Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con) I beg to move, That
this House has considered the matter of delivering new housing
supply. One of the critical issues facing our constituents today is
housing. Whether it is young people struggling to get on the
property ladder, tenants having to put up with high rents and
substandard housing, or families who cannot afford an adequately
sized home, across the political divide we are all acutely aware of
the growing...Request free trial
(Haltemprice and Howden)
(Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of delivering new
housing supply.
One of the critical issues facing our constituents today is
housing. Whether it is young people struggling to get on the
property ladder, tenants having to put up with high rents and
substandard housing, or families who cannot afford an adequately
sized home, across the political divide we are all acutely aware
of the growing crisis we face. Seven out of 10 voters think that
there is a national housing crisis. Housing is a top issue for
millennials. After the first and second world wars, there were
campaigns for homes “fit for heroes.” What we need now is a
campaign for homes fit for a new generation.
It is worth pausing for a moment to reflect on why home ownership
is so important. I think we all believe in the ideal of a
property-owning democracy. MPs in every party will understand
that buying your first home is a huge milestone in life. We all
understand that having your own space and somewhere to call home
is incredibly valuable. It gives people a stake in society and a
sense that they control their own life. Ownership also provides
much greater security than the rental market, which is especially
difficult at the moment. It is not right that huge numbers of
people, including families with young children, have to keep
moving or are insecure and unable to properly put down roots
anywhere. That is bad for all of us and undermines our collective
sense of community.
House prices have reached unaffordable levels because, as is
fairly evident, we have a housing shortage. The average home
costs about £285,000. In London, where the picture is even more
stark, the average cost is an enormous £523,000. Over the last 25
years, housing affordability has worsened in every single local
authority across England, and younger people most acutely feel
the impact of the crisis.
In my lifetime, the number of young families trying to buy a
house has virtually halved. When I first bought a house, the
average house cost three times the average income. Now it is
between eight and nine times the average wage. In the last
decade, over half of first-time buyers have had to rely on some
kind of help from their parents. The increasing need to rely on
the bank of mum and dad is widening the inequality gap and
further eroding social mobility in the UK. The crisis is forcing
those who cannot rely on well-off parents to fork out thousands
of pounds more in rent, to stay at their family home for longer
and to delay their plans to start a family.
Even those who can afford a home are getting less for their
money. Since 1970, the average size of a living room in a new
build property has declined by a total of 27%. The average floor
space of homes has declined by almost 20% in that time. We need
not only to build more houses but to build them better. Our
constituents deserve and, rightly, expect both quantity and
quality.
Obviously, housing is a matter of supply and demand. Let us deal
with demand first. Since the mid-90s, the nation’s population has
grown by between 9 million and 10 million, principally because of
immigration. Governments of all persuasions—I am making this
deliberately a non-party matter—have failed to build the homes
required to meet that increased demand. The result has been a
huge backlog in housing need—probably of 3 million or 4 million,
although I have seen all sorts of estimates. Clearing that
backlog and meeting new annual demand would require us to create
several hundreds of thousands of homes every year for decades to
come, which, again, all Governments have failed to do.
On the face of it, the answer is simple: build more houses. But
with our planning system, that is far easier said than done. The
real question is not whether to build, but where to build, and
not just because demand is higher in some places than in others.
All of us have run into vested interest groups who oppose new
build estates. Often those groups can have legitimately held and
valid concerns about overdevelopment, the impact on local
amenities and infrastructure, or the concreting over of local
countryside.
If we want to attack this problem properly, we should not see
nimbys as irrational or selfish. Indeed, their feelings are
entirely understandable. A home is probably the most significant
investment that a family will ever make. So-called nimbys quite
rightly want their children to grow up in a decent home in a
good-quality neighbourhood. If someone has moved to a rural or
semi-rural area, already facing stretched public services or
congested roads, they will not wish to see their idyllic new home
engulfed by rapid and substantial urban sprawl, or local
infrastructure placed under unnecessary or additional stress.
(Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is making a powerful case and is absolutely
right in the way he is laying out the problem and how people see
it. Is he aware not just of nimbyism but of yimbyism—the “yes, in
my backyard” movement? It says that many people are willing to
accept densification, particularly in British towns, to see more
investment in town centres and to breathe life back into those
towns, both socially and economically. That goes with the grain
of what people want and also cuts housing costs, both to rent and
to buy.
Mr Davis
I agree entirely. It is slightly separate from the main thrust of
my argument, but my hon. Friend is exactly right. One of the
issues is quality of community, which is addressed directly by
what he just said.
How do we get around the nimby problem in its conventional sense?
I believe that a large part of the answer is garden towns and
villages. It is not a new proposal but a tried and tested policy,
albeit with some tweaks to deliver it in the 21st century.
Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet () has spoken about it
before, as have I, and there have been Policy Exchange think-tank
papers on it. It is not that new, but it is worth resurrecting.
In the 20th century, the garden city movement resulted in the
creation of towns such as Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City, now
populated by around 30,000 and 40,000 people in each case. Those
new garden towns and cities were great successes. What is the
measure of that? Nearly 3 million people live in the 32 towns
created under the New Towns Acts 1946. Reviving these ideas will
hold the key to solving much of the housing crisis.
(Isle of Wight) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for a really fascinating speech and
hope that the debate will be of equal quality. There is an issue
with density. Garden cities are a fantastic idea, whether
Hampstead garden suburb, Welwyn Garden City or the others, but we
have some of the lowest density cities in the world. We are a
small country with a high-density per-kilometre population
compared with elsewhere in the world. How does he square that
circle with the high-quality environment that he wants to
see?
Mr Davis
Part of that fits in with what my hon. Friend the Member for
Weston-super-Mare () said, but I will deal with
the point about the high density of the population in a
moment.
Let us talk about the politics of nimbyism. Today, in a village
in my constituency, a small development of 100 homes would
generate thousands of objections. That is inevitably what
happens. A garden town could deliver tens of thousands of homes
and, if put in the right place, would probably generate a few
hundred objections. I will talk about how to minimise that, too.
Such a scheme would be fruitless unless we can ensure that new
developments generate the funding they need to become places
where people actually want to live. That is key.
Part of the problem with the existing process is that a mass of
potential funding for infrastructure can quickly disappear,
captured not by the local community but by landowners and
developers. As soon as a hectare of farming land gets planning
permission, its value will shoot up roughly a hundredfold. That
is the order of magnitude. It goes from £21,000 for the average
hectare of agricultural land to an enormous average residential
land value of £2.1 million per hectare—that is outside of London.
However, the vast majority of that will go to the landowner and
the developer. About 27% will be captured by the state, mostly by
the Treasury—that is over and above the money brought in by
section 106 agreements.
There is no guarantee that money will be spent locally. Indeed,
there is almost a guarantee that it will not be spent locally—I
am looking at my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough
South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke), a former Treasury Minister,
as I say that. This system starves local communities of funding
that could pay for necessary infrastructure within the
development, such as schools, roads, train stations, GPs and
hospitals, fibre optics or cycle lanes—you name it—or even
funding that could pay for larger and cheaper homes, which comes
to the point about density. The result is piecemeal development
around existing settlements that lacks the proper amenities to
cope.
The solution lies with the example I have referred to already,
set during the 20th century. The construction of new towns was
centred around radical but effective legislation that allowed new
town development corporations to buy large tracts of land at
their existing use value. That meant that when buying up farmland
for garden towns, the corporations paid the agricultural use
price rather than the hope value, or hypothetical market price. I
want to propose a slightly more sophisticated approach, because I
do not really like expropriation—I am a Conservative, remember.
We will have to have some sort of compulsory purchase, but there
should be a proper compensation for that.
Consider an example of a 1,000 hectare garden town, a little
smaller than Welwyn Garden City. Purchasing 1,000 hectares of
land at agricultural value would cost £21 million, but as soon as
it has planning permission the value would rise to £2.1
billion—remember that number. There is no change to the
underlying land usefulness and no work undertaken—that is just a
change of planning permission. But a Government-created garden
town development corporation might pay the existing owners, let’s
say, 10% of the development value. That is still £210 million, so
we are now talking about a pretty rich farmer. That is ten times
the existing use value and a profit for him of £190 million, but
it still leaves £1.9 billion of uncaptured asset value. That £1.9
billion surplus can be used to invest in the town’s
infrastructure, schools, medical centres, parks, pedestrian
walkways, high-speed optical links, and road and rail
connections.
Sir (East Ham) (Lab)
I commend the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate; he is
making some very important points. Does he agree that part of the
success of the new towns was around the provision of social
housing and that there needs to be a substantial programme of
that within the programme that he is setting out to the House
this evening?
Mr Davis
Frankly, I see nothing difficult about that, because I am talking
about creating communities that have been designed. When
communities are designed, all sorts of social structures are
created. I will come back to the detail in a minute, but I do not
have a problem with anything that the right hon. Gentleman
mentioned.
As I say, the design is done as a single entity. Unlike the
chaotic marginal extensions and infills of current development,
we can ensure the developments are well designed. We know how to
build successful communities— we have plenty of evidence. We know
how to design out crime. We know how to separate traffic from
pedestrian ways and cycle-to-school routes. If we select
locations properly, we can ensure links that facilitate getting
to work, shopping and entertainment.
(Rugby) (Con)
I admire my right hon. Friend’s ambition in looking to achieve
such large new towns. In my remarks, I will argue that we are
probably better off looking at sustainable extensions to existing
communities, although I admire his ambition. Does he not
recognise that we have tried this with eco-towns, no more than 20
years ago? Not a single one succeeded. There was so much
opposition that I fear his laudable aims will not be
realised.
Mr Davis
Well, that is the rest of the argument. My aim is to create a
well-designed town, which is attractive to live in. I looked
around my own part of the world and I thought, “I can see where
they would go.” I am not going to say it publicly as I do not
want to change the land values, but I could certainly see
that.
These developments would be built in areas of comparatively low
population. They will not be on top of an existing town, as my
hon. Friend describes, so they can, to a large extent, sidestep
the nimby problem. Even in cases where there is a hamlet near to
a proposed site, considering the size of the surplus, it could be
used to buy out those who are objecting, with a small premium on
the existing market price, a little bit of help with moving and
the payment being tax free. That would minimise the nimby
problem.
It is not as though we are short of space for these new
developments. As my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight
() said, we often hear that the UK
is full or that further development risks damaging our beautiful
countryside. I am afraid I do not agree with such arguments. My
hon. Friend has been in a helicopter more times than I have, so
he will know that if he flies from London to York or Hereford to
York, or wherever he likes, if he looks out of the window he will
see that unless passing over a major conurbation, it is like
looking at a golf course. Only 8.7% of England is developed; in
Scotland, it would be a tiny fraction.
My right hon. Friend may find that that figure is disputed. When
we look at motorway service stations and urban lighting, we see
that urban sprawl means the number is significantly greater than
8.7%. That number represents a very narrow definition and there
are people who would at least double it.
Mr Davis
Like all mathematicians, as I am, I always treat numbers
carefully. My hon. Friend might note that I said, “Look out of
the window of a helicopter.” If he does that, he will see what I
am talking about—large amounts of free tracts of land. I am
talking about not just any old land, but land near motorways,
railway hubs or the old Beeching railway lines, if we wanted to
rebuild some of those. There are a whole series of places where
we could put people.
It is not just a numbers game either. As the right hon. Member
for East Ham (Sir ) and others have said, new
communities need to have character. They need to be attractive to
all sorts of members of society. Garden villages and towns make
that possible. I am not necessarily trying to introduce another
policy aim, but instead of shoehorning new houses into any nook
and cranny we can find in existing settlements, we can build
good-quality, spacious homes in new developments.
(North East Hertfordshire)
(Con)
On that point, will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr Davis
I have to stop there as I have nearly finished. We can build
good-quality, spacious homes in new developments—well-designed
homes in well-designed communities. Learning from previous
development of garden villages and new towns, we can avoid past
mistakes and build attractive, pleasant places that people will
genuinely want to call home. In many ways, this is a matter of
property rights. What we are aiming for is the best balance of
affordability, ambition and respect for local residents of any
mass house building proposal currently on the table. They are
based on a proven model of success. Let’s get building.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
As colleagues will see, this is a very well subscribed debate. If
we are to get everybody in, that requires speeches of seven
minutes.
7.37pm
(Stretford and Urmston)
(Lab)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden
(Mr Davis) on securing this important debate and on setting out
many of the arguments that I hope to advance in my
contribution.
The statistics speak for themselves: more people living with
parents for longer; more people private renting, unable to get on
the housing ladder; lower rates of home ownership; and adults
aged between 35 and 45 now three times more likely to be renting
than 20 years ago. The system is broken, the symptoms are many,
but the root cause is always a lack of housing supply. This is
basic supply and demand, and we must take the action needed to
address what is a spiralling crisis.
I speak out on this issue because I have been there. I understand
it and I know that millions of young people are suffering because
we are not building enough homes. In short, my lived experience
makes me a “yimby”, as the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare
() called it—yes-in-my-backyard,
pro-housing, pro-development and cognisant of the economic
potential that house building brings. I want to see us build it
now and build it all: social, affordable and unaffordable, even.
All can play their part in tackling the housing crisis.
