National Planning Policy Framework — House of Lords, 2018-03-06
Topic: Housing
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, for repeating the Statement delivered in the other place yesterday. I draw the attention of the House to my relevant registered interests as a councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. It is a disappointing Statement, not in all of what it proposes to do but in how timid the proposals are and with the wrong focus Since 2010 the number of rough sleepers in England has trebled to almost 5,000 last year. The number of households living in temporary accommodation has risen almost continuously since 2010. The latest figures had 79,000 households in temporary accommodation, including 121,000 children, as I have referred to in this House before. Wage-to-mortgage differentials are making owning your own home, as the Statement says, only a dream. The ratio of wages to affordable rents in many parts of England means that in reality these are unaffordable for most people. Some of the measures in the consultation may make a difference but, as with all the Government do in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, it is too little, too slow and the actions never quite meet the rhetoric It is regrettable that, despite all of us agreeing that there is a housing crisis and that we need to build more homes, council housing and the contribution that additional council housing could make are not mentioned at all in the Statement. There is one reference to, "in the social or private sector", in the concluding remarks. The solution to the housing crisis will not be found just within the planning process or with developers—affordable homes that in large parts of the country are unaffordable for most people, or increased permitted development rights, which further exclude the local community from the planning process and other measures. We need to allow local authorities to build council homes and housing associations to build more homes on social rents. It will make a real difference to the housing crisis; where people are on benefits it will help reduce the Government’s housing benefit bill; it will help take the heat out of the market; and it will contribute to delivering the improvements to housing that we all want to see in terms of the numbers and the quality of the homes built, with appropriate infrastructure Planning departments have taken a huge cut in recent years and the increase in fees that has been allowed is welcome but it is still not enough. Again, I have called many times for full cost recovery on fees. I have suggested that the Government should find one council to pilot full cost recovery but so far they have refused to do that. There are still more than 400,000 approved planning permissions where not even one brick has been laid. I agree very much with the comments of the Local Government Association chair, the noble Lord, Lord Porter of Spalding, who said: "If we want more houses, we have to build them, not plan them" Can the Minister explain why his friend in the other place, the Secretary of State, returned money earmarked for affordable housing to the Treasury? We have a broken housing market, as the Government keep reminding us, so why is the department not making every effort to spend every single penny to build the homes we need? If one area cannot use the money why can it not be used elsewhere? Can the Minister tell the House what work the department has done to see where money could be spent quickly if it is returned from other areas Can the Minister give us some idea of the timescale once the consultation has finished? There are a number of consultations going on in the department at the moment—for example, on letting agents’ fees and electrical safety checks—which I have raised regularly. At some point will we get some real, concrete action? It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us With regard to achieving sustainable development, I warmly welcome the comments about protecting ancient woodland and veteran trees. That is very good. But can the Minister say a bit more about how the Government propose that we really do achieve sustainable development, particularly with those authorities that are under delivering on housing in their own areas The noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, is in her place. I recall our discussions about plan-making last year. Can the Minister comment on plan-making and permitted development—is there a conflict there? If we are increasing permitted development rights in local areas and a local plan has been agreed, is there a conflict? Perhaps the Minister could comment on that We all agree that we need to deliver high-quality homes. I am very conscious that Governments of all persuasions made some terrible mistakes in the 1960s and 1970s in the quality of the homes they built. I do not want to see us build homes that are not of good quality and in years to come our successors have to deal with another problem with the quality of housing we have in our communities It is not in the Statement but the consultation includes the viability of town centres. We need our communities to be sustainable in terms of infrastructure, and town centres are really important. Can the Minister say a little bit about that? It is not just the planning; issues such as business rates are also important Finally, the consultation also talks about sustainable transport. Transport needs to be built into communities as well. I am conscious that we have a number of new towns. Ebbsfleet is one; I have asked a number of questions about that recently. There is some more work to be done to make sure that these new towns succeed I will leave my comments there and look forward to the Minister’s response.