Local Authority Housing

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Drew]

Of course I want to build more social units. The leader of Stroud District Council—Councillor Steve Lydon, who is a good friend of mine—came to see the shadow Housing Minister and has written to the Prime Minister to ask for help with this particular problem. We are pleased to be a pilot area for business rates retention. That helps with the problem of potentially negative revenue support grants, which affected our ability to do some of the things that we would like to do with housing, but this is a different matter. This is about the housing revenue account and about allowing Stroud the freedom to go on and do what the Government want local authorities to do, which is to provide the answer to the immediate housing problems. This is about having the vision to look back and to look forward.

The last time we genuinely met housing targets was in the 1950s, when that well-known socialist Harold Macmillan was able to prove that public authority housing was the best way to deal with a housing crisis. He was convinced of that, and I am convinced that we can play our part.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good case for his local authority to be able to build more houses, although the circumstances are difficult. Does he agree that we also need to ask the Minister about the 50% of local authorities which, after being encouraged by the Government to sell off their local housing stock to housing associations, no longer have a housing revenue account? What should they do when all their housing stock has been transferred to social housing associations?

[Dr Drew]

I am largely talking about the role of the local authority, and we had that issue, but we defeated large-scale voluntary transfer. That happened the last time I was an MP, and I actually led the campaign against the Conservative council. We won because the tenants decided that it was important that we kept local authority housing not for themselves, but for the generations that follow. I am pleased because we still have the ability to do the things that we need to do both strategically and in reality by building our own houses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alok Sharma]

Local authorities have received almost £2 billion as a result of the voluntary right to buy in order to provide additional affordable housing across the country. Some of this money flows back to the Treasury, but that is part of the self-financing settlement and it is to tackle the budget deficit. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should encourage Stroud District Council, at the appropriate time, to bid for an increase in its HRA cap.

[Wera Hobhouse]

As I understand it, in the financial year that has just finished, we lost more than 12,000 homes to right to buy and rebuilt only 5,000 new council homes, so clearly this system does not work with the like-for-like replacement.

[Alok Sharma]

I have just set out that this is over a three-year cycle and I have set out the numbers available to me now. However, I would be happy to discuss this with the hon. Lady when we meet to discuss it and other matters.

Let me get back to Stroud District Council, which has a track record of building replacement homes and has worked with affordable housing providers and neighbouring authorities to achieve that. As the hon. Member for Stroud may know, we expect to make a decision early in the new year on the council’s application to designate 32 parishes within the Stroud District Council area as “rural” for the purposes of section 157 of the Housing Act 1985. If they are designated as such, that will enable the council to impose restrictions on the resale of properties that it sells under the statutory right to buy.

I have a few minutes, so I shall address a couple of points made in the debate. The hon. Member for Stroud talked about planning permissions not resulting in homes being built fast enough. As he will know, the Chancellor announced at the Budget that my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) will be conducting a build-out review. Indeed, his work has already started.

As Members will know, we consulted on viability in the local housing needs consultation that closed on 29 November. We will of course consider the feedback on that. We have been clear that we want viability to be considered much earlier in the process—at the plan-making stage—so that local councils and developers can be clear about what is required with respect to affordable housing.