Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
James O’Shaughnessy (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for moving this amendment—not, unfortunately for him, because I support it, but for the opportunity to spend a little time, I hope not too long, considering an underappreciated and potentially very important part of the Bill. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for giving us an example about how it might work in practice In previous sittings of the Committee, my noble friend Lord Horam said that what we always need to remember in this debate is that this is a housing crisis caused by lack of supply, and it is through that lens I am thinking of how custom and self-build could contribute to solving that problem. This is an area of great potential. According to the impact assessment, only 8% of English homes—just 5,000 to 8,000 a year—were built under custom or self-build under the current regime compared with about 30% in the US and 50% in some parts of Europe and Scandinavia. At the moment, it is a cottage industry, but, as other countries show, it could be a game-changer. It could be the biggest deliverer of housing in the country. Critically, it offers an opportunity for a diversity of design that is much more sympathetic to local surroundings than perhaps is the case with some of the big builders, which produce houses to a template. One of the main reasons that people object to local housing is because it does not fit into the local vernacular According to Ipsos MORI, around 1 million people would like to take action to build their own homes. That might be a little optimistic, but it is an indication that there is a real groundswell out there. Indeed, the housing vanguards that the Government have established seem to have been quite popular, with an average of 80 people signing up to the registers of land to build on within the first four months of their opening, which I think coheres with what the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, was saying. Some interesting examples are given of what that has meant If this is what we want to see happen, we have to will the means as well as the ends. The truth is that the crash has been brutal to SME housebuilders who will ultimately deliver many of these houses. They declined by 49% between 2006 and 2013, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, they find it difficult to access finance because they are undercapitalised. This is a really critical aspect which I think is underappreciated. There is also the factor of planning delay. The FMB 2015 House Builders’ Survey of the Federation of Master Builders showed that 68% of respondents said that planning delay was significantly impacting on their ability to deliver houses. So that is the backdrop against which we are looking at this part of the Bill Turning to the amendment, I feel that at best it is not necessary because there are provisions for making sure that serviced plots are made available with the costs recovered by the local authority. That is my reading of it, but it would be useful to have clarification from the Minister. At worst it could become another barrier, and I think we need to be very conscious of building extra barriers into the process when we are trying to liberalise the system. We need to make it easy for local authorities to embrace the idea, and indeed make it easy for potential homeowners to take this opportunity My one concern with where we are in the Bill is about the timetable for compliance by local authorities, or rather the lack of it. I would like us at least to consider whether the timetable ought to be on the face of the Bill, but we have been told that it will be set out in secondary legislation. It would be useful to understand what the timetable might look like so that we know that local authorities will be held to account for their performance in delivery. If the timetable is not tough enough, I am sure that is something noble Lords will want to consider while we are looking at the primary legislation. It would also be interesting to hear about what the Government are doing to provide capital support for SME builders. When we talk about self-build, it is not literally self-build. While there will be a few handy people who can build their own walls, most will commission a local architect and builder, but as we know, there are not enough of them. A variety of schemes are available to help the big builders capitalise, but not enough for the smaller ones. What will the Government do in that area As I say, the Government are providing the right mechanisms, but we need to will the means for this to happen. There is a right for citizens, which is fantastic, but we need a time-bound obligation to be put on local authorities as well as some financial support or at least underwriting to help the builders. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments.