argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, it gives me considerable pleasure to be responding to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, who will probably remember only too well that not so long ago we debated a number of Bills with some vigour. This amendment would introduce provisions under which cover for money received or held by lettings agents in the course of business, generally known as client money protection, would be mandatory. I hope that at the end of my remarks I can offer a little light at the end of the respective tunnels for particular Lords, if I may put it that way I am aware of some support within the housing sector for this measure. That has been reflected in interventions from the noble Lords, Lord Palmer and Lord Foster. But I am concerned that requiring lettings agents to belong to a client money protection scheme will introduce burdens and costs into the sector that could have implications for rent levels. Instead, this Government’s approach is to encourage lettings agents to adopt client money protection without the need for regulations. I shall explain. We have already legislated through the Consumer Rights Act 2015 to require lettings agents to be transparent about whether they offer client money protection. Transparency raises consumer awareness and encourages landlords and tenants to shop around and choose an agent based on the level of service that it provides. I recognise the importance of client money protection. This is why in our guide on how to rent we champion the SAFEagent scheme—a kitemark scheme, in effect. This helps landlords and tenants easily to identify agents that offer this protection by the display of the SAFEagent mark. I accept that participation is voluntary but estimate that at least two-thirds of agents already offer client money protection. At the moment, to introduce mandatory client money protection would be a step too far and overburden a market that is perfectly capable of self-regulation. The balance of regulation for lettings agents is now about right. We need to allow time for the transparency measures to which the noble Lord, Lord Foster, alluded to bed in We shall review the impact of the transparency measures later this year. I reassure all noble Lords, and in particular the noble Lord, Lord Foster, that this review will be taken seriously and that we intend to work closely with our industry partners and representative groups to develop this review. I hope that this explanation reassures noble Lords and that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): I appreciate that the noble Lord feels strongly about this, but as explained earlier, at the moment we feel that we have got the balance right. I have explained that the review will aid us further by providing greater intelligence. Further regulation could deter lettings agents and make it difficult to encourage landlords to invest in properties. This is what this Bill is about—freeing up the market to ensure that the supply of housing for rent helps to meet the country’s urgent housing needs and demand.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, indeed. I shall make two points arising from the noble Lord’s question. We believe that the balance is right also because we want to encourage a market whereby customers or people who wish to rent have the opportunity to shop around and to go to those agents where there is a kitemark scheme and reassurance in terms of their level of service. We believe that the market will weed out those without that. To answer the question on the money involved, agents typically pay an annual levy of around £300 to join a scheme. The noble Lord probably has these figures himself. This forms part of a central pot of money that can be used to pay successful claims by landlords and tenants.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
Rachel Trixie Anne Gardner (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, this amendment is self-explanatory, and people in this House have heard me speak before on the issue of sinking funds. It was drawn to my attention particularly by people who bought their council flats in the days of Margaret Thatcher. No sinking funds were set aside at all and, if you are a tenant in a local authority block, you do not have to pay for sudden repairs. However, the case I quote to the House is of a woman who has an income of £10,000 a year and received a bill, this year, for £12,000 for her part of the roof repairs. When I followed this up with the housing association that owns the property, it said the problem is that there are 26 people in exactly the same position. To avoid this, from the day that you own a leasehold, you should really be part of a sinking fund so that you do not suddenly find yourself threatened with losing your home altogether because you cannot find the money. What happens if she does lose her home? The local authority has to pick it up again, so it seems that the fund is necessary It is also very necessary and important that a sinking fund exists in private blocks. We do not have one in the block that I own a flat in and, some years ago, someone suggested that we have a voluntary scheme. The scheme came into force and we all put our money in, and it was great because it paid for all the repairs for the year—some minor and some less minor. Then, a new tenant bought a leasehold in the block and said, "I don’t want to pay a sinking fund; there is nothing in the lease about it". They had to give us all back our money, whereupon, years later, we will be faced with another giant bill for a new boiler system or new central heating or something It really is so much better if people have a sinking fund for repairs, and it is important that this should be a possibility for people in local authority housing and people who have a right to manage, even if their lease does not have provision for a sinking fund. My aim is to put in a clause that would enable people to decide that by a majority. If a majority want it, it should come into force, and it should not be the case that it can be withdrawn at a later date, which was what threw our system into complete chaos, it having been done on a voluntary basis. I beg to move.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
