Planning and Housing Supply

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Brady. This debate is primarily for Back Benchers, so I had intended to keep my remarks fairly short. I think I should do that and give the Minister lots of time. I congratulate the hon. Members for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) and for St Albans (Mrs Main) and the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) on securing a lively debate on what is clearly a serious issue, given the large number of Members present.

I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I do not go through their contributions individually, because that would take up a great deal of time. They spoke passionately about their own areas. There clearly is a major issue across the country. I was pleased that a number of their remarks were not based on just being anti-housing. There was a sound recognition that we need more housing, but concern was expressed about the sites that have been identified for building houses. I was pleased to see a commitment to plan-making and place-shaping, because they are an important part of the solution to some of the issues that have been raised today. Hon. Members also produced a wish list. I am probably going to add to that a little bit, but I hope not too much.

We know that we need more housing, including in rural areas. In order to secure a typical mortgage, a rural resident needs to earn £66,000. With the average rural income standing at just over £20,000, there clearly is a problem with affordability. That exists partly as a result of insufficient supply. The situation in rural areas is part of a wider problem. For decades, under successive Governments, house building has stayed low relative to demand. I will hold my hands up to say that the previous Labour Government did not see enough houses built, but neither did the previous Conservative Government. Private house building completions in England have been relatively static for more than 30 years, averaging about 130,000 per annum. That is below the peak average of 180,000 per annum in the 1960s, and well below potential.

[Mrs Main]

The hon. Lady just said that the number of houses being built has been low or static. What about the number of permissions? I have not seen anything that shows that the number of permissions has been low or static. It is just the amount of development that developers are prepared to get under way.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

The hon. Lady makes a valid point. We know that a number of sites with planning permission never end up being developed. The point I am trying to make is that we must look seriously at the housing numbers that we need, particularly as we have a shortage, partly because we were not building enough in the past.

Private completions increased from 2003, with a steady improvement to 154,000 in 2007. However, they fell with the economic crash to 89,000 in 2012. In contrast, new affordable homes produced by local councils and housing associations, which averaged more than 130,000 per annum in the 1950s and ’60s, have seen a steep downward trend since the 1970s. Production has averaged fewer than 30,000 per annum since the mid-1980s, falling to 13,000 in 2003. There has been some improvement since then, with new completions at 27,000 in 2009 and a similar number in 2012, due to the housing stimulus put in place by the previous Labour Government following the crash. However, the numbers produced are too low.

There is an ever-growing gap between supply and demand, which means that millions of hard-working people are increasingly priced out of buying their own home. Home ownership has declined from its peak in 2001—69%—to 64% in 2011. The average house price is now nine times larger than the average wage. The average low-to-middle income household would now have to save for 22 years to accumulate a deposit for the typical first home, compared with just three years in 1997. So-called second steppers are also being affected, with the average age for a second purchase rising to 41, despite 40% of families saying that their first home is too small for a growing family.

More than 1.1 million families with children, and 8 million people in all, are now part of what we are calling generation rent. They are paying private rents that are rising faster than wages and contributing towards a cost of living crisis. They face rip-off letting agent fees, instability and uncertainty as a result of short-term tenures, and sometimes poor standards and service. Many want to buy their own home but have little hope of being able to do so.

We must address the housing shortage. I absolutely agree with all the Members who have contributed this afternoon that development sites need to be identified by local communities, with a stronger emphasis on neighbourhood planning and putting consent at the heart of the planning system. I think that can be helped in a number of ways. I have often paid tribute to the Minister and his predecessors for introducing neighbourhood planning. We think that is probably the key in the medium and longer term to delivering the sorts of neighbourhood that we all want.

The issue is not just about housing. I think we will partly get consent when we stop referring only to housing numbers when talking about the issue. People want to see employment, proper infrastructure and leisure, and they want to keep their open spaces. The issue is about building communities, and we have to talk more about that.

We also need to do something about quality. I know from my constituency that people often get upset about the houses proposed, because they simply look awful: they are too small, or have various features not in keeping with the local neighbourhood. We need to get better at improving the quality of our housing stock. That is especially important in rural areas, national parks, areas of special scientific interest and so on. I am a bit concerned that the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 reduced some of the existing protections in areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks. That is not a good thing; it is a step in the wrong direction. [Interruption.] I think that hon. Members might think that the clock is set for 4 o’clock, but we actually have until 4.30.

Will the Minister consider the Woodland Trust briefing sent to all of us about giving better protection to ancient woodlands and planting many more trees? Does he intend to monitor the relaxation of permitted development rights and use-class order changes to see what happens to the quality of buildings in rural areas as well as on our high streets? High streets are not part of this debate, but rural town centres would be relevant as well.

I am looking forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about the over-reliance on appeals that seems to have emerged as a result—probably a temporary one—of the national planning policy framework having been put in place before local plans were adopted. I am interested to know whether he has thought about that, or considered speeding up plan-making to reduce the reliance on decisions made by inspectors. Does he plan to strengthen the brownfield first policy, which the NPPF weakened, and does he intend to reform land acquisition and assembly in accordance with some of the helpful suggestions made in this debate about opening up the land supply market for competition by a larger number of people?

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

The shadow Minister is quite right: it is possible, though not mandatory, for the debate to continue until 4.30.