Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, although perhaps I would not want to align myself with my friend’s sentiments about the complexity of the Covid rules currently being examined at the other end, I support this group of amendments.

Net zero and adaptation to the impacts of climate change are getting more and more difficult because they are more and more pressing. We have to deploy every tool in the toolbox, and the planning system is a pretty powerful tool if it is properly pointed. It is true to say that the National Planning Policy Framework requires local authorities to address climate change, but when push comes to shove, housing targets tend to get the upper hand. If a local authority lays stringent requirements on developers about net zero or adaptation to the impacts of climate change, the viability test immediately gets rolled out, as well as challenges about developments being not viable under the rules that the local authority is laying down. Local authorities have to have some sort of protection against that kind of challenge, by being able to point to strong guidance and a statutory requirement to deliver net zero and adaptation to climate change.

As my noble friend on our Front Bench said, it is good that a large number of local authorities have declared a climate emergency, but they now need help to make that reality. There are already a few hooks in planning legislation that local authorities ought to be able to rely on, but they are clearly not sufficient because planning inspectors are overturning development proposals and local plans on the basis that the planning authorities have gone too far. We have to make sure that they are not going to be subject to those sorts of local challenges for doing the things that need to be done to tackle this emergency.

These amendments have some considerable strength. As has been said, they deal not just with plans but with planning policy, and indeed with individual applications. They talk not just about net zero but about the very real need for local planning authorities to take pretty stringent steps to ensure that there is adequate adaptation to climate change on a local basis.

If noble Lords really want to break their hearts some evening, they should go and read the successive reports of the Adaptation Committee of the Climate Change Committee, very nobly chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, who is not in her place. It would break your heart to see how little progress we have made in making our local settlements, infrastructure, and other important things for the quality of life and of the economy in this country resilient in the face of climate change. We really have to get a grip of that one.

Other excellent features of the amendments are that they cover climate change and nature, and are about mitigation actions, as well as adaptation. It would be extremely helpful to planning authorities, developers, and those who care about climate change and climate adaptation for these amendments, or some variant of them, to be accepted at Report.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I support these amendments and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, for bringing them in front of noble Lords today. I want to focus on just one aspect of this. It is about not just whether the Government agree to these amendments and facilitate all the action which noble Lords have already spoken about but whether they back away from the current position, which is putting a ceiling on the ambition of local planning authorities in achieving net zero, and indeed in trying to set a purpose that is in any way in alignment with the nationally set targets of getting to zero carbon by 2050.

Many local authorities are straining at the leash to make their communities zero carbon and to ensure that they take steps to protect the well-being of their residents from flooding and extreme weather events, and from the costs and harm that they can see happening now and foresee coming in the coming decade or two if they do not take vigorous action to tackle climate change and mitigate the worst consequences of it. Unfortunately, time and again, via the Planning Inspectorate or government pronouncements, local planning authorities are prevented from taking those actions by the imposition of a national framework which is not in alignment with the equally national statutory framework to reach zero carbon by 2050.

If the Minister feels that, somehow or other, the formulation of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, is not the right one, that is fine, but can she, in the first instance, say that she and her Government will not continue to deliberately suppress the ambition of local authorities to achieve that national target and come forward herself, or encourage her Government to come forward, with a way to facilitate progress along the lines the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, has so well set out today?

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I totally agree with the amendments in this group and thank the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, for bringing our attention to this issue before we start addressing the clauses that concern national and local planning policy.

Strategic planning depends and rests on planning legislation such as this and on national and local planning policies. We need to provide the tools in planning legislation and at national planning policy level to produce the focus and levers that we require at local level to pursue net zero—which I have not heard a voice against in this debate so far. We all know how important it is, but we need the levers and tools at local level to achieve it.

That is not going to be as simple as it sounds. Planning is a forward-looking approach: it is for new development or change to old development and does not do as much for the existing built environment. I hope that when we discuss the national management development policies the Government will indicate where they will provide a strong policy in favour of achieving net zero through planning legislation and policy. Currently, the National Planning Policy Framework has the goal of

“presumption in favour of sustainable development”,

which is about 10 to 15 years old, and it was the start of the journey towards achieving a firm commitment to tackling climate change and achieving the Government’s aims of zero carbon by 2050. We need a step change in planning policy if we are to achieve that. Unfortunately for the Government, the tools they put in planning legislation and policies are cross-departmental if they are going to achieve anything.

