Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-10
Topic: Housing
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, as ever, it has been an interesting debate—necessarily, I am afraid, longer than any of us would have liked but there is a huge amount of detail and a great many concerns about the Bill I thank all Members for their contributions, particularly my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, who regaled us with some very worrying details of life in Westminster. However, I caution him sometimes to take Zoopla’s valuations with a grain of salt; for a short period my own house in Newcastle, a pleasant four-bedroomed semi, was valued by Zoopla at £5.96 million, which would have made it by a considerable margin the most expensive house in the city. When I pointed out that this was possibly slightly overdone, Zoopla corrected it, and I have been going round ever since saying that I have just lost something over £5 million on the value of my house. So one has to look carefully at some of the figures. However, I dare say that the rest of my noble friend’s figures were robust The Minister has again earned the thanks of the House for the way in which she is endeavouring to deal with an almost impossible task. If anybody deserves some promotion and recognition among Ministers who serve in this House, she qualifies, and I expect my 10% of any increased salary for acting as her agent when that matter arises. However, I take issue with some of the conclusions that she has come to and indeed some of the replies that she made. She talks about selling the properties where it is right to do so. The question is: who determines where it is right to do so? The answer is not the local authority, which has knowledge of the local community, but, effectively, the Government. That is a ridiculously formulated conclusion because it does not put what should essentially be a local decision in the hands of anybody accountable to the local community but gives it to some machinery established by central government The Minister was unable—presumably because the information is not there—to give any indication about the balance of how the levy money would be spent between facilitating housing association right to buy and new build. This may be part of the information still being compiled in some office somewhere in the city, but it is crucial that we know what the intended balance should be between those two distinct options for the use of the money which will be derived either from sales, which is in the view of many of us bad enough, or even worse, from the Government anticipating sales long before perhaps they have occurred and requiring payment from the local authority. Given the position of local authorities, it is difficult to see how that levy could be funded. Perhaps subsequently we might have an indication from the Minister or the Government in general as to how they envisage authorities being able to fund such payments in advance of a sale The Minister was critical of Amendment 66, which deals with replacing such expensive housing. I cited the position in Newcastle, which I suspect will be similar in many other authorities, where a small proportion of properties in council ownership are large properties because of the need for five bedrooms, perhaps because the family is large or because there are special needs in relation to providing for disabled people—perhaps a carer needs to be on the premises, and so on. If all of these have to be sold as they come on the market, in Newcastle’s case, as I have indicated, we have roughly 28 applications a year for these properties and a turnover of only five a year. So on average it will take five and a half years now to accommodate applicants for accommodation of that kind. If the properties have to be sold—and only a handful become vacant every year: five a year—there is virtually no chance of that demand being met. I do not know whether anybody has given any thought to that difficulty. I suspect that roughly similar proportions would be found in many other authorities. I invite the Minister to ask her officers, or whoever advises the Government on these matters, to look very specifically at the demand for that kind of large accommodation. Of course, there are other higher-value properties which are not of that size, but I ask that she look at the question of larger properties needed for larger families or for people with particular needs that must be met with that space and at how that would fit into the present proposals. At the very least, perhaps the Minister could look at a possible government amendment to deal with what would be a very real situation. The numbers are not large but the period is long for people with a need which might not otherwise be met. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.