Planning and Housing Supply

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I apologise to you, Mr Havard, and to my neighbour, the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), for missing the opening speech. I congratulate the hon. Members who secured the debate, which is enormously important.

The issue is enormously important politically for both coalition parties, because we both made profound promises in opposition. The Conservative party’s policy document, “Open Source Planning”, states:

“Our emphasis on local control will allow local planning authorities to determine exactly how much development they want, of what kind and where”—

not how much an econometric model tells them they need, or how much demand has to be met, but how much development they want.

The Liberal Democrats produced a document called “Our Natural Heritage”, which states that

“our quality of life is dependant on the quality of our environment. We will not only work to maintain and enhance it but will give people more access to and influence over it.”

One of the ways in which we suggested doing that was a new designation, the local green space designation. I helped to author that policy, and I was proud when it made its way into the coalition agreement, and from there into the “Natural Environment White Paper” and then the national planning policy framework. As the Prime Minister said to the director of the National Trust, I think, it would be a tool that local people could use to protect not vast tracts of countryside, but those local spaces that were not necessarily the most beautiful or the most rich in great crested newts, but the ones valued by communities.

Instinctively, all of us know which those areas are—we can all think of that local area that people have been campaigning to protect, sometimes for decades, as in the case of Leckhampton in my constituency. I thought, “At last, we have a Government committed to localism, which I am proud to be part of and a supporter of”—Conservative colleagues were equally proud—and that the Government were actually going to deliver on such promises, rejecting the very unpopular, top-down regional spatial strategies that seemed to be imposing numbers from above. The regional spatial strategy in the south-west had 35,000 objections—but the situation around my constituency in Cheltenham is every bit as bad now.

In practice, we are facing the loss of vast areas of green fields. The local paper converted the amount into that popular measure of area, football pitches—about 2,000 football pitches of green fields are about to be lost, if the plan being formulated in the joint core strategy goes through. Almost everything in the plan is greenfield sites, and almost all those sites are in the green belt—there is a Kafkaesque process whereby the green belt boundary is redesignated, so that the bits taken out of the green belt can be built on, while claiming that the green belt is not being built on.

Equally badly, another area at Leckhampton had a sustainability assessment and a green belt review, which talked about its value in biodiversity, public access, the enjoyment that it brings, its rural character, and such things—all of which were recognised by inspectors in the past—but again that is included simply because the econometric model dictates a certain number. That number for around Cheltenham is at least 10,000 houses, which is a 20% increase in the size of the town. That is not sustainable.

As the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) rightly said, it is as if the rest of the national planning policy framework, which we celebrated at the time of its second draft, did not really exist. There were elements that discussed balancing economic growth with environmental and social factors, and things such as the local green space designation to protect what people really cared about; among the core planning principles were meant to be respect for the environment and sustainability, and prioritisation of open spaces and, if possible, brownfield over greenfield development. In practice, however, at local level all of that appears to count for absolutely nothing. We are told that the objectively assessed housing need dictated by the econometric model must be observed absolutely—that the developers must get absolutely everything that they are demanding, because otherwise unelected inspectors will declare the whole plan unsound.

There is a nice coalition balance of local councillors in Gloucestershire. In the constituency of my neighbour the hon. Member for Tewkesbury and in Gloucester city, we have Conservative councillors who felt obliged to vote for the thing, while the Liberal Democrats very much enjoyed opposing them. In Cheltenham, it was rather the other way around—many Liberal Democrats and some Conservatives voted for it, while others voted against. The result was that councillors were put between a rock and a hard place. They were told that if they voted things down and did not move on at least to the next stage of consultation, the plan was likely to be declared unsound, it would all fall apart and we would end up with a developers’ free-for-all.

I have to tell the Minister that local people see very little distinction between what is emerging from some local plans and a developers’ free-for-all. Despite all our promises in opposition, despite the national planning policy framework and despite all the grand words in it about balancing environmental and economic factors and respecting open space and sustainability, we are in a position that is every bit as bad as the regional spatial strategies. That is simply not acceptable—

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Martin Horwood]

I suspect that I shall be out of time shortly, so I fear that I had better not.