So what must we do to get things moving? Quick wins to deliver
more housing supply would include the restoration of mandatory
housing targets to at least the 300,000 previously committed to
by the Government and ideally more; but beyond overarching
targets, we must stand by the requirement for councils to show a
five-year supply of land, and ensure that local plans are still
required to be evidence-based and open to challenge from a
planning inspector. Failure to do so allows local authorities
throughout the country to under-provide consistently if they wish
to do so. That is a scandal, and enabling it to happen would be
an abdication of the Government’s basic duty to provide a safe
and secure home for all.
What of new ideas to improve housing delivery? We should give
urgent consideration to the introduction of a “builder’s remedy”
in areas where no credible local plan exists. If a local
authority is unwilling to play its part in tackling the national
housing crisis, central Government must step in and compel it to
do so. The builder’s remedy is not new; it has been around in the
United States since the early 1980s, when the California State
Legislature passed the Housing Accountability Act 1982. Such a
measure in the UK would ensure that local authorities agreed to a
compliant housing element in their local plan documents. If they
did not do so, their development controls would be restricted,
and development would be not just centrally determined, but
determined under far less stringent requirements.
(Worthing West) (Con)
There may be something in what the hon. Gentleman is saying.
However, following a planning appeal in Goring, in my
constituency, the inspector said that even if every bit of grass
in the whole town were built on, the council would still not be
able to meet the Government’s theoretical target—and that would
mean no green gaps at all between habitations. Would the hon.
Gentleman allow exceptions to his general proposal?
Given that this is a multi-layered and complex process, I am not
certain that I would. I would be looking into questions such as
housing density, and considering other flexible options that we
could adopt to deliver that result, alongside broader reforms of
the planning system. If we are to tackle the housing crisis
credibly, we must look at planning reform as well as the supply
of land. I will say more about that shortly.
Those are the quick wins—including the builder’s remedy—but what
of the sustainable longer-term changes that we need to plan
effectively for greater housing delivery? There are two key
elements: reforming the planning system, and increasing the
supply of land. First, we must accept that our 76-year-old
discretionary planning system is not fit for purpose. The Town
and Country Planning Act 1947 should be scrapped, because it
stymies development. Perfectly acceptable applications are
rejected on the flimsiest of grounds if there is local
opposition, often coming from those making their feelings known
from the safety and security of a comfortable home of their own.
What should replace that planning system? We must shift away from
a discretionary system to one that is rules-based, underpinned by
a flexible zoning code, and determined nationally for local
implementation. Land would be allocated for certain uses, and if
a compliant application for the usage deemed appropriate for that
land was received, it would be automatically approved. The system
would be clear, fair, even-handed and efficient.
(Reading East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a fascinating speech, and a powerful
case. Does he agree that as part of reform of the planning
system, developers should be encouraged to build on existing
brownfield sites in towns and cities? Many such areas are very
large and could contain a large amount of housing, and many
English towns and cities have relatively low density and a great
deal of brownfield land.
I entirely agree. I am in no way opposed to increasing density,
and, indeed, unlocking the more than 1 million homes that
currently have planning permission on brownfield sites. However,
that alone will not resolve the issue. In comparison with our
European neighbours, we are short of some 4.3 million homes per
capita, so there is more to do than simply increasing density on
brownfield land, although there is a potential for up to 1.5
million additional units.
Of course, even a reformed planning system needs adequate land
supply. There are few issues thornier than this, but the fact is
that whatever the density, whatever the tenure type and whichever
way we cut the cake, there are not enough brownfield sites in
urban areas to meet our housing need. We have to be honest about
that, and we fail future generations when we are not. It is for
this reason that I believe we must now look to the green belt for
additional land capacity.
One option would be to provide brownfield land within the green
belt for development, as my colleagues on the Opposition Front
Bench propose. I would support that in a heartbeat, but a more
radical option—to which the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and
Howden alluded in connection with the use of garden cities—would
be to allow all green-belt land within 1 mile of a commuter
railway station, and not subject to any other protections, to be
used for housing. Such a move could deliver between 1.9 million
and 2.1 million homes in locations where people actually want to
live: on the outskirts of major conurbations, with the
connectivity enabling them to take advantage of all that that
offers. However, the point about protections is important,
because with either of these options, national parks, areas of
outstanding natural beauty, sites of special scientific interest
and green spaces with protections would be left untouched. Our
genuine natural beauty would be preserved, rather than the
artificial construct that is the green belt—in truth, less a
green belt than an urban choke.
That is how we should drive the delivery of new housing. We need
testing housing targets, five-year land supply, sound local plans
and a builder’s remedy now, planning reform, flexible zoning and
strategically managed building on the green belt in the long
term. None of this is easy, but if we are to tackle generational
inequality, uphold the promise that each generation should do
better than the last, deliver rapid economic growth and ensure
that everyone has access to a safe and secure home of their own,
we must meet this challenge regardless. We have a unique
opportunity to side with the builders, not the blockers, and to
truly start planning for growth. I am, and always will be,
proudly Labour and proudly yimby, but I am proudest of all that
it is now clear that a Labour Government will respond to this
unprecedented challenge and deliver the new housing that our
country so desperately needs.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
Order. I remind the House of my advice about seven-minute
speeches. Others will be squeezed if Members do not stick to
that. I am sure that will provide a brilliant example.
7.47pm
(North West Hampshire) (Con)
I will do my best, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’
Financial Interests, tangential though it may be. I congratulate
the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston () on his speech, much of the
contents of which I agreed with.
Some four years ago, when I was Housing Minister, I decided to
hold a housing summit in my largely rural constituency—220 square
miles of beautiful rolling Hampshire downland, much of it an area
of outstanding natural beauty. About 150, shall we say, more
senior members of society showed up for the event in a village
hall, and it was obvious from the outset that I was heading for a
beating. I began my remarks by posing two questions to the
assembled group. I asked them first to put their hands up if they
had a child or grandchild over 25 still living at home, and about
half of them did so. I then asked them to put their hands up if
they had bought their first home in their 20s, and about two
thirds of them did so.
Having thus posited the problem, we went on to have quite a
civilised conversation about where houses should be going in my
constituency and, indeed, in much of the south-east—for these
people had come from far and wide. In truth, the message to
people who are resistant to or nervous about housing
development—even to the small number of verifiable nimbys among
us—is that whether they like it or not, the houses are coming. A
generation that has been denied access to housing will eventually
come of age and be able to vote for councils and councillors,
Members of Parliament and Governments, who will deliver what that
generation has been denied and put those houses in place.
How many sites have been allocated following that meeting?
I am pleased to say that my constituency overall is forecast to
take something like 30,000 homes over the next 10 years or so.
There are some questions to be asked about where the houses are
going and what they are going to look like, but those are
fundamentally the only two questions that we have to ask. We are
building a lot. Indeed, I hope that over the next 10 years,
Andover, the main town in my constituency, will get close to
double the size that it has been in the past.
This is not just a problem for those individuals who are denied
housing; it is a problem for the nation as a whole. We can see
the impact of restrictions on housing and the inability to access
housing elsewhere. In the United States, for example, a brain
drain is taking place from major coastal cities such as San
Francisco, New York and Washington DC as young, highly productive
people who cannot access housing are leaving in large numbers. In
this country, we might see that spreading to other parts, but
because we are a smaller country geographically, we will see
other impacts. We have seen lower household formations over the
last 20 years than we have before, along with a declining birth
rate, and more and more young people are choosing to live and
work overseas. The history of human economic achievement has
shown us that the closer we gather and crowd together, the more
productive and innovative we are, so there is going to be a
long-term impact for us overall, economically as well as
individually.
Now, how do we deliver those houses? I do not think that anybody
believes that we should not be delivering 300,000 houses today.
When I was Housing Minister, I had a church totaliser on my
whiteboard showing me where those houses were going to come from
and how we were going to get there. For me, there are broadly
three things that we need to do. The first involves the planning
system. It has long been an obsession of wonkery that the
planning system needs to be swept away because it is not working,
yet local authorities tell us that 92% of applications are
approved and that it is functioning. They do, however, express a
frustration with it, which is that the system as it is currently
configured has become a huge game of poker. Developers,
councillors and local people are gambling on what is going to
happen, and somebody in a suit, male or female, from Bristol—the
planning inspector—will be the final croupier who decides who
wins the game of poker. That is just not good enough. As the hon.
Member for Stretford and Urmston said, certainty is what produces
results.
So for me, the first step is the abolition of the Planning
Inspectorate, alongside setting hard targets for local
authorities but giving them an absolute right democratically to
choose where those houses should go in their area. Hopefully that
will be brownfield, and some of it may indeed be garden villages.
It is a great sadness to me that the Oxford-Cambridge arc seems
to have been abandoned by the Government; I had huge ambitions
for that part of the world. If we can create certainty by putting
local authorities in charge, with those hard targets, they will
know that they have their fate in their own hands and we can just
get on and build.
The second element of the planning system that needs to be
removed is the viability test. Many developers over-densify and
hide behind the viability test. They do the local community out
of its rightful contribution from the uplift in value because
they show a spreadsheet of whether a development is going to make
money or not and they justify adjustments here and there. That is
particularly the case in London, where it is simply impossible to
overpay for land. The viability test says that anyone who has
overpaid for land can just build a 44-storey skyscraper that will
pay for their effective overpayment and largesse. If we get rid
of the viability test, we would get an actual market for land and
it would be possible to overpay. We would then see realistic
values and get more land coming through.
Finally, one of the key elements for the acceptance of housing in
local areas, alongside the need for the restoration and
strengthening of neighbourhood planning, is a strong sense of
aesthetics. I certainly see this in my constituency. I have joked
in the past that if they would only build thatched cottages in my
constituency, we could build thousands of the damned things.
Aesthetics matter. When we look at some of our historic towns and
cities, we see that they have been scarred by previous
generations building rubbish stuff. The houses that were built in
the 1960s and ’70s have largely been—or will largely be—bulldozed
and replaced. Hardly anything from that era will be deemed to be
a conservation area, unlike so much of the mass development
created by the Victorians. If we get the aesthetics right, along
with providing local people with the certainty that they are in
charge of their destiny on housing, acceptability will rise.
Let me give the House an example. Anyone who has the joy of going
to Stamford in Lincolnshire—I did not mention to my hon. Friend
the Member for Grantham and Stamford () that I was going to mention
his constituency—can see a game of two halves. They will find
developments in the classic tradition that look like Stamford,
and people queue round the block to buy those houses. On the
other side of town, they will see developments that look like the
same old rubbish that is built anywhere else in the UK, and they
will scar that beautiful town for many generations to come.
We need a rigid aesthetic code looking at vernacular
architecture. We need to put local authorities in charge, rather
than having arbitrary decision making by the Planning
Inspectorate. We need to get rid of artificially inflated land
values through the abolition of the viability test. We also need
some hard numbers that will add up to 300,000, or possibly more,
as the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston said. Then I think
we would stand a chance of answering the question that we have to
answer for the next generation: will their life be better than
ours? If we can do all that, the answer may well be yes.
7.55pm
(North Antrim) (DUP)
It is good to follow the right hon. Member for North West
Hampshire (); I think I agreed with everything he said. I will
focus my brief comments on public housing supply across Northern
Ireland. We have a chronic under-supply of homes across the
country. In terms of public supply, I believe that the Northern
Ireland Housing Executive remains the largest public housing
organisation not just in the United Kingdom but in Europe. By and
large, it does a fabulous job in very difficult circumstances. It
used to be the organisation that managed some of the largest
housing estates across Europe. Many of those estates were sold
off, and some were bulldozed because they were not effective or
efficient. The impact resulting from those decisions is that we
do not have a good supply of public housing.
Unlike other public housing authorities, the Northern Ireland
Housing Executive has a statutory duty to meet need for the
homeless when they present as homeless. This is difficult enough
in normal UK housing circumstances, but in Northern Ireland
community tensions flare up from time to time, which puts
additional pressures on public bodies, not least the Northern
Ireland Housing Executive. For example, last year we had a feud
between certain sections of the community, and that internecine
dispute between rival groups and organisations impacted on
people’s lives. Threats were levelled at people, and people were
put out of their homes. The crisis became a real problem going
into a particular weekend during the year. On that crisis
weekend, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive had on its books
five properties across the whole of Northern Ireland that it
would have been able to give people if they presented as
homeless. It is little wonder that we have a housing
accommodation emergency in Northern Ireland. Those five
properties were for the entirety of Northern Ireland, not just
for dealing with that particular one-off situation of the feud.
Those properties were all that was available to deal with all the
other problems relating to the lack of housing supply.
The Northern Ireland Housing Executive has to deal with other
routine housing need. Levels of homelessness are hidden from
sight, more in Northern Ireland than anywhere else. Indeed, post
pandemic, the levels of homelessness have been exposed. The
opportunity to sofa-surf at a relative or friend’s house is no
longer available. However, the number of properties available is
nowhere near the level necessary to meet the need, despite the
fact that the Northern Ireland Housing Executive is still the
largest provider of public housing.
The figures are significant. The demand for temporary
accommodation—a marker of homelessness—soared from a pre-pandemic
level of 3,000 placements in Northern Ireland in 2019 to 9,000
placements last year. This week, I got new figures from the
Housing Executive to suggest that we will probably exceed the
10,000 mark this year. Those are the most up-to-date figures that
the Housing Executive has presented to me in recent days. As an
elected official for more than 26 years, I have worked very
closely with the Housing Executive. It is an amazing organisation
that is staffed by great people who care, but they are struggling
to meet very intense need, which must be addressed by a new
strategy.
