Local Housing Need — House of Lords, 2017-09-14
Topic: Housing
John Warren Shipley (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association It is good that councils will be undertaking a more accurate assessment of housing needs in their area and working across boundaries with neighbouring authorities—perhaps better than occurs in some places. The further support through the capacity fund is welcome, although I suspect that it may prove not to be enough, but no doubt the Government will keep that under review The Statement goes so far but when it says that, "we need a proper understanding of exactly how many homes are needed and where", there is something missing. We need to know also what tenure they ought to be. Are they for sale, and at what kind of price range? Are they for rent? Are they to be affordable or are they to be homes for social rent? A major failing in the Statement is that it does not address the issue of finance. I will come back to that in a moment I am interested, if the Minister happens to know, in how much the expensive consultants using their own methodologies have actually wasted. Presumably there is a figure in the department which would indicate to us how much money has been spent by consultants who are not using common methodologies. It should be a matter of concern if public money is being spent for purposes that may not be giving us a clear result. But the Statement ends by saying: "The result is an opaque mishmash of different figures that are consistent only in their complexity" We need to know more about that, because the figures that are being used for planning purposes need to be reliable Perhaps the Minister will explain why the four times average earning planning figure is being used rather than some other number. Presumably it has been carefully worked out but another number could be more appropriate. The Government may find that they need to keep under constant review whether the three stages of assessment are actually working. They may do, but the consultation will reveal whether or not they actually do Is it necessary for planning authorities to have 12 months, "to set out exactly how they are working with counterparts across their housing market area" In some cases they already are; in other cases where they are not, they should be doing it a great deal more quickly than in 12 months. If there was to be a faster figure, I would want to support that The Government have come out with the figure of 266,000 homes per year as the starting point for local plans across England. I just draw the Minister’s attention to the report by the Economic Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House, which said that it should be 300,000 a year—after a great deal of work. Perhaps the Minister could explain whether 300,000 is the Government’s target. Presumably, to hit 1.5 million over five years, as the Statement also indicates will occur by 2022, it is closer to 300,000 a year. Unless the financial arrangements are sorted out to enable local authorities and others to build, particularly for social rent, a problem is going to arise because I do not think you can build 1.5 million houses to sell. Whether it is for a form of shared ownership or whatever, in the end we simply need more social homes for rent The Statement makes it clear that: "These measures alone will not fix our broken housing market" That is absolutely true. But the Statement does not go on to tell us why that is. But the reason is because the financial arrangements are not in place to do it. Earlier today in Questions, I cited the National Audit Office report on homelessness, which cost local authorities £1.1 billion in 2015-16. That would have provided 30,000 new affordable homes—not necessarily homes for social rent. It is clear to me that the broken housing market will not be fixed only through changes to the planning system. The root of the problem is that the cost of renting is too high and not enough social housing is being built. The Government are at serious risk of not delivering the 1 million new homes by 2020 and the further 500,000 by 2022 Finally, the Minister said a great deal about the regional spatial strategy. There were problems with the regional spatial strategy, but it was not quite as bad as the Statement made out. This new approach may be better, but it is still slightly top-down. I draw the Minister’s attention to a report published recently by Homes for the North, which looks at a regional approach to the provision of housing and identifying housing need. What is particularly interesting in its statement that 500,000 homes are needed over a 10-year period across the north of England is that the work is being done in conjunction with Transport for the North; in other words, there is an integrated planning system, not officially in place but unofficially in place, which I think is going to help identify need. If the Minister has not read the report, Future Housing Requirements for the North, I hope he will endeavour to do so.