Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 20th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to start this day in Committee by moving Amendment 240. I shall also speak to the other amendments in this grouping.

I am very grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who apologises for not being here today. This amendment has the support of the Bicycle Association, Bikeability Trust, British Cycling, Cycling UK, Living Streets, Ramblers and Sustrans. I think you can say that that support basically includes the Better Planning Coalition. Its purpose is to ensure that the various walking and cycling network plans and rights of way drawn up by county councils or combined authorities are incorporated into local planning authorities’ development plans and are reflected in their planning decisions. This would help to safeguard land for new walking and cycling routes or rights of way, including disused railway lines, improve existing routes, and ensure that developments connected with existing or new walking, wheeling or cycling networks with secure development contributions are introduced. This came to a head within the last six months, when National Highways was caught filling in disused railway bridges with concrete to prevent them from being used in the future as footpaths or cycleways, for example. I am grateful that there has been a pause put on that. I hope that it stays a pause, because it was a very stupid decision with no benefit whatever.

This amendment addresses the problems of local planning authorities that sometimes, wittingly or unwittingly, frustrate a higher tier authority’s aspirations for walking, cycling and rights of way by not recording these network aspirations in their development plans. That means that they are not safeguarding the land for these networks or to connect new developments with existing networks for secure developer contributions to implement or upgrade specific routes. There is much discussion going on about all these issues, but it is very important that this covers what is happening now and what might happen in future. The biggest problem is when we have two-tier authorities—county councils or combined authorities, and district councils. In one case, one part of a unitary authority commissioned Sustrans to assesses the feasibility of reopening a disused railway line as a walking and cycling route, while another part of the same authority gave permission for a housing development which blocked the route. There is no point in doing this; it wastes a lot of time and seriously affects the people who want to develop cycling or walking routes.

Local transport authorities have a duty to prepare a statutory local transport plan. They are also responsible for drawing up one or more non-statutory local cycling and walking infrastructure plans. That is all a bit of a mouthful, but really important. Usually it is the same body, but for each one it is required to draw up a statutory rights-of-way improvement plan for its area. We probably all have examples in our own areas of rights of way not being taken very seriously—and we will talk about that later—but all these things need co-ordination.

The Government have argued that our concerns about this lack of co-ordination would best be addressed through the NPPFs, rather than through legislation. My worry is that the current NPPFs, which are still in proposed revisions, mention these local cycling, walking and infrastructure plans only in passing, leaving out the right-of-way plans altogether. This results in developments being granted permission without taking into account the need for walking and cycling or improving these links. I call it active travel—it is a bit shorter. I am sure that the Minister will take this amendment seriously, and I hope that she gives me a nice positive response to it and says that perhaps we can have further discussions and see what happens.

My Amendment 470, on electric vehicle charging, is quite a short amendment. It requires a change to the Electricity Act, for the Government to facilitate or accelerate the rollout of electric vehicle charging points for domestic and commercial customers. We have discussed this in your Lordship’s House quite a few times. A few statistics really worry me, frankly. First, the Government have a target of 300,000 public charging points by 2030, and there is a long way to go before we get there. Interestingly, a Written Answer from the Minister on 29 March to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, stated that the number of installations were 8,600 public charging, 71,000 electric vehicle home charge schemes, and very few electric charge point sockets and grants, while workplace had 15,000.

Another telling Written Answer, to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, on 21 March, stated that

“the majority (around 75%) of electric car charging happens at home, as it is often cheaper and more convenient for drivers.”

I am sure that the Minister is right, but the problem is: how many people have home charging? I expect many noble Lords here have home charging, if they want it, but there are an awful lot of people in this country who park on the road and, if they want to charge their cars, they will have to get it off a lamppost.

Another Written Answer from the Minister said that there was no national data on how many lamppost chargers were available. If we do not know how many are available, we do not know who wants them, and we do not know where the public ones are, where do you charge your heavy goods vehicle or coach? Who will fund them? Most important of all, what about the regulation of chargers? There is a lot for the Government to do to meet their target of 300,000 charging points by 2030.