I think we will end up in a situation that is just as bad as under the regional spatial strategies. I want to go back to my local councillors and constituents to say that the coalition Government have delivered on their promises, but I have to tell the Minister that that is not what is happening now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Main]

rose—

[Martin Horwood]

rose—

[Nick Boles]

If I may finish, we also know that the size of the homes in which families are forced to live has fallen steadily for several decades. The number of overcrowded families has risen and the amount of space in which young people must grow up has fallen for several decades for a simple reason: our population has grown and we have not built enough houses to keep pace with it.

That growth in population has had two main sources. One, which is contentious in the House and elsewhere, is immigration, which was uncontrolled for a long time. We as a party rightly criticised that, and are now doing something to control it. However, it is important to remember that the majority—about two thirds—of the growth in population and in the number of households in the country has resulted not from immigration but from ageing. One way that I ask people to think about it is by considering how many people now are part of families in which four generations are alive. Quite a lot of them are. It used to be rare to have a great-grandparent or great-grandchild in a family; it is now common, because people are living longer, and they do not all want to live in the same house. I could go on, but I know that time is limited.

[Nick Boles]

I would like not to take interventions on the argument, as I have heard the argument from hon. Members. I will take interventions later if I have not answered the specific questions raised.

[Martin Horwood]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Nick Boles]

No, I will not take interventions on the argument; I will take them on the specific questions asked. I have sat here for two hours listening to the arguments from the Opposition, and I would like a brief moment to develop my argument.

Housing need is intense. I accept that my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) does not share my view, but many hon. Members do, and there are a lot of statistics to prove it. How are we going to solve the problem? My hon. Friend, whom I congratulate on securing this debate, referred to the country having 700,000 empty homes, which, he said, should be a priority for meeting the intense need for housing. Although I agree with the sentiment, unfortunately his figure does not give a true picture. The figure of 700,000 homes captures every home that is empty right now, including every home that is between buyer and seller and every home in probate.

I will, therefore, give him the true figure for homes that have been empty for more than six months, which I think we can all agree is probably the right figure for an empty home that could meet somebody’s housing need in the long term. That number is 260,000 for the whole of England. It has fallen by 41,000 since this Government came into office in 2010. We are spending a great deal of money, and we and local authorities are working hard, to bring those empty homes back into use. It is important to recognise that many—not all, by any means, but many—of those 260,000 are in parts of the country where demand for housing is not as strong as it once was, not in parts of the country where demand for housing is great. I do not believe that a Government can tell people to go and live somewhere with no jobs and no future, just because houses have been built there. Empty homes can make a contribution and are doing so under this Government, but in the scale of need explained so vividly by so many, they are a small contributor.

We need to move to the question of brownfield sites. If it were possible, everybody in this country would prefer every new house to be built on a brownfield site. We would all love not to develop a single scrap of greenfield land if we did not need to. Therefore, the question is whether there is enough brownfield land to do that. The Campaign to Protect Rural England often bandies about the statistic that 1.5 million homes could be built on the available brownfield land. I am afraid that that figure is not entirely a fair representation, because more than half of that brownfield land is already occupied for another use—for example, with a house or factory on it. In theory, it might make good sense to use it for converted housing, but the people currently occupying and using it for another purpose would, by and large, have a view on that: if they own or use the property, they will probably not want to give it up immediately, and if they did give it up, where would they be employed? Having taken all that out, a large number of the remaining brownfield sites are in places where demand for new housing is not so intense. In many areas of most intense demand, the number of brownfield sites that have not been developed is relatively small.

I reassure hon. Members that nearly 70% of new houses in 2010, the last year for which figures are available, were built on brownfield land. We are still building more houses on brownfield land than on greenfield land. We are approaching the point at which the number of brownfield sites that are in the right part of the country and are vacant and available for housing development is too small to supply more than a small, although significant proportion—nearly 70%, but not more—of our need.

Another subject raised here and elsewhere by many hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), is the amount of land banking in the country. We all know individual examples of sites that have been bought and for which planning permission has been given, but on which development has not happened. The question we have to ask is: why has that happened, what is the scale of that problem and what contribution would fixing that problem make to solving our intense need?

We must first recognise that that is true of many sites because developers bought them before the financial crash, secured planning permission in anticipation of the economic environment pertaining at the time and, frankly, could not raise the money to build out the site or, even if they raised the money to do so, could not find people to buy the houses. Ultimately, developers are businesses. Certainly in my party, which so many hon. Members here represent, we believe that businesses need to be free to make investments and bring forward projects, but should be forced to complete such projects only if they have a reasonable prospect of getting their money back and perhaps gaining a small return. That problem grew during the recession not because of developers’ greedy behaviour, but simply because they do not want to build houses if there is nobody to buy them.

