Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con) I beg to move, That this House has
considered access to affordable housing and planning reform. It is
a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq, and I am
delighted to have the opportunity to take the lead in today’s
debate. I would like to declare a registered financial interest in
that I have a part-share in a property used for long-term rent. I
am glad to have secured this debate, as the severity of the housing
situation in...Request free trial
(St Ives) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered access to affordable housing and
planning reform.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq, and I
am delighted to have the opportunity to take the lead in today’s
debate. I would like to declare a registered financial interest
in that I have a part-share in a property used for long-term
rent. I am glad to have secured this debate, as the severity of
the housing situation in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, which
I represent, requires urgent intervention. It is not a new
situation; I recall having a meeting with the current Health
Secretary when he was the Housing Secretary, some years ago now,
asking him to intervene in the housing situation on Scilly by
allowing the council to have powers to address the rate of second
home ownership on the islands.
Likewise, in relation to housing in Cornwall, my Cornish
colleagues and I have regularly raised the difficulty faced by
residents to acquire affordable housing since we were elected.
More recently, we have raised this directly with the Prime
Minister in meeting of Cornish MPs. I secured a debate in 2018
asking the Government to address the difficulties that second
home ownership and the holiday let industry place on families who
need affordable homes so that they can both work and raise their
families locally.
Various measures have been introduced, predominantly in support
of first-time buyers, which is welcome, as having a home of one’s
own brings security and a commitment to the local community that
is rarely matched by any other intervention. However, recent
developments in relation to the pandemic and a clumsy approach to
housing by some council officers, until recently, have starved
ordinary working families of appropriate and affordable secure
housing. Therefore, while access to affordable housing for
working families is not a new difficulty, it has become a whole
lot more difficult over the past two years.
In the first quarter of 2021, searches for homes to buy in
Cornwall topped 15 million, and 1.1 million people searched for
homes to rent. Our total population is just half a million, and
many of them are finding that the house that they rent and
believed was secure is being taken back by the landlord to
capitalise on the boom in Cornwall as a holiday destination. I
feel slightly guilty because I have promoted Cornwall and the
Isles of Scilly as holiday destinations for many years; I might
need to tone that down a bit, because although it has had the
desired effect, it has also put enormous pressure on our housing
supply.
(Totnes) (Con)
If my hon. Friend is going to stop promoting people coming to
Cornwall, he is very welcome to promote them coming to Devon.
However, he makes a serious point about the fact that the impact
of visitors and tourists is driving up prices. Does my hon.
Friend think that there are ways in which we can act by closing
the business rate loophole, for instance?
I would not want a tabloid paper to misinterpret what I said
about coming to Cornwall; please do still come. I am going to
Devon as well, so let us not argue about jam and cream.
Absolutely, the topic of the debate I had in 2018 was that very
thing: how to ensure that properties that should pay council tax
do so, because that helps to deliver services that we all need,
including for those who own a second home.
If a person is lucky enough to get anywhere near a rental
property, then they will pay approximately £100 a week for one
bedroom in a shared house; £200 a week for a two-bedroom house
with no garden; and £400-plus a week for a three-bedroom house.
That may not surprise people living in London, but it marks an
enormous inflation in rent in Cornwall, particularly given that
the average wage in my constituency is £25,000 a year. It can
quickly be seen that such rent is not an affordable housing
solution.
As it happens, there is almost no chance of securing a property.
A search for houses to rent in my constituency last night
returned a total of three three-bedroom houses across the whole
constituency. A letting agent has advised me that 100 families
compete for each three-bedroom property that is advertised. Those
families include key public sector workers who have accepted jobs
as teachers, police officers, NHS workers and, ironically,
according to our own planning department, planning officers
themselves. On the Isles of Scilly, people with jobs that are
critical to the islands’ day-to-day existence face the prospect
of leaving Scilly in the spring if they cannot find a home to
rent. Properties for sale are equally few, and are out of reach
for the majority of those needing homes in Cornwall and on
Scilly. House prices have risen by 15% in the last year.
I do not want to dwell on the severity of the situation much
more, other than to thank a number of town and parish councils in
my constituency. They share my concern and have taken time to
discuss the issue and write to me, pressing and calling for
action. They include Penzance Council, Ludgvan Parish Council, St
Just Town Council, St Erth Parish Council, Sancreed Parish
Council and a representative of Madron Parish Council, to name
just a few.
I am pleased to say that there has been a dramatic gear change at
Cornwall Council since May this year. A new Conservative
administration, council leaders and MPs are tackling the housing
shortage. The council’s strategy, now under consultation,
includes commitments to improve availability and access to homes
for local residents by working with public and private sector
partners to bring forward sites, and to provide modular private
rented homes for key workers and local people in towns. After
years of pressure from me, there is a renewed emphasis on
bringing more long-term empty homes back into use. It is
unbelievable that there are thousands of empty homes in Cornwall.
They are not second homes or holiday lets; they are just
empty—not used at all—despite the pressure on housing that we
have had for such a long time.
The council plans to increase the rate of affordable housing
provision on exception sites—increasing the minimum number of
affordable housing units, I hope to 100%—through the use of
grants. It will work with housing associations to develop a
pipeline of sites to increase affordable housing, including by
releasing council sites, which is a new and novel idea.
Critically, the council wants to re-engage with small and
medium-sized developers to find and develop land, and to step up
work with local councils, parishes, towns and communities to
identify suitable and stalled sites.
(Twickenham) (LD)
In my constituency of Twickenham, housing is extremely expensive.
For anyone who grows up in the area and for key workers, as the
hon. Gentleman said, it is almost impossible to get on the
housing ladder. The social housing waiting list is enormous, and
I see people every week who are struggling to get rehoused. He
spoke about finding sites. We have very few sites in south-west
London. Does he agree that, where there are public sector-owned
sites, for instance police stations—Teddington police station, to
be exact, in my constituency—there is national legislation that
forces the owner to get the best value, so they have to sell to
the highest bidder? I know that there are local housing
associations—and, indeed, a GP surgery—that would be keen to
redevelop that police station for affordable and social housing,
but they are going to be outbid by luxury developers, who will
build more luxury housing that we do not need.
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. That is a theme with
which we are familiar in Cornwall. In fact, in 2015 we signed a
devolution deal that talked about one public estate. The idea was
that all publicly owned land would be used for the benefit of the
local community, including for housing. It would be fair to say
that that has not materialised, for various reasons. When we
talked to the NHS, it said what the hon. Lady said: that it must
get the maximum return. The police station in St Ives, where the
housing shortage is most critical, has been sold, even though
there was a local attempt to try to secure it for housing. There
is a real challenge, and maybe the Minister will look at that.
Network Rail owns land, and all sorts of land that could be built
on seems to be locked up. That would be a great thing to address,
and I am sure that it will be addressed in the White Paper.
Another bugbear of mine has been the sheer number of planning
proposals that have approval but are yet to be built. I
understand that, in Cornwall alone, there are 19 units that are
approved and not yet built. The council intends to work with
Homes England to develop a partnership to unlock developments
that have planning permission, so that they can become homes for
local people. Other ideas include a pilot to explore the
conversion of vacant buildings in town centres, which the towns
fund is seeking to do in Penzance and St Ives.