The Mid and East Antrim Borough Council area is not coterminous
with all my North Antrim constituency, but it gives a sample of
what the Northern Ireland Housing Executive is up against. From
November 2022 to January 2023, 438 people presented as homeless
and 252 of them were offered temporary accommodation. The rest
could not be facilitated. That is approximately three families a
day presenting in one part of my constituency and the biggest
public housing provider does not have stock available. This is
not sustainable and radical action is required to fix it.
Across Northern Ireland, households stay in temporary
accommodation for up to 32 weeks on average. Thankfully, the
average is lower in the Mid and East Antrim area, at about 16
weeks—it is about 14 weeks in the Causeway Coast and Glens
area—but it is still a massive problem. There is so much reliance
on private landlords, who are themselves working in a squeezed
marketplace.
Migration and immigration have had a knock-on impact on Northern
Ireland’s housing need, too. Northern Ireland is pulling its
weight with both refugees and migrants, doing proportionately
more than some parts of Scotland, but the impact on the
availability of housing and temporary accommodation has been
challenging.
Hostels and hotels have now become a Home Office policy, and they
are regularly filled by long-term contracts for migrants and
refugees. They are not available to meet indigenous housing and
homeless need. A number of hotels in the Mid and East Antrim
Borough Council area are now full-time occupied, so their
availability for urgent temporary accommodation has gone.
I would like the Northern Ireland Housing Executive to be given
power to assist in two ways. First, I would like it to be
permitted to buy back stock and to add to its asset base,
including by being permitted to buy no-longer-used nursing homes,
hotels and other such facilities to start to address the 10,000
people who require homes. Secondly, I would like it to be able to
borrow money and engage the market, instead of having to fight in
a buoyant housing market with one hand tied behind its back while
housing associations are not restricted in the same way. Allowing
the Northern Ireland Housing Executive to borrow money would
enable it to compete on a fair basis.
The Northern Ireland Housing Executive invests hundreds of
millions of pounds in housing stock each year, and it is
regularly the choice of tens of thousands of people in Northern
Ireland who want a happy, settled, good-standard home, but in the
modern era it must be able to invest to improve and compete.
At the end of this debate, I do not expect the Minister to be
able to address all these issues. I respect her greatly, and I
know I will not hear any platitudes from her about how this is
best addressed through the Northern Ireland Office or how this
would all be sorted out if we just got the Government sorted out
in Northern Ireland. None of the issues I have raised requires a
Northern Ireland Government to be in place; they require the
housing sector to be liberated to do the things I have asked. I
encourage the Minister to speak to her Cabinet colleagues and to
encourage our Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to push for
these issues to be addressed, to allow the Northern Ireland
Housing Executive to borrow money and to buy back housing stock,
otherwise the housing crisis in Northern Ireland will deepen.
8.03pm
(Northampton South) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and
Howden (Mr Davis) for securing this debate on such a pressing and
important topic, which I have been involved with, in one way or
another, for 20 years in elected office. I was pleased to lead a
Westminster Hall debate on the related topic of the future for
SME house builders just the other week, and today’s debate
provides a welcome opportunity to hammer home some of the points
I made then.
As a Conservative, the idea of the UK as a property-owning
democracy is one about which I feel very strongly, and it worries
me deeply that, for many younger people, home ownership is
increasingly out of reach. Unsurprisingly, given my chairmanship
of the all-party parliamentary group for SME house builders, I
have a strongly held view that the sector can play an important
role in helping to address the dual problems of housing
accessibility and affordability across the UK.
The Home Builders Federation reports that, in 2020, the SME house
building sector delivered about 22,000 homes. To put that in
context, according to the Federation of Master Builders, SME
builders could deliver 65,000 homes by 2025, compared with 12,000
in 2021, given the right conditions.
For those who are not aware of how vital the SME sector is to
housing delivery, let me explain. SME developers typically carry
out smaller developments built on trickier sites, and the SME
sector tends to go where volume house builders cannot. As well as
this, they often face less vocal opposition, as they deliver
brownfield housing up and down the country, instead of the
large-scale developments that often do not have the
infrastructure to go along with them and which are responsible
for so much so-called nimbyism. The sector delivered 39% of all
homes built in England in the late 1980s yet, 40 years later, it
barely manages 10% of our annual housing completions.
The rising cost of materials is causing difficulties for
developers across the board, which is why I welcome initiatives
such as the one developed by Travis Perkins, based in my
Northampton South constituency, that enables SME house builders
to access building supplies and materials directly without facing
lengthy pre-approval checks. Another issue for SME house builders
is access to finance, on which my APPG is soon to deliver a
report. That includes difficulties in the Land Registry process
for recording changes of property ownership. Labour shortages are
another issue, as labour is crucial to the whole process.
It is extremely important to recognise that small house builders,
which were largely wiped out in the 2007-08 crash, have not
re-emerged. Does my hon. Friend think the Government should look
at the generation of new house builders—in the ’70s we had Lawrie
Barratt and the chap behind Redrow, these big house builders—in
the same way that they are looking at the generation of new
scientists and new companies that promote science and technology?
They have a strategy and funding all of their own, but I have yet
to see anything that would stimulate new house building companies
for the future. Does he agree that is something the Government
should look at?
My right hon. Friend makes an important point, and the APPG
produced a report in which we suggested a Homes England for SME
house builders to try to address those points.
The planning system has already been touched on in this debate,
and I say it again for the record that removing binding national
housing targets from our house building system was a mistake.
When the history of this Government is written, that mistake will
loom larger than it already does. A different way was available
and that was, if not a zonal planning system reset, some way
towards that, as referenced by the hon. Member for Stretford and
Urmston (). This Administration are
probably out of time for anything so radical, but other options
exist.
I have come to understand that the issue of planning also relates
to planning officer case load. As one town planner said to me,
although a 20-unit brownfield development built by an SME is
likely to require less work than a 400-unit greenfield
development built by a volume house builder, it will not require
20 times less work. SME house builders are therefore
disadvantaged in the planning process. Indeed, the explosion of
process is a speech in itself. We have an entire sector that can
help, but it is blocked in so many ways.
In his opening speech, my right hon. Friend the Member for
Haltemprice and Howden touched on migration in detail. Eight
million—it is on us as national politicians, whether or not we
supported that unsustainable level of migration. I did not, but
it does not matter. A national solution of greatly increased
house building is absolutely essential.
Ideas are flowing. My right hon. Friend made insightful and
challenging points in favour of garden towns and cities. Then
there are the ideas in the Bacon review, an impressive and
important piece of work led by my hon. Friend the Member for
South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) and commissioned by the Government, and
now in need of implementation. It is about self-commissioning,
not just self-build. My hon. Friend the Member for
Weston-super-Mare () outlined ideas on building
up, adding storeys, not high rises, about which I was recently
interviewed on Times Radio. There is also the work of my hon.
Friends the Members for Milton Keynes North () and for Ruislip, Northwood
and Pinner (), my right hon. Friend the
Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) and
our fellow members of the Housing, Communities and Local
Government Committee, as I wish it were still called.
It may be something of a cliché to say that many of our people
will only truly believe in capitalism if they have a piece of
capital of their own but, as Terry Pratchett once wrote:
“The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the
hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.”
8.09pm
(Weaver Vale) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to participate in this debate, which was
eloquently opened by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and
Howden (Mr Davis). We have heard some fantastic contributions
from Members across the House.
I know that we would all agree that housing should be a basic
human right and that it should be safe, secure and genuinely
affordable, whether it is to rent in the private rented sector or
the social sector, or to own. Yet in Britain today that is simply
not available to all. Far too many people are homeless. We have
more than 100,000 families in temporary accommodation. Hundreds
of thousands of people are trapped in the building safety crisis,
many in a tenure called leasehold. Of course, it should be a
feudal relic of the past, yet it is still alive and kicking in
England and Wales. Those people are classed as homeowners, but we
know that in reality that is not what they are, as they have
fewer rights than homeowners. In fact, someone has more rights if
they purchase a toaster than they do if they are a leaseholder.
That is an unfortunate fact and many across this Chamber have
again spoken eloquently about it.
We have 1.2 million people in genuine housing need now. The
fundamental issue here is a lack of housing supply with the right
mix, in the right places and with the right tenure. I am going to
focus on public housing, which the hon. Member for North Antrim
() mentioned, because without public housing or social
housing being a fundamental part of the mix, we will never meet
what should be a consensus figure: about 300,000. I know that
some have been more ambitious and suggested 350,000. If we look
back to the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, we had about 90,000 to
100,000 social houses built. Whether under a Labour
Administration or a Conservative one, that must be a fundamental
part of the mix. History is staring us in the face there. Yet
last year’s figure was minus 14,000, when we take into account
right to buy and demolition. Just 7,400 were built. If we map
things forward over the next five years, the figure is just
6,400—even less than that pitiful figure of 7,400 last year.
How do we achieve this? I concur with the concept of garden
cities and garden towns. I am a son of Wythenshawe, which was the
largest council estate in Europe, thanks to the likes of Lord and
Lady Simon. So I have seen the impact that can be made. People
had gardens for the first time. They were beautiful gardens and
this was well-built social housing. So we certainly need greater
intervention, regardless of what political party is in power.
Conservative Members will not be surprised to hear that I have no
faith in the current Government delivering on that scale, because
the past 13 years have demonstrated that that is not going to
happen. However, we need that bold transformation—that
intervention in the housing market.
I would direct the right-to-buy subsidy to the First Homes
initiative; that is a great idea. The former shadow Housing
Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and
Dearne (), proposed that. It is a great
idea but it is not resourced properly. In fact, only 35 First
Homes were built last year; the target was 10,000. Again, there
was an over-promise but a lack of delivery. It is a good idea in
principle so why not use that subsidy more creatively? Why not
use the £23 billion a year that is spent on a dysfunctioning
private rented sector in housing benefit to build genuinely
affordable social housing and indeed garden cities? That could be
done through Homes England or whatever it may be called in the
future—it could be done through a Government agency.
Too many people, young people in particular, have had the
drawbridge pulled up from under their feet in regards to home
ownership or renting, at an affordable rate, a safe, secure home.
The only way to do this in future is for everybody, across the
political persuasions, to be bold and show leadership in their
communities. Sometimes genuine concerns will be raised about a
lack of infrastructure in what we might class as “cowpat
communities”. The former Housing Minister, the right hon. Member
for North West Hampshire (), referred to some shoddy build that we have in
estates across the country, which is undoubtedly the case. So let
us build something beautiful in the future. Let us kick that
drawbridge down and let us have opportunities for generations to
come.
8.15pm
(Rugby) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice
and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing this important debate, in which
I am going to draw on the experiences of my constituency, where
we are doing our part to deliver new housing at scale. I also
want to talk about the challenges in delivering new homes and in
delivering the infrastructure that is needed alongside
residential development, and thus the reasons why people often do
not like development in the first place.
In Rugby we have an exemplar of high-quality, infrastructure-led
development at Houlton, on the eastern side of the town. It is a
sustainable urban extension to the town of Rugby, which has been
master-planned by the developers Urban&Civic. Once complete,
it will boast some 6,000 homes, four schools, a district centre,
transport connections by both road and rail, and a variety of
leisure, retail and community spaces. Houlton has been developed
on a brownfield site, one previously home to the famous Rugby
radio mast, which was clearly visible from the M1 motorway.
The Houlton development pays tribute to that history, as the
first transatlantic message from the United Kingdom to the United
States was broadcast from the site to the town of Houlton in
Maine. One interesting fact is that by the time the new community
at Houlton in my constituency is complete, its population will be
significantly greater than that of its namesake. I understand
that it is also a unique example of a place in the UK taking its
name from a location in the US, rather than the other way
around.
An important part of getting that development under way has been
bringing communities along and getting support for the proposals.
Back in the noughties, when I was a councillor at Rugby Borough
Council, very extensive community engagement was done to
understand the concerns of neighbouring communities to this site
that we now know as Houlton. Particular engagement was done in
Hillmorton and the village of Clifton-upon-Dunsmore to alleviate
the concerns that residents nearby might have. Technology was
used to provide computerised effects of what the new development
would look like, to take out the uncertainty factor and the fear
that people had about what they might be having there. That
technology has advanced in recent years and it should be used on
all occasions to give people a clearer idea of what the
development is going to look like.
People are bothered about the fact that when new homes are built,
often the roads, schools and health provision come afterwards. At
Houlton, the local authority—Rugby Borough Council—Warwickshire
County Council and the developer have worked together to bring
forward infrastructure at an early stage. Road access, with a
link road between the new development and Rugby’s town centre,
was delivered very early, with a financial loan from Homes
England. That has enabled traffic to flow in and out of Houlton
without having to travel through the community of Hillmorton,
where people might have reasonably objected to this new
development. The developers have brought forward outstanding
educational provision, building a secondary school around the
historic radio station, the one that broadcast around the world.
The design is of such quality that it beat Battersea power
station in a competition about the re-use of original
buildings.
A primary school was also opened there four or five years ago.
When it was built, there was not only respect for the area in
which it was built, but sufficient investment to develop
something at scale. But one area where we have encountered
difficulty in securing the infrastructure that we need is in the
development of health services. Here I would like to contrast the
difference that I have experienced in dealing with different
agencies and bodies. The Department for Education, Homes England
and Warwickshire County Council have demonstrated great
flexibility in bringing forward the road and education provision.
But, regrettably, the health service and the network of bodies,
boards and bureaucracies that support it have proved very
inflexible. A surgery for eight GPs has been approved as part of
Houlton’s district centre, but so far we are nowhere near getting
any agreement to bring that facility forward. I hope that, as we
continue this vital debate both today and in the future,
Ministers will engage with those other bodies to ensure that
infrastructure is delivered on time.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden made a
good case for garden cities—for additional, totally new
communities. However, we have been down that road before and
nothing has happened. The sustainable urban extension to existing
sites is the only way that we will practically achieve anything
like the volume of housing that we need. Of course, expanding an
existing community has a wider economic benefit, particularly in
respect of our town centres, many of which are struggling, as
people are buying more and more online. I was very pleased to
hear my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire
() say that one of his communities will be expanded
to double its existing size. It will always be easier to expand
an existing community.
Central Government have a role to play in encouraging local
authorities to take a proactive and pro-sustainable approach to
development. If Government fail to properly require planning
authorities to build the new homes, we will not see the
significant progress that everybody in this Chamber wants to see.
We must encourage our local authorities—Rugby has already done
this—to develop clear and comprehensive local plans that set out
in detail where development should take place. My real concern is
that, in withdrawing the targets and making them advisory, we
have created a charter whereby development is constantly stymied
by the loudest voices who often oppose development.
8.22pm
(North Shropshire) (LD)
I welcome the debate and congratulate the right hon. Member for
Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing it.
I think that we are all in agreement that we have a housing
crisis, and that young people in particular deserve an
opportunity to buy a decent home for themselves, or at least to
rent one at an affordable price and of a decent habitable
standard. The proportion of people renting in the UK has grown
substantially since the mid-1990s, from 29% to 35%, and, in
tandem, more people are paying a higher portion of their salary
to rent their homes. Shelter UK estimates that private renters
are spending more than 30% of their income on rent.
Finding a good-quality home at a fair price has become a
never-ending task for some people. There is a general consensus
that we need to deliver around 300,000 new homes every year if we
are to overcome the crisis. However, despite the efforts of
successive Governments, this has not been achieved since the
1950s, and we should ask ourselves why that is.
It seems like an obvious question, but much of the debate focuses
on planning, and indeed on blaming the nimby. But if we look at
the numbers, we can see that building, not planning, is the key
driver behind this shortfall. In the past six years, we have
granted planning permission for an average of just over 300,000
homes per year. Some 80%, or possibly more, of planning
applications were granted last year. Although I agree that the
process needs to be streamlined, that is not the reason why the
homes are not being built.
So what is the reason? The first is to do with profitability.
Developers build at a rate that the local market can absorb
without depressing prices, because, obviously, they need to make
a profit on their activities, which is quite reasonable. Another
reason is capacity in the industry. We do not suffer high rates
of unemployment in the construction industry—quite the opposite,
in fact. In the absence of thousands of construction workers
sitting about with nothing to do, the simple reality is that it
is not possible for us to build 300,000 houses a year without an
informed strategy to train and retain the workers required to
deliver them.
It is also important to consider the types of housing that we
want to see built. We urgently need affordable housing, but
developers make most of their money from larger, more expensive
homes, and that worsens the shortage of affordable housing. I am
sure that we all have examples in our constituencies of local
developments with affordable housing quotas being specified as
conditions of planning permission, only for those quotas to be
significantly watered down on the basis of commercial viability
as that development progresses. The result is that the least
well-off in society are bearing the brunt of the housing crisis,
because it is at its most acute in the affordable and social
rented sectors. Here again, demand is outstripping supply, often
forcing people to live in cramped and unsuitable temporary
accommodation while they await their chance to be allocated a
property from the housing register.
Overall, the National Housing Federation has estimated that there
are currently 8.5 million people in England with some form of
unmet housing need. That is putting huge pressure on the private
rental market, keeping rents unaffordably high and preventing
many young people from saving for a deposit with which to buy
their first home.
I wish to focus my attention specifically on the provision of
social housing, especially in rural areas. I also broadly agreed
with the comments of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale () on social housing. The NHF
estimates that 4.2 million people would benefit from a social
housing solution, and that 145,000 additional affordable homes
need to be built each year, including 90,000 for social rent, and
that is just to meet the current need for social housing in
England. Despite that, last year just 60,000 new affordable homes
were built, and a mere 7,500 homes were built or acquired for
social rent.
Put simply, those are astonishing statistics. However, based on
my constituents’ experiences, they are not surprising. A lack of
affordable and social housing is a particular issue for rural
constituencies such as mine in North Shropshire. The all-party
parliamentary group for rural business, of which I am a member,
has estimated that 175,000 people are on rural housing lists at
present, with homelessness increasing, especially among young
people.
Rural homelessness may be invisible, but it is estimated to have
increased by 24% in the past year, according to a study
commissioned by English Rural. With average house prices 8.6
times higher in rural areas than in urban areas, this is hardly
surprising. Only 11% of annual affordable housing delivery is
built in rural areas, and that figure is falling. For every eight
homes sold through the right-to-buy policy in a rural area, only
one has been replaced. Overall, only 8% of rural housing stock is
affordable compared with 19% in urban areas. This not only
deprives people of the basic need of a home, but creates a
barrier to the rural economy, causing businesses to struggle to
recruit the quality of workforce they need to survive. In short,
we need more affordable and socially rentable homes, and we
especially need them in rural areas.
The impacts of this deficit of social housing are depressing.
Many people waiting for social housing are forced into the
private rented sector, where homes are often inappropriate,
insecure and really expensive. They are also pushing up demand
and average rents, working to inflate the demand for housing
benefits. Alternatively, those waiting on the housing register
are often housed in so-called temporary accommodation—often rooms
in bed and breakfasts, hotels or shared houses. Even in my
constituency, I have found that they can be unsuitable and even
hazardous solutions to the lack of available social housing, and
that housing register applicants live in them for far longer than
a period that could be considered temporary.
Of course, that lack of housing comes at a substantial social
cost. Shelter has suggested that, of the nearly 100,000
households living in temporary accommodation, more than 25% live
outside the local authority area they previously lived in. Not
only do those people suffer the threat of homelessness, but their
only chance of being offered a roof over their head involves
moving away from their places of work, critically their support
networks, often including childcare, and their children’s
schools. For a family already suffering the threat of
homelessness, that intensifies an already incredibly tough
situation.
In my constituency, I have families facing lengthy waits to be
provided with a house, and a lot of my casework deals with the
quality of social housing. I have a family of seven in a
two-bedroom house, unable to find something more suitable despite
having been given priority status. I have a woman whose mental
health is at rock bottom, having been placed in a bed and
breakfast for months on end, and a family with a disabled child
unable to find a home with step-free access.
Like most hon. Members, I also have a constituent struggling with
mould and damp in council and local authority housing, which,
instead of being treated, has just been given a new extractor
fan. One constituent has a disabled child and another suffers
from asthma. We all agree that that property is not adequate to
meet their needs, and those are just a few examples I have picked
out from my casework. We must go further and build at least
150,000 new homes for social rent per year, delivered by
empowering local authorities to commission the housing that they
need, with an independent inspectorate to evaluate their
assessment of that need.
As I noted at the beginning of my speech, none of that can be
delivered without training the workforce to deliver it. I think
we agree on the need to increase the housing supply, with the
right homes in the right places, but social housing must be a key
element of delivering that. We need to empower local authorities
to put those homes where they are needed and we need a coherent
workforce strategy to be able to build them.
8.30pm
(Carlisle) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Mayor. I think this is a very important
debate—[Interruption.] I do apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker; I
was away with my local government head on there, rather than my
parliamentary one.
Clearly housing matters. We should never forget that a house is a
home, a place where people live as individuals and bring up
families. Therefore, we want to see improvements in housing. We
want to see increased quality and we want to see quantity
improve. We want to ensure choice in social housing, in the
rented sector and, most importantly of all, in the owner-occupier
sector. We must also remember the other markets, such as the
student let and the holiday let markets, that have a role to play
in housing.
As has already been said, in many respects the solution is
straightforward: we simply need to build more homes. However, I
appreciate that there are barriers to achieving that.
I have listened to all the contributions, and I am probably out
of step with quite a few hon. Members here, but nobody is talking
about the failure of the builders to build. The builders are
getting the permissions in their tens of thousands, even hundreds
of thousands, but they are land banking the permissions and the
land promoters speculate on that. If we could tackle that, would
we not get closer to solving the problem?
I am not totally convinced that that is correct, but it is an
interesting point that my hon. Friend makes.
I appreciate that in housing there is a degree of controversy in
particular parts of the country, but we should be careful about
making lazy assumptions. There is not a national housing market;
there are many variations up and down the country. London is
different from Manchester, Cornwall is different from Leeds.
There are differences between urban and rural, and in many
respects the housing market is regional and sub-regional. In my
county of Cumbria, the Lake district is a very different market
from Barrow or Carlisle. What is affordable also varies
considerably depending on values, supply and of course salaries.
Therefore, the housing market is a bit more nuanced than we
sometimes think, and we must respect and consider that when we
come to making policy.
It is also important that we do not see housing policy in
isolation. Tax, whether it is council tax, stamp duty, capital
gains tax or inheritance tax, can influence the housing market.
How we organise our infrastructure and connectivity—train lines,
roads, access to housing and housing developments, bus
routes—also has an impact on the housing market. So too, most
importantly, do businesses and economic and employment
activity.
There are solutions, which hon. Members have already touched
upon. I wholeheartedly agree that the responsibility for a local
plan lies with the local authority and, if it does not produce
one, one should be imposed upon it by Government. I think that is
right. On tax incentives, we need to look again at our tax
regime, particularly stamp duty and council tax, and hon. Members
have already touched upon the planning rules that also need
reform.
However, we also need to be bigger in our thinking. We need to
think strategically. The Government need to be bold, imaginative,
visionary and above all brave. We have an unbalanced nation,
principally a north-south divide in our economic performance. The
north clearly needs a great deal more investment, both public and
private.
We have economically underperformed in the north for many years,
but there are opportunities emerging. We have the green
revolution, we have the energy policy and the prospect of nuclear
plants, and there is an industrial renaissance—I hope—starting to
happen. The northern economy is still 15% manufacturing, so there
are opportunities. We need more business investment and we need
to grow that economy.
The Government should make a commitment to build half a million
new homes in the north of England and shift activity to those
areas. To achieve that, we need better connectivity and greater
incentive for business. I agree with my right hon. Friend the
Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) about new towns.
That is an eminently sensible solution. Garden villages can also
be part of the solution, as can reclaiming brownfield sites.
I will give two little examples of what can be achieved. In my
Carlisle constituency, we have a proposal for a garden village of
10,000 homes. That has been opened up by housing infrastructure
funding that will improve the road infrastructure, which will
release those 10,000 homes over the next 10 to 20 years. It is
well supported: people want to see places such as Carlisle grow,
because we need critical mass to support the services that we
have in our area. We are, in many respects, an area that needs to
attract a greater population.
I was involved with the borderlands growth deal initiative. There
are 1.5 million people in the borderlands area. If we
superimposed a plan of that area over London, it would stretch to
Brighton and almost to Cambridge and Bristol—an area that
contains more than 20 million people. There are opportunities for
housing and places for people to move to, but at present we do
not have the housing supply. With economic activity, private
investment and public infrastructure investment—housing policy
cannot be seen in isolation—that would be a win-win for all. It
would take pressure off parts of the south, create a stronger
north—fundamental to improving the overall performance of our
country—create a more balanced country and, above all, create
homes for all.
8.36pm
(York Central)
(Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden
(Mr Davis) on securing the debate. He will be familiar with New
Earswick outside York—the first garden village, and such a
desirable place to live today. As York nears the end of its
77-year journey to secure a local plan, I hope that the
inspectors look at Labour’s proposals to create new garden towns
on the edge of York. That is very much in keeping with the
history of our city, where we have 15-minute connectivity and the
infrastructure—schools, healthcare and transport facilities—that
we need to make the community work.
York has a significant housing supply challenge: along with a
low-income economy, the cost of housing is exceptionally high. A
single person can afford just 5.6% of properties, but finding
those properties is a real challenge. Last year, the cost of
properties in York rose by 23.1%—the highest rise anywhere in the
country. That costs our economy and families. The challenges are
not abating. The only difference is that last month York voted
for a Labour council. We are committed to doing everything
possible to build homes that people can afford to live in. We
need to look at how we can develop supply, especially when it
comes to starter homes and social homes.
I encourage the Government to ensure that, when analysing their
consultation on short-term holiday lets, robust measures are
applied to return lets to residential use. Today, 2,079 lets are
being advertised across the York area, and we need those homes
back in circulation.
Starting with land, Labour has set out its stall on compulsory
purchase. Land needs releasing at scale and at pace, not just for
local authorities but for housing associations. Too much is
banked, and although that may be profitable for developers, it
prevents much-needed house building. We need measures under which
land is re-evaluated and brought into use—through compulsory
purchase orders, if necessary. Too many are gaming the system.
Although our policy and priority is “brownfield first”, green
spaces—green lungs—must, where appropriate, be placed in the
centre of our communities. That is so important for people’s
wellbeing and mental health. We saw throughout the pandemic the
price paid by people who were locked into high-density
communities.
Secondly, we must address funding. In 2012, the Government
imposed a housing revenue account debt on local authorities.
