Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Matthew Owen John Taylor (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I want to associate myself with the comments just made and those of others who have spoken to this amendment. My own view has long been that in looking at the underprovision of housing in this country, the primary issue is not enough land being made available for the homes we so desperately need. Particularly for large parts of the market, the unaffordability of a home is generated by the cost of land in a market which has been so rationed and underprovided; the cost has escalated out of all proportion. Many people in this country can afford the bricks and mortar of a home because they do not cost that much. It is the price of the land that has made those homes unaffordable In other parts of Europe and indeed around the world, self-build or commission-build is more common. There is confusion about these terms: we are not necessarily talking about people putting in the time and labour themselves, because they may well commission an architect and a builder to design and build the home of their dreams. If they can get a plot, not only can they get the design that is right for them but such designs often have much higher environmental qualities than would otherwise be delivered. Furthermore, this takes out the profits made by speculative land developers and large housebuilders. Small local housebuilders will be prepared to build at rates of profit that the big firms would not even consider As I say, in the rest of the world a much higher proportion of high-quality homes are being brought forward in this way, precisely because land is accessible and available. When my former secretary from when I was an MP retired, she and her husband sold an old farmhouse outside St Austell and looked to build a home appropriate to their needs in old age, on a plot anywhere around St Austell. They were unable to get a single plot on which they could build such a home because the housebuilders who owned the plots said, in many cases, that they were not prepared to have them build their own home to the high environmental standards they wanted. Others said, "You can build a home for yourself there, but it has to be our design. It has to look exactly like all of the other houses". They ultimately ended up building a home of their own in France. The big difference was that land was in ready supply What the Government are seeking to do is right. My view—the Government are well aware of this—is that, to do it on the scale we need at land prices that will be affordable for many people, we need to enable people to have serviced plots in fantastically well-designed new settlements, where the value of the land has been captured in making a great place, rather than taken by the landowner for their place in Bermuda—or, if it is on a large scale, their helicopter and island near Bermuda. The amendment touches on an important issue, and the Government are right to go down the route of making it easier for self-build and commission build to take place. To do that, we need serviced plots. It is right that this should be part of the obligations on local authorities to bring land forward. But that will not by itself answer the question of affordability for the many people who will want to do this if we cannot find ways to make land available at a price that will allow those who may have only modest means, but can afford the bricks and mortar of a home, to get a plot on which they can afford to build.