Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Robert Kerslake (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I speak in favour of the amendments in this group—in particular Amendment 48C in my name and Amendments 48A and 48F which I have supported. This group of amendments addresses two issues which concern me most about this section of the Bill. The first is that starter homes will come ahead of and instead of affordable rented accommodation. There is no doubt about that in the way this will play out. Secondly, the Government will dictate to a level I have never seen before the proportion of starter homes that are built, down to individual schemes. This is quite extraordinary The Bill gives local authorities a duty to promote starter homes. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, this is a manifesto policy. I acknowledge and accept that point, but it gives them an absolute duty. It does not say, "Promote starter homes as part of your wider housing plans". Had it said that, we would now be in a different conversation. It simply says, "You will promote starter homes". It does not say anything about any other tenure. So, yes, the manifesto does say that the Government can ask and indeed require local authorities to promote starter homes, but they should be asked to do it in the context of their primary role, which is to assess housing need and provide for it. That is the first point I really care about in this Bill The second point, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, has made very clear, is that we have now a well-established process through the NPPF of housing market assessment followed by a local plan and the identification of the necessary land. It is not an easy process. Local authorities go through a lot of heart-searching before they come up with their local plan. Crucially, they think about the local needs in their area before they agree that plan. What we have here is the superimposition of a government view about one tenure or even one product—it is not even a tenure—ahead of other products. It makes much more sense, as the amendment seeks to put forward, that they consider their local plan and have a duty to promote starter homes but that they do it in the context of a plan that they have already developed and are seeking to promote. If starter homes are such a popular and well-regarded product, it would be very surprising if local authorities do not rush to put it in I touched earlier on the requirement for starter homes in individual applications. One thing we do know is that we have massively different housing markets in this country. I will say a few words about, and declare my interest in, the London Housing Commission in a minute. Where housing markets can vary literally over two or three miles, never mind between the north and south of the country, having the Secretary of State judging the proportion of housing that needs to be starter homes in each application before that application is approved is asking for trouble. The one thing that we can be sure of is that he will get the number wrong for some part of the country. He may get it wrong for every part of the country, but he will definitely not get it right everywhere. It is in many ways the worst kind of centralism.