Despite the HRA debt cap being removed, councils still have to
put money aside to pay the debt and interest. The amount
available for repairs and retrofit of existing stock is therefore
squeezed, blocking the development of social housing, as that
money has to be available to pay off the loan. That is freezing
development in York and elsewhere.
In York, the HRA holds about 7,500 properties. The council had to
pay for that housing stock using the Public Works Loan Board loan
of £121.5 million, which demands £4.5 million of interest
payments each year. We need the Government to address this issue,
as it is restraining development. I urge that the debt is lifted
from local authorities’ balance sheets, as it is choking off
development opportunities and local authorities do not have the
resources to meet the demands. The Government will respond that
they have lifted the cap on the HRA, but borrowing will be at an
even higher interest rate, so we need to see that debt moved to a
different balance sheet. I want the Minister to respond to that
point, because the debt is having a chilling effect. Local
authorities also need greater flexibility with right-to-buy
funding, with receipts currently capped at 40% to reinvest.
York’s income from its stock is only £30 million, so once we have
addressed our old stock—retrofit and repairs—and put in
sustainable measures, there is very little to spend on
development without getting into greater debt with greater
interest, so we end up with low build and a housing crisis, as
many of our authorities face today. The Government need to build
out at pace and scale, so we need to address refinancing. If we
think about housing as an investment—and as a 60-year investment,
because we want to build the quality homes that are needed—we
start seeing the equations change, and that investment will bring
forward not only housing but opportunity.
The hon. Lady says that the Government need to build out. The
Government do not have these planning permissions; it is the
planning industry and the developers that do. How would she
persuade the developers to build out? Is that not the issue?
That is what I have been talking about; it is about the structure
and the infrastructure of the building environment, which the
Government do control.
Thirdly, the Government need to build sustainably. That can be
achieved if Homes England is properly funded. I am grateful to
Homes England for its time and for enabling me to see what it can
achieve. It must not be underfunded, as it needs the right
resources to build the required volume and to provide the
injection of funding that local authorities need. We need
adequate grant funding, as required by the local authority, to
build volume at the necessary standard, rather than having to
waste precious land—as we see on many sites—on luxury
developments that are often set aside for the far east market as
opposed to being brought into local use. We need to build
according to need, so that we do not waste resources and build
luxury developments that nobody can live in; that is a real
frustration for my community.
Fourthly, we need to make the numbers count. Rather than having
targets, we need obligations. The Government made a significant
mistake in bringing house building numbers down to targets only,
because the numbers we need to see and the scale we need to talk
about will be drawn back.
On planning, we need to ensure that the larger developers are not
just sitting on sites, stalling development and gaining on the
land. We need to get those sites into use as quickly as possible.
That has been a significant failing, because as prices rise, the
market itself rises too; we are certainly seeing that in York. We
need investment in planning departments. We recently took control
of the council in York, and found that the planning department
had been hollowed out. We do not have a chief planner and the
department is significantly understaffed. Even if all the
infrastructure is put in place, if we do not have the planning
staff on hand, the opportunity for development will be
stalled.
We need land, resources, workforce and ambition. In 18 months,
Labour will build the homes people need, tackling the burning
injustice of housing poverty, and realigning government
priorities to create a new generation of sustainable homes. I
trust government will move soon.
8.44pm
(Middlesbrough South and East
Cleveland) (Con)
It has been a genuine pleasure to be part of this evening’s
debate, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for
Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) in his absence on securing it.
I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Stretford and
Urmston () for what I thought was an
exemplary speech, in which I really could not find anything to
disagree with. I say that with deep admiration.
We must confront the stark reality that we are facing a severe
shortfall in housing because of the policy choices of successive
Governments, a dearth of political leadership at both local and
national level, and a lack of honesty with the public about the
consequences every time a Member of this House, a local
councillor or a local campaign group celebrates blocking new
homes. The Centre for Cities estimates that our shortfall is as
great as 4.3 million homes. That crisis is stunting our economic
growth, leaving young people without the space to start a family,
and trapping renters in unsafe accommodation. At our aimed-for
build rate of 300,000 homes a year, it would take us some 50
years to put that right, and we are not getting anywhere near
that build rate.
Of course, historically we did much better. Home ownership was a
moral mission for the Macmillan Government, and it may not have
escaped the attention of Conservative Members that his
achievements underpinned his huge election victory in 1959, in
the way that Mrs Thatcher won huge support through her
right-to-buy policy. The contrast with the 1960s could hardly be
more stark: in that decade, we built 3.6 million homes, more than
we have built in total since the turn of the century. We have
created a supply and demand feedback loop of the worst possible
kind.
I am afraid that I must take issue with the hon. Member for North
Shropshire () when she says that the
planning system is not the problem. I am afraid that it is: that
system is fundamentally broken. It is what is driving the fact
that someone buying their first home now faces paying nine times
their income for it. In the 1980s, the figure was just three
times the average salary.
I would just like to clarify: it is not the only problem. We give
planning permission for all these houses, but we do not build
them. We need to address the build-out problem as well as the
planning issue.
Mr Clarke
I think the issue of land banking is something of a straw man in
these debates, because I have never seen compelling evidence that
it happens. I think the reality is that developers need a
predictable land supply in order to have a programme of forward
build, and that is what largely accounts for that question.
I do not want to make this a starkly political debate, but I am
very conscious that it is often the hon. Lady’s party that is—I
am afraid to say it—the worst offender when it comes to
campaigning cynically against the development that we need. I
refer colleagues across the House to the Chesham and Amersham
by-election a few years ago to see just how detrimental that
policy has been to the wider debate. Arguably, it was that
election result that led to the disastrous removal of targets,
which I think is what is driving tonight’s debate in the first
place.
My right hon. Friend talks about the planning system being the
problem, not land banking per se. Does he accept the figures from
Lichfields, which show that from getting planning permission, it
takes eight and a half years for a first house to be built on a
large housing estate, and that on average, a 2,000-home housing
estate is built out by developers at a rate of 160 homes a year?
It takes the best part of two decades to build out a 2,000-home
housing estate. Is my right hon. Friend really saying that the
development industry is not the problem?
Mr Clarke
I think it is much more about the developers seeking to make sure
that they can sell the homes that they are building and about
their having a supply of land predictably available to allow them
to build into the future. Developers are obviously very
constrained at the moment by the scarcity of supply.
The consequence of where we find ourselves is that, according to
Schroders, the last time house prices were this expensive
relative to earnings was 1876, the year that Victoria became
Empress of India. That should make us all reflect on what kind of
society we have become. Clearly, part of the problem is that we
need to control immigration more strictly, and I strongly believe
that the numbers announced just before recess were unsustainably
high, but this is fundamentally a home-grown problem. Our society
does not build the homes that we need to accommodate our existing
population, and therefore we need to establish clear targets for
housing supply. Doing so is not some kind of Stalinist five-year
plan; it is the best way we have yet identified to prevent
councils from backsliding on their responsibilities and caving in
to what are often small, if noisy, pressure groups. It is my view
that the regrettable decision taken by the Prime Minister last
year to weaken those targets by removing their legal force was a
mistake that has already had far-reaching consequences.
I am prepared to have a sensible debate about how we set our
housing targets. We could change our approach and take as our
starting point the existing occupied housing stock of an area and
apply a rate at which it should be increased in line with the
national house building target of 300,000 homes a year. Urban
areas would see the highest levels of need, allowing a
brownfield-focused policy, and no part of the country would be
asked to contribute more than its fair share. This stock-led
starting point for a standard method would remove the reliance on
discredited housing projections, and it could be nuanced with
carve-outs for AONBs, sites of special scientific interest and
places with high concentrations of holiday lets or, indeed, where
historic drivers of demand, such as university expansion, have
ceased to exist.
One thing I would say is that we cannot insist that the green
belt should be out of bounds wholly and completely, as the Prime
Minister implied recently. The green belt was a 1940s mechanism
to prevent urban expansion, pretty crudely drawn on the map. It
is not—I repeat, not—a sophisticated environmental protection
measure. It is, however, the beneficiary of effective branding.
We have to raise awareness that about 11% of our brownfield land
lies within the green belt and that 35% of the green belt is
intensive agricultural land of minimal environmental
significance. The public deserve to know that. Perhaps areas of
the green belt that do not have genuine environmental value could
be designated as orange or amber belt, capable of being developed
in exchange for substitution elsewhere.
There are other things I could talk about. I could talk about the
onerous nutrient neutrality rules, which are blocking huge
swathes of housing from the Solent up to Darlington.
The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and
Communities ()
indicated assent.
Mr Clarke
I can see my hon. Friend the Minister nodding from the Front
Bench. I urge the Government to act on this issue. There could be
a grand bargain, whereby we carve house building out of the
Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 in exchange
for more robust action on the actual polluters—that is to say,
our water companies and bad farming practice. I will say no more
on that.
As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (), we need the appropriate
infrastructure to make sure that new developments succeed. That
is certainly something I want to see in Coulby Newham in my
constituency, where new homes are in contemplation at scale. I
agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North West
Hampshire () on the importance of aesthetics. We need to build
beautifully to win the argument with communities that we can
build well. I also agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for
Haltemprice and Howden about new garden towns and cities. Where
is the ambition that led to Welwyn Garden City or Milton Keynes?
It is vital that we try to concentrate developments where they
can make the most difference, which will often be around the
capital.
My final point—I crave your indulgence on this, Madam Deputy
Speaker—is that this is a cross-party issue. It is an area where
we need to work together and not take cynical advantage where
politicians or councils of the opposite party try to do the right
thing, because it is the easiest campaign in the world to fight
new house building, but it is against the interests of this
country. We risk becoming a profoundly unequal society, fractured
on the twin fault lines of low home ownership and unaffordable
rents for cramped, undesirable properties. That is not progress.
That is not something of which any of us can be proud. I do sense
that the mood in the House is changing on this question. I
profoundly hope that Government policy will follow suit.
8.53pm
(Chelmsford) (Con)
Chelmsford, my constituency, has a vibrant community, excellent
schools, low crime rates and a popular city centre, and is an
easy commute to London. It is also the home of the legendary
Essex Cricket, so it is no wonder that it is a very popular place
to live. Since becoming a city in 2012, Chelmsford has grown
considerably. In the past five years, about 1,000 new homes have
been built every year, and in Chelmsford a new garden community
is being built right now. Many right hon. and hon. Members have
mentioned that they want to see more new garden cities and
communities—if they pop on the train down to Chelmsford, I will
take them to see what we are doing.
Many of the new homes that have been built meet the Government’s
definition of affordable housing, because when a new development
of over 11 homes is built in Chelmsford, the local authority
applies an affordable housing obligation of 35%. Furthermore,
over the past decade many Chelmsford people have used Government
schemes to help them get a foot on the housing ladder. However,
despite the many new homes, the fact that many of them meet the
Government’s definition of being affordable and the many years of
generous support to help people buy their homes, we still have a
shortage of housing that people can afford either to buy or to
rent.
The pressure on social housing is acute. About 360 families are
currently housed in temporary accommodation, which is an all-time
high. I spoke about that in this place when I presented my Bill
on conversions of office blocks into homes. In Chelmsford, many
office blocks are being converted into homes. In the past nine
years that we have data for, approval was given for over 1,400
homes to be created by converting office blocks into flats, and
we are expecting to see even more of that. Post pandemic, more
people are of course working from home and there is less demand
for office space, so we expect to see more conversions.
However, there is currently no ability for the local authority to
apply an affordable housing obligation when a commercial property
is converted into flats. Someone can take an entire office block
and convert it entirely into luxury flats without causing one
single extra affordable home to be created. My ten-minute rule
Bill would enable local authorities to apply an affordable
housing obligation to conversions of commercial property to
residential use. If we had had that in the past decade in
Chelmsford, it could have released 453 more affordable homes—that
is more than the number of families who are currently in
temporary accommodation because they cannot get social housing. I
do hope that my wonderful hon. Friend the Housing Minister is
listening this evening, and that she will continue to look
favourably at my suggestion.
Another issue that is often raised by my constituents is
infrastructure. Many people in Chelmsford tell me that they are
not opposed to new homes being built—they know that people need
somewhere to live—but that they are getting more and more
frustrated at seeing new homes going up and the infrastructure
not keeping pace. It has not kept pace with the massive growth in
housing in Chelmsford. In Chelmsford, the city council uses the
community infrastructure levy, which is much better than the old
section 106 approach. It gives more flexibility to how developer
contributions are used for infrastructure, which means that both
existing residents and residents of a new development can benefit
from the new infrastructure.
However, there are some problems with CIL funding. For example,
there is no CIL contribution for new houses on previously
developed land. As a lover of the green belt, of course I want to
prioritise building on brownfield sites. I recognise that some
brownfield sites are costly to develop due to previous
contamination, and if a levy cost was put on top of the
decontamination cost, that might make those sites unprofitable
for developers and they would not get developed. However, not all
previously developed land is contaminated and brings that cost,
yet every single home that is built puts additional pressure on
the infrastructure. Let me give an example. If someone builds on
a field that used to be a farm, provided there are more than 11
homes, they pay a contribution towards infrastructure, but if
they build on what used to be a riding school, they do not. I
hope that the Minister, through the work in the Department, will
look at closing that anomaly.
(Waveney) (Con)
In many ways, what my right hon. Friend is saying cuts across
what I am going to say, which I think is because property values
in Chelmsford are much higher than they are in Lowestoft. We are
therefore illustrating what my hon. Friend the Member for
Carlisle () said, which is that we
actually have lots of different property markets throughout the
country. Would she not agree with me that what is right for one
place may not necessarily be right for another?
