Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Bill

John Bercow Excerpts

Friday 24th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bacon]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and the issue is broad and deep. The fact is, many people who go into the planning profession do so because they are driven by a desire to help shape the community and provide better places for us to live. Then they get into a local authority, with the extraordinarily complex planning environment in which it operates—I commend the Government for scything away hundreds of pages of planning law so that an ordinary lay person can read it and have some hope of understanding it—and suddenly find that instead of being able to help shape the community and think logically, they are the person who says no the whole time. They do not like being that person, so the good ones often leave. That is a dreadful caricature and it is not true that the only people left are the malign and mediocre, but hon. Members will get the point.

Some people who go into planning with the best of motives end up leaving. I have met such people, and when I present that caricature they say, “Yes, I used to be one of those people; I found I couldn’t do anything.” Think about where planning authority power sits. My local district council is the council tax raising authority and the planning authority, and 1p on council tax raises only about £60,000 for it. Will it be able to stand up to a large developer? There is an enormous asymmetry of power; it cannot take rounded decisions in a responsible and representative way on behalf of the people it governs locally, as I and the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) would like. Once again, however, I fear that reforming the whole of local government and making it flow and function as it should is probably outwith the terms of my Bill.

On patient capital and the Duchy of Cornwall, let me talk about Poundbury, which is an urban extension of Dorchester. I went there last year with the Public Accounts Committee when we were looking at the Duchy of Cornwall, and again this summer with a number of colleagues. As for the Georgian pastiche—like sugar in tea, some people like it and some people do not—I happen to think that if it is well done, and some of the pastiche in Poundbury is extraordinarily well done, it is rather good, and it is built to a very high standard. If one stands near the farmhouse and some of the oldest developments that have been there for nearly 20 years by the mature trees, one would swear one was in Islington or Camden 150 years ago. People like that and want to live there.

What is really interesting, however, is that Poundbury is now 21 years into a 33-year project. Last year, they had done more than 1,000 dwellings and 1,600 jobs. Now they have done 1,200 dwellings and more than 2,000 jobs. The target for 33 years was only 2,200 jobs, so they have nearly reached the target in two-thirds of the time. The dwellings are becoming more and more attractive, and the most fascinating thing is that when firms such as Barratt are allowed to build there, they have to build to a very tight design code, and they pay a premium for the land compared with what they pay elsewhere. On the surrounding land belonging to different land owners there is a halo effect, because people look at it and say, “Phwoar—I’d like some of that!” Instead of boxes on the greenfield at the edge of the town, which is easier and cheaper to build on than the brownfield mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer), the value of the last house built is higher than that of the first house built, which is rarely the case in most big house building developments.

I will make a bit of progress and try to whizz through the rest of my thank you list because I would like to get on to the substance of my Bill. As it is such a humble little Bill, I hope that will not take too long.

Lord Richard Best, president of the Local Government Association, has been enormously helpful and supportive to me, as has a group called Housing People, Building Communities in Liverpool. It has an award-winning self-build project on land provided by the Roman Catholic diocese. I recently met the Bishop of Rochester, James Langstaff, who leads for the Church of England on land and property. He is hoping to link the dioceses across England with the vanguard councils that were recently announced by the Department for Communities and Local Government. The National Housing Federation has also been amazingly helpful and supportive. Being at the cutting edge of technology, I am sure that the Minister will be aware that 12 November is #housing day. I am even more impressed by its December Christmas campaign, Ho Ho Homes for Britain. Somebody should probably get an award for that, even if it is only a bar of chocolate.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is indulging in what I think I can accurately describe as preliminary dilation. If it is of any encouragement or succour to him, I have the very keen sense that the House is enjoying his preliminary dilation, and I am a little alarmed by the thought that he might, as he put it, “whizz through” the rest of his remarks. I do not think we would want him to do that.

[Mr Bacon]

I feared that my speech would be more like Oscar Peterson than J. S. Bach, and so it is proving, but I will conclude my thank you list because I want to move on. Lloyds bank has been tremendously supportive to the planning sector. Stephen Noakes is head of mortgages at Lloyds bank, and the current chairman of the Council of Mortgage Lenders. He supported our all-party group on self-build, custom-build and independent housebuilding when we had a meeting last year with the university of York. It launched a report on blockages in the self-build and custom house building sector, and Stephen Noakes was a sponsor of that report. Earlier this year we had a meeting with Kevin McCloud in a Committee room upstairs. The meeting was packed with MPs and peers, Stephen Noakes was also there and I found myself on a panel with him at the party conference. Earlier this week Lloyds bank announced a £50 million fund for small house builders to encourage a sector that has been decimated.

When we consider what happened after the housing crash, and the fact that many big banks, including Lloyds bank, decided at the highest level to shrink their exposure to property on their balance sheet, the fact that such institutions are making long-term commitments is extremely welcome. Lloyds bank has created the Lloyds bank commission on housing to explore and address such issues. That is chaired jointly by two of the Minister’s predecessors—my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk) and the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), and they will bring together in that commission a range of housing experts.

On the front of a recent document Shelter asks the extremely important question:

“Where are our children going to live?”

When one looks at the Lyons review, which was commissioned recently by the official Opposition—I think I have a copy of it somewhere—the front page title is:

“Mobilising across the nation to build the homes our children need”.

I was given the review only yesterday so I have not had a chance to look at it all. I have heard it slagged off in newspapers, probably by people who have not read it all. I am sure it contains things I would agree with and things with which I would disagree, but it is an interesting and important contribution.