I am also hopeful that the council recognises that it is not
solely responsible for bringing family homes into existence. For
example, despite several attempts by me and other colleagues in
Cornwall, the council has repeatedly blocked opportunities to
build family homes using models such as rent to buy, because it
has an apparent dislike of local people freely owning their own
homes. This is a missed opportunity, as I know that rent-to-buy
companies have had ambitions to build thousands of homes on sites
without using any public money, which would have helped to
address many of the pressures that we see. I am hopeful that we
will see a change of heart at the council.
The timing of this debate is not an accident. I have been trying
to secure it for some time but was particularly keen to get it
now, because I am aware that the Secretary of State for Levelling
Up, Housing and Communities plans to bring forward revised
proposals to address the problems faced by hundreds of thousands
of people who need housing across the country. The hon. Member
for Twickenham () referred to the waiting list
for social housing in her constituency. In Cornwall, there are
14,000 homes needed by people on the list. There is no better way
to level up than to ensure that people have a secure home of
their own.
Secure homes mean secure communities which, in turn, mean secure
rural schools, secure services such as post offices, GP practices
and bus routes, and the survival of pubs and churches. The
Government’s plan must speed up the delivery of homes that are
genuinely secure and affordable. Cash that goes to councils for
housing must be spent on housing, not on endless meetings and
draft proposals. A recent council-owned scheme that I visited
took seven years to deliver 55 houses for shared ownership and
affordable rent.
Support must be given to small builders, which are best placed to
build quality homes in rural areas, and there needs to be a
massive effort to attract people into the trade with high-quality
training opportunities. The building trade can be seen—I know
this from my experience in school, because I went on to become a
Cornish mason, which involves slate, stone and different types of
plastering—as a negative career, but I can testify that some of
our most skilled people work in the construction trade, and we
need an awful lot more of them.
As I have just discussed, land belonging to the public sector
must be secured in order to build homes that are affordable, and
this must be done quickly. I am fully in favour of building
homes, but we must ensure that they are built in the right place
for the right people, and at the right price. If we do not, which
is the greatest fear of people in Cornwall, house building in
areas such as Cornwall will never match the demand of an open
market, prices will always be out of reach, and green fields will
continue to be lost. In the current climate, we cannot leave the
situation to the mercy of market forces. Although I would
ordinarily support that, intervention is needed in Cornwall, on
Scilly and in many parts of the United Kingdom.
Novel ideas must be considered to ensure that people can access
the homes they need. With your permission, Dr Huq, I will suggest
a few novel ideas to the Minister that would help to address the
situation in Cornwall and elsewhere where it is a real issue for
local people. First, we could speed up and increase the supply of
housing by using Homes England money to pay on results, such as
rewarding social landlords and developers big and small on the
completion of homes that people can afford. At the moment, it
takes an age to even get anywhere near the site by using Homes
England money. It would be far better to create the incentive
that the money follows the completion of homes.
Secondly, the Government should consider offering local
authorities the opportunity to introduce a blanket requirement
for all new building to be restricted to primary residence only.
This policy idea is reassuring to communities who find that they
are quickly becoming ghost towns in the winter months. When I go
and talk to my parish and town councils about the housing that is
needed, they have no confidence that the houses will meet a local
need. To have a blanket restriction—as a tool and opportunity for
local councils—that all new housing must be for primary residence
only would really help to reassure communities who, at the
moment, often oppose such developments.
I am sorry to interrupt and have two bites of the cherry, but my
hon. Friend is making a really important point. I understand that
somewhere else in Cornwall has introduced such primary residence
restrictions, and I wonder whether he might add any weight to the
implications of doing so and whether it has been deemed a
success.
It is a great subject, because it actually happens to be in St
Ives, which is part of my constituency, so I know a little bit
about that. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. A neighbourhood
plan introduced the policy of primary residence only, so all new
housing has to be for primary residence. They did it—this is
years ago now, so it is not a new problem—because purchased
properties were often pulled down and others built in their
place, which devastated the local community. We have seen
villages such as Mousehole, Porthleven, Coverack and others
where, in winter, the lights are pretty much switched off.
St Ives has done it and we have not seen a particular impact. In
the summer I went to see quite a large site developed by
bunnyhomes, where every single home for primary residence was
sold without a problem. It definitely can be done and it would
make it easier if it applied across the whole authority, rather
than in one particular town area. I thank my hon. Friend for his
intervention.
The Government should re-emphasise to councils our commitment to
home ownership and make it more difficult for councils, such as
Cornwall council, to restrict other housing delivery models, such
as rent to buy. I fully understand the pressure on houses to
urgently respond to the situation today, but I cannot stress
enough how positive it is for a family to own a home and put
roots down in that community, support the local school and feel
that they have a stake in how that community goes forward. Home
ownership is a significant part of the mix and must be
protected.
The Government should consider an incentive to landlords to sell
to their tenants by enabling capital gains tax to be used to give
the tenant help with the deposit and purchase price. We remember
that a previous Chancellor introduced rules that made the
financial incentives for being a long-let landlord much more
difficult. Many landlords in my constituency are looking to sell
their properties to their tenants, but that is surprisingly
difficult to do. One idea came to me from a landlord who is keen
to do this. His alternative is to switch it—avoid the tax
implications and switch the property to a holiday let, which he
does not want to do. We are seeing other landlords do that, but
he wants to have the opportunity to sell his property to the
tenant, but the tenant needs help to get the deposit together.
There may be a way to use capital gains to support that transfer.
Otherwise, we will continue to see long lets lost to holiday lets
or sold to the highest bidder. These homes are often snapped up
by those who can afford a second home to retreat to in coastal
areas and other attractive parts of the British Isles. That issue
must be addressed.
The Government should consider introducing a licence scheme, so
that properties currently lived in require a specific licence
before they can become a holiday let or bolthole. This policy
idea favours permanent residents. In the past couple of years,
because of the need for staycation and inability and sometimes
reluctance to fly abroad for holidays, we have seen people
flooding into tourist attraction areas and driving up a holiday
let market that has seen large numbers of families evicted from
their homes, which they have sometimes rented for many years, and
these homes transferred a holiday lets. We would therefore like
the Government to intervene and require a licence to be given to
allow that house to move from a permanent residence to a holiday
let or some other use. That is novel, I know, but we are in such
a time where families cannot hold down the jobs or get the jobs
we need them to have because of the lack of housing.
Councils should consider applying council tax to all homes,
irrespective of their use. At the moment, the police, the parish
and town councils do not get their share of the council tax if
that property is switched to a holiday let or business, as we
discussed a few moments ago. Such a policy of council tax across
all properties built for living in would also save the UK
taxpayer, who at the moment pays the Treasury to refund councils
which lose that council tax income. That is a fair idea that
recognises and values houses built to be lived in.
The Government have encouraged the possibility of creating new
locally led development corporations to encourage local areas to
come forward with ideas for new towns to deliver jobs, homes and
economic growth. There is an appetite in Cornwall to identify
village garden sites. This seems entirely sensible, but the
challenge facing this innovation is the immediate escalation of
land value when an area is identified for development. That
absorbs the very money that would otherwise be used to create the
infrastructure to serve a new community.
The increase in land value, which the locally led corporation
then has to find, undermines the viability of the scheme and the
ability to deliver the infrastructure needed. The Secretary of
State and the Minister here, my right hon. Friend the Member for
Tamworth (), should consider
allowing these locally led development corporations to be
established much earlier in the process, to secure the sites
before the value rockets. This policy idea enables the
development of these garden villages, which reduces the
incredible pressure placed on existing towns and villages to meet
the entire housing demand.
