Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-03
Topic: Housing
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, this has been an interesting debate and I thank all of your Lordships who have taken part. Perhaps I may start by addressing Amendments 51 and 52. Clause 5(4) already makes provision that an authority must make these reports "available to the public". The clause also provides that the Secretary of State may make regulations "about their timing" and whether they should be combined with the local authority’s authority monitoring report. The authority monitoring report is an existing requirement, which must be published on at least an annual basis. We do not want to introduce unnecessary burdens and it would be sensible to combine starter-home reporting with this existing requirement. We will be consulting on the monitoring requirements associated with starter homes shortly. We want to understand wider views on what the reports should contain and their arrangements for publication Furthermore, local planning authorities are already required to report on affordable housing delivery. They must report on the extent to which their planning policies are being achieved through their authority monitoring reports. This is a statutory requirement in Regulation 34 of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012. Measures under this amendment are already covered by the legal framework Amendment 52 would require all local planning authorities to demonstrate that these sites were not otherwise needed for employment, retail, leisure, industrial or distribution use. Our planning policies look to encourage the productive use of brownfield land. Our starter homes exception site policy has a crucial role in delivering starter homes by providing new and cheaper land to be used for housing—and, because the land tends to have a lower value, this helps to improve the viability of starter home developments. This is why we have consulted on extending and strengthening this policy as part of our national planning policy consultation. Let me be clear: this is not about building houses at the expense of all other types of use but about releasing land where there is no reasonable prospect of it being used for its original purpose As part of the consultation, we invited comments on evidence to be used to justify the retention of land for commercial or similar uses and on whether there should be a fixed time limit on land retained for commercial uses. We expect local authorities to be proactive in identifying and publicising these exception sites and, where applications for starter homes come forward, in being prepared to give planning permission. The intention behind the new duty to promote starter homes in Clause 3 is to encourage local authorities to do this. Before they grant that permission, of course, local authorities will need to assure themselves that this brownfield land is an exception site and, in particular, that it is underused and unviable in its current land use. I believe that local authorities are capable of taking this decision using our guidance without the Government monitoring them. For this reason, Amendment 52, which would require all local planning authorities to report in detail about the appropriateness of sites, is unnecessary and bureaucratic Amendment 53 would require the Secretary of State to prepare a report on an annual basis containing information on the construction and sale of starter homes in the area of each local authority. As part of this, the report should contain information about the household composition and incomes of persons who have purchased a starter home in each area. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, put it rather articulately, this would not be a particularly proportionate approach to reporting on the operation of the policy. Any monitoring requirements should not be overly onerous or waste precious resources. I believe that reports should be published at local level, to ensure that first-time buyers can access them easily and that local councils can be accountable.