Finally, I support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, on the same subject. I am sure that she will tell us a great deal more of it. I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, in this debate on transport, it is a pleasure to follow in the slipstream of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and add some footnotes to his speech on Amendment 240.

Before I turn to the amendment, I will say a word about the target of 300,000 EV chargers. Some chargers are fast chargers and some are slow chargers. At some point, we need to define more accurately the division of those 300,000. If they are all slow chargers, that will not do the trick. If they are fast chargers, we may not need quite so many. So a bit of granularity on that target at some point would be welcome.

Researching for this debate, I came across a government document stating that

“continuing growth in road transport and consequential environmental impacts present a major challenge to the objective of sustainable development. Traffic growth on the scale projected could threaten our ability to meet objectives for greenhouse gas emissions … and for the protection of landscapes and habitats”.

I should have recognised it instantly, as it was in a document that I published nearly 30 years ago when I was Planning Minister. It was PPG13, which offered advice to local authorities on integrating land-use planning and transport. Its object was to reduce reliance on the car by promoting alternative means of travel and improving the quality of life.

I note in passing that I referred to the then Government’s policy of increasing the real level of fuel duty by an average of at least 5% a year—a policy now very much in the rear-view mirror—and also my commitment to introducing electronic tolling on motorways. Back in 1993, I was clearly a little bit ahead of the game.

Amendment 240 could almost have been lifted from PPG13. It promoted development within urban areas at locations highly accessible by means other than the car, and it supported policies to improve choice for people to walk, cycle or catch public transport, rather than drive between homes and facilities that they need to visit regularly.

I also came across an article in the Independent from 10 July 1995, when I became Transport Secretary and continued my campaign. In an open letter to me, Christian Wolmar wrote:

“When your appointment as Transport Secretary was announced, the whoops of joy from cycling campaigners could be heard across the nation. The notion of having a Transport Secretary who is not only an active member of Friends of the Earth but also an active cyclist and tandem rider was beyond their wildest dreams”.


So, the Minister will not be surprised that, as middle age taps me on the shoulder, my commitment to environmental means of transport is undimmed.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, set out the case for the amendment, which I believe is even stronger than it was in the 1990s. I will not repeat it. I understand from the Government’s response to a similar amendment in another place that, instead of an amendment to primary legislation, the objectives to the amendment should be incorporated in a revised NPPF, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has just said. My response is that I tried that and it did not work. We need to be more assertive.

Paragraph 1.10 of PPG13 said:

“If land-use policies permit continued dispersal of development and a high reliance on the car, other policies to reduce the environmental impact of transport may be less effective or come at a higher cost”.


That is exactly what has been happening, as the Government’s own publication, Gear Change: A Bold Vision for Cycling and Walking, published in 2020, recognised. Despite the exhortation in that PPG and, I suspect, many other PPGs since, we have not seen the transformation in planning for transport that is required. We continue to build housing with little or no public transport provision, or where it is impractical to get to school, the shops or work without jumping into a car. We must up our game and cease relying on guidance.

The amendment also addresses the problem touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that has arisen in two-tier authorities, where, typically, the county council is the transport authority but the district council is the planning authority: if you do not have the commitment to walking or cycling networks recorded in the district plan, this can then frustrate the county’s ambition to promote cycling and walking networks—clearly an undesirable outcome.

The challenge to my noble friend, who I am delighted to see is replying to this debate, is to convince me that we should continue to rely on guidance, as I suspect my officials advised me to do in 1993, despite the evidence that it has not brought about the transformation that I aspire to. I wish her every success.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak to a number of amendments in this group, to which my name is attached. This is, of course, a group of transport-related amendments. Like the noble Lord, Lord Young, I am very pleased to see that we have the Transport Minister here to respond in detail to us, because all the warm words on levelling up are meaningless without decisive action to improve transport infrastructure and services. Poor transport facilities almost exactly mirror the overall picture of the social divide in our country: poorer areas have poor public transport and poor transport infrastructure generally.