I would like to quickly move on to the thorny issue of
enforcement, because as we consider planning reform, enforcement
should not be ignored. Currently, we have something of a gold
rush in Cornwall, with people and businesses buying any land they
can get hold of. Small farms are being sold because they are no
longer commercially viable and are often snapped up by
individuals who have no intention of farming but would quite like
a piece of Cornwall’s real estate. They get hold of this land and
carry out all sorts of development and destruction, knowing that
the council’s enforcement team is overwhelmed, under-resourced
and seemingly lacks power, or at least fears legal challenges at
every turn. It is a huge problem across Cornwall, and I am sure
it is a problem elsewhere in the country.
It is a complex issue, but I would like to take this opportunity
to suggest a simple adjustment. The Government could, and should,
introduce a fixed penalty system where councils can apply a
significant and proportionate fine to both the owner and
contractor. An owner or developer may feel that a breach of
planning and possible enforcement is worth the risk, as the
financial gain may outweigh any enforcement action. However, such
people rely heavily on contractors who will be less inclined to
breach planning law if the penalty applied to them. As a former
tradesman, I know that I would check to ensure the task I am
charged with has the necessary planning consent if there were a
potential fine and a blot on my copybook. A fines system would
fund enforcement and ensure councils have the capacity to do a
good job.
When it comes to housing, this is the time to be bold. It is time
to apply some clear, blue-sky thinking and demonstrate that the
Government are on the side of those who, in the past, we have
described as “just about managing.” Right now, in Cornwall and on
Scilly, these families are not managing.
(in the Chair)
I aim to take the Front-Bench spokespeople from 3.38 pm, so
please could the Back-Bench speakers stick to six minutes? We
kept changing it, as we did not know how long the hon. Member for
St Ives () was going to speak for, but
if everyone sticks to six minutes, then everyone will get in.
14:52:00
(York Central)
(Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, Dr Huq. I thank the
hon. Member for St Ives () for opening the debate. I
want to reinforce much of what he said, because the challenges
that we have in York seem to replicate those in Cornwall and
elsewhere across the country.
We have a housing market that is out of control and heating up at
pace, year after year. When I bought my first house, the housing
affordability ratio was 3. In 2019, in York, it was 8.3. Right
now it is 11.7. So, just in the period of the pandemic, it has
already risen significantly and is increasing even today. In York
it is growing faster than anywhere else in the north, or indeed,
I understand, in the country, at 14% in the last year. York is a
very desirable place to live and, with new ways of working,
people now realise they can live in York and still have a base in
London.
People’s patterns are changing, but the housing crisis is just
escalating for us. We cannot recruit skilled workers, the tourism
and hospitality sectors are struggling to function and, while
social care has not been able to recruit for some time, we are
now seeing graduate professions, such as working in the NHS,
coming under significant strain. People cannot afford to live in
York, but we need their skills. Therefore, the impact of the
housing crisis is showing itself in the economy.
As the luxury and investment markets increase, the housing market
is heating up further. I understand that estate agents can, and
do, now name their price and that investors see opportunity. Why
are we in this situation? There are so many questions to be
asked, including why we see housing as at asset at all, when we
know it should be a human right. York’s social housing numbers
have also been falling, but at the same time, the waiting lists
have increased threefold since I have been an MP. Affordability
is completely unaffordable in York. In post-industrial cities
such as York, like in many areas of the north, there is an
economic dependence on low-wage and insecure work. Housing
poverty is a reality for vast swathes of my constituents. In the
private rental sector, behind Bath, Brighton and Oxford, York is
the fourth least-affordable place to rent outside of London—and
the least affordable in the north. When 61% of renters have no
savings, a future of home ownership is completely unrealistic.
This traps more people in housing poverty.
Over the past decade, the City of York Council has only built an
average of 36 affordable homes a year, and has seen a net loss of
its social housing stock. Over 200 of these units lie empty,
awaiting repairs, but the council is struggling to recruit the
necessary skills to bring them back into use because traders
cannot afford to live in York. That means that we have a skills
shortage preventing us from bringing those properties into use.
That is a problem right across the industry; it shows how
investment is needed to get control of the housing market—to then
get control of the economy.
Of those who are lucky enough to rent, many are living in box
bedrooms—I am talking about whole families—or damp, mouldy homes.
That is completely unacceptable. As in Cornwall, York is being
absolutely overrun by Airbnb’s, holiday lets and second homes.
Over a quarter of the housing stock is owned by private
landlords, who can literally name their price. In addition to the
measures laid out by the hon. Member for St Ives, we need to
collect proper data, both on what domestic residential properties
are being used for and on Airbnb’s and holiday lets. We also need
to ensure that we have a mechanism or lever to secure homes for
primary occupation, as opposed to other use.
York’s local plan is with the inspectors; this is an issue that
runs sore in our city, so we want to see that come forward as
fast as possible. However, the local plan process was designed
for a different era; I put it to the Minister that we need to
refresh and overhaul that process, so it is not just about
numbers but about looking closely at tenure and what is needed to
join up the housing and economic needs of an area. We need to
look at longer-term development, and ensure that it is hardwired
into what we are doing. As the Minister knows, we have a massive
site in York Central that is owned by Homes England and Network
Rail, which are public sector organisations, and yet the demand
on Network Rail is to release that land as a capital receipt, in
order to see investment over 60 or 70 years that will enable
housing to be built to meet local needs in the right forms of
tenure.
There are so many things that I could speak about today, but I
will end by saying that the issue of land banking must be
addressed. Developers’ ability to sit on land without having to
pay the price, needs to be brought into focus. Today housing is a
driver of inequality, and housing is too important to be used in
such a way. We need to make sure that we build homes that people
can afford to live in, and end this racket in the housing
market.
14:59:00
(Totnes) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I
congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (), because this is a long
overdue debate on a subject that many of us across the south-west
feel extraordinarily passionate about, and extremely concerned.
Each week, issues relating to available housing affordability can
be found in my inbox—by post or email. It is becoming distinctly
more alarming over the course of covid.
I just want to add a bit more of a Devon perspective. First, in
my constituency of Totnes and south Devon, there are 5,000 second
homes in South Hams; 27% of all second homes are found in the
south-west. To put that in context, 57% of the properties in
Salcombe are second homes; in Hope Cove that goes up to 80%; and
in Thurlestone Sands it is 95%. That has had the undeniable
impact of pushing up rental and property purchase rates. Anybody
who wants to work or live in the local area on a full-time basis
simply cannot find a property to live in, so of course they look
around to see where they can find appropriate housing—and it is
often many miles away. I think about the lifeboat service in
Salcombe. I think about the teachers in Salcombe. I think about
the doctors and nurses who live in and around Kingsbridge and
Totnes, who do not have adequate properties to live in to enable
them to work and provide the very necessary public service that
we expect in our rural community.
The second part of this is the way in which we calculate what is
“affordable”. According to the Devon County Council website,
“affordable” is not based on the reality of what people are
actually earning on the ground, so I ask the Minister to be
considerate and to look into how we might find a better formula.
When we have a lot of people with second homes working outside
the area, it pumps the number up so that it is not indicative of
what local wages really are.
