Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-27
Topic: Housing
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for their amendments, both of which relate to agreements with local authorities in respect of the delivery of new homes. The powerful points that have been made in your Lordships’ House today show just how important this issue is I turn first to Amendment 6 from the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake. I am grateful to him for working with me over the past few days on the issue of additional homes. I hope that he will agree that in our discussions we were clear that the agreement process was the best way to ensure that new housing is built using these receipts, giving local authorities the ability to build additional homes to suit their local communities—I press that point quite firmly. As I said earlier and on Report, we intend to give authorities with particular housing needs in their area the opportunity to reach bespoke agreements about the delivery of different types of new homes. Responding to the diverse housing needs in this country is at the heart of the Government’s drive for localism. The Government’s aim is to support this through agreements, taking into account other normal considerations of funding such as value for money and delivery plans Amendment 6 focuses on social housing. This regresses to the discussion that we have been having on developing the agreement process to acknowledge the potential desire for many different types of housing that would best meet local housing need, and it is not in line with the commitments that I made in Committee and on Report Amendment 3 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, would require new housing delivered under these agreements to be within the same local plan area. I understand the concern that the noble Baroness is seeking to address—that new homes should be reasonably local to those that were sold. However, in my view the best way to address this is for local authorities to decide where the new homes should be delivered, as part of the agreement process. This could be within the local authority’s boundaries or it could involve working with a neighbouring authority to deliver homes across boundaries, as my noble friend Lord Lansley says. This enables a local approach to decide where the new homes should be. This co-operation may be important particularly in places where there is less available land, and flexibility is needed for local authorities and partners to deliver the new homes that they need. Through our engagement, local authorities have been very clear that they are looking for this flexibility, and it is important that we do not put an additional barrier in the way Rather than restrict flexibility at the local level, the Government want to allow local authorities the opportunity to work with neighbouring authorities to build new homes, as they already do on a number of developments. Many local authorities already own housing outside their own boundaries, and many are working together across areas such as mine in Greater Manchester—where 10 local authorities are working together—or Oxford or Cambridge, as my noble friend Lord Lansley says. As my noble friend Lord Carrington of Fulham said in Committee, the location of new housing should not be imposed in the Bill. The amendment would be unnecessarily restrictive because it predetermines the type and tenure of the housing, as my noble friend Lord Lansley says, and it removes the ability of local authorities to work together to find the most appropriate solution for their area The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, raised the issue of receipts from the sale of high-value assets, and she quoted from our proceedings on Report; I think that she was speaking about the high-income social tenants policy. On