Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Bill

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Friday 6th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I will do my best to act as a stand-in for my noble friend Lord McKenzie. I do not profess to be an expert on this subject but it is one that I have a lot of enthusiasm for.

It will be clear from the deliberations in the other place that we support and welcome the Bill. As we have heard, it aims to make it easier for prospective self-builders and custom builders to seek a suitable plot of land for their homes. We offer our congratulations to Richard Bacon MP on using his place in the Private Members’ Bills ballot to address this important issue and on his skilful steering of the Bill through the Commons. It is a particular pleasure to see that the noble Lord, Lord Best, has taken the responsibility of steering the measure through your Lordships’ House. His engagement in matters of housing we see as a quality assurance mark, which noble Lords can see from the quality of the contribution we have just heard.

It is also important that the Bill has the full support of the Government, who are focused on the right to build and see its provisions as enacting the first element of the right: that is, the establishment by local planning authorities of a register of prospective custom builders who are seeking a suitable serviced plot of land. The Minister may wish to say something about the timing of later stages, given how close we are to the end of this Parliament.

We support the Bill for a number of reasons, but fundamentally because we see self-build and custom housebuilding as being able to make a more significant contribution to meeting housing needs than hitherto and because, in part, it would give opportunities to those who believe themselves shut out of home ownership —a considerable number of people these days.

Of course, this is not just about first-time buyers. It is as much about existing homeowners wanting a bigger—or even smaller—property than the one they currently own. Evidence submitted to the independent housing commission chaired by Michael Lyons suggested that it would be possible to contribute a further 10,000 to 20,000 units per year—a reasonable ambition. The two strands of this—self-build and custom build—are becoming distinct, the first being more hands-on and the latter where the individual is more reliant on a specialist developer or expert. But each leads to the prospect of better design and quality, greater focus on energy efficiency and more regard to what the surrounding environment will be. In particular, custom build can act as a catalyst for more diversity of providers and more opportunities for smaller housebuilders. I cannot help but reflect that it will also mean that a greater group of people will acquire skills that they did not previously possess. Who knows, it might even enhance the number of apprenticeships.

Our briefing note tells us that there is no conclusive figure for the number of self-build and custom-build properties completed each year but that the sector generally accounts for between 7% and 10% of new housing across the UK. The UK Self-Build Market Report suggested that the second quarter output for 2013 represented around 8% of all new housing completions and 28% of new detached homes. Indeed, as my honourable friend Emma Reynolds said in the other place when the Bill was discussed, research by the University of York found that the market is dominated by an older, asset-rich demographic. This underlines the need to promote custom and self-build to a wider range of people. Having said that, we know that there are good examples of custom build being used to create social housing—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Best. He also stressed the added advantage of better participation and satisfaction. He gave some very interesting statistics showing that the UK is missing out in this vital area.

We are building about half the number of homes we need to keep up with demand. The shortfall has not only arisen under this Government. We know that home ownership is continuing to decline. A record number of young people in their 20s and 30s live at home with their parents. Some 9 million people live in the private rented sector—with some difficulty, given the rising cost of rents. Of course, this Bill will not fundamentally change all that, but it can make a difference. We need a comprehensive and sustainable plan to tackle our housing crisis. We need specific measures to help self and custom housebuilding, where some of the more general problems are more acute. Those problems are, as we know, access to suitable sites and appropriate funding, the challenges of the planning system and the capacity of smaller developers.

The Lyons review offered prescriptions, some following the experience of European countries, which include encouraging local authorities to act as master developer on assembled sites, local authorities having a more proactive role in site assembly, and giving some form of priority to the use of surplus public land. Each should be taken forward. The noble Lord, Lord Best, gave really good examples of proactive local authorities having real impact and making a difference in this area. I hope that the Minister will address this; surely we should encourage that kind of approach.

It is acknowledged that the Government have and are looking at a variety of initiatives, but we are faced with uncomfortable statistics suggesting that fewer people are building their own homes than at any time in the past 30 years. This is attributed in part to the slow recovery of the self-build mortgage market. Our briefing also makes reference to the limited impact on actually increasing the number of additional homes because the self-built home is built on brownfield land where existing dwellings have been demolished.

As to the specifics of the Bill, we support the duty to keep and publicise a register of those who seek to acquire serviced plots for individuals to build properties that must be homes. It would become a mandatory requirement and would help better understand levels of demand. That raises a number of issues which are explored in the Right to Build consultation and the experience of the 11 Right to Build vanguard authorities. These would feed through via regulations and statutory guidance. The consultation quite properly explores some of the detail that might emerge in those regulations and guidance, particularly around the scope of preferences that can be expressed and a local connection test.

Of course, the other leg of the Bill addresses the supply side—the requirement for local planning authorities to have regard to the register when exercising relevant functions, which include housing, planning, land disposal and regeneration. We recognise that “having regard to” is a somewhat imprecise requirement on local authorities, and suggest that future legislation might impose a new statutory duty to bring forward land to meet the demands of the register when it is reasonable to do so—a debate for another day, perhaps.

This is a worthy Bill that demands our support. The timetable may prevent its further advance during this Parliament, but it has caused a necessary focus on an important element of housing provision and helped to raise its profile. The political consensus that it has demonstrated should encourage further action in the next Parliament.