From my perspective, the purpose of this debate, and the purpose
of the discussion that we are having around affordability and
available housing, is to make sure that those that do have second
homes pay their fair share, and that there is support for those
who want to live and work in the area. I do not want to take up
much time because I know that lots of people will make many of
the same points, but since I arrived in Westminster I have made
it a bit of a mission to work on closing the loophole around
business rates for second home owners.
For those that do not know, lots of people got away with not
paying council tax by claiming business rates, and therefore were
eligible for business rates relief. When covid came along, they
were then eligible for the covid grants, and there were two of
those. So actually, out of the 13,593 properties in Devon alone,
the vast majority claimed the covid grants. I have no doubt that
some of them absolutely are legitimate businesses, and we should
welcome their taking that money to support their businesses so
that they can continue to thrive, but I personally know of many
examples where lots of people were claiming for that money
because they were just putting their second home on to the
business rates so that they could escape paying council tax and
then, in the circumstances of covid, benefited. That is totally
unacceptable and morally, I have to say, completely dubious and
unacceptable. I hope there will be a review to look into those
who were claiming to be eligible to pay business rates but were
not actually running businesses. That is important.
That brings me to what I think we can do. The Chancellor has been
good by mentioning that he wants to close that loophole, but can
we do it sooner rather than later, and not in the expectation
that more grants will be paid out? We need to announce where we
are going with this. I might add that there should be a minimum
requirement of actual days let in order to be eligible for
business rates, and the Minister should make it as high as
possible because legitimate businesses would have nothing to
fear—so 180 days, 200 days, 210 days, or whatever he thinks is
proportionate. That would at least start us on the process to
getting this right and closing that loophole.
I have been very privileged to work with Councillor Judy Pearce,
the leader of South Hams District Council. The hon. Member for
York Central (), in a fantastic speech,
made a very important point about data. In South Hams we are
running a review of all second home properties and Airbnb, and we
are happy to share best practice with any other hon. Member. We
need to be able to point to the data so that we can make the
argument somewhat better. So my first ask is to push on with the
business rates.
My second ask is around Airbnb. It is great that people want to
come to south Devon and spend their holiday in the south-west,
but I do not understand the taxation policy around Airbnb. I
believe that all too often the money does not stay in the local
area, unlike with local letting agencies. We need to consider
what Edinburgh and London are doing, and now, as I think I saw in
The Guardian—it might surprise people that I occasionally read
The Guardian—the island of Tiree has just introduced an
alternative to Airbnb. Those are models that we should definitely
look at.
My third and fourth points are on local government. Where
possible there should be, as my hon. Friend the Member for St
Ives said, a new planning requirement to have one’s house as a
second home. Local government and local authorities should have
the power to raise council tax above and beyond the statutory
level that they have now. Again, it is about the stresses and
strains that are put on our resources and our communities, so we
have to make sure that we get that right.
It is great that we now have the planning Bill. The Minister has
been extremely diligent in listening and working with many of us.
Two weeks ago, we debated the Planning (Enforcement) Bill. If we
insert measures in that Bill into the planning Bill, we might use
the fines put on all the developers that break their enforcement
orders to build social and affordable housing. Frankly, we need
to toughen up on developers and ensure that we are leading by
example.
15:05:00
(Plymouth, Sutton and
Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to see the hon. Member for St Ives (), who has called such an
important debate, especially for the south-west. The holiday
industry is important to us, but so is our housing market. Our
housing market in the south-west is broken, and needs fixing.
The pandemic has turbocharged our housing crisis. We not only
have a housing crisis; we have a homes crisis. In many cases,
there are enough houses but not enough homes for people to live
in. Too many tenants have been turfed out to make way for holiday
lets and second homes, which can sit empty for much of the
year.
The low-wage economy means that many people cannot afford to live
in the communities where they work. The sell-off of council homes
means that there is no longer that safety net for far too many
local families, and that is not good enough. We need to see
proper action, and nowhere is that more important than in the
south-west, where more than a quarter of England’s second homes
are, according to 2019 data. Our rural and coastal villages are
being hollowed out, and local people are priced out of moving or
buying within the community where they grew up. In cities such as
Plymouth, homes are being flipped to become Airbnb properties,
damaging our local hotel trade and robbing local people of a home
of their own.
I want to see more people come to the south-west—it is a great
place to be—but housing policy should put local people first. We
need a focus on first homes, not second homes. That is why I have
worked with Councillor Jayne Kirkham, leader of the Labour group
on Cornwall County Council, and Councillor Tudor Evans, leader of
the opposition on Plymouth City Council, to develop our “First
Homes not Second Homes” approach. That is a very simple,
five-point radical plan, designed to tackle the housing crisis
that is facing so many rural and coastal communities because of
the surging number of second homes and holiday and Airbnb lets in
the south-west, especially since the pandemic hit. The region
most affected by second homes is rightly where the solution to
fix the problem should be first applied. Our “First Homes not
Second Homes” approach is a simple one, which I hope that the
Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich
() will be able to
support.
First, let us give councils the power to quadruple council tax on
holiday lets and empty second homes. We need an economic
disincentive against keeping houses empty, denying local people
homes.
Secondly, let us introduce a licensing scheme for second homes,
holiday homes and Airbnb lets, to understand the full extent and
to set a minimum floor on the number of homes in any community
that must be for local people and not for second homes, holiday
homes or Airbnb lets. The minimum floor should be 51%, meaning
that no community can be dominated by folks who do not live
there. Then let us give councils the power to adjust that
threshold upwards, to suit local circumstances—60%, 75% or
90%—because it is time that we called time on the takeover of the
south-west by absent landlords.
Thirdly, let us create a “last shop in the village” fund, so that
councils gain the power to introduce an affordable community
infrastructure levy on empty and underused second homes, to
support the last shop in the village, the last pharmacy, the last
post office, the last pub and the last bus. Hollowed-out
communities do not sustain essential community infrastructure and
services. We need to find a new way to keep them in business.
Because people should not need to move away from where they grew
up to get a decent job and a home they can afford, I want us to
focus, fourthly, on an effort to build first homes, not second
homes. That means building more genuinely affordable zero-carbon
homes to buy or rent and for social rent, with a preference and
priority for local people. In particular, that should focus on
the key workers who keep our communities alive—the nurses, the
shop workers, the teachers, the care workers, the farm workers
who are now being priced out of our communities.
Finally, we need to introduce a discount lock for future renters
and purchasers of those properties, to ensure that affordable
first homes are not lost in the market blizzard of second home
and holiday let purchases after that first family moves on,
staircasing the benefits, not losing them. That is why we need a
focus on first homes, not second homes.
We need to be bold, because our communities are being dominated
by a second-homes approach. If we do not act soon, the
south-west’s amazing attractiveness will be lost. Shops will not
have anyone to work in them. Care homes will not have anyone to
support the people inside. We will lose the essential spirit of
the west country. That is why we need a focus on first homes, not
second homes. I hope the Minister will respond to those points.
We need to put first homes first and second homes second.
15:10:00
(Bolsover) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I
congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives () on securing, as he called it,
a timely debate that is at the heart of the Government’s
levelling-up agenda. I question the Cornwall and Devon bias to my
right; Derbyshire is where people should be going for their
holidays.
Like many former coal communities, the Bolsover constituency is
fairly rural. Small pit villages, such as Glapwell and
Shuttlewood, and small towns are its backbone. Anyone who has
driven through the constituency recently will have seen the
number of new dwellings popping up—439 since 2019. I have had the
pleasure of visiting many of them, and many are affordable. It is
a step in the right direction. It is great to hear how welcome
those new residents are, many of whom are moving from outside the
constituency and, indeed, from the south-east because they
realise the benefits of living in Derbyshire.
