of the difficulties.

At Second Reading, the Minister indicated that she expected that housing associations would replace locally. Has she negotiated with the stakeholders concerned— the local authorities, the communities or landowners’ representatives—to enable this to happen? The portable discounts to be enabled by housing associations where they opt out of selling will suffer from the same disadvantages. These clauses will exacerbate the shortage of affordable properties and social cohesion in rural areas and I therefore support the amendment.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I would quite like to take up the challenge to the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, as someone who has been involved in housing associations for the past 12 years and chaired three different associations. I assume that the one that I currently chair, Housing & Care 21 is, fortunately, excluded from the right-to-buy provisions—I hope that the Minister will confirm that—because it is involved in retirement housing.

Personally, I am depressed by this whole debate on the right to buy. I cannot believe that a Conservative Government can produce such a complicated and bureaucratic proposal, particularly when we come on to discuss how it will be funded. Frankly, I fear that they have a manifesto commitment around their neck which ideally they would like to get out of but have failed to do so.

In the housing association organisation, I was tempted to let the Government get on with their own dirty work in implementing this legislation, but we have a voluntary deal and I respect that. My own association voted against it. But the mistake that the Government have made is that they have ignored the pioneering work that housing associations have been doing over the past 10 years to extend shared ownership. Indeed, they have got involved in private sales. Now the Government are undermining all that by bringing in this right-to-buy legislation. But we have already had the more general debate, so I will not go into that.

My own priority—and it should be all of ours—is to make sure that we are building more homes, and I have deep doubts about whether this will end up doing that at the end of the day. But we have a voluntary scheme. The only problem with that, which is why I support the amendments to which I have added my name in this group, is that we do not have sufficient oversight of what will go on, especially when there are particular problems. That is why it is important that we have some exclusions achieved through these amendments. I mentioned retirement housing, but supported housing is also excluded. There are already exclusions.

Rural housing, as this debate has shown, is a particular problem. We know that it is a problem because the stock is attractive. Anyone who has the opportunity of a discount will break the earth to get the advantage of it in a rural area because you would have a very good asset. Even if someone cannot afford it, they will get the help of friends and family or whatever to get that discount. There will be immense pressure on housing associations to sell the stock.

I want to say a word about how housing associations are run in this country. I personally think that the structure of housing associations has been allowed to grow like Topsy. I am glad to say that quite a lot of the housing associations that I have been involved in have a link with their localities, but a lot of the bigger ones no longer do. We have to look at how the bigger housing associations will behave. I accept that they will generally be honourable, but the problem is that when there is the possibility of disposing of a little rural stock that does not really count for very much in your association and which would get rid of a management problem and is normally quite valuable stock, I am not sure that housing associations will resist the temptation to quietly dispose of those units. It may well be that they are the only source of money grant for building new stock in areas where they can make a greater surplus. I worry about that.

That is why we have to understand that the successful housing associations are increasingly bigger and will be remote from some of these rural areas. They will not be sensitive to individual rural areas and they could become the agents of government because they simply want to get more grant. We have to be particularly sensitive about that, which is why our role in this House is important. We cannot just leave it to the voluntary scheme. I support Amendments 57B and 57D because the grant must be used to reinvest in the parish or neighbouring parish to where the house is being sold, if that is unfortunately happening. We must recognise that there has to be some restraint in respect of this housing.

Finally, I want to say a few words about Amendment 57C and community land trusts. I have spoken in earlier debates on this subject. If we do not make some exceptions for the smaller community land trusts, which have often achieved what they have from small, exceptional sites, often having been given the land, we will dry up the source of these exceptional sites. Landowners will simply not give up that land if they think that someone else will make money for themselves out of it. That has to be recognised. For those reasons, the Government must give close consideration to these amendments, which I support.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have listened very carefully to all the arguments concerning the possible disposal of some houses in rural areas owned by these community trusts. In Cornwall, where I live, I see big concerns about where essential workers will live, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, mentioned earlier. I also go to the Isles of Scilly a lot and that is what I want to mention. I put down Amendments 56B and 66CA to cover that, although I think the problem is probably covered by the other amendments.

The Isles of Scilly are 25 miles away from the coast and 2,500 people live there. The transport services, as I have frequently mentioned in this House, are pretty awful. You cannot commute there if you want to be a bus driver or anything. There is some affordable housing, but if that is sold, where will people live? Building new houses on those islands, which are very beautiful, is a problem. Demand for housing for essential workers is high, but the provision is virtually zero. If anyone does build a house, it is usually for a holiday let or because they have lots of money and they want to go there occasionally and leave it empty for the rest of the year, which happens so much in other parts of the country, including Cornwall.

If there is a strong argument for exceptions in the Bill for rural areas, there is an even stronger argument for the Isles of Scilly. It should not be allowed at all. I hope that the Minister will take that into consideration when she comes to respond. There may be other ways of doing this, but if there is no housing for essential workers in places such as the Isles of Scilly, where you cannot commute from the mainland to drive your bus or dustcart or work for the council, the community will die. This is a very serious issue.