Rating (Property in Common Occupation) and Council Tax (Empty Dwellings) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-06-04
Topic: Housing
John Patten (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, following what the noble Baroness said, I do not think that this is a missed opportunity; rather, it is a pretty big incremental step in dealing with the issue. That is why, during debates in another place, the Bill received all-party assent and agreement—and I congratulate my noble friend and his colleagues on getting that. Having said that, I do not want to alarm the noble Baroness but I agreed with much of what she said—but that is business for another time. This sort of cross-party agreement is not without precedent. It is reasonably rare, but I hope it will be followed by your Lordships, because this is a good, if short, Bill that addresses two exceptional issues. I will concentrate on the second: empty dwellings For a long time in England it has seemed that having at least 300,000-plus empty houses was accepted as being structurally the natural figure needed to balance the housing market. I do not agree with that. It should not have been so and it is good that, since 2010, a concerted effort has resulted in the figure of empty homes being greatly reduced to a bit above 200,000, as the noble Baroness has just said. However, I do not think that that should suddenly be accepted as the new normal, and with these new powers there is absolutely no reason to accept any figure much above 100,000 as the likely structurally reasonable figure at any one time to take into account the needs of people moving in and out, service men and women, the settlement of inheritances, delays in selling due to market conditions and regional differences in those conditions, and all the rest. I wonder whether my noble friend has some such end target clearly in mind or whether the Government accept that 200,000 is about as far as we should go—I must say, I hope not Even so, eternal vigilance will be necessary to stop the problem re-emerging. After all, it seems that, as my noble friend said in his excellent introductory speech, about 10% of councils in England today have yet to shake their local stumps and even take up the powers to use the existing premium on empty homes of just 50%, let alone go any further. I say to my noble friend that I trust that they will not be allowed to carry on like this for much longer or be dilatory with the new higher figure of 100%, as proposed in the Bill, which in effect would allow a maximum council tax charge of 200% Equally, too few councils—perhaps as low as one in 10—are making use of the empty dwelling management orders that I am told can be used in respect of properties that have been empty for a long period. I am not quite sure why this is: I believe that experts are useful sometimes and I am sure experts will come up with reasons as to why this is. Perhaps it has something to do with the typical English reserve about using powers that may be thought of as confiscatory of property—I do not know. It seems that there may also be striking differences between location to location in the publicly owned stock of councils and housing associations and the percentages of empties in their ownership. Again, I do not understand the reasons for this Nor do I understand the surprising spike in the number of empties in areas of very great pressure in the London commuter belt, in council areas such as Harrow, Brentford or Three Rivers—these being exactly where, at the same time, the green belt is under the greatest pressure. It may be a case of that buy-to-leave phenomena, with owners waiting for land values to increase, again promoting redevelopment. So I conclude that greater, more effective and uniform pressure on all local authority areas would be brought about by the regular six-monthly publication of centrally collected data on these critical aspects of public information, without the need for campaigning bodies to resort to freedom of information requests, the media, me or whoever else to get the facts in front of them. I do not believe that that is right. Facts are of great value and, once published and regularly available, speak for themselves. That is when councillors might shake their stumps in this area. It is not a matter of naming or shaming but rather of naming to inform Others would argue that it is a pity that the Bill does not contain provisions for what might be thought of as a later escalator of the maximum council tax charge, pushing it up by another 50% or 100% in areas of extreme pressure. I would have liked to have seen that order-making power in this Bill. But I shall not seek to disturb the smooth surface, for the reasons that the other place concluded. We must always be on guard. Just when public policy seems to be incrementally dealing with an issue such as this, other unforeseen problems may pop up to disturb the surface and increase the number of empties. Let us look at the huge structural changes in retail that are currently overwhelming shops and shopping, devastating high and side streets alike in cities large and market towns small. This may well lead to a new increase in empties suddenly hitting us among the often interconnected residential properties when it is least expected, because of redevelopment in areas where shopping has collapsed. I have seen this myself in a small Somerset town near where I live, where there are many empty shops and many empty residential properties among them So eternal policy vigilance is imperative in the never-ending problem of vacant and residential homes. I have thought this for a long time, from when I was first on the old Oxford City Council, as it was then called. Across that chamber, the then yet-to-be-ennobled Lords, Lord Hunt, Lord Liddle and Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, were busy cutting their ruthless interrupting and barracking teeth on me. It was a problem then and so it remains There was a drive in this direction by the Chancellor in his excellent Budget last November to increase the empties premium, which will be combined with whatever action he may take following the conclusions of the review currently being conducted by Sir Oliver Letwin from another place on how to bring forward homebuilding on lands with valid planning permission that are vacant and being hoarded. Indeed, land being hoarded and vacant is the exact mirror image of the empty homes that have already been built. They are part of the same problem that the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has just referred to. If we get those two streams of public policy action in tandem, there will be a clear twin-track more-homes approach by the Government that should be widely welcomed—just like, to me, this Bill should be welcomed.