Local Authority (Housing Allocation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-08
Topic: Housing
John Mann (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the sun is shining on this Bill today. First, the RMT arranged a strike so that the date could be moved to today for me to present it, and yesterday the Prime Minister kindly timed his resignation to give a clear sign that the days of an overcentralising approach—which was the criticism policy-wise that I heard by far the most from Conservative MPs—would be adjusted This Bill provides an antidote to the centralised state by simply shifting power to localities. It does so by building on a tremendous government success. Governments normally want to shout out loud their great successes. This Government have one. It is not one they originated themselves—the origins of neighbourhood planning began in 2003, under Tony Blair. Nothing happened under the Brown Government, but David Cameron, in 2011, gave it a huge fillip and promotion, and it has continued ever since. There has been a consensual approach, both locally and nationally, but its great success has not been advertised I feel rather obliged to point out that I live in the district that has had the biggest single success, with the most neighbourhood development plans and the biggest percentage of its land mass allocated to them—which when it comes to housing and housing allocation is always rather important and sometimes controversial. In Bassetlaw—which is a small district of 120,000 people, and only just a little more than one parliamentary constituency—the 13 fully functioning, agreed-at-every-level neighbourhood plans have brought forward between them 1,133 new housing allocations. That is from a position of zero in the local plan Let us look at some of the villages. In Walkeringham, local people have agreed under the neighbourhood development plan that there should be 60 new properties in their village, yet every time there was any proposal when I represented Walkeringham everyone was up in arms about any planning application for any houses. A single house in Walkeringham was controversial; now they have agreed 60. Another small village, albeit slightly bigger, is Carlton in Lindrick, where the entire village went crazy over 90 new houses. It was a pretty horrendous time, even though I was on their side in the argument. The people of Carlton in Lindrick have now agreed 560 new houses. In the village of Blyth, the vast majority of the population came to public meetings that I had to block the prospect of new housing in areas that they and I regarded as totally unsuitable The argument put by the developers in all those cases was that there are national housing targets. The advice from council officers was: "You need to be careful, because if we don’t meet the national housing targets, the developer will appeal to the Secretary of State and, on the balance of probabilities, is bound to win, in order to meet the national housing targets." Yet the village of Blyth, where we could not fit people in the room for repeated meetings to stop new housing, has agreed to 62 new houses. If we take the rest of the district—we are talking about only the rural villages, which cover about 15% of the population—that number will double with the neighbourhood development plans, some of which are nearly finalised, agreed and just need to be signed off. That is over 2,500 new dwellings from zero 15 years ago. I went out and argued the case across those villages: "If we give you control, you sort out the new housing and where it will be", because you cannot have a neighbourhood development plan without more new housing. People were agreeing, and usually unanimously. There is more to be done on neighbourhood planning It is shame that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham is no longer in his place. I have not had enough time to promote how we should look in urban areas and towns for other ways of defining "community". One example in Worksop in the Bassetlaw district is the priory church, where 12 years ago I attempted to get a neighbourhood development plan based around the church parish rather than the local authority parish. It was a little too early for most people to conceive. It is still a good idea. It still would work. It would still bring forward more rational development—more housing—to meet the housing needs of the country and of the locality If you give local people the power, they will agree the houses to be built—and the proof is in what has actually happened. We should give them more power, because people understand. They want new houses. Even more so, their children and grandchildren want more houses, new houses, better houses, nicer houses—sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller—in their locality, although many move to other localities. In every case across 90% of the landmass of Bassetlaw, which is as big as Greater London, the local people voted for more housing in their back yard Decentralisation works, and while giving the national state power over some issues is absolutely the way to do it, where possible, power should be devolved to the people and decentralised. I will not argue whether this is at the ideological core of what the Conservative Party has always been about, that it is a Liberal concept or that, as it was initiated by the Blair Government, Labour should take credit for it. All parties should be getting behind this. Give the power to localities. The localities will deliver the housing that the country needs. They will provide more than the country needs. The days of big arguments—of the developer backing the locals and the locals attacking everyone and getting disillusioned with politics because the big state and the big developer wins—will be minimised This is a good policy and a good opportunity for the Government. I am attempting only to be helpful to the Minister and to make him the most popular of all government Ministers, whoever the Prime Minister of the day is. I beg to move.