For example, housing development requires highways infrastructure. Is such infrastructure going to enable more traffic? Even if we have transferred to electric-generated vehicles, that will still create considerable carbon emissions, both in the production of the vehicles and in the production of the electricity, for the foreseeable future. What is the policy going to be there?

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[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, who was a member of the Built Environment Committee when we discussed this issue. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for his excellent introduction; I agreed with probably most of what he said, which is quite unusual for me.

There is a housing problem. We are here to talk about the short-term issue and the relationship between supply and demand, the short-term issue and location, as other noble Lords have said. It comes back to the question of where the workers—the term is a little insulting—the people who need to live locally, will live. It varies across the UK. As noble Lords will know, I live in Cornwall and sometimes on the Isles of Scilly. I have a bit of data from Cornwall Council that puts this into perspective. According to the council, we have 13,292 second homes in Cornwall. I am not sure how that was measured or how you define a second home, which is partly what we are talking about now, but that is a pretty high figure.

On the question of where people might live, the same council and its deputy leader have said that there are 6,000 affordable homes in Cornwall which have planning permission, but only 600 are being built. One has to ask why. Is it that the developers are waiting for a year or two so that they can get a better sale price, or what? We need that information.

The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said that he did not have any evidence of people being kicked out of their longer-term lets for Airbnb, but there was evidence of this in Plymouth in a local paper article about six months ago. It named the person—I think—and where it took place. It involved a man who was working in some local authority role. He had been there for many years, but one day his landlord, who lived downstairs or upstairs in the house, gave him notice to quit, because he said he was going to sell it. So, the tenant had to leave. I do not know whether he found anywhere else; history does not relate. However, he did keep an eye on the property, and six months later he found it advertised on Airbnb. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this, it is keeping the availability of accommodation—both affordable and unaffordable homes—in a pretty nasty state wherever this happens. I recall asking the Airbnb witness, when he or she came to our committee, whether they felt it would be all right for somebody to be kicked out like that and for the council worker to sleep on a park bench—that was his alternative. I did not get much of an answer; I did not really expect one.

There is a problem here, but it is only in some places, as other noble Lords have said. There are other places where it is probably not necessary to have legislation, and that is the purpose behind Amendment 441. For me, the most important thing is to have the ability to register these properties when the local authority believes that it is necessary. So, I favour “permitting” in Amendment 441, but if the Government think that it is essential around the whole country, we will have to look at this again.

My worry about Amendment 443 is the inclusion of “90 days” in the definition of a short-term rental, but as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said, this a probing amendment. It is easy to ask: would this apply to a rental if it is let for 90 days, or if it is available for let for 90 days? Who is going to check? It is a bit difficult to define something which will probably cover the whole country—ditto my comments about Amendment 444. That amendment talks about one room in a house, which sounds fine. If you have a three-bedroom house and you let one, that sounds fine. However, there may be people who then build a bigger house in order to let multiple rooms—I do not know how many; it could be three, four, five or six—and make a lot of money out of it, and they could get away with it because it is a series of single rooms. All these special exclusions could make it more difficult for this legislation to work.

The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, are absolutely essential. This is one of the things we discovered with Airbnb, as the noble Lord said: it does not have to comply with any of these regulations. Fire and safety are fundamental to any property that is let. I know many people who run holiday lets, and they moan like anything that they have to get all these certificates. But if you have rented something, whether it is for a week, a day or a year, you still expect the same level of safety. It is amazing that people think they can get away with not having this.

Some noble Lords will have met the people doing the R&R, who told us what is going to happen with the restoration of this building. My first question to them was, “And what are you doing about fire extinguishers, fire monitoring, and extinguishers in the roof in particular, after Notre-Dame?” They said, “Well, that will come later, when we’ve decided what to do and started the work”. We all know that the most likely time for an old building to catch fire is when the contractors are in. That probably applies as much to lets registered or unregistered with the local authority as it does to this place—which we all love, of course.

In supporting all these amendments, my final comment, therefore, is that it is going to cost local authorities money to do these things. We know that. They must have the money and be allocated the money, and they must be able to spend it on what they like. Everybody will then think that this is all fair and above board, and they will sleep better in their beds at night.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I am speaking as a former member of the Built Environment Committee; I was a member when the committee’s report was drawn up. I thank the chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and his committee clerk for sending me a copy of the letter received by the committee this week, I understand, from the Minister who has accepted responsibility for this issue. It is, as it turns out, the Minister from DCMS. Before I go any further, I say that in a previous debate it was extremely frustrating for the Government Front Bench to reply, “Well, that was a matter for the Department for Transport”, and for no answer to be forthcoming. I hope we will not get into that dead end today, because this is a significant set of amendments on a significant proposal in the Bill. As this debate has already made clear, it has a very clear crossover into the housing market and the availability of housing in many areas of the country.

When the committee commenced its inquiry, it consisted of members with a very wide range of views—from those who had an extremely free-market approach to the housing situation and believed that the market would determine it, to those at the other end who thought that the best solution to our housing problem was a state allocation system. So, we had a very wide range of views in the committee, but we received such convincing evidence during the inquiry that it was not that difficult for us to produce a consensus report. The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, are very much exploring with the Government their response to the committee’s report, and I have signed Amendment 441 in particular. The Government’s wording in the Bill is that the Secretary of State can propose regulations “requiring or permitting” local authorities to do something, but the amendment would delete “requiring” so that the Secretary of State’s regulations can only be about “permitting” them.

I am also privy to what my noble friend Lady Thornhill would have said if she had not tested positive for Covid yesterday: “My first major concern is that there are several ‘may’ or ‘must’ statements in the Bill, which could either require or permit action, and there is a world of difference between the two. We are being asked to agree a general principle and accept that there will be additional shorter consultations to bring forward a set of regulations on the details of how such a registration scheme would operate.” My noble friend Lady Thornhill shares my aversion to the Government having unfettered power and, on this occasion, even being able to restrict the time for consultation. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has spoken about that. I hope that the Minister, despite being from the wrong department, will be able to tell us what the outcome of that consultation process was.

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[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

I will be coming to that in a moment.

Finally, I turn to Amendments 445, 445A, 445B and 447, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath. These amendments concern the detail of how the registration scheme will operate, particularly in relation to data sharing and the safety of properties. These issues will indeed be explored in the consultation, and a registration scheme will be designed to ensure that all providers of short-term lets are aware of their legal responsibilities to ensure health and safety in their properties. Infrequent use should not mean that short-term lets do not need to meet safety standards, but that issue will be considered in much more detail in the consultation.

The shape of England’s guest accommodation landscape has changed greatly over the past 15 years. Online platforms have enabled greater choice in accommodation for holidaymakers and have brought many benefits to the tourism sector. This proliferation of a new type of guest accommodation has, however, been unregulated, which has prompted concerns including on safety, as my noble friend highlighted. We want to ensure that England continues to provide a safe and competitive guest accommodation offer, while also supporting those who live and work in our local visitor economies.

That is why the Government launched a call for evidence on this topic, as an important first step in understanding how we can ensure we continue to reap the benefits of short-term lets, while also protecting holidaymakers and local interests. This initial call for evidence, which ran between June and September last year, was indeed led by DCMS, as it follows on from previous work that that department did, as short-term lets are an integral part of the UK visitor economy. A report on that call for evidence will be published at the same time as the consultation on the registration scheme, this summer, and I reassure noble Lords that both departments are working together closely because of their shared interest in the scheme.

It has become clear from the call for evidence process that there is a compelling case for introducing light-touch regulation in this sector, and that is what we are intending to do through the Bill. The Government are also introducing a registration scheme for short-term lets through the Bill. The details of how the scheme will operate will be explored through a public consultation, which will be published before this year’s Summer Recess with a view to the register being up and running as soon as possible thereafter. The consultation is intended to flesh out many different aspects of how the scheme would operate, such as what information would be collected, who would administer the scheme, which requirements should be satisfied as a condition of registering and whether any fees would be charged; it will also cover any enforcement powers, which were asked about by an earlier contributor to the debate.

The important matters on safety that noble Lords raised—

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I appreciate what the Minister said about enforcement. It was in fact me who talked about that—not my noble friend Lord Shipley, as was widely said. Enforcement is vital because without it, the scheme becomes a dead letter. Making sure that any costs or fees take adequate account of that is quite important.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

The noble Lord has made that point well and I will certainly take it back to the department, which will take note of it.

Regarding a precise time definition for short-term lets, it is not the length of time but the activity that is important. In essence, the definition of a short-term let is a dwelling used by a guest, in return for payment, that is not the guest’s main residence

The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, asked whether the planning changes that the Secretary of State referred to are the subject of the planned consultation on a short-term let use class, as discussed by this Committee on Monday. I recognise that a number of the questions asked by noble Lords will be answered only by the consultation process. However, I hope that, in the meantime, I have been able to offer at least some reassurance; I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Foster, to withdraw his amendment.