Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Maddock (LD)]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with the comments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. I spoke on these issues in Committee. As has been said by both previous speakers, we managed to get such agreement across the building sector and all the organisations that care about these issues as to what the standard would be. When we came in as a coalition Government, we stuck to that. For some reason, we changed our minds. I would really like the Minister to explain what made us question the agreements we had and the standards we had wanted.

I know that two of my honourable friends who have been Liberal Democrat Ministers in the department have pushed to row back from where we were going, and we have now gone forwards again. However, we have not managed to get any farther. We are owned an explanation from the Minister tonight of why we have ended up in this position when we had such a good agreement back in 2010.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome both these amendments; indeed, they are very similar to amendments I tabled in Committee. I am grateful to both the noble Lord and the right reverend Prelate for pushing these further to see what response we get from my noble friend the Minister.

I will try not to repeat everything that I said in Committee. On the minimum number of houses to which this would relate, the Bill takes everything the wrong way. It is absolutely clear that smaller builders—whom this clause does not target very effectively, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said—are more capable of building better-quality homes than the large builders. They are in no way constrained by technology. The clause somehow conveys a government view that small-scale builders are merely jobbing builders with no skills. That is absolutely wrong and sends completely the wrong message. They can deliver a high standard of homes as well as any other building business.

I agree with the right reverend Prelate. I certainly live in a very rural area. A number of the developments there are small scale, and they are all off the grid. I am off the grid. Local developments in villages around me are off the grid. We therefore have the problem that we institutionalise for another 50 to 100 years, or whatever the life expectancy of the property is, potential fuel poverty for those who live in those houses—that or we have an expensive retrofitting programme in the future, which we are already struggling trying to make work. In fact, DECC’s own figure for the cost of retrofitting the current housing stock to get it up to a proper level is £60 billion. That is quite a big sum. We should not be starting to add to that figure.

I welcome the proposal to keep a minimum number of houses; I suggested five in Committee, but 10 is quite reasonable. I welcome that fact that my noble friend the Minister, judging by our conversations, does not see the figure being any greater than that. Clearly, we are having a consultation process at the moment and I am sure that he cannot be specific until that is closed, but I welcome the fact that the Government have recognised that that number cannot be too large. We certainly need a sunset to this clause. I hope that that will come out of this as well.

My noble friend Lady Maddock has gone through the questions surrounding the standards for zero-carbon homes very well, and how that issue appears to have moved backwards and forwards and backwards. I look forward to enlightenment in that area. I again come down to what the right reverend Prelate said about allowable solutions. I am not at all against them in concept, but wherever possible the targets need to be met within the building itself or very close to it. Once again, if we do not do that, the people who live in those houses will have increased energy bills for as long as they live there. We might neutralise carbon emissions globally—ensuring that is much more difficult on allowable solutions than actually on the property itself—but then you still have the problem that that property requires more energy to heat it and to keep it to the right standards.

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Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

108: After Clause 26, insert the following new Clause—
“Determination of planning applications
(1) In circumstances where planning permission for a development has been granted pursuant to section 70(1)(a) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (determination of applications: general considerations), any building work remaining to be carried out as part of that development after the expiry of six years from the granting of planning permission shall no longer be permitted to be carried out in compliance with the Approved Document Part L in force at the time when planning permission was granted, but shall instead be required to be carried out in compliance with the Approved Document Part L in force at that time.
(2) For the purposes of this section—
“building work” has the meaning given in regulation 3(1) of the Building Regulations 2010 (meaning of building work);
“Approved Document Part L” means a document issued in pursuance of section 6 of the Building Act 1984 (approved documents) for the purpose of providing guidance with respect to the requirements of Part L of Schedule 1 to the Building Regulations 2010 (conservation of fuel and power).”

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, this continues a similar theme. I tabled an amendment in Committee to try to get more rigour into ensuring that the building regulations that we have are met and complied with. There is very little point in our legislating if those standards are not met in practice. I quoted the Government’s own adviser, the Committee on Climate Change, which stated that there seemed to be a big gap between what should be happening with the thermal efficiency of homes and what was actually happening. I was not completely reassured by that, but I accept that that is mainly a role of local government.