That situation led to an expansion in the scale of land banking, but let me tell hon. Members about the current position, because it has been reduced by the recovery in house building. The latest estimate is that the total number of units of housing in land banks throughout England is 500,000, but only half of that is on sites where building has not begun. From our constituencies, we all know that most housing developments of a scale greater than a dozen houses are not built out in one year, but sometimes in three or five years, because it is natural to do so. If all the houses were built in one place in one year, it would result in a strange development in which half the houses were sitting empty. That is how the house building industry works, and unless any hon. Member in the Chamber wants to nationalise house building, we have to live with that system.

Only 250,000 units are on sites that have not been started. That is a significant number, but the point is that it covers the whole country, including some places where demand is not sufficient to pull through supply. The Labour party has proposed to confiscate that land from developers, but will such compulsion really solve our housing crisis or lead developers to build more places where we want those houses? I am sure that that might make a contribution, as empty homes may, but I do not believe that it could solve the problem on its own.

On the whole question of local plans and the process that local authorities are asked to go through in putting them together, the fundamental basis of the national planning policy framework, about which many hon. Friends and other hon. Members have been generous, is that local authorities are in control because they have put in place a local plan. Doing the work of producing a local plan puts the local council, as the representative of the community, in control. The local plan has a very simple concept that is very difficult to deliver, which is that the authority has to provide a five-year land supply of immediately developable and deliverable sites to meet its objectively assessed housing need.

I understand that there are concerns. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) referred to an econometric model, and other hon. Members have spoken about the various methodologies. It is not unreasonable, however, for the Government to tell an authority, which is representing the people and has a duty to serve them, “Work out what’s needed, and make plans to provide it.” That is what we do with schools. We do not tell local authorities, “You can provide as many school places as you feel like”; we say, “Provide as many school places as are needed.” We do not tell the NHS, “Provide as many GPs as you feel you can afford right now”; we say, “Work out how many GPs are needed.” The same is true of housing sites: we tell local authorities, “Work out how many houses will be needed in your area over the next 15 years, and then make plans to provide them.”

[Stuart Andrew]

rose—

[Martin Horwood]

rose—

[Nick Boles]

I am happy to give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham.

[Martin Horwood]

My constituents in places such as Leckhampton and Hatherley do not understand this: the econometric model is based not so much on need as on demand, which in areas such as mine—and St Albans and many other constituencies—is practically insatiable, so we will still have high house prices that are unaffordable for many first-time buyers in places such as Cheltenham, because we have good schools and shops, as well as a good local environment and good employment levels. If such areas are simply consigned to endless development, we will lose something very precious to local people and to the environment.

The problem with the Minister’s scenario is that the issue is not about trying to stop all development—nobody has said that—but about wanting local people to be able to make some difference and have some say. The economic model for the assessed housing need or demand—

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that interventions should be short.

[Martin Horwood]

Sorry, Mr Brady. The model or whatever dictates that number should not be a be-all and end-all that nobody can influence.

[Nick Boles]

I want to reassure my hon. Friend that the process is not based simply on a measure of demand. It is not a matter of sending out a survey to ask people whether they fancy living in West Worcestershire. That is not how it is done; it is done on projections of population, of the number of households in which ageing is taking place and of the historical record and, therefore, the likely future trend of inward migration. That is the definition. The immigration figures are based on the past record. They are not just plucked out of the air as the number of people in the whole world who would quite like to live in Cheltenham. The model is based on an understanding of the pressure of demand from people who actually want to come to Cheltenham. They might want to move to Cheltenham to be near a job, go to college, or be close to their mum who is growing old on her own in a flat.

[Martin Horwood]

indicated dissent.

[Nick Boles]

My hon. Friend shakes his head. I am happy for him to go through the modelling that is the basis on which this is done. I simply say to him that if he added up all the projections of housing need of all the local plans in the country, he would find that it would add up to a figure that is too low to meet the overall population growth of England. It is not, therefore, the case that there are these hugely inflated demand figures being put into local plans, which add up to something way in excess of what we need; they are too low to meet our universal needs as a nation. Somehow, somewhere, we are not overestimating the need.