There is a reason why London and the south-east are the richest parts of the UK: they have the transport links to service the areas well, and one reinforces the other. I say that while recognising of course at the same time that there is poverty and disadvantage amongst the most privileged.

I start with Amendment 240, to which I have added my name. The noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Young, have spoken in some detail, and with greater information than is necessary for me to repeat here today. But I want to endorse the fact that this has to be about broadening access to the activities of cycling and walking and safeguarding our rights of way: for many decades, we have been accustomed to the gradual erosion of the practicality of safe walking and cycling, and the erosion of our rights of way on footpaths. The car has been king for a very long time. If we are going to truly improve the quality of our lives and the lives of the generations to come, we need a much broader and more informed approach. In my own local area, I notice the cycleways that disappear into nothing at key junctions and so on. It is a skilled business to provide really good cycling and walking facilities.

Turning to Amendment 468, the intention here is to prioritise the requirements for disability access at rail stations. Progress on this has been painfully slow—way too slow. I use this opportunity to praise the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and my noble friend Lady Brinton, who raise these issues time and again in the media and in this House. We live in an ageing society, and we should be much more encouraging to those people who are less mobile but who want to travel by rail or bus. So this amendment goes way beyond the simple issues of wheelchair access, access for those with sight impairment and so on. It is about access for people who are less agile.

However, treatment is far from being on an equal basis for those people in wheelchairs. As a regular rail traveller myself, I watch this week after week. Despite huge efforts by the staff, there is still so much further to go. We have to ensure that people do not have to book way ahead in order to be able to make a simple journey.

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[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak particularly to my Amendment 438, but I will preface my remarks by saying how much I have appreciated this debate and the contributions from the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds. We have explored this issue in a comprehensive and useful way, and I greatly appreciate that.

I draw noble Lords’ attention to the Affordable Housing Commission report, which came out in the middle of Covid and was therefore buried and forgotten by everybody. The AHC report, which noble Lords can find via Google or their favourite search engine, was a pretty big effort, thankfully funded fully by the Nationwide Foundation—the Nationwide Building Society’s foundation—with a secretariat from the Smith Institute; I had the honour of chairing this. The report is a pretty meaty document and worth those who are interested in this subject following through, but that was a great debate on those amendments, and I support the essence of all of them.

My amendment 438, to which the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has kindly added his name, seeks to remove from the statute book an obnoxious, offensive legislative measure which has hung over local authorities since the passing of the Housing and Planning Act 2016. I reiterate my declaration of interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Back in 2016, I was the LGA president and along with allies from all parts of the House, including the noble Lord, Lord Porter, with his local government expertise, and the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, we fought—unsuccessfully—to remove these awful sections from the 2016 Act.

What does this part of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 say, and why is it so troublesome? The key section imposes obligations on local authorities to sell their most valuable council housing when tenants move out, rather than reletting the property. It does so by requiring local authorities to pay a levy to the Secretary of State equivalent to the market value of the best council housing when it becomes vacant, multiplied by the estimated number of vacancies for the next year. To raise the money to pay this levy, local authorities would obviously have no option but to sell their most valuable homes. Most of the proceeds from these compulsory sales go straight to the Secretary of State, who, in a convoluted twist, would use the money to compensate housing associations for selling properties at large discounts to their tenants under an extension of the right to buy.

The effect of this extraordinary measure, had it ever been implemented, would have been highly damaging both for local authorities trying to meet the acute need for social housing in their areas and for the families desperately waiting for a home. Council housing would be further stigmatised and labelled as only for those with no hope of anything better, and with fewer re-lets, pressure on the remaining council stock would be even more intense than it already is.