I am trying move on to address the fact that it often takes—and certainly has over recent years—a long time for a planning permission to become a built-out and lived-in development. We have the situation—I look on it as an anomaly or rather a loophole—whereby the building regulations to which builders must build relate to the date of the planning permission rather than when the development is constructed and completed. If that is only within a couple of years, it makes no difference whatever. We have, however, a number of developments—at certain times more than others—when that stretches over a considerable period. I realise that planning permissions themselves have a shelf life. After three years, if they have not been used, they go into abeyance. However, I remind noble Lords that under that system, as long as you do a certain amount of work—you do not have to complete it—that planning permission remains live. That is something that is done very regularly to make sure that planning permissions are not lost.

I was very impressed by the Minister’s figure of £200 that would potentially be saved per annum by the moving up of building regulations by the Government. Of course, that illustrates very well the extra cost to residents of houses that do not meet those standards—either because they have been exempted under the small development regime that we talked about in the previous amendment or because houses are being built under building regulations that are several years old.

It seems to me that this is something that needs to be fixed—for consumers and certainly for the government strategy on fuel poverty and zero-carbon homes. So I am putting forward an extremely modest proposal that is a longstop: if developments have not been completed within six years of gaining planning permission, at that point they must comply with the building regulations of that time rather than those when the planning permission took place. I have tried to make this amendment as clear as possible. I hope it says that. I very much hope that it is in line with government policy and that this is something of a loophole that we would like to close—particularly when we have periods when building and construction developments take a particularly long time.

Indeed, I would ask whether there is a temptation sometimes to get planning permissions early. Where we have land banks, it perhaps means that construction is delayed but it almost gives a benefit to developers to hang on to undeveloped land. I would like to see this very sensible measure used as an incentive for building, particularly of dwellings when we have such a national housing shortage, to be started and completed within a reasonable period. I beg to move.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, we should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for raising a very important and interesting point about developments that are not completed within six years of the granting of planning permission. As we have heard, it requires the development to be carried out in accordance with current building regulations relating to conservation of fuel and power. This is an attempt to address the very serious point that we have delays in the completion of developments, particularly housing. Given the housing crisis we face in this country, the objective should be to encourage sites with planning permission to be built out as soon as possible.

This is one of the issues that the Lyons report addressed for us. Although this is not the occasion for an extensive discourse on that report, one of the interesting points it makes is that some 80,000 unbuilt homes have planning permission from 2010 or earlier. Some of these will be built to 2006 standards, and so be eight or more years out of date. One of the issues that this amendment raises is how practical it is retrospectively to amend the applicable building regulations. There will obviously be issues around homes that are partially constructed at the cut-off point. Getting homes built earlier is good for obvious reasons, although, of course, it does not necessarily do anything to raise the standards of applicable building regulations.

I might resort to going back to the Lyons report. Obviously, not all these recommendations are yet, or will become, policy, but under the heading “Use it or lose it”, it suggests that,

“the life of a planning permission should be reduced to two years with higher fees applying for renewal of expired permissions”.

That would present an alternative mechanism whereby people have to go back and face updated building regulations. Certainly, more substantive work should be required to count as the commencement of development. That is a problem the noble Lord identified. The report also suggests that,

“councils should have powers to levy a charge equivalent to council tax if land allocated in a plan with or without permission is not brought forward within five years”.

Compulsory purchase powers could be strengthened and streamlined to make it easier for public bodies to acquire land where it is not brought forward and where it is a priority for development, so there are alternative ways to encourage developments to take place and perhaps to realign the nature of those developments with updated building regulations. The noble Lord has raised a very interesting point which I am sure will get a full response from the Minister. One hopes that something could actually flow from this.

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[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for his support and his very good response to the concept that we are discussing. I look forward to the Labour Party developing that policy further. I particularly thank my noble friend the Minister for a very good and useful reply to my thoughts on this. I will read all that he has said very carefully. I bow to his knowledge of this area, which is much more excellent than my own, and which he has both through practical experience and through government. I hope that this might be the start of a further dialogue in this area—one which I will take an interest in, particularly regarding the use of that flexibility that is already there within the legislation. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 108 withdrawn.