I absolutely agree that what is right for one place may not be
right for another. I would just like to point out that the
purpose of all my suggestions is to enable local authorities to
make the right decisions for their area. These would not be
top-down quotas set by Government; they would not set the
proportion of affordable homes to be put on which office block
development. That would be the decision of the local authority in
line with the local plan. At the moment, however, the local
authority does not have that power at all.
A second point about CIL funding is that at the moment it is not
sufficient to cover all infrastructure needs, especially when we
have larger infrastructure projects due to larger developments. I
am extremely grateful to the Government for the quarter of a
million pound housing infrastructure fund grant for Chelmsford.
As a result of that grant, a new train station is being built.
This is the first time a new train station has been built on the
Great Eastern main line for over a century. It is the most
amazing engineering project, and the grant will also help to
deliver our north east bypass. Both of those are crucial to
delivering the garden community. However, those two projects
alone will not deal with other massive problems we have from
traffic jams due to the increased number of people living
locally. People from all over Essex are wasting valuable time
stuck in Chelmsford’s traffic jams and that is hampering economic
growth in large parts of Essex. So I ask DLUHC Ministers urgently
to help me get support for the bid, currently with the Treasury
team, for funding to upgrade the Army and Navy junction with a
package of new sustainable traffic measures. Without that
investment, Chelmsford will grind to a halt and will not be able
to support the future housing growth.
Finally, there are real concerns about how CIL money is allocated
locally. The process is not transparent and decisions about
significant amounts of money are made without them coming back to
full council members for approval. Cost overruns appear out of
control, especially since the Lib Dems took control of the
council. They spent £4 million on refurbishing a theatre, which
was meant to cost £1 million, and redesigning Tindal Square with
fancy pavements at the top of the high street has cost over £4
million, more than double the original budget.
Furthermore, CIL monies are not necessarily being spent by the
Lib Dems on people’s priorities. My constituents often tell me
about the pressure on NHS GP surgeries. Tens of millions of
pounds have been spent in the past four years, but the two
projects to help enlarge the capacity of GP surgeries have been
massively delayed. We need better planning by local authorities
in all the different areas that need infrastructure, including
the NHS, to ensure that all sectors of critical infrastructure
keep pace with housing growth. If we do not do that, we will lose
public support for the new homes.
9.02pm
(Milton Keynes North)
(Con)
It is a genuine pleasure to be involved in this debate and I
congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and
Howden (Mr Davis), who is not currently in his place, on bringing
the debate to Parliament. As my right hon. Friend the Member for
Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) said, this is
something that needs cross-party consensus, and I think that
broadly we have achieved some degree of consensus over the course
of the debate. That is important because successive Governments
over the past four or five decades—perhaps even longer—of every
colour and political persuasion, have tried to resolve the
housing issue. Unfortunately, the interventions they have made
have been probably no more than tweaks, which have further
distorted the complex feedback system that is what we call the
housing market. It is not really a market in the traditional
sense. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle () noted, it could at best be
described as a series of local markets, distributed pretty
randomly around the country.
Most of the interventions that Governments have made over the
last half century or so have been demand-side. We have had far
too many demand-side interventions, which have just driven up
prices and driven away affordability. We are simply not building
enough houses in the right places and the shortage of housing
supply has a direct impact on house prices. The cost of home
ownership and renting has been rising steadily, outpacing wages
and inflation. In the UK, the gap between house prices in high
demand areas such as London and the rest of the country has
doubled over recent years. So our market is broken. Land prices
follow economic activity and drive up house prices.
I apologise for intervening yet again. Developers restrict
build-out in order to keep land prices high. Is not the answer a
“use it or lose it” rule, or to put pressure on developers, or to
find a market mechanism that makes developers build more quickly?
There are 1 million outstanding permissions, 500,000 of which are
on brownfield sites.
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. I think he might
be zeroing in on a particular aspect of the picture that I have
painted of the broken market. The behaviour—or perceived
behaviour, in some cases—of developers and builders is not
necessarily the cause of issues that I have been discussing; it
is more a symptom.
My hon. Friend is making a very good speech. On the numbers given
by my county colleague, my hon. Friend from the Member for Isle
of Wight (), at the current rate of
building, which is 200,000-odd homes a year, outstanding
permissions would account for four or five years’ supply. That is
in an uncertain planning environment, where seeking planning
permission, as I illustrated earlier, is a huge gamble. Does my
hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North () agree that it is more likely
that land prices are driven by the existence of the viability
test, which means that you cannot overpay for land, rather than
land prices being driven by the value of the property—that is,
downwards? That means that land is at an unrealistic value.
Absolutely. I could not agree more. In any regulated environment,
the market players require, and are incredibly hungry for,
clarity, consistency and certainty. The system is so complex, and
subject to so many historical and, to be frank, future changes;
there is not the clarity, consistency and certainty needed by the
market players—the people who will provide the houses. They do
not have the confidence to put bricks and mortar on the ground.
We are calling for massive reform, but we need certainty, which
we will put to good use. It should be massive reform first, and
then some certainty. I am grateful for the interventions.
The market is broken. Land prices follow economic activity. This
is the critical point: what was once a symptom of the need to
level up is now a cause. When we have gone through all the pain
of getting through the planning process and getting houses built,
very often we end up with identikit estates of massive,
four-bedroom houses that look exactly like the suite ofb estates
in our existing stock. That does nothing for mobility between our
existing sector, which is of course about 99% of our stock, and
the new build sector. It does not make moving out a viable option
for people who are under-occupying former family homes in the
existing sector. New build homes are not genuinely affordable and
attainable for young, local, first-time buyers, and they are not
appropriate for elderly people who are looking to downsize and
live in retirement living. There are multiple issues, but
fundamentally we are building the wrong kind of houses in the
wrong places.
My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South () touched on the subject of
small and medium-sized enterprise builders, labour and material
shortages, build cost, inflation, and access to finance, so I
will not go on about those, but one of the key barriers to
mobility between existing stock and new build stock is stamp
duty. Stamp duty is a tax on social mobility. It is crippling
mobility in the sectors that we need to drive economic activity.
We need to set people free in terms of their labour mobility as
well.
I will skip the bits of my speech about the planning system and
resourcing planning departments, for reasons of time. I want to
end with a reason to be optimistic and hopeful. We have a huge
opportunity. We are pouring billions of pounds into left-behind
communities through the levelling-up fund, the high streets fund,
the shared prosperity fund and the towns fund. All of that is
based on the concept of levelling being about opportunities for
people who need somewhere to live. So we need to revisit the
algorithm and recast the targets. We need to put much more
emphasis on where we create and stimulate demand through the
billions of pounds the Government are investing through levelling
up and make it sustainable, so that communities can benefit from
the economic growth from the levelling-up agenda but be
sustainable, because people are living and building families and
communities in the places near where they work.
9.10pm
(South Thanet) (Con)
Very little has been said about the reason we have such demand
for housing and the problems with planning at the moment. My
right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr
Davis) mentioned that the population is 10 million greater than
in 1997. In this last year alone, we had net migration of
606,000. If we multiply that for the next 26 years, without
population growth of excess births over deaths, that is a
population of at least 15 million more over the next 26 years. If
the deficit in the number of houses required today is 4.1
million, it will only get worse.
One wonders where the new people coming into the country—the
606,000 just last year and the big number the year before
that—are actually living. Students are one issue. They may be in
halls of residence, but many people will be joining family in the
UK and friends perhaps, and they will not have found their feet
yet. We also have to think about the existing population who are
trying to leave home for the first time. Where will they live? We
managed to accommodate some 170,000 from Ukraine over the last
year, but that was almost an example of sofa-surfing. If people
stay, they will want to find their feet in their own
accommodation, which will not be shared HMO-type high-density
accommodation, so we are building up an even bigger problem. No
one has even discussed whether we will ever have enough builders
and building materials to build out those numbers. My argument is
one of supply of people and how we go about solving this
issue.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I want to make progress; we have very little time this
evening.
We need to reduce immigration. We need to take measures to reduce
internal relocation, which does happen within the country. That
is very much on the levelling-up agenda. No one would be more
pleased than I, living in the south-east, if populations
relocated up towards Carlisle and elsewhere. I would be
absolutely delighted with that. Do we need to encourage families?
We live differently these days. In times of old—perhaps I do look
to the past—families stayed together. They lived together in
multigenerational units, not least looking after each other as
they got older. That is quite a norm in European countries. We
may have to build prolifically and that is what we have been
discussing this evening. Where do we build? We are all nimbys in
one way or another and it is not surprising that most people in
the country are. The property they own is likely to be either
their biggest asset in life, or, more than likely, the biggest
liability in terms of what they owe on it, so they do not want
what they have purchased and created in their own communities to
be at all tainted, and I do not blame people for thinking that
way.
If I reflect on some sites across my constituency—we all have
such sites—when there is a proposed development, there is always
a great deal of opposition. In Preston, a village in my
constituency, there was an old transport site. There was huge
opposition while it was being built out. In Ash, another village,
there was huge opposition when a development called Harfleet
Gardens was being built out. But sometimes these smaller villages
need extra development to make them credible-size villages, where
one can support the shop, the pub, the chemist and everything
else. So there is a sweet spot and I think most people recognise
that.
I am in favour of brownfield development wherever and whenever it
can happen, but a lot of new builds end up looking exactly the
same, as described by many Members this evening, not least my
right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (). Instead of solving a problem, they often create
one.
I want to concentrate on putting our existing housing stock to
best use, by using the tax system. Why do we not consider a
downsizing relief for stamp duty? That would liberate some bigger
houses that widows and widowers may be living in that are not
perfect for them by any standard—expensive to heat, high council
tax and all the rest of it. But when they look at the stamp duty
cost of downsizing, particularly in higher cost areas, older
people know the value of money and will say, “I’m simply not
paying that, so I’ll stay where I am”—in the wrong accommodation
and in the wrong place as their needs change.
Most importantly, there is an issue of capital gains tax. We are
stopping people getting rid of second homes. A number of studies
have been carried out of how many second homes there might be in
the country. Rather than penalise people with increasing council
tax and saying, “We know best. We aren’t going to allow you to
have a second home—how dare you?”, I would rather create a tax
system in which people are encouraged to get rid of their second
home.
I am in practice as a chartered accountant, and I have had a
number of cases of a client coming through the door, newly
widowed, who has said that they would like to get rid of their
second home. It might be in Devon, Kent or anywhere else. They
are often smaller properties in the right places, where
communities are complaining that they have been hollowed out
because there is no settled community. They come to an accountant
like me and say, “We’ve had this home since 1980. It cost us
£20,000. I’d like to get rid of it.” I have to tell them, “You
can’t get rid of that. You’ll face a 28% capital gains tax charge
and then, if that cash is in your account and the natural happens
in due course and you pass away, you will face an inheritance tax
charge on the cash in your account. If you are not in a taxable
estate, the value if you keep that property will simply be
uplifted for your family, completely free of tax.”
We are binding up hundreds of thousands of second properties in
the right places because of the tax trap. That could be hundreds
of thousands of houses—perhaps whole years’ worth of the
development that we are looking for, in the right places, simply
because we are not brave enough. We are frightened of what the
Opposition might say. We have talked a lot about cross-House
unity. Surely, at times such as this, we should use the tax
system to liberate homes and save some green belt or green areas
that always cause problems, not least from the Lib Dems at
election time. Let us work together and maximise the properties
that we have. That would be a sincere step in the right
direction.
I am taking a slightly different tack this evening. We have to
look at the number of people—that is very much an immigration
case—but let us use the properties we have, by using the tax
system. That does not need one new build, one new builder or one
new development. Let us do that first.
9.18pm
(Waveney) (Con)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this
important debate, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the
Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing and
leading it.
Before I came to this place, I practised as a chartered surveyor
for 27 years in Suffolk and Norfolk. Much of my work focused on
the residential development sector, advising landowners, house
builders and local authorities. Today, my involvement revolves
around meeting the needs of often desperate constituents seeking
a decent home, addressing concerns about the pressure on
infrastructure that arises from developments and working with
local authorities to regenerate town centres.
The extent of the national housing crisis has been graphically
illustrated by what we have heard across the Chamber this
evening, and by the briefings provided by Crisis, the National
Housing Federation and Policy Exchange. They all illustrate the
advantages of a vibrant and dynamic house building sector. In the
time available, I shall briefly highlight how I believe we can
meet this major challenge.
First, it is important to focus on all sectors of the housing
market, including the elderly. We need to ensure that we have
sufficient and properly laid out and designed homes for older
people. I mention that as I co-chair the all-party parliamentary
group on housing and care for older people, along with , who does much vital work in this
sector. We have an ageing population who need and deserve
properly adapted and comfortable homes. The provision of more
such accommodation will free up other homes for others to move
into.
Secondly, we must also build more homes for social rent. Crisis
and the National Housing Federation both calculate that we need
to build 90,000 homes for social rent each year if we are to
tackle the current homelessness crisis. Policy Exchange also
highlights that if we invest in and expand social house building,
we will also restart the stalled conveyor belt of home
ownership.
Thirdly, there is a need to improve the planning system, to
ensure that all local planning authorities are functioning
properly, have up-to-date local plans, supplemented by local
design codes, and that they all determine planning applications
promptly. Planning departments must be properly resourced and
adequately staffed in order to do that, which means they need
funding from national Government.