Buyers of the housing which councils would be forced to sell would very often be private landlords who would let to similar occupiers but would charge market rents, thereby imposing twice the burden on the Exchequer for tenants in receipt of benefits. I was glad to catch up with the latest statistic from the noble Lord, Lord Stunell: that 50% of properties sold under the right to buy have been moved into the hands of private landlords and, obviously, let at rents that are twice as much, if not more.

To add insult to injury, the 2016 Act also empowered the Secretary of State to top up this raid on council resources by requiring local authorities to raise the rents to market levels for any tenant foolish enough to increase their income above a fixed level. The extra rent would not go towards management and maintenance of council housing but instead would be remitted to the Secretary of State as a windfall for the Government.

I moved an amendment opposing the measure and it was carried by a huge majority in this House. I even featured on the BBC documentary on the work of the House of Lords. Although it remains in law, it is another ingredient in the 2016 Act that thankfully has not seen the light of day.

Returning to the compulsory sales of higher-value council housing, as is addressed by the amendment, we can now see what a disaster this would have been—but the offending measure remains on the statute book. In reality, this sword of Damocles hanging over councils is no longer a major threat since Government Ministers have made it clear that they have no intention of using these draconian asset-stripping powers. Indeed, I am confident that Ministers understand the imperative for more, not less, social housing provision.

It was, no doubt, the work of an enthusiastic but naive special adviser coming up with a cunning wheeze to extract the cost from local authorities of securing new right-to-buy sales by housing associations. Today there would be little appetite for such shenanigans which would reduce the stock of available social housing, following the right to buy’s removal of 2.8 million council homes and the subsequent higher costs of using the private rented sector instead. Indeed, the right to buy has now been abolished in Scotland, and Wales is following suit.

Councils have welcomed the Government’s recent move enabling them to retain 100% of right-to-buy receipts for 2022-23 and 2023-24. With long waiting lists for social housing and the private sector becoming more and more unfeasible for many households, that announcement should support councils trying to replace the homes sold through right to buy. It would be helpful if the Government completed this change and made it permanent rather than just for two years. On this theme, I hope that the Government will finally agree to councils having the ability to set right-to-buy discounts locally as part of the Bill’s emphasis on devolution.

The time has surely come to be rid of this 2016 misguided measure to strip local authorities of their best housing assets. The LGA and others have been waiting for a legislative opportunity for the Government to enact their clear intention to have nothing to do with this defunct legislative device. The Bill provides that opportunity, and I think everyone in local government and in the world of social housing will breathe a sigh of relief to see this expunged from the statute book. I commend this amendment.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to intervene briefly to put this debate in an important context. Before I do so, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Best, on eventually achieving the victory which he sought when the 2016 Act was going through; it was not the best piece of legislation on housing that Parliament has seen. I agree with what the right reverend Prelate said—that we should unfreeze the local housing allowance or, if we cannot, increase the discretionary housing grant, to enable those who find that they cannot meet the rent to have more support.

I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that “affordable” is a misnomer, but there is a fundamental choice that we have to make, which is: the higher the rents, the more social houses you can build; and the lower the rents, the fewer social houses you can build. That is simply because of the way that social landlords are funded. A Government decide to have a capital fund available for new builds. A Government of a different persuasion may have a higher figure than the current one but, whatever that figure, the number of houses that can be built is dependent on the rent levels which the social landlords can charge.

A Housing Minister has a choice: you can have lower rents, social rents or genuinely affordable rents, but you will get less output. When I had responsibility and was faced with this spectrum, I went for slightly more output but slightly higher rents, to meet the demand for new houses and to build more houses that would last 60 years. I recognise that others may choose to go the other way on the spectrum, but you cannot get away from the fact that this is the choice. If you want to have affordable rents reduced to social rents, the consequence is that you will have fewer houses. I make this intervention at the end of this debate just to put it in a slightly broader context.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in my name that I wish to speak to briefly. However, prior to that, I say that my noble friend Lord Stunell made an important point about how all the amendments here are trying to resolve the issue of what is affordable. So-called affordable homes are those built by the commercial sector as part of a development—a planning obligation—yet the challenge for us all is to provide homes at a social rent, which is roughly estimated as 50% of the market rent.