In my relatively short time as the Member for Bolsover, my
mission has always been focused on four things: infrastructure,
skilled jobs, education and housing, which are all tied together.
An area needs those things to thrive. They cannot be looked at in
isolation. There is no point having housing without jobs and
infrastructure, and there is no point building it all without
equipping people with the skills they need to take advantage of
those opportunities. Places in my constituency such as Shirebrook
have suffered cycles of stagnation and deprivation that are
difficult to disrupt. Nothing has ever really replaced the jobs
and pride that the mines brought to many of my local communities.
Honest people can work hard their entire lives, but because of
the social and economic facts of the area, it is hard to grow the
standard of living.
It is crucial that the Government continue to make bold decisions
to promote the sustainable building of new homes in parts of the
world like Shirebrook, which the Minister visited recently. On
top of the tremendous benefits to the construction sector, new
affordable housing is an important part of our offer to young
people in our community. For too long, it has been accepted that,
to find a good job and start a good life, people have to move
away from places like Bolsover, where there are limited services
and opportunities. Building affordable homes gives young people
an incentive to stay local and invest their energy and creativity
in the place they grew up. It can keep families together; staying
local allows young people to maintain their most powerful support
networks during a mental health crisis, takes pressure off the
social care system and breaks down the worrying trend of
loneliness in old age.
That is why I particularly welcome the Government’s decision to
launch the First Homes scheme in Shirebrook. It allows local
people and key workers the opportunity to buy their first home at
a 30% discount. I was grateful to host the then Secretary of
State for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark
(), who I think appreciated
the unique challenges associated with regeneration in my
constituency. Actively building new homes allows us to plan and
grow our public services sustainably. Why do we build a few more
houses in a village, with a salami-slice approach, rather than
building a proper new estate with a school and GP practice, which
can benefit the whole community? Building sustainably means a
stronger local market for public services, which means better
services for residents. When residents are against developments,
it is almost certainly because they are unsustainable.
That is also why I am supporting and working with a number of
local stakeholders on a project that has been known by many
names, but which we will refer to as the Shirebrook growth
corridor. We are looking to bring together infrastructure,
housing, education and employment opportunities, which can help
to break the cycle of stagnation that places such as Shirebrook
have seen and unleash our potential.
I am sure the Minister will agree that now is the best time to
embrace developing sustainably. We need to look at how we can use
green technologies, such as mine water heating, electric vehicle
charging points and heat pumps to reduce energy bills, reduce
emissions and make the journey to net zero much more achievable.
That is precisely what we are doing with the Shirebrook growth
corridor.
All of that is not without its challenges, however. During the
summer, I did a series of village hall meetings across my
constituency and was slightly amazed that the most raised topic
was not anything on the national agenda; it was parking in rural
villages. Many of those areas were built at a time when most
families did not have a car and if they did, they had one. Now,
it is perfectly common for families to have two or three. That
puts a huge burden on the villages in question and people do not
like the traffic that builds up. I therefore encourage the
Minister to get his officials to give some serious thought as to
how we can solve the great parking issue in rural areas,
particularly in areas such as Pinxton.
I would also raise section 106 moneys, because unfortunately, we
hear time and again that although section 106 moneys have been
agreed, they do not appear. Serious efforts are needed to ensure
that residents are not being undersold by developers.
In closing, Dr Huq, as I can see that you are giving me that
look, affordable housing is a vital cog in the system, but we
need to see it in line with all the other elements that make
sustainable communities. I am grateful for the way the Department
has engaged with me so far, but I look forward to further
conversations on the Shirebrook growth corridor, among many other
things.
15:16:00
(Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives () on bringing this matter to
Westminster Hall today. It will be no surprise to right hon. and
hon. Members that I am here to give a Northern Ireland
perspective. It is not the Minister’s responsibility, but I want
to replicate the viewpoints put forward by others.
I am reminded that the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
had a policy and a strategy to ensure that people who wanted to
buy their homes could do so. That introduced many people to the
opportunity of having their own home. I have supported that over
the years. I bought my own home and my mother and father’s farm.
The opportunity was there to do so and the opportunity to reduce
the price was also helpful for me.
While I am aware of the differences between the planning system
in Northern Ireland and that in mainland UK, the similarities in
need are outstanding. In my constituency of Strangford, families
are in need of suitable homes, as are young people, and our
elderly and disabled are in need of affordable homes. We have
currently not found the right way to provide that. Co-ownership
is one option I suggest to the Minister and we have schemes of
that kind in Northern Ireland. My second son Ian and his wife
Ashley bought a co-ownership home, where they bought half and the
other half was controlled by the firm that built the homes. That
meant people were able to have access to homes at an early stage
in life. Is that a policy that the Government, and the Minister
in particular, are looking at for the mainland? People can access
half the price of co-ownership homes, thereby providing the
possibility of home ownership. It has to be set up by the firms,
but it can happen.
To give a snapshot of the needs at home, the population of Ards
and North Down is projected to rise by some 1.5% from 2019 to
2029, along with the percentage of older people who are 65-plus.
As other hon. Members have said, we have areas where people want
to go and live—it is good that that is the case—thereby the
demand for houses has risen dramatically. I know that those from
the 65-plus vintage buy a lot of the houses down on the Ards
peninsula, where I live. However, it also means that the social
stock is under pressure. Some 25% of buildings in the years 2019
to 2029 will need to be specifically for people who are elderly
or disabled, or will need to be age-friendly. The housing growth
indicator shows that there will be a new dwelling requirement of
5,500 in Ards and North Down for the 14-year period starting in
2016. In that year, there were more than 70,000 households in
Ards and North Down, of which 72% were owner-occupied, 16% were
privately rented, and 12% were socially rented.
The reason I list those stats is that they show a rising demand
for social housing. Even if we built 5,500 houses over that
14-year period, the demand for social housing in Ards and North
Down at this moment is over 3,000, so that tells us what the need
is. The public and private sectors are simply not meeting the
need that is there. My constituency has much to offer—others have
said this as well, so I will say the same thing—including a quick
commute to Belfast just up the road. There is the joy of great
high street shopping, salons and solicitors. Everything is there
to make homes much more attractive if appropriate housing were
available.
I have outlined the housing sector report that was presented to
Ards and North Down council in an attempt to explain why there
must be changes in planning zones and policy, in order to allow
affordable, economic, environmentally friendly housing to meet
the need that it perceives. The right housing in the right place
at the right price can empower people to put roots down and to
feel that where they live is where they want to be. The upshot is
that weighted consideration must be given to new building
applications, taking in the need in the area. I need to impress
on Members that when I talk about housing stress, it is not a
matter of numbers on a page: it is a matter of people’s lives. It
is about the pensioners who are unable to heat their old
four-bedroom draughty houses; the young families who are unable
to pay £850 per month for a two-bed terraced house in the private
sector housing market; the young person who is unable to leave
their parents’ home and live their own life; or the abused
partner who is unable to leave their home, as there is nowhere
they can afford to go. Those are the realities in my
constituency, and they are realities in everybody else’s
constituency.