Rachel Trixie Anne Gardner (Conservative, Centre-right): I would like to respond to the point made. I think it is very interesting First, I should have spoken to Amendment 84F as well as Amendment 84E, because the two are linked on the groupings list, which I had not realised. The situation as described sounds entirely different from my own personal experience. My experience is that people who do not live in these places at all—except maybe for a few weeks in the summer when they come from somewhere overseas—do not respond to any attempt to contact them whatever. If you end up with a sufficient majority of those people, you cannot get anything done. There is no money to put forward even for emergency repairs. In each case you are asked to pay your money in advance, before the work can go ahead. Often legal action has to be taken against someone who says, "No, I’m not paying until I’m sure you’re doing the work". An instance in hand was that, as the building was old, we wanted to have all new windows at the front. We all paid our money for them. People came and put up the scaffolding and the windows were delivered. The council arrived and said, "Have you got permission for that?" "Oh no, we phoned up and they said you don’t need it." "Oh yes, you do. This is a conservation area"—the building itself is not worth conserving, but it is a conservation area. So the windows were all taken down, taken away and thrown away. We paid for them but we never got them, which was pretty disastrous for everyone Other times when someone needs emergency work done on the boiler or heating systems, again the money is needed up front—and people often have to be taken to court to get it. They might claim that they had not been justifiably contacted, but with the right to manage there could be a contact address or a proxy for every single resident or owner in the block I went to a meeting with Peter Bottomley, who is in the other place, and someone stood up from the department there. They said that the department was seriously considering the idea that if you fail to respond in any way you would be deemed to be not opposed to whatever was suggested. I then came back to this House and tabled a Question on that and I was told, no, that was not being thought about. Now again I am told that maybe it is being thought about. I find it extremely confusing, but I am looking for some way whereby you can deal with non-resident, uninterested parties who would allow places to fall apart.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
Rachel Trixie Anne Gardner (Conservative, Centre-right): The second to last point the noble Lord made was that you have to have 100%. The problem is getting the 100%. I have asked Questions in this House—I had the Library look them up and there must be at least six—and each time the Government have answered that it is impossible to get 100%, or that it is very easy to avoid getting 100%. All you need is a landlord who has a different interest to pay one person or own one flat in the block himself and he can prevent any action of any sort to improve or maintain it.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
Rachel Trixie Anne Gardner (Conservative, Centre-right): We have gone into this legally in great detail over many years, but the answer is no, you cannot amend anyone’s lease unless everyone agrees to that. That is why I would be quite happy with the 100% if one could be sure of replies from 100%. However, if the replies do not come one way or another, it is very fair that the action should be deemed to be not opposed. They would be given ample time. They would be able to produce—this happens in Australia and everywhere; it is very simple management—a contact or someone who could attend any meeting as a proxy. They can authorise a party. There is no reason why they should not be able to reply in some way. They either deliberately wish to be obstructive or they are uninterested. Either way, it can have a disastrous effect on everyone else in the block. You need only one person to be obstructive In the description I gave, the landlord himself—the head lessee—has now bought one. He is happy to take on every flat that comes up if anyone wants to leave. He is always offering to buy mine. The point is that to get that 100% is acknowledged to be impossible. Certainly it is very difficult. Even when you agree on the works to be done and everyone is prepared to pay their money, there are always a few who have to be taken to court and works never start until all the money is available to pay the contractor. This means that terrible deterioration can happen during that period. Of all the points that are in these two amendments, to me, that concerning the leaseholder who fails to participate in the vote is the most important. In that instance you are being deliberately manipulated or controlled by people who do not have enough interest to bother expressing their views.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