It is a tragedy for this country that successive Governments seem to have abandoned provision of homes for social rent in any large numbers. Local authorities have been severely constrained in building their own social housing, and the provision of homes for social rent has largely been left to housing associations. We then come to the conundrum which the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, just rightly pointed to—that the capital that housing associations receive from government depends on their flow of rental income. Therefore, do you have more or less? Either way, everybody agrees that there are insufficient homes for social rent.

About 30 years ago, my authority had 42,000 council houses at social rent—it now has 21,000. That is the scale of what has happened. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Stunell is absolutely right that about half of them are now back in the market as private rented properties at a higher rent for folk but without any of the support packages provided for homes for social housing rent within either a local authority or a housing association. That is a huge challenge that this country needs to tackle. One of the key factors in levelling up is a decent home—it is in the levelling-up missions. Millions of people in our country do not live in an adequate, safe home appropriate for their family, and we need to address that scandal.

On affordability, my noble friend Lord Stunell expertly laid out the issues, and I do not wish to say anything, except that obviously I totally support him. I wish to raise one issue about affordability that is a bit of a side issue. It seems that any property built as part of a commercial development which is deemed affordable should be affordable in perpetuity. My own council adopted that policy—I have to say as a result of pressure from my own party there—so that, when the house is bought, the 80% factor remains. The least the Government could do is to include that as part of a definition of affordability.

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Moved by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

248: Clause 99, page 108, line 34, at end insert—
“(3) If there is conflict between street voting on development and the development plan, a determination must be made in favour of the development plan.”Member’s explanatory statement
The outcome of a street vote may conflict with the development plan. The amendment provides guidance on how to resolve this conflict.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, we come now to the clause in the Bill dealing with street votes, which has generated a substantial number of amendments, of which mine is the lead amendment. It seeks to ensure that a street vote cannot conflict with a local plan. This clause was not in the Bill when it was introduced in another place: it was introduced on the second day of Report. The Government have said that Clause 99

“is intended to encourage residents to consider the potential for additional development on their streets, and support a gentle increase in densities, in particular, in areas where additional new homes are needed”.

I expect the Minister will describe the provisions of the clause in more detail, so I will not spell them out.

We have heard the expression “gentle densification” several times from the Secretary of State; it is something he clearly approves of. I will need some clarification before I lend it my approval, for this reason. Michael Gove was in another place, as I was, when the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, then John Prescott, the Secretary of State, came up with a similar policy of promoting suburban development and the development of back gardens. Those with long memories will remember that all hell broke loose. On 7 March 2007, the Daily Mail thundered:

“Thirty thousand gardens every year ‘torn up’ due to Prescott's policies”.


My party was whipped to vote on a Friday for a Private Member’s Bill to block the policy. Greg Clark, the then shadow Minister, wanted gardens to be reclassified as greenfield sites, and he took up the cause because local authorities were powerless to stop gardens being built on. When my party won the 2010 general election, Greg Clark, then the Minister, ordered changes to planning rules that meant gardens will no longer be seen as brownfield land, ripe for development. Crucially, it meant that stronger powers were available to local authorities to block “gentle densification”.

I just mention that to put this proposal in a broad historic and political perspective and to suggest some caution before we endorse it. Normally, and indeed given the controversial background to this proposal, innovation such as this, in the planning world, would be preceded if not by a Green Paper then at least by some form of consultation to gauge its practicality and effectiveness. This would involve the LGA, the Royal Town Planning Institute and, of course, the public. Nothing of the sort ever took place. This policy emerged from a think tank and was fast-tracked into primary legislation, overtaking on the way some well thought-out and badly needed policies on housing reform, in sharp contrast to the normal process of policy formation. I believe that the Government are adopting a high-risk strategy and, rather than going straight into primary legislation, they should test the proposal in the usual way and then consider how best to proceed. There is nothing particularly urgent about this, and we need to get it right.