I fully support what the hon. Member for St Ives has said. I very
much look forward to the Minister’s response: I know it will not
be about what he can do to help us in Strangford, but he will be
able to help us look at the bigger picture. We need changes in
the system that lead to changes on the ground, and that work
needs to begin now, so I urge the Minister to work co-operatively
with the devolved Administrations—that is where there is contact
between the Minister and my representation of the constituency of
Strangford—to swap and enlarge ideas and strategies to allow
UK-wide changes that will enable affordable housing to be built,
thereby enabling our need to be met.
15:23:00
(Bolton South East)
(Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I
thank the hon. Member for St Ives () for securing this important
debate on planning reform and affordable housing, and also for
his work as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on
brain tumours, of which I happen to be a member.
The two issues we are debating today are of great importance to
people across the whole country, including in my constituency of
Bolton South East. Access to affordable, good-quality housing is
the single biggest issue that fills my mailbox every week, and I
am sure it fills other Members’ mailboxes as well. The importance
of housing has been highlighted by the covid pandemic, and
specifically by the effect it had on those parts of the country
where there is a lot of overcrowding due to multi-generational
households or because many people cannot afford a home of their
own and are living in rented accommodation—perhaps renting a room
in a house. The pandemic threw up this big problem that we have
in our country and, to be fair, it is not a party political
issue. Over the past 40 or 50 years, there seems to have been a
failure to build more affordable, decent homes in our country
across the piece.
Obviously, most Members are not able to help when our
constituents write to us about such issues, irrespective of how
much effort we make, because the housing stock is just not there.
In Bolton alone, there are 9,000 people on the waiting list for a
council property. I pay tribute to the work of Bolton at Home,
whose representative I met this summer at one of its new
developments. Jon Lord, the chief executive officer, told me that
a single three-bedroom home for social rent, which had just been
finished, had received 400 applications from families—400 people
applying for one home. How is Bolton at Home meant to choose
which of those 400 families, who are all equally needy, is deemed
worthy of that property?
When it comes to owning a home, an affordable home is classed as
costing no more than 30% of the average monthly household income.
Although the median income in Bolton is around £26,000, which
equates to a house price of around £80,000, the average house
price in my area is £125,000. How does that add up? That builds
on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central
() about the cost of housing
in relation to salaries.
Some 14,000 of my constituents are on universal credit, the
majority of whom are working people on low incomes. We are living
through a massive housing crisis, and that is compounded by the
fact that mine is the 37th most deprived constituency in the
United Kingdom, with almost 9% unemployment and 40% of children
living in poverty. The route out of the crisis is clear: we need
to build more homes.
On planning reform, I want to briefly discuss an issue that is
important to my constituents. I am concerned that the Government
will implicitly force local councils like mine to turn greenfield
sites into housing developments, rather than existing brownfield
sites. In Bolton, historically an industry-based town, we are
blessed with more than 100 existing brownfield sites,
predominantly in the form of ex-factories. However, the lack of
available funding and the costs of converting those premises
means councils are often forced to give planning permission to
build on green spaces. Often, if planning permission is denied,
companies appeal to the Secretary of State and, because of the
rules, most of the time they are successful, so our green space
is taken.
I would like to see a legislative and financial framework to
assist housing developers, private developers, local authorities
and social housing companies to convert existing brownfield sites
into affordable housing, which could alleviate much of our
housing crisis. That is a possible solution that could lead to
affordable housing. We do not have to have this crisis. It is not
just in Bolton—across the country, there are brownfield sites
that are eyesores, blotting the landscapes of our towns and
cities.
We should do something practical to see how we can use brownfield
sites rather than greenfield sites. We know that because of the
particular buildings that are there, the preparation needed to
make it possible to build on that land will cost money. I ask the
Government to work nationally, through a special body, with local
authorities or even with private developers to give out grants to
make the land usable, and then it can be built on. The houses
could then be sold with a 5% or 10% profit on each property, or
it could also be done through a housing association. There are
ways that we can deal with the issue.
Again, it is not a party political issue. Brownfield sites have
not been utilised by any Government for so long, and they are
pieces of land that could be used for building good homes. I
really hope that the Minister will go back and talk to the
relevant people. I am sure that they can work out a suitable,
fair formula that helps everyone to convert brownfield sites and
thereby provide homes. I know that if the brownfield sites in my
area were converted, my constituency would not have a housing
problem.
15:30:00
(Vauxhall)
(Lab/Co-op)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq,
and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for St Ives () for securing this really
important debate. I associate myself with the remarks that many
Members have made about planning reform, but I want to focus on
why we desperately need a clear solution to affordable
housing.
My constituency of Vauxhall lies in the centre of London, just
over the river from this House. As such, it faces the brunt of
the affordable housing crisis in this country. As an MP, I get
constituents contacting my office every day with problems that
are exacerbated by the lack of affordable housing in Vauxhall.
Many of those who contact me have horror stories of poor housing,
urgent maintenance issues and severe overcrowding, which are
making their lives a misery.
One of my constituents lives with four other family members in a
one-bedroom flat, and they are forced to share bunk beds because
there just is not enough room for individual beds. Would this be
tolerable to any of us? My constituent also told me that right
above the bed, there is a massive crack on the ceiling that lets
in cold air, and that the flat is damp and has rodent problems.
My constituent’s grandmother has dementia and has to adhere to
strict guidance, meaning that the rest of the family are confined
to the bedroom.
Another constituent explained to me that she lives with her three
children, two of whom have been diagnosed with autism. They, too,
share a one-bedroom flat, with no room for the children to
develop. They also highlighted safety concerns; one child nearly
fell from the third floor before a neighbour intervened. I defy
anyone in this House to say that we should not expect such cases
in Britain today. We are the fifth-richest economy in the world,
but the truth is that unacceptable housing standards, poor
housing and overcrowding are far too often the norm—not just in
Vauxhall and London, but across the country.
The pandemic highlighted the devastating impact of overcrowded
housing on households and families. In the past one and a half
years, those in overcrowded housing have been at more risk of
contracting covid, and such households also suffered the most
from measures to combat covid. Our local councils play a vital
role in housing supply and council reform, and research by the
Local Government Association highlights that investment in new
social housing could generate £330 billion for the country over
50 years. In turn, that would generate work in the construction
sector, with over 89,000 jobs. More importantly, however, it
would offer a clear route out of unaffordable housing and
insecure private rental.
A survey commissioned by the National Housing Federation found
that nearly 20% of respondents had experienced mental or physical
health problems because of the lack of space in their homes
during lockdown. We cannot fail to see the link between
inequality and the social injustices that plague our society, so
I ask the Minister to look at how we can increase the supply of
genuinely affordable housing and social housing—like the home I
grew up in, in Vauxhall—at the heart of housing policy. Only a
publicly funded programme of council house building, supported by
Government grants, will help the Government to meet their target
of 300,000 new homes.
15:34:00
(Greenwich and Woolwich)
(Lab)
It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Dr
Huq, just as it is to respond to what has been an extremely
thoughtful and well-informed discussion. I congratulate the hon.
Member for St Ives () on securing this important
debate, and on the considered way in which he opened it. He spoke
with great clarity and persuasiveness about the severe housing
pressures in his corner of England—pressures that, as he made
clear, have been exacerbated by the pandemic—and he set out a
number of interesting proposals to address them, many of which
warrant further consideration.
When it comes to second and holiday home ownership in particular,
we very much agree that more needs to be done to ensure that
local first-time buyers get priority access to new homes for
market sale, and that local people who are not in a position to
buy or to secure social housing can access affordable private
rentals, rather than those homes being used by landlords
exclusively as short or holiday lets.
