Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Bill — House of Commons, 2015-01-09
Topic: Housing
Brandon Kenneth Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): I start by endorsing the cross-party harmony and join the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) in congratulating my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) on introducing the Bill. He has carried it through to this stage with his usual passion and individual flair—including mince pies in Committee, which I am still working off on my training bike. It is a testament to my hon. Friend’s passion as well as the necessity for legislation that the Bill has been received so positively across the parties in this House. I am particularly pleased about the cross-party consensus on the Bill’s aims, which will help to give the custom build sector further impetus across the country, and I especially welcome the Opposition’s support We had a good debate on Second Reading and in Committee, so I shall not go into too much detail on the Bill’s content. If the House will allow me, I will take a few minutes to explain why the Government support the Bill so strongly and how it will help to take forward our proposals for a new right to build The Government are committed to increasing housing supply and helping more people achieve their aspiration of owning a home of their own. When we came into office, the housing market was stalled. In fact, we inherited from the last Labour Government the lowest level of house building since, I think, 1923, which puts things into context. Prospective buyers could not get mortgages, and developers were not building. We have spent the last four and a half years fixing it, and we can see that our efforts are paying off. I appreciate the comments of the hon. Member for West Ham on the Lyons review and the aspiration for 200,000 homes to be built. I shall come on directly to the number of homes in a few moments, but let me politely point out that this is the third target that Labour has set in the last 12 months. I will be interested to see where the level falls to the next time Labour announces a housing target The facts are that we have seen 500,000 new homes built since April 2010 and the number of starts on new homes last year totalled 139,500—up by 15% on the previous year and the highest number since 2007, which should provide some context. The construction industry, furthermore, has been hiring at the fastest rate since 1997. I am sure that my hon. Friends will have seen that the number of first-time buyers is at its highest since 2007, according to a Halifax review published just this week. That is proof that our policies, such as Help to Buy, are working We can see light at the end of the tunnel, but there is still more to be done. We want to increase house building rates further and encourage improved standards of design and sustainability. I believe it is through greater diversity in our housing market that this can be achieved. With more competition, more new entrants and more new development, we will increase the speed and, importantly, keep, develop and improve the quality of house building in respect of build, construction and design Our volume house builders play a vital role in our housing market, but we know that there is no "one size fits all" model for our market. As the economy and the construction industry recover, we want to see more small and medium-sized builders back in the market. We know how important they are. In addition to their role in increasing the supply of housing, they provide local jobs across the country, as Members will know. They provide a more personalised product and services for local people, and they strengthen the capacity of the house building sector more broadly. They are the reason for the changes in planning terms for small sites, which we announced just before Christmas and they are direct beneficiaries of this Bill We are already actively supporting the small and medium build sector. Our support for smaller builders through our £500 million "Get Britain Building" investment fund for smaller builders’ work has already helped to deliver thousands of new homes and to commence work on a further 12,000 sites. We have opened our £525 million builders finance fund to small and medium builders to deliver schemes as small as five homes. Again, that could benefit directly from the Bill and the work behind it However, we want to look at more innovative ways of diversifying the market such as the custom build sector, which leads me directly to why we are all here today. I strongly believe that custom and self-build housing can play a central role in securing greater diversity in the housing market and help us to deliver the homes people need. We know we live in a country where there is high demand for custom and self-build. That could be met by the small and medium building industry, as I have outlined According to research by the Building Societies Association, one in three people in the UK is open to building their own home, and 1 million people want to build their own home in the next year alone. In fact, according to the website PlotSearch, January is apparently the peak time for subscribers to plot-finding services. It is no surprise that this high level of interest exists; custom build can be cheaper, greener and better designed than conventional market housing As I mentioned on Second Reading, a report published by the Lloyds Banking Group in 2013 concluded that self-builders can save between 20% and 25% on the cost of the equivalent home on the open market. According to the National Custom & Self Build Association, a typical three-bedroom home costs just £150,000 to build. It is interesting to think about some of the available options. Just before Christmas, I visited my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk in his constituency to visit Beattie Passive, a Norfolk company that showed us how it works. If I recall correctly, it let me have a go at trying to build one of the homes that it can supply. The kit can be supplied for somebody to build their own home at a cost of just £7,500. That makes house building, and custom house building in particular, affordable at a level that people often do not realise is available to them. For many custom and self-builders, the key advantage is the potential for more energy efficiency than can be achieved in typical developments. The Beattie Passive homes are a good example of that. Home owners who can influence the end product tend to have a longer-term interest in their properties, which may result not only in more energy-efficient homes, but, frequently, in better design and increased investment in the community. In fact, custom and self-build residents remain in their homes for about 14 years longer than the average resident Despite the advantages of custom building in diversifying the market and producing high-quality, sustainable homes, the market is stymied at present. Custom build currently accounts for only about one in 10 homes in Britain, just over 10,000 a year. That is a far lower proportion than we see in the United States and in other European countries. I think that the state of the market is caused by three main barriers: the limited availability of land, limited access to finance and advice, and the problem of red tape Since 2011, the Government have worked with the industry to overcome those barriers and develop the custom building sector. We want to double the output of the sector over a decade, so that well over 20,000 homes a year are built. I have been talking to finance houses—in fact, I did so only this week—about how we can make finance more accessible to those who wish to develop and build their own homes We are already encouraging the provision of more land through the planning system. Since 2012 councils have been required, through the national planning policy framework, to assess and plan to deal with the need for housing, including the requirements of those who wish to build their own homes. We have identified 12 Government-owned sites, which have been released for custom and self-build development by the Homes and Communities Agency.