Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2017-11-23
Topic: Housing
Robert William Henry Seely (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the Chancellor on a good Budget, elements of which may encourage more housing development. I wait with interest to see how the Government’s detailed plans will affect housing on the Isle of Wight. Although I welcome much of the Budget, I want to take this opportunity to explain why I feel that housing policy has not helped the Island and why I look forward, perhaps in hope, to this Budget encouraging a better system My constituency of the Isle of Wight needs intelligent, sustainable and sensitive regeneration to drive economic and social development, much of which is supported in this Budget so I thank the Chancellor. However, the system of developer-led housing is flawed. It fails to deliver the right type of housing, specifically housing for young people and people of working age on the Island, and it also fails to deliver for older Islanders. It eats into greenfield sites, damages our tourism economy and quality of life, and forces communities to accept divisive and unpopular developments. In many ways, our system is the definition of unsustainability I hope that the Budget will encourage the right sort of housing to be built. Too much housing being built is financially out of reach of Islanders, particularly young Islanders. Housing associations tell me that we urgently need one-bed housing, starter housing and social housing; I would add key worker housing to that list. We also need housing for older Islanders—extra care accommodation that allows people to move out of housing and, therefore, to free it up. But those are not the houses that the developer-led system wants to build. And that, combined with Island economics, means that we have to build a lot of housing that we do not want in order to get a little bit of housing that we do want. That system is not right As a result, young people are forced off the Island. Even so-called affordable housing is, in reality, unaffordable. I am delighted that the Conservative Isle of Wight Council is trying to ensure a change to the system, and I congratulate Councillors Dave Stewart, Chris Quirk, Barry Abraham, Stuart Hutchinson, Tig Outlaw and others for trying to improve a highly flawed system. The Island needs a different form of social regeneration—one that invests in people, not just land. The overdevelopment we face causes many problems. It is worsening our quality of life and eating into greenfield sites. We do not have the infrastructure to afford it, and we are unlikely to get that significant infrastructure because we are an Island. We have about 600 metres maximum of dual carriageway and, frankly, we are unlikely to get more. So I am waiting to find out the details of how this extra money can help us I am very uncomfortable with the Government’s target of over 6,000 homes in a decade. I do not believe that is sustainable, and I cannot think of any way in which I will support anything like that number, because so many of those homes will not be built for Islanders. The only target I am looking at is something possibly around half that figure, but it would be focused on the people who need those homes. I want these homes to be largely built by housing associations. Why can we not have schemes whereby housing associations can buy back property from older sellers to repurpose it? A housing association could buy back a bungalow, repurpose it, put on a first floor and create two homes, developing the homes the Government want, without eating into new land As part of our commitment to the future, I will seek to work with partners to develop a sustainable model of development. I hope very much that the Government will work with me on this so that we can get sustainable models of development that meet the needs of the Island as well as the needs of Government.