Rachel Trixie Anne Gardner (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that the wording might be defective. The purpose of Committee stage, however, is that it is the topic that you are really discussing and you can always go back and correct the wording. So that is not really the issue but I appreciate his point, though I thought the Public Bill Office had done jolly well even to get it as clear as it is, because I found it impossible The Minister has not looked at the entire situation. He keeps talking about the freeholder and the leaseholder, but what about the head lessee—the person between the freeholder and the leaseholder? This is where most of the problems come in. The head lessee should not even exist because the head lease should have been offered to all the people in the block, but because of that company law loophole it was not. That therefore creates an extra intermediate tier. Where that happens, you are in quite a degree of difficulty. Our freeholder seems quite benign and willing to go along with things, except where he evidently agreed to set up this sister company and floated it off to an outsider as a leaseholder —the head lessee. It becomes very complicated when you get these extra layers in management, and it means that each process has to go to each person I cannot remember the detail, but something meant that until we got to the door of the court the head lessee would agree to nothing. We were applying to the court to deal with it without his consent because he refused to respond to any correspondence, making it very difficult for everyone. Right at the last moment, there was a message from his solicitors saying, "We agree". What was at issue was nothing terribly major, but it was hard to believe that we had to go through those legal procedures to get a simple agreement about something.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
Rachel Trixie Anne Gardner (Conservative, Centre-right): That sounds like a good and constructive suggestion. Perhaps we can work on that idea. Certainly we are looking for some answer to this. I went this week to a meeting on the private rented sector at which the person speaking was the present Housing Minister. The one thing on which he agreed with me was that we need a property consolidation Act. I have been involved in Act after Act since 1981, when I took my seat in this House, and the way that each law amends the previous one and goes on to change something else is such a hotchpotch. We really should have a comprehensive consolidation Act. The problem is that the Law Commission does not do these any more, but if the Government were prepared to pay then it certainly would. That would save a huge amount of bother for ordinary people. If ordinary people cannot understand the law, it is very difficult to implement it and for people to feel satisfied with it. That is why I am all for a consolidation Act Meanwhile, I think that we have aired this subject fairly well. I am grateful for the comments from those who have made them, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, neighbourhood planning has been a success since its introduction in 2011. For the first time, communities have been able to prepare plans that have real statutory weight: neighbourhood plans have the same weight in law as the local authority’s local plan, and must be the starting point for decisions on planning applications. As the noble Lord also said, more than 1,800 communities have started neighbourhood planning, representing more than 9 million people, and planning applications are being approved and refused according to neighbourhood plans. The Government made a manifesto commitment to support communities who have embarked on the process and to encourage more to start. Under Clause 125, the Secretary of State would be able to use regulations to prescribe the circumstances in which local planning authorities must designate the neighbourhood area applied for. In the prescribed circumstances, the authority would no longer need to advertise, and consult on, the proposed neighbourhood planning areas. This will allow communities to start planning more quickly and will significantly reduce the burdens on local authorities.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
Nicholas True (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will probably get the final say, because he heads the group. Having heard such kind words, however, it would be extremely churlish of me not to say how grateful I am to my noble friend on the Front Bench. I will make sure that the officers who have been involved in that process see what she has said. I am of course slightly disappointed, because as time goes by circumstances could arise whereby diversity gets snagged on legalism, and a single approach is in the end fraught with difficulty My only other comment—I do not expect a reply, although it would be interesting to get a comment in writing—is that a number of things that have been said relate to parishes and areas where there are clearly defined communities. For me, the really interesting challenge in neighbourhood planning—one which we are seeking to address—is in local urban communities, where it is much more important to get people involved and engaged. In urban communities boundaries overlap I will not detain the House long but I have an interesting example of this which I urge the Government and Committee to reflect on. There is a stretch of river in my borough—the only one which lies on both sides of the Thames—that has a lovely green area in it. We would like the many institutions in this area to work together in what we call a river park concept; that is part of our local plan approach. One part of that area, the Ham community, wishes to become a neighbourhood forum. There was a nascent dispute—I had no interest in disputing a neighbourhood forum—over where the boundaries were. In those green lands, not only did Ham have an interest but so did Petersham, Richmond and Twickenham. Yet the Ham neighbourhood forum was effectively saying, "We want exclusive control of this territory". In the end, we agreed to the boundaries. One of the problems, however, with the legislation as explained in the Explanatory Notes, is that if the Secretary of State says that wherever there is a designation —particularly in an urban area—the whole area asked for must be designated, there may well be overlapping interests. Parallel communities, different villages and communities may have an interest in the same land. That is why sometimes it may be legitimate for the principal planning authority to say that they might withhold that land from the neighbourhood plan because there are communities and neighbourhoods that have an interest in it. As I say, I do not expect a response. It is quite a detailed point but a fundamental one, because real human communities do not have red lines around them: they have fuzzy lines.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