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[Earl Howe (Con)]

I am so sorry I omitted to reply to the noble Baroness; I will write to her. It is a question I ask officials myself. It is an issue which will be decided in the consultation because, as she rightly said, there will be instances where a street, as such, does not exist. For example, you might have a small community of houses where the owners or residents may wish to apply under this procedure. In short, this is an issue to be determined under the consultation.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the hour is late, and we are less than half way through the targeted groups for the day, so I will be as brief as I can in winding up this fairly lengthy debate. I note that all those who spoke to their amendments had at some point held elective office, either as councillors or in other place—and, in some cases, both. That may explain the lukewarm—I think that is the best adjective I can use—reception for this proposal. The conclusion I draw from this is that the role of a think tank is to think and to come up with radical policies; the role of government is not to fast-track those into primary legislation but to subject them to critical scrutiny and consultation, and then progress to the next stage. The more I listened to the debate, and the more I heard my noble friend the Minister use the word “consultation”, the more I have come to the conclusion that, while I said in my opening speech that this was a policy in the process of gestation, it is in fact the size of a pinhead, as far as I can see, when it comes to movement towards delivery.

I will now pick up some of the points raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, struck a note of caution about the policy and agreed with me that it was okay to have street votes as a process of feeding into the formulation of a district plan, but she wanted more clarity and asked for assurances about conservation areas for which an assurance was not given. She asked relevant questions about the role of tenants, voting thresholds and declaration of interests. As I understand it, a short-term tenant will have a vote, but the owner, who is not in the property at the moment, will not. There are a lot of issues behind entitlement to vote, which I will come to a moment.

I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, was a Minister in the DCLG in 2010, when the Prescott policy of not-so-gentle densification was overturned—his head is stationary, so I do not know whether he was or not; now it has moved vertically, indicating that he was indeed in the department then. He made the point—I will come to it in a moment—about the priority of the neighbourhood plan. One of the worrying things that my noble friend the Minister said in his reply was that, where a neighbourhood has gone through the whole process of consultation, and has developed and had approved a neighbourhood plan, and then within that neighbourhood a street comes up with a proposal which is in conflict with it, the street vote has priority because my noble friend was unable to accept the amendment.

The same applies to my amendment. When one has gone through the whole process of formulating a district plan, residents throughout the district feel confident in the outcome. They then find that it can be overturned by a street vote. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, again highlighted the potential for neighbourhood conflict, which is one of the things that really worries me about this. I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister, whose patience and tolerance have been extended to the extreme over the past hour and a half. I note that he did not reply to the points that I made about the DPRR report, which made some scathing criticisms and suggested that whole sections of this Bill should be removed. Nor did he indicate when the Government might reply to that report.

My noble friend said that the street vote could go ahead with the support of residents, but we do not know what is meant by “support” or “residents”. As I read it, there will have to be an assessor; it will have to go through a process. My understanding is that an inspector—probably from the Planning Inspectorate—would be appointed to assess it. We did not get an answer to the question of who pays for the PINS inspector who is going to assess the proposal. The ratepayers will have a vote, but it is not quite clear who will exercise that vote on behalf of the business. If there is one very small business and one huge business, do they both have one vote? Who exercises it?

The conclusion that I draw from this is that the best thing for the Government to do is to drop this clause. Frankly, the Bill is far too long; this is not urgent; there is no great demand for it. That was quite clear from what my noble friend said whenever he was asked a question: “This is subject to consultation”. We should have had the consultation before we had the legislation. Although I will withdraw my amendment, I suspect that if I did not, I would win the vote quite comfortably on the basis of the exchanges that we have had so far. In the meantime, however, I thank all noble Lords, and particularly my noble friend. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 248 withdrawn.