Fourthly, one of the solutions to the housing supply crisis is
already in place in the form of Homes England, which does good
work in facilitating development on challenging sites in urban
areas and provides development finance through the levelling-up
home building fund. It would help if its role and resources could
be increased, so that it can do more to facilitate urban
regeneration.
My fifth point is that we should consider whether there is a need
for investment zones to promote the redevelopment of derelict
sites in urban areas. In Lowestoft, in my constituency, the
enterprise zone, which is focused on commercial development, has
been a great success, although to a degree it has run out of
steam and is in need of re-energising. The proposed investment
zones, announced last September, provided a vehicle for doing
that. The proposals, worked up by Suffolk County Council and East
Suffolk Council, included three large, primarily residential
redevelopment sites—the Sanyo, the Jeld Wen and the Brookes
sites. It is disappointing that the plans for investment zones
announced in the March Budget were much more limited than those
originally proposed.
Finally, I am mindful of another challenge that confronts us in
towns and cities across the country: the decline of our high
streets and town centres, which urgently need revitalising. In
those locations there are millions of square feet of former
office and shop space, often on upper floors, and we need to
promote and encourage their residential reuse. If we do that, we
can provide customers for the shops and leisure facilities that
remain in those town centres. Invariably, such properties can be
difficult to convert, so developers prefer greenfield sites, too
readily at times. We need to work with those developers to remove
the barriers to carrying out town centre projects. As a start,
the Government could consider the zero-rating of VAT for
conversion and refurbishment work, so as to put such projects on
a level playing field with new build.
In conclusion, increasing the supply of new housing opportunities
is a panacea for many of the challenges that we face: providing
people with warm and decent homes, enabling them to get that
first important step on the housing ladder, improving the
nation’s health, regenerating urban areas and town centres, and
delivering meaningful levelling up.
9.24pm
(Isle of Wight) (Con)
I am going to break the consensus slightly, but not, I hope, in
an unhelpful way.
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney
(), who made some excellent
points, especially about shops. This is one of the things that
nimby rebels such as me raised with various right hon. Friends:
the need to use the stock that we have. I also thank my right
hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) for
securing the debate. I agreed with a lot of what he said, but it
is not an “either/or”; it is an “and”—yes to new towns, yes to
new villages, and yes to new green garden villages, towns and
cities. But we also need to get the system working.
I take issue with those who say that this is a system failure. I
think that, above all else, it is a market failure. I agree with
the hon. Member for North Shropshire () about the need for rural
affordable housing, which is a massive problem in my patch. On
the Isle of Wight we have doubled our population in the last 50
or 60 years, but we have never really built for locals. We need
to prioritise local building, and I would overwhelmingly
prioritise affordable housing. Yes, I would set lower targets,
because we have an amazing landscape—75% of the Island is
protected, and we need to maintain that protection—but we also
need to look after our own people, which is especially important
on an island.
I am going to throw out some facts. I know that we have a problem
with house building in this country, but I do think that it is
important to note some of the facts. I say to my right hon.
Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr
Clarke) that we have built 2.5 million homes since 2010. Last
year, according to the House of Commons Library, there were
400,000 first-time buyers, the best figure for 30 years; 829,000
people have been helped under this Conservative Government; and
since 2015 we have built, on average, 222,000 homes a year. That
is quite respectable, especially, dare I say it, in comparison
with new Labour’s—according to the Library—171,000 homes a year.
We have a problem, but those who say that we are not building,
when we have built 2.5 million homes since 2010 and 222,000 a
year since 2015, should slightly nuance the points they are
making.
We know that other factors are playing a role in this. For
instance, we have huge rates of immigration. When the net
immigration figure is 600,000, unless we are building close to 1
million homes a year we are in trouble. As a sensible man such as
my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East
Cleveland will know, the printing of money—quantitative easing—is
very bad news because it leads to inflation in house prices and
assets. Interest rates have been too low for too long. As my hon.
Friend the Member for North Devon () will also know, we have a
problem with second homes.
In the few minutes that I have, I will rattle through a few more
points. What do I mean by “market failure”? Following the crash,
70% of supply is delivered by the 10 largest developers, and they
are responsible for a vast number of our planning permissions.
According to the surveyors Lichfields—a very respectable outfit
that does a lot of the thinking on this sort of thing—it takes 20
years to build out a housing estate of 2,000 homes, and the
period between the initial permission and someone having their
first home is eight and a half years. I am sure that we could
speed that up. Much of this is due to developer slowness. There
is then a build-out rate of 150 or 160 homes a year. That means
that a developer who is granted a 2,000-home planning permission
now will finish the development in 2043.
Is there something we can do to speed up that process? Should not
a builder with a good reputation who has a small brownfield site
and is going to throw in some social housing, or who is working
with affordable housing, go to the front of the queue? A builder
who says that they will build out very quickly will bounce the
big developers into better behaviour. I wonder whether there is
much more that we could be doing.
I want to say a few things about the so-called nimby
rebellion—which I do not think was very nimby, and I am not even
sure it was a rebellion. We had a few issues, including a
significant issue with something that pains me: the lazy
developer reliance on greenfield, low-density, out-of-town
housing estates, because they are unsustainable. The hon. Member
for Stretford and Urmston () made an impassioned and
eloquent speech, but when it comes to greenfield land, where does
“develop, develop, develop” fit in with our climate change
agenda?
We know that high-density cities provide a critical way of
reaching net zero, but we have some of the lowest-density cities
in the world. Sheffield’s population density is one tenth of
Barcelona’s. That is an extraordinary statistic. Sheffield has
1,500 people per square kilometre, while Barcelona has 16,000.
They are both slight outliers, but London has 8,000 or 9,000
people per square kilometre, while Paris has 12,000. Newcastle,
Bristol, Manchester and Birmingham have about 3,000, while the
density of Valencia, Basel, Milan, Bilbao and Geneva is almost
double that. So we have a problem with density in our
country.
Then there are top-down housing targets. The problem with those
is that developers game the system. They get the permissions, as
the hon. Member for North Shropshire said, and sit on them for
eight or nine years. Then they come back to councils such as ours
on the Isle of Wight and say, “You haven’t built, so we are going
to push through more.” That system is not working.
But what else do the so-called nimbys want? We want greater
powers for compulsory purchase. We want Government to say to lazy
developers who sit on places for years, “You have six months to
build out or we will put the place on the market for you.” We
have also strongly recommended a character test for builders, so
that a bad builder who does not treat people with respect or who
does not build will not get the permission. We want more focus on
smaller sites. We need still more focus on the half million
brownfield site properties. London is particularly bad; it is
building a quarter of the homes that we need, which is stifling
the targets and the numbers.
I love the idea about properties above shops. We said that to the
Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities when
we were negotiating for this, and we want more emphasis on that.
We also want more emphasis on affordable housing so that councils
such as Shropshire and mine on the Isle of Wight can force this
stuff through. Rather than being nimbys, what we are doing often
is finding a better way to fix the system. That could include
plans for last-time sellers. If someone is old and they want to
downsize, they could pay a significantly reduced rate of stamp
duty. This would encourage people to free up the market. We could
have 50-year or 30-year fixed-rate loans so that people would
know what they were getting. Last year, before interest rates
started going up, although house prices were rising, interest
rates were low and housing was statistically relatively
affordable, historically. It is less affordable now because
interest rates have gone up to 5%, a historic average, rather
being at a historic low. I hope the Government stick to the
agreements. There is a lot that we can do to free up the market
and to make the market work, rather than just attacking the
system.
9.31pm
(North Devon) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and
Howden (Mr Davis) for this important debate. North Devon presents
challenges consistent with those in many tourist destinations for
delivering new housing alongside retaining our existing housing
for local residents. The planning system is not designed for
rurality. North Devon is remote, and with a lack of planners,
builders and materials, we build at just 18% affordable units due
to viability concerns. The local plan has mostly delivered the
targeted number of houses, but we still have nothing like the
number of affordable homes we need. Everything takes an eternity,
and far too often the affordable element is cut out of
developments. Brownfield sites—particularly derelict
buildings—lie empty for years, if not decades, while stuck in
planning disputes, often relating to retaining late-listed
façades that are not valuable enough to warrant historical
investment schemes yet render them unviable for development.
Fortunately, the five-year land supply is now back intact, but
that has taken three years, and numerous developments on
beautiful green fields have been waved through due to this
situation. Also, the rapid switching by landlords, after the
Osborne tax reforms that came in during the pandemic, from
long-term rentals to short-term holiday lets means that we have
lost 67% of our long-term rentals post-pandemic. Moving to North
Devon for work or being able to afford to buy at all is just not
viable in one of the fastest rising house price regions in the
country. This leaves us with a housing “crisis”—a word I do not
use lightly. Hopefully there will be some light on the horizon
with accommodation being the next phase of development on our
hospital site, as health and social care are the sectors that are
worst impacted by the current housing crisis, closely followed by
the other emergency services and our schools.
Solutions are hard to come by, but building on endless green
fields to tackle the situation in North Devon—which has unique
challenges, being highly designated and prized for its remote
beauty—is not popular or, to my mind, the least bit desirable. We
need a more strategic and better resourced planning system for
all of Devon. Our small district councils almost have a rotating
door policy of planners moving from one council to another for a
better position or a final stop before retirement. I do not blame
them, because there is nowhere nicer to retire, but we need an
extended and enhanced planning team that proactively wants to
deal with the derelict buildings scattered across my
constituency. They include empty hotels in Ilfracombe, a care
home in Instow, and the former lace factory and the Oliver
buildings in Barnstaple, alongside the redevelopment of the old
leisure centre.
Numerous empty properties are scattered around, yet in the past
week alone my inbox has seen planning applications for properties
above shops in Barnstaple town centre turned down as it might
flood in 84 years’ time. Locally, the council could reverse the
planning restrictions it has placed on properties that, when
built, were only allowed to be holiday homes when the owners
would now prefer to move to permanent residential. Surely that is
to be encouraged, but no, the owners face an endless series of
hurdles, from being told they have to sell the property to
installing all sorts of extra measures just so that a barn can be
converted for a child to live in, although that child is now an
adult. But they can convert a holiday let with no problems at
all. It is no wonder that developers struggle to build in North
Devon. Even when they do, it is easier to build holiday lets than
permanent residences, as borne out across endless farms. For
small villages, community land trusts need to be simplified, with
learnings from rural communities more widely shared. Again,
delays in planning mean it is months and months before any
response is forthcoming for even pre-application work.
When we do build, we need to ensure that properties are available
to local families who want to live and work in North Devon. Far
too many properties are sold as holiday lets. We have to take
some responsibility as a community if we want to remain a
community and not become a cross between a holiday park and a
nursing home, with no staff to service either.
I would not mind an additional town, but I am not thinking of
Milton Keynes. A town the size of my third biggest town, 4,000 to
5,000 residents, within commuting distance of Exeter, adjacent to
the link road, may be an option. Unless we can sort out our
strategic planning so that there is public transport and proper
facilities, such as health, education, water—we already have a
hosepipe ban—and a road network that is fit for purpose, we will
struggle to deliver the houses that our community so desperately
needs.
First and foremost, we should use the properties we have more
effectively. Since being elected to this place, I have campaigned
relentlessly on tackling the exponential increase in holiday lets
in North Devon. Yes, we love our tourists and warmly welcome folk
from all over the world, but our housing market is out of kilter.
There are now not enough homes to enable people to live and work
in our vital tourism economy. We need: to expedite plans for
registers of holiday lets; to introduce planning changes for
properties to move from long-term to short-term rentals; to
reverse the Osborne tax changes or, at the very least, to ensure
an even tax playing field between long-term and short-term
rentals; and to ensure there is not a discrepancy within schemes
such as energy performance certificates, which are designed to
protect tenants but, in old, rural properties, are increasing the
flood of landlords exiting the long-term rental market to a tidal
wave.
If our housing stock were utilised more of the time, we might not
need to build so much. I rent on a close of fewer than 30 houses,
where one has been derelict for more than 15 years and almost
half are second homes, often left empty for three-quarters of the
year or more. These are two or three beds-up, two-down homes, and
the latest to be valued, at £575,000, is out of reach for most
locals. Is there no way that some of these properties, empty for
so much of the year, could be made available to our invaluable
public sector workers?
We cannot allow our coastal communities to become ghost towns for
much of the year, and I hope more will be done to utilise more
effectively the buildings that are already standing, and to
improve our strategic planning to tackle and rebalance our
housing market.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I call the shadow Minister.
9.37pm
(Greenwich and Woolwich)
(Lab)
It is a pleasure to respond to this important and timely debate
for the Opposition. I congratulate the right hon. Member for
Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing it, and I thank the
Backbench Business Committee for granting it. I also thank all
the hon. Members who have participated this evening. In addition
to the right hon. Gentleman’s thoughtful and compelling opening
remarks, there has been a large number of extremely well-argued,
informed and insightful contributions.
While there is good reason to treat sceptically the argument that
boosting housing supply, in and of itself, will quickly and
significantly improve house price affordability or address what
are now essentially static levels of home ownership, there is no
question but that a significant uplift in house building rates is
an integral part of the solution to England’s chronic housing
crisis. It is undeniable that, as a nation, we have clearly not
built enough houses in recent decades to meet housing need,
particularly in London and what might be termed the greater
south-east, so it is imperative that we address this historical
undersupply of homes.
