Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-13
Topic: Housing
Robert Kerslake (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I first declare my interests as chair of Peabody and president of the Local Government Association. The purpose of Amendment 64A, which I have tabled, is to do two things. First, it is to put one-for-one replacements in the Bill so this issue is beyond doubt. Given that this was quite clearly in the manifesto, it seemed right and proper that it should be in the Bill. The second part of the amendment was to give the opportunity for a local authority, where it could demonstrate the need, to put the case to government and seek their agreement for a like-for-like policy—that is, the replacement of a social rented property with a social rented property. So there are two parts to this, which I would call one-for-one and like-for-like. They are drafted very differently to allow for local flexibility and initiative As has already been made clear today, the Minister has signalled a willingness to compromise on the issues involved in my amendment. She will say more about this in a minute and I do not wish to steal her thunder but, having had a chance to have an informal conversation with her, I am very grateful to her and the Secretary of State for their willingness to listen genuinely to the concerns of this House and those affected outside, and to respond to these concerns. It reflects well on them both and I am grateful for it It is worth rehearsing briefly why this part of the Bill has caused such concern. The first and most significant concern has been that of basic fairness. Local government is being expected to foot the bill for a central government policy: to extend the right to buy to housing associations. This is a central government policy funded by local government. To do this authorities are having to sell off, as we now know, higher-value properties as they become vacant, thus reducing the opportunities for those who are in most need. As the letter to the Guardian from the four LGA leaders put it, "selling council homes will hamper councils’ ability to invest in new affordable council housing", and it is, "likely to have the unintended consequence of increasing homelessness and pushing more families into the more expensive private rented sector" That is the view of all the parties in the Local Government Association. In short, those who are better off and have the means to purchase their housing association property will gain a large cash discount. Those on the lowest incomes who are in most need of housing will lose out. That is a basic issue of fairness that cannot be avoided in this proposal The second major concern, which we have debated a lot this afternoon, is that the proposal as previously drafted was highly centralised and "one size fits all" in its effect. As we have already heard, we do not have the proposed formula for top-slicing local authority receipts, which will come later. However, as the Minister expressed very well, in some areas there was the prospect under the previous construction that the social housing in those areas would, over time, be effectively wiped out, utterly changing their character and working completely against locally assessed need.