As an aside, I very much welcome the fact that there is an
energetic all-party group on the short lets sector, because the
regulatory balance in this area is delicate and needs to be
approached sensibly, without party political controversy. If the
Minister has time, I hope that he might outline whether the
Government have any plans to better regulate the short-term
platforms spoken about by many in this debate.
I strongly commend the detailed “First Homes not Second Homes”
proposals set out today by my hon. Friend the Member for
Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (). I know the painstaking work
he has been doing, as have Councillor Jayne Kirkham, Councillor
Kate Ewert and others, to ensure that local people in Devon and
Cornwall are not priced out of their local communities. I hope
that the Minister will give those proposals serious
consideration.
More generally, the hon. Member for St Ives was absolutely right
to have used this debate to make the case, on behalf of his
constituents, for focusing on delivering the right quantity of
new housing in the right places at prices that local people can
afford. It was implicit in his remarks that that should be done
in a way that secures buy-in from existing local communities. I
think those sentiments were shared widely by Members on both
sides of the Chamber. Where he and I differ is in the belief that
the means of achieving that vision are the flawed proposals
outlined in the Government’s August 2020 White Paper for reform
of the planning system—assuming that those proposals eventually
emerge in some recognisable form from the review initiated by the
Secretary of State following his appointment in September.
I will use what remains of my time to pick up on the two main
themes of the debate—availability and affordability of
housing—but also to draw out the third element, which is what the
public’s role in the planning process should be. When it comes to
the availability of housing, all Members who have spoken today
have made it clear that there is widespread agreement on the need
to accelerate the delivery of new housing across the country.
While the Opposition do not deny that the existing planning
framework has its problems and there is an obvious case for
reform, there is scant evidence that it is the primary cause of
supply constraints. Even with all the caveats that must be
considered, the statistics make it clear that the total number of
units granted planning consent each year has consistently
outstripped the rate of construction over the past decade, and
the number of un-built permissions is highest in the regions with
highest demand. Amazingly, London, of all places, where housing
pressures are acute—I know this from my constituency caseload,
which mirrors the situation set out by my hon. Friend the Member
for Vauxhall ()—has the largest volume
of unused consents. A report by the consultancy BuiltPlace
suggests that our capital has as much as 8.1 years of supply
approved, and yet unused.
Instead of obsessing about supply side reform, the Government
would do well to focus, in the first instance, on cracking down
on land banking and speculative planning, and consider what might
be done to incentivise or compel developers—a point made by my
hon. Friend the Member for York Central ()—to build out the
permissions they have acquired.
When it comes to housing affordability, we really must get away
from the over-simplistic notion that ramping up the supply of new
housing will fully resolve the affordability crisis affecting
many parts of the country. That is a theme that has re-emerged
time and time again. Even if the Government’s target of 300,000
new houses a year were to be met—that is a very big if, given
that completions in 2020-21 stood at just over 216,000—the impact
on prices would be relatively small, and it would be felt only in
the medium term.
Prior to the pandemic, there were a million more houses in
England than there were households; that surplus has increased
over recent decades and continues to grow, at the same time as
prices continue to rise. Put simply, increasing home
ownership—and boosting home ownership rates among the young, in
particular—is as much about the affordability criteria and who
can buy any new housing that becomes available as it is about
overall deficiencies in supply. Instead of obsessing about supply
side reform, the Government should look at how lending can be
better targeted towards first-time buyers, so that they, and not
just those who already have large amounts of equity, can purchase
new homes to live in. As my hon. Friends the Members for York
Central, for Vauxhall, for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, and
for Bolton South East () have said, we need better
support for those who simply cannot buy, such as greater
protection for private renters and action to reverse the sharp
decline in social housing provision over recent years.
A key point, which has been implicit in today’s contributions but
not brought expressly to the surface, is the role of local people
and their priorities in the planning process. It is not disputed
that there is an issue that needs to be confronted in terms of
England’s discretionary planning system, but the solution to the
problems of housing availability and affordability is not to
silence communities and hand control of planning to development
boards appointed by Ministers in Whitehall. As much as some
rather offensively like to brand them in this way, most people in
England are not die-hard nimbys, and that is why nine in 10
planning applications are approved.
What local people want, and what they should retain, is a say
over how their areas are developed and a right to challenge
inappropriate or harmful proposals that they do not believe will
help to sustain balanced communities or, as the hon. Member for
Bolsover () remarked, provide the
necessary infrastructure and amenity to thrive. Instead of
attempting to reduce the public’s involvement or remove them from
the planning process entirely, the Government should concentrate
on how the system can be reformed to ensure that more developers
bring forward proposals that significantly enhance local areas
for existing communities, as well as for newcomers. That will
incentivise local people to say yes with greater frequency.
As things stand, we have no idea whether proposals to reform the
planning system will re-emerge from the review that the Secretary
of State commissioned and, if they do, what form they will take.
If a Bill is introduced next year, we hope that it will be the
product of genuine reflection on the criticisms levelled at the
White Paper by Members from all parts of the House. We hope that
rather than approaching the planning system as so much red tape
that needs to be swept aside, the Government will seek to make
the current system more reflective, rational, transparent and
democratic, and better resourced, putting communities at the
heart of good place making that delivers high-quality,
zero-carbon affordable new homes in the places where they are so
desperately needed. As the hon. Member for Strangford () said powerfully, the housing crisis is, at the end
of the day, not about numbers or units; it is about how we build
the homes that people and families need so that they can
flourish.
15:42:00
The Minister for Housing ()
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq, and
to wind up this Westminster Hall debate. It has been thoughtful
and considered, with detailed and useful contributions from
Members from across the House. I hope that I will be able to pick
up on the points made by Members, and occasionally I may refer to
the excellent speech that has been provided to me by my
officials.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich () on his appointment to
the shadow housing portfolio—a very important role indeed. I look
forward to working with him as he attempts to keep us true, and
to helping to persuade him of the righteousness of our approach,
and I wish him well. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for
St Ives () on securing this important
debate and making such a thoughtful contribution. I am sure that
he will not stop promoting Cornwall or, for that matter, Devon.
We want him to promote them, but we also want to ensure that his
constituents have good quality, decent and affordable homes to
live in.
I remind everybody of the importance of building more homes. The
hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich spoke about other reasons
and methods to ensure that we provide affordable homes, but
fundamentally we have to build more homes if we are going to
supply good quality homes in the places that people want. That is
why over the last 10 years we have had programmes such as the
affordable homes programme, under which hundreds of thousands of
new properties have been built across our country. That is why we
are using programmes such as Help to Buy, which has only recently
provided its 300,000th instance of help to buy for Sam Legg and
his partner, Megan, who bought a home in Asfordby in
Leicestershire. Sam said that without the Help to Buy programme,
he would not have been able to afford to get on to the property
ladder. That is a dream that more than 80% of people,
particularly those in the social and private rented sectors, say
they want to achieve—the right to own, the right to buy and the
right to acquire. They want to get themselves on to the property
ladder.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives and several other
colleagues—including my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes () and the hon. Member for
Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport ()—mentioned the importance of
primary residences. I recognise the challenge that has been put
to us, and it is one of the reasons why we have reformed stamp
duty and increased the costs to foreign and international
purchasers of British property. To the point made by my hon.
