Planning Reform

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your guidance this morning, Mr Betts. This is an important debate and I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke) for championing this issue generally and for raising some interesting points today, many of which I agreed with.

In my constituency the average house price is about 12 times the average household income. So much of the existing housing stock is not available for anybody to live in, make a home in and raise a family or work locally. Over the last 20 years we have seen a huge explosion in the number of second homes, owned by people from away. It is nice for them that they can do that, but they do not—bless them—contribute to the local economy to the extent that those who live there full time do. More recently, we have seen a real explosion in the number of short-term lets. That in itself is not so awful; but it is awful when we see how they have gobbled up the long-term rental market to get into that situation.

We see a decline in the number of homes available for people to live locally—wherever they are originally from—set down roots and contribute to our community. Those are evaporating, and the housing stock we already have is moving into usages that do not contribute to maintaining a full-time economy. That is miserable for families that are effectively expelled from the communities in which they grew up. It is also economically stupid, with hospitality and tourism being one particular sector we can list. It is our largest employer, but 63% of hospitality and tourism businesses in Cumbria are currently operating below capacity—not meeting the demand that is there, which is criminal in a difficult economic situation like this—simply because they do not have the workforce to contribute. That has an impact on health and social care. A fifth of care jobs in Cumbria are currently unfilled. There are a number of reasons for that, but the principal one is that the incomes that are paid in social care are not enough for people to have a home anywhere near communities in the lakes and the dales, in south and central Cumbria.

The housing crisis is real, and it is particularly acute in places like mine. We need action on both what we build that is new and what we do with the existing housing stock.

I very much agree with the diagnosis of the problem by the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, and with some of what he said about potential remedies. I do not agree, however, that a free-market approach is the answer. Housing is not a normal market. To treat it like a normal supply-and-demand market is to misread the situation. If we have targets for additional housing, take away all planning controls, and allow people to build what and where they want, we will simply have a field day for speculators—people who buy homes not to live in, but as investments. The people who have something will get more, and people who have nothing will not get anything. We must understand that the housing market is not a normal market, and that the reason we are in this mess is in no small part down to the fact that we have treated it like a normal market. The problem is that, when it comes to the development of new housing, we have an insufficiently fettered free market.

For example, in Appleby, new houses are being proposed and are soon likely to be developed. As things stand, not a single one will be affordable. As somebody who has actively fought for new homes to be built—indeed, I have risked losing votes over it—that causes me great concern. I see estates of 100 houses being built, and perhaps 20 are affordable—although are they really affordable? Yes, the other 80 will sell—there is demand for them—but there is no need. I am happy to go into the trenches and fight for new homes to be built if they are needed, and I am even happy to be unpopular over it, but I am fed up of seeing developments that are basically a waste of bricks. They are very nice bricks, in a nice part of the country, but we do not need them. They will end up being second homes, investments or Airbnbs for somebody who does not need them.

Meanwhile, families who live locally are hanging on by their fingernails. As long-term lets are turned into Airbnbs and people are evicted, those families have to leave the area altogether, which is totally miserable. I have seen that happen right across my patch, from Kirkby Stephen and Kendal to Grange-over-Sands, Ambleside and Windermere: local families are evicted and expelled because of the move from long-term to short-term lets. When we build new homes, they have to meet those people’s needs, not the desires of people who have tons of money and live nowhere near Cumbria.

It is important that we begin to redefine what “affordable housing” actually means in planning law. Homes that are 80% of market value can count as affordable, so we could build a house just outside Kendal that is worth 500 grand, which goes for 400 grand. Well, I am sorry, but that does not help anybody—at least not anybody normal—and it does not help our local economy. Let us be clear that “affordable” should mean genuinely affordable; otherwise, we abuse the term, and it means absolutely nothing.

We need a rebirth of social housing. The right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland talked about Harold Macmillan, to whom we owe a massive debt for his support for the building of council housing. Whatever we call it—social rented housing or public housing—we need loads more of it. We need to build it not in the drip-drip, bottom-up way that is permitted at the moment; the Government have to act, not even as the developer of last resort, but perhaps as the developer of first resort. They need to start investing—backing local authorities and housing associations with public money, so that we build the homes we need in the places we need them. That would ensure that we have viable communities, and that families in areas such as mine can cling on—and not only cling on, but thrive and be centres of communities in the future.

The answer to the problem is not the removal of planning powers. Conversely, we need more. I am blessed to have three planning authorities in my constituency: the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District and the other beautiful bits, not in either national park, that are covered by Westmorland and Furness Council. We have seen empirically over the years that where we are really specific and prescriptive about the housing that we need in our area, particularly in the Lake district and the Yorkshire dales, we will get planners grumbling for months and years about the fact that we will only allow affordable, social rented, shared ownership or local occupancy housing to be built. Planners will grumble, but then they will realised that this is the only game in town, so they will build. That is how things work. The problem is that the lack of certainty will often lead to more speculation and land banking, actually achieving nothing.

Generally speaking, at any given time there are a million homes with planning permission that are not built. We realise that it is not the freedom in the planning regime that is an issue; it is sometimes not being specific enough. We need some specific powers. Local authorities should be given the power to enforce 100% affordability, particularly in areas such as ours, where there is extreme pressure on rural communities.

It is commendable that the Government are now moving towards turning short-term lets into a separate category of planning use, so that we can ensure that we maintain long-term homes available for communities such as ours. However, I urge the Minister to look again at something I proposed when the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill was in Committee, and on the Floor of the House, which is to make the same arrangements for second homes. Second homes should also be a separate category of planning use, so that we can have a limit on the numbers that there are in any given community to protect full-time occupancy of other housing.

As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who has just left the Chamber, said, new powers are useless without a planning department that is well resourced. Planners are important and gifted people, and we need more of them. We do not need to be in a situation where they are beleaguered and run ragged by people who know if they break the rules they can get away with it. Enforcement is absolutely vital.

If we are going to build the homes that we need—and we desperately need to—we must be tight and clear about what homes we do need. We need to ensure that we build the homes that Britain actually needs—and that our community in Cumbria actually needs—not the homes that there may be demand for, and that people will speculate over and use as personal investments and land banking. We need to provide the infrastructure first, so that there is space for those homes.

Let us think of the communities that we most serve by building new homes. I think of Hawkshead, which has a brilliant primary school, but does not have the numbers that it should because we have not built the affordable, social rented homes that the community desperately need. I am committed to working with the school, the local community and the local counsellor, Suzanne Pender, to ensure that we achieve that in the coming months and years.

When we do see development, let us also ensure that we build infrastructure. Often we will see the water company saying that it does not need to invest in any more sewage infrastructure or additional capacity, and to just go ahead and build. Because water companies are a statutory consultee, the planners have to nod that through. We should hold the water companies to greater account when it comes to planning processes, so that they are not giving a green light to something that actually needed their investment—which is why they give the green light, of course.

People need a home that they can rely on and afford, that is safe and secure, and that is theirs for years to come; and in which to raise a family, if they choose, and to work from and retire in. That is an essential building block of being part of a civilised society. Without that kind of secure home, we are robbed of our basic freedoms. Communities are based on a range of people who have those freedoms, and who live and work them out together.

Our communities in the lakes, the dales and the rest of Cumbria, as beautiful as they are, will not survive unless we support the building of new homes that are genuinely affordable and meet the needs of local people. We also need to ensure that the homes that are built are used for what they were built for, and not just investments for those who will never live there.