Simon Burns
Main Page: Simon Burns (Conservative - Chelmsford)
Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)
Listening to some of the speeches by Labour Members made me feel that they were in deep denial about what happened at the back end of the previous decade, which had a significant, if not catastrophic, impact on the construction industry and the house-building programme. I gently remind the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) that it was the previous Labour Government who brought the economy to its knees, causing problems which had such a devastating impact on the construction industry that there was no possibility of providing the houses that were needed. Frankly, it is living in cloud cuckoo land to suggest that there has been no improvement since then. Since April 2010, 445,000 new homes have been delivered. That, to me, is quite an achievement. We have seen a reduction in the number of empty properties, and rightly so. Just over 200,000 planning permissions were granted last year. Those are signs of the beginning of improvements in a market that had been brought to its knees.
Having said that, I agree with everyone who has spoken that it is crucial that we meet the housing needs and requirements of a growing population. My own local authority, Chelmsford, has been extremely good. Between 2001 and 2020, we are being required to provide 16,000 extra homes to meet local demand. The council has been imaginative and innovative in identifying brownfield sites, to start with, throughout the borough and providing new planning permissions for housing on them. Owing to the scale of the housing provision required, it is moving on to greenfield sites in the north-east of Chelmsford, where we are hoping to get a new station as a result of a new almost-ward of just over 3,000 properties, of which 35% will be affordable housing to meet the needs of local people who will benefit from it.
I would like to raise an issue with my hon. Friend the Minister about affordable housing. The main provider of social housing in Chelmsford is Chelmer Housing Partnership. That housing was originally the housing stock of Chelmsford borough council, as it was then. Chelmer Housing Partnership has had an imaginative way of developing its properties since it took them over about 20 years ago. For example, all the houses have had central heating put in, which means that no one comes to my surgeries any more complaining about massive condensation. It has improved the fabric of the buildings, and, through its imaginative policies, is investing in building more housing stock for its tenants.
The other housing associations vary as to the quality of the service that they provide to their tenants, and that worries me. Chelmer Housing Partnerships operates a policy of housing for local people. The problem in Chelmsford—I am sure it is not unique—is that significant numbers of young people are leaving school or university and living at home because they cannot afford, at that stage in their lives, to buy a property. Meanwhile, there is not enough social housing available, because most of the housing associations have a policy whereby half the allocations are for local people and the other half are up to the housing association. A lot of people from outside the borough, often from London, are being rehoused in social housing in Chelmsford. If we had a surfeit of properties, that would be perfectly reasonable, but we have long waiting lists for housing. Realistically, a 21-year-old in Chelmsford who is single, has no children and lives with their parents would be on a housing waiting list for a minimum of 10 years before they might get anywhere near consideration for an offer. I believe that is wrong.
Local housing should, first, be for local people, and if there is then spare capacity, people from elsewhere may certainly be encouraged to go to live there. Chelmsford is a very attractive place. It has two of the finest grammar schools in the nation. It has good communications with London. About 8,000 of my constituents commute by train down to London to work. It is an area with good shopping, and so on. That means that there is constant demand for housing in the borough. We therefore need to look at this issue again, to make sure that local residents who were born there and whose families have lived there all their lives are able to get housing, along with other family members who may wish to come back to Chelmsford to help to look after elderly or ailing family members and parents.
I make a plea to my hon. Friend the Minister: is there any way of fine-tuning the allocation of social housing to make sure that local people are given greater priority, rather than having to compete with people who have no connection with the area and, in effect, queue-jump? That causes tensions within the community, because people ask why they have to wait so long to get housing when people who have never been there before and have no connections can get an allocation through a housing association and come to live in a very attractive and vibrant city.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) on securing a debate on this exceptionally important subject.
It is less than a year since we in this country were talking about a sclerotic housing market, in which people were not confident and housing was not being built. Now, almost every time the Governor of the Bank of England opens his mouth, we are talking about a housing bubble. We have gone from one to the other inside 12 months, with no intervening period of sanity, despite the ever-present, predictable and long-run need to have a roof over one’s head. One might have thought that that indicated a systemic flaw in our housing market.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House have referred to the Government’s failure to build houses. I want to point out the very simple fact that Governments do not build houses. They can get in the way and make building houses easier or more difficult, but they do not build them. House builders build houses, in response to demand from tenants who wish to rent, and from buyers who wish to buy. At least, that is how it is supposed to work. We do not have a national shoe service, yet everyone in the Chamber is wearing shoes. The supply of shoes rises to meet demand, and the same is true of chairs. We do not feel the need to have a national chair service, yet we all have chairs to sit on when we need them.
That suggests that we need to deploy another factor, something that is not yet fully available: the energy of the people who want houses or somewhere to live. Rod Hackney, the Prince of Wales’s architectural adviser, said:
“It is a dangerous thing to underestimate human potential and the energy which can be generated when people are given the opportunity to help themselves.”
That is why I formed the all-party group on self-build, custom-build and independent house building. It is why I was so delighted that when Kevin McCloud addressed the group only a few weeks ago, both the Minister with responsibility for planning—my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles)—and the shadow Housing Minister were able to attend.
For that reason, I was also delighted to take some all-party group members, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), and people from several local authorities and housing associations, including the excellent Saffron Housing in my constituency, to look at Baugruppen, or building groups, in Berlin, where more than 5,000 dwellings have been created from the bottom up by more than 300 groups. I am sorry that the Minister with responsibility for planning and the shadow Housing Minister were not able to come, but the Department for Communities and Local Government sent some officials, and I know that the Minister will hear more about the visit. It was interesting to see both affordable rentals provided by Genossenschaften—so-called housing co-operatives—and, in some cases, housing for purchase. Most of what we saw was affordable housing, which shows that with imagination, drive and energy from the bottom up, more can be achieved.
I have not drawn first prize in the lottery of life, as the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) has, but I drew prize No. 4, so on 24 October I will introduce—I hope, with the support of all parties—the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Bill. I keep calling it an Act, but the Public Bill Office reminds me that I have to get it through the House of Commons first.
Mr Bacon
And the House of Lords. I will briefly mention the three things that I hope the Bill will do. First, it would impose a requirement or duty on local authorities to keep a register of people or community groups, whether they want to rent or purchase, who are interested in bringing forward or acquiring land for what in Berlin are called self-organised projects. Secondly, when bringing forward housing initiatives in local plans, local authorities would have to take account of and make provision for the needs of people on the register. Thirdly, they would have to do something in the affordable space, so that people with affordable obligations can meet them, or at least part of them, as a result of people’s contributions from the bottom up.