To the best of my knowledge, no Conservative Minister has ever
explained precisely why the number was chosen, but the Government
made a manifesto commitment to build 300,000 homes a year by the
middle of this decade. Even accounting for the additional supply
facilitated by the progressive expansion of permitted development
rights since 2013, many of them incredibly poor-quality
office-to-residential conversions, the Government have never come
close to approaching, let alone hitting, that annual target. In
2021-22, net additional dwellings stood at just 232,820. That
level of output, respectable but ultimately insufficient, was, of
course, achieved prior to the range of concessions the Government
made, in their weakness, to the so-called “Planning Concern
Group” of Conservative Back Benchers late last year.
In the aftermath of that abdication of responsibility, we have,
predictably, seen scores of local plans across the country
stalled, delayed or withdrawn. In the face of this alarming
trend, Ministers contend that we need not worry because the
proposed changes to the national planning policy framework will
ultimately boost local plan coverage and, in turn, housing
supply. Even if that is what ultimately transpires—there is good
reason to doubt it—it would be a form of increased local plan
coverage that is entirely disconnected from the Government’s
purported aim of building 300,000 new homes per annum, because
the intended effect of the proposed changes is to allow local
planning authorities to develop and adopt local plans that fail
to meet the needs of wider housing market areas in full. As such,
the Government’s manifesto commitment to 300,000 homes a year
remains alive but in name only; abandoned in practice but not
formally abolished, in order that the Secretary of State and his
Ministers can still insincerely cite it in a risible effort to
convince this House and the British public that they did not
agree, consciously and deliberately, to plan for less housing in
England over the coming years in order to placate a disgruntled
group of Back Benchers.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way to a disgruntled Back
Bencher. If he reads the NPPF letter, the “Dear colleague”
letter, he will find that although there is leeway on housing
targets, there is set to be higher density and more
liberalisation in many areas. A lot of what we tried to achieve
was to free up the market to make it work better.
I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Gentleman on that. Whether
it is by means of the emphasis in the proposed NPPF on locally
prepared plans providing for “sufficient” housing only, the
softening of land supply and delivery test provisions, the
ability to include historical over-delivery in five year housing
land supply calculations or the listing of various local
characteristics that would justify a deviation from the standard
method, the intended outcome of those changes is to allow local
authorities to plan to meet less than the targets that nominally
remain in place.
As I said, the choice the Government made entails a deliberate
shift from a plan-led system focused on making at least some
attempt to meet England’s housing need to one geared toward
providing only what the politics of any given area will allow,
with all the implications that the resulting suppressed rates of
house building will have on those affected by the housing crisis
and economic growth more widely. The next Labour Government will
fix this mess. When it comes to housing and planning, our
overriding objective will be to get house building rates up
significantly from the nadir we will surely inherit, including,
as part of that effort, markedly increasing the supply of
affordable homes and, in particular, genuinely affordable social
homes to rent. We do not intend to pluck an annual national
target out of the air and ineptly contort the system to try to
make the numbers across the country add up, as the Government
have done by imposing an entirely arbitrary 35% uplift that most
of the 20 cities and urban centres in England to which it applies
are clear cannot possibly be accommodated.
rose—
I will not give way.
But we will insist that the planning system is once again geared
toward meeting housing need in full. To that end, if they are
enacted as expected, a Labour Government will reverse the
damaging changes the Government propose to make to the NPPF in
relation to planning for housing. However, although reversing
those damaging changes to national planning policy will be an
essential first step, more far-reaching reform will be required
if we are to overcome the limitations of a speculative house
building model, a broken land market, and a planning system that
is at once both too permissive and too restrictive. That will
mean, among many other things, overhauling England’s
dysfunctional planning structures so that the system more
effectively facilitates strategic housing growth across those
sub-regional areas with significant unmet need. That might be by
way of extensions to existing urban settlements or entirely new
settlements—I would argue that we need both in good measure. It
will mean more proactive public sector involvement in housing
delivery on large sites across the country, so that quality place
making and long-term value creation become more than just the
rare exception.
Let me make it clear, Madam Deputy Speaker, that Labour’s
approach will not be premised on a drive for units at any cost.
We appreciate that many local communities resist development
because it entails poor-quality housing in inappropriate and
often entirely car-dependent locations, without the necessary
physical and social infrastructure for communities to thrive, or
sufficient levels of affordable housing to meet local need. We
would argue that that outcome is a direct consequence of the
Government’s over-reliance on private house builders building
homes for market sale to meet overall housing need. Yet when it
comes to house building, there need not be an inherent trade-off
between quantity and quality. A Labour Government will be
determined to see increased rates of house building, but equally
determined that much more supply comes via a long-term
stewardship approach so that, if not removed entirely, public
opposition to significant development in contested areas should
at least be much reduced.
Similarly, we reject the notion that building more homes must
come at the expense of wider national policy objectives. In
addition to increasing housing supply in a way that prioritises
quality of build and quality of place, we will act to ensure that
the housing and planning systems play their full part in
addressing other pressing national challenges such as the drive
towards net zero, the need for urgent nature restoration and the
need to improve public health.
To conclude, it is not the only way of solving England’s housing
problems and it certainly will not be a panacea for them, but
building more homes remains the most effective way that we have
of tackling almost all of the housing-related problems with which
our country is contending. The Government needed to build more
homes before the so-called planning concern group extracted its
damaging concessions late last year. As a result of the
Government’s appeasement of that group, we now face the very real
prospect that house building rates will plummet over the next 12
to 18 months.
We desperately need a change of approach, but it is a change that
the present Government and the Ministers on the Front Bench are
incapable of delivering. It is high time that we had a general
election, so that they can make way for a Government who are
serious about ensuring that we build to meet housing need in full
and boost economic growth.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
Before I call the Minister to speak, I have to say that I am
extremely disappointed that some colleagues were not present to
hear the winding-up speech from the Opposition. It is as
important to be here for the Opposition’s wind-up as it is to be
here for the Minister’s wind-up. It is extremely discourteous not
to be here.
9.47pm
The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and
Communities ()
It is a pleasure to respond on behalf of the Government. I thank
my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr
Davis) for securing this important debate. It is a tribute to him
that so many people have come to the Chamber to reflect the
experiences of their constituents and to speak about local
housing conditions.
I thank the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (); the two former Housing
Ministers who spoke, my right hon. Friends the Members for North
West Hampshire () and for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr
Clarke); the hon. Member for North Antrim (); my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South
(); the hon. Member for Weaver
Vale (); my hon. Friend the Member
for Rugby (); the hon. Member for North
Shropshire (); my hon. Friend the Member
for Carlisle (); the hon. Member for York
Central (); my hon. Friends the
Members for Milton Keynes North (), for South Thanet () and for Waveney (); my right hon. Friend the
Member for Chelmsford (); and my hon. Friends the
Members for Isle of Wight () and for North Devon (). All of them gave
thoughtful, constructive, knowledgeable and, in some cases,
rightly challenging contributions.
The points that have been raised today have underscored the
importance of this Government’s mission to drive up housing
supply and to deliver on our manifesto commitment of delivering a
million additional homes by the end of this Parliament. They have
emphasised the urgency of our work to build more homes of all
tenures in the places where they are so desperately needed.
[Interruption.] Is somebody trying to intervene?
I was looking for a point to come in to show my support for the
Minister. I remind her that this Conservative Government have
averaged 222,000 homes a year, when new Labour managed about
171,000. Therefore, even when we are doing allegedly badly, we
are still 50,000 ahead of Labour.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, which I
was just about to make.
The Government remain committed to our ambition of delivering
300,000 homes a year—homes fit for a new generation, as my right
hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden said. I agree
with him: as a Conservative, I support a property-owning
democracy, and despite the economic challenges of the pandemic,
the war in Ukraine and global inflation, we have made real
progress towards that target. In 2021-22, more than 232,000 homes
were delivered—the third highest yearly rate in the last 30
years. Since 2010, more than 2.3 million additional homes have
been delivered. That is the achievement of a Conservative
Government, and it is fantastic compared with the woeful record
of the last Labour Government.
At the same time, we are not complacent about the scale of the
challenges that have dogged England’s housing market for decades,
as many hon. Members have mentioned: demand outstripping supply,
local shortages and residents being priced out of the places they
grew up in. That is why we have committed £10 billion of
investment to increase housing supply since the start of this
Parliament to unlock, ultimately, more than 1 million new
homes.
Hon. Members will know how committed the Government are to the
supply of affordable housing. I think every single hon. Member
who spoke referred to that. That is why, through our £11.5
billion affordable homes programme, we will deliver and are
delivering tens of thousands of affordable homes for both sale
and rent.
Moving on to the specific campaign or proposal from my right hon.
Friend—
Will the Minister give way?
I will not at this point, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me,
because I have a lot to get on the record.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden has
passionately advocated for new towns. We agree that an ambitious
pipeline of housing and regeneration opportunities is crucial. I
am a representative of a new town, Redditch, which currently
houses about 70,000 people, so I know how successful and how
important those developments can be. That is one of the reasons
why we are already supporting delivery at scale along the lines
he suggested through several funds, including the garden
communities programme, which will support the delivery of more
3,000 homes by 2050, most of them in the north, the midlands and
the south-west.
To pick out a couple of examples, Halsnead garden village in
Knowsley will deliver more than 1,600 new homes in Merseyside,
along with new businesses. Another, West Carclaze garden village,
will support up to 1,500 new homes in an innovative and
sustainable new community that promotes the health and wellbeing
of its residents. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford
noted the fantastic development in her local area, and I look
forward to continued active discussions with her about the
proposals in her Affordable Housing (Conversion of Commercial
Property) Bill.
We must also work to unlock large complex sites through
initiatives such as our housing infrastructure fund, which my
hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle has welcomed in his area. The
fund delivers the infrastructure needed to ensure that new
communities are well connected and supported by local
amenities.
New towns, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and
Howden rightly asserted, can deliver high-quality, sustainable
urban development and make an important contribution to housing
supply. However, they require considerable resources and
co-ordination, a long-term vision or masterplan, strong local
support, enabling infrastructure and a significant capacity and
capability commitment that is often beyond the abilities of local
authorities.
For all those reasons, the Government believe that new towns can
be part of the solution, but not the whole solution, to alleviate
housing demand. They should be considered alongside regeneration
opportunities to make the most efficient use of brownfield land
and maximise the benefits of existing transport infrastructure.
All our reforms are based on the principle that we will deliver
housing only with the consent of communities and elected
representatives at all levels. We know that wherever development
takes place, local people will express the same concerns, so we
have to get it right.
Would the Minister at this point like to address the issue that a
number of us have raised about the removal of hard targets and
the uncertainty that that creates, particularly for the industry?
For example, as she will know, gearing up to deliver 300,000
homes a year is a huge logistical exercise that requires massive
capital investment to produce bricks, building machines and all
sorts of stuff. That requires a very long horizon of certainty of
delivery. If there are no targets, how is she going to give that
certainty to industry?
My right hon. Friend will, I hope, hear the remarks about that
later in my speech.
Unfortunately, I cannot do justice to all the questions that are
being asked, but I will touch on the importance of a healthy and
diverse housing market, including the SME builders that were
rightly mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton
South. We have launched the levelling up home building fund,
which provides £1.5 billion in development finance to SMEs and
modern methods of construction builders. Our Levelling-up and
Regeneration Bill makes changes to the planning system to make it
much easier for SMEs to operate.
Every Member has spoken about the importance of a modern,
responsive and transparent planning system. I think it vital that
our reformed planning system helps to bring certainty to
communities and developers. That will enable them to take those
positive steps towards building more housing, regenerating their
local areas and supporting economic growth.
To address the point on which my right hon. Friend the Member for
North West Hampshire challenged me, he will know that we have
just concluded a consultation on the NPPF. A number of those
policy questions are live and the Government will respond as
quickly as possible to provide that certainty to the market and
to local authorities. However, it is a huge consultation and it
is important that we get it right.
Does the Minister believe that building 35 first homes for
first-time buyers is sufficient or ambitious?
I am very proud of the Government’s record of building affordable
homes and homes for young people.
I am aware that I need to conclude my remarks, so let me
reiterate my huge thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for
Haltemprice and Howden. He is absolutely right to articulate so
powerfully the case for driving up housing supply. That is our
ambition—to build the homes that this country needs—and that is
what this Conservative Government, working with Members on all
sides of the House, will achieve.
9.56pm
The extraordinary importance of this issue is measured by the
sheer number of people here, and not just the quantity but the
quality. We have had ministerial experience, local government
experience, professional experience and even APPG chair
experience. I deliberately chose the subject “delivering new
housing supply” so that it was as wide as possible, but it is
notable that we have had complete unity on the aim of closing the
gap in supply. We have had a massive multiplicity of ideas, all
of which are necessary, frankly. If we are to deliver a proper
property-owning democracy to the next generation, we have to use
everything that we have heard today. I thank everybody for their
contributions.
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. When I spoke earlier,
I should perhaps have referred to my entry in the Register of
Members’ Financial Interests, as I am an unpaid member of the
board of the legendary Essex Cricket. I hope that Members will
forgive me and that the record can be corrected.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I thank the right hon. Lady for her point of order and for giving
me notice of it. I know that she genuinely regrets not mentioning
that, and I am sure that the House will appreciate the fact that,
as soon as she realised, she came to point out that she perhaps
should have declared it before.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the matter of delivering new
housing supply.
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