Nicholas True (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I follow a very great deal of what has been said by noble Lords opposite. It is absolutely fundamental that it must be right that you get more development and housing by a process of consent than by a process from outside. That is one of my objections to some of the other policies that are around and appear to be more developer-led than development-led, so I agree with that. I think that I should quit while I am ahead in this part of the Bill because, with my authority having been praised by my noble friend on the Front Bench, the kind words of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and even some from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, I might risk getting some kind words from the Front Bench opposite I have a slight difficulty with the amendment, because it gets into the prescriptive area and slightly snags on the point that I was making on the previous amendment on the Government’s one-club approach. If we put this in statute, it will relate just to the process under the existing legislation. All local authorities should have a duty to involve communities, to put out publicity and to get engagement. My slight worry with these amendments is that, if they fall into the hands of a department of state, we will get regulations that say, "Just publish what we want to do, not what you want to do". So I support the spirit of the amendments, but I think that it is a duty on local authorities. In our case, we might find ourselves running two parallel publicity arrangements, although we obviously publicise the opportunity to have a neighbourhood forum. For that reason, I could not go along with it, but I fully support the spirit of where the noble Lords opposite are coming from.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I think I have an answer, but I just need to check it, so if I could carry on I will try to come back to the noble Lord before I finish on this group These changes followed two public consultations which found that the legislation required in setting up a parish or town council was too burdensome and bureaucratic —and that it discouraged local campaigners from establishing one. The subsequent amendments made a number of important changes. The threshold of signatures required to trigger a review of governance was lowered from 10% to 7.5% of residents. The amount of time the local authority can take to complete a governance review was shortened to 12 months from receipt of a valid petition. This is speeding up the process and creating greater certainty for local campaigners. Importantly, the changes allow neighbourhood forums, which have a neighbourhood plan passed at referendum to trigger a community governance review for a new parish council without requiring them to submit a petition. The next phase of work will be to publish guidance on community governance reviews to establish the working principles and to reflect the evolving devolution landscape The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, was correct in his figures. Early evidence indeed shows that the first neighbourhood plans are proposing around 10% more houses than the local plans. Applications are coming forward more quickly. Also, neighbourhood plans are helping to improve the acceptability of housebuilding among the public, which has also doubled In relation to the noble Lord’s question, the Government have provided £12 million to local authorities to support neighbourhood planning. I hope that with these reassurances noble Lords will withdraw or not move their amendments.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Mixed Topics
Nicholas True (Conservative, Centre-right): As the noble Baroness knows, the question of costs is very much in the hands of the inspector at the end of the day. Sometimes they are awarded and sometimes not. In my experience, a very lenient view is often—quite rightly—taken where community bodies are involved. I am, therefore, nervous about this amendment, as drafted, because although well intentioned it could very easily be exploited to create agitation where none existed before, to frustrate needed community development.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I believe that that is correct, yes We already have a system which ensures that the views of communities are heard, understood and taken into account in reaching a decision. The best way for communities to engage in the planning system is for them to become involved in the development of local and neighbourhood plans, and make representations on applications as they arise. I hope that the noble Baroness will consider withdrawing her amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord makes a good point but I draw his attention again to the national planning policy, in which there is a requirement for local planning authorities to look at these areas and plan proactively. There is of course now the brownfield register as well. With that, I hope there is some reassurance that progress can be made.