Friend the Member for Totnes, it is why we will introduce a
threshold for the business rate loophole tie-up, to ensure that
only proper letters are letting their properties and making use
of the business rate regime.
I am conscious that other Members have made points about council
tax and the importance of local authorities having discretion
over it. We have allowed local authorities to increase the
council tax to 100% for second homes, but I will consider
carefully the points that Members have made about local
authorities having further discretion over their council tax
regime.
The hon. Member for Bolsover () spoke about First Homes,
which the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport
mentioned in a slightly different context. I was pleased to visit
Bolsover a couple of weeks ago to give Nicky Bembridge, an NHS
worker, the keys to his first home. As my hon. Friend pointed
out, the First Homes regime is provided by developer
contributions and it does not cost the taxpayer a penny. It means
that local homes are available to local people at a discount of
at least 30% off the market rate. Local authorities have the
discretion to determine which residents will be eligible—it could
be people who live locally, or people with skills that are
missing from the area and are needed.
The First Homes product allows people to get on the property
ladder, while covenanting the discount into the future so that
future generations of local people or skilled workers, defined by
the local authority, will be able to get on to the property
ladder. I rather hope that if some First Homes are built in
Plymouth, they can be built on the site of the former registry
office, which I think is being demolished—thanks partly to
£250,000 of brownfield funding that the Government are providing
to Plymouth City Council to ensure that that work is done.
The hon. Member for Bolton South East () mentioned brownfield sites.
We are absolutely committed to further development on brownfield
land, and that is one of the reasons why we have introduced
further funding for that purpose. In the recent Budget, £1.8
billion was made available for brownfield remediation, £300
million of which will be given to mayoral combined authorities.
Greater Manchester has already benefited to the tune of more than
£90 million of public money for brownfield remediation, and we
look forward to going further in the future.
The hon. Member for York Central () raised an important point
about the time it takes to make local plans. She is perhaps more
aware of that than most, because York has not had a local plan
since 1956, when the present planning regime was barely eight
years old.
We are very conscious of that challenge. If we are to get more
developers, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, to
build different types of property on different land packets to
different tenures, we need a planning system that is far more
transparent, predictable and speedy. I take on board the points
made about the planning system by the shadow Minister, the hon.
Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, but I think we all recognise
that it is far too slow. It can take seven years for a local plan
to be produced, and a further five years for planning permissions
to be granted and spades to go into the ground. That is far too
long for SME developers that are living, quite literally, hand to
mouth. We need a system that is far more predictable and speedy,
and that will be the effect of our planning reforms, which I can
assure the hon. Gentleman and the House we will introduce.
We also want to make the planning system far more engaging. It is
very important that more people get involved in our planning
system. It really is not very democratic that literally 1% of
local people on average get involved in local plan making—that is
more or less local planning officers and their blood relations.
The percentage rises to a massive 2% or 3% of people getting
involved in individual planning applications—still not enough. We
need a system that is far more engaging, three-dimensional and
digitised. That is what our planning reforms will provide.
By providing a digital planning system, we will free up local
planning officers, giving them much more bandwidth to do the sort
of strategic planning that they trained to do, that we want them
to do and that communities need them to do, rather than focusing
on the administration of agreeing that a dormer window can be put
in a particular building. We will ensure that we have a faster
and more accessible planning system. We have also committed
ourselves to a review of the resourcing of local planning
authorities to make sure that—quite apart from digitisation,
which should increase their bandwidth—they have the wherewithal
to do the work that we want them to do.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives raised the importance of
skills and apprenticeships in our construction supply chain, a
point also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover. The
Department for Education has made available some £2.7 billion for
the purposes of apprenticeships, and innovative partnerships
between the National House Building Council and developers such
as Redrow have allowed for the development of bricklayer
academies. One has opened in my constituency —I am sure it is
just coincidence that they chose Tamworth.
The academies mean that the time it takes to train a bricklayer
is cut in half. They also allow young people to see that there is
a career in construction beyond bricklaying. They may be 19 and
learning how to lay bricks, but they also learn that, by the time
they are 30 or 35, they can do other things in the construction
sector and they do not have to lay bricks for the rest of their
working life. That encourages more people, and also more women,
into the construction sector—a very important thing.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover raised the importance of
infrastructure. That point was also made by the hon. Member for
Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. We recognise that, if we are to
get more people to support our planning regime, they must have
the infrastructure to support the homes that are built around or
near them—the GP clinic, school, roundabout or kids’ play area.
We know that the present system of section 106 agreements is
loaded in favour of the developers, and that the bigger
developers tend to have the bigger lawyers, with the bigger guns,
who can drive down the will of local authorities to resist.
That system means that proposed infrastructure is often
negotiated away, or does not arrive on time. We are going to
introduce an infrastructure levy, and I hear the point made by
many contributors that that ought to be as localised as possible.
That levy will allow infrastructure to be built up front, when
people want it and in a way that they expect. As my hon. Friend
the Member for Bolsover rightly said, if the infrastructure can
be put in place, that will carry with it the hearts and minds of
local communities, who will see that they will get some bang for
their buck.
Members raised the issue of empty homes. There are sometimes good
reasons that homes are empty—for example, if they cannot be
repaired, if they are in the wrong place to meet demand or if
they are not the right size for the people who most need them.
However, I hear what colleagues have said. As I have already
pointed out in my remarks about council tax and the consideration
of further discretions, I will go away and ponder the points that
have been raised by a significant number of Members.
I will make one final point, Dr Huq, before I make some
concluding remarks.
Will the Minister give way?
Before I make those remarks, I will allow the hon. Lady rapidly
to intervene.
(in the Chair)
The hon. Lady will have to be quick.
I want to pick up the point I made in my intervention, about the
statutory duty placed on police forces to sell to the highest
bidder police stations that are being closed, which therefore
considers financial rather than social value. This is a problem
not just for Teddington police station, but across London, where
we have a real dearth of sites. Will the Minister look at
changing national legislation so police forces can consider
affordable housing bids?
The hon. Lady makes an important point. I remind her that
developer contributions can contribute to affordable homes being
built in her locality, and that it is a Government obligation
carefully to consider how public money is spent so as to ensure
we get best value for it. I will certainly go away and consider
the point she has raised.
I will say one quick thing about net zero, which a number of
Members raised. The future homes standard, which we are to
introduce in 2025, will mean that homes are built with materials
and heating systems that make them at least 75% more carbon
efficient than homes built to present standards. As a down
payment on the 2025 date that we have set the sector, next year
we will introduce an uplift in building regulations to ensure
that homes are at least 31% more carbon efficient than homes
built at present.
This has been an important debate, and I have been pleased to
hear the contributions made by colleagues from across the
Chamber. I hope I have given reassurances to Members as to the
importance that the Government place on building good-quality,
affordable homes around our country, where they are needed. Be
they for ownership, shared ownership, affordable rent or social
rent, we need more good-quality homes. That is one of the
building blocks of levelling up. It is a mission that the
Government have set me and the Department for Levelling Up,
Housing and Communities, and one that we shall deliver.
15:58:00
I am grateful to the Minister for his response and to all the
Members who took part in the debate. What was really clear from
the debate, and something I hope will follow through to the White
Paper, is that at the centre of the issue are families and people
across the country who need housing. They need houses they can
afford and that give them security in their local communities. If
we can get that message across and if it is in the White Paper, I
feel that we have done our job.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered access to affordable housing and
planning reform.
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