Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Taylor of Goss Moor and Baroness Butler-Sloss
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I have not spoken on this Bill before. However, I would like to add a practical point from the part of the West Country where I live, where there is both very large building going on—5,000-plus houses, some on a flood plain—together with very small building on small sites. What we are being told locally is that the various builders, particularly those on the larger sites, are now going back to the council to ask not to have to provide as much affordable housing as they were originally asked to do. It really is a very serious matter down in our part of the West Country. As everyone knows, affordable housing is so important that every step that can be taken to support it, I would hope that this House would support.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)
My Lords, first, I draw attention to my interests on the register; in particular, I am president of the National Association of Local Councils. Although not in the register of interests, I chair a neighbourhood plan in a rural village.
I spoke on this in Committee to support the noble Lord, Lord Best—I was a member of the rural housing review that he conducted. I speak today in support of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. However, primarily, I want to urge the Minister to address the very real issue that is being raised here. I will not repeat all of the comments that I made before about the importance in small, rural communities of making sure that there are homes that the people who work in the shop, the pub, on the farm and with the children in the local school can afford to live in. I believe that that is something that unites the House. I simply say that in a world in which we want to protect many rural villages and communities from overdevelopment, one solution to affordable housing—simply to build enough houses so that prices come down—is not available. That means that if we are to provide homes for the people who do the work of the countryside, we have to do it in the form of affordable housing, whether it is to rent or through part ownership. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, the rural housing review made it clear—I believe that the Government know this—that the majority of such homes are provided on small sites as a result of affordable housing requirements. These are not sites which are unviable for development. There may be small urban sites where the costs of development are such that providing affordable housing is genuinely difficult to do viably, but in these cases, typically, the land has enormous value when given permission for market housing. While landowners in some cases may seek to maximise their returns, I think that it is legitimate, right and indeed part of neighbourhood planning that we say that the returns they make should be shared with the community by providing some affordable homes. Some landowners will do so voluntarily, but too often that will not be the case.