Housing: Affordability

Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)]

My Lords, first, I declare my interests both as chairman of the National Housing Federation and in various projects and businesses trying to deliver the housing needed. As has also been referred to, I am involved with a government project to supply planning guidance.

I very much welcome what the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, said. There was nothing with which I disagreed. In fact, there were things that I strongly champion. I just want to highlight three points in very little time. First, there is a myth among some that the demographic data showing the need for housing are somehow a finger in the wind. A local authority planning officer once said that to me.

However, with 20-year plans, we are not talking about housing for people who are not yet born but for the people who are born—not only the people of the baby boom of the 1990s and beyond who will be coming through soon, but the 3.3 million adults between 20 and 34 who, as the Financial Times highlighted today, are living with their parents. That is an increase of 669,000 since 1996 without any increase in that population age group. These people are living at home because they cannot afford to move out—even their own parents say that, when asked—and, as a father of three young children, it worries the heck out of me.

Secondly, there is a capacity issue in delivering the numbers we need. The large housebuilders have a grip on developable land through land options but, on their business model, they do not have the capacity to increase delivery, however much they and we might want it, because their business model will not allow such a growth in numbers. We have seen that historically. It is simply a fact.

I passionately believe that our country’s most successful social enterprise sector—the housing associations—has that capacity. It has it through the housing it already has and through its experience of delivering a not-for-profit, social purpose model. The housing association sector believes that some 2 million more homes will be needed between now and the early 2030s. This includes a mix of affordable homes to rent and homes for sale. That capacity can be unlocked by liberating the sector and giving it greater flexibility. We must allow that to happen, otherwise we will be unable to deliver the homes.

Most of all, we will be unable to deliver the homes without the land being made available. As long as we try to push denser and denser, smaller and smaller, and less and less attractive houses around our attractive historic communities on to the land on which people want to walk their dogs and to look at out of their window, the more and more unpopular it will be and the harder and harder politically.

That is why I passionately believe in freeing land for new communities, recreating the deal that said you can have green belt around existing communities to protect them but, in return, you must create new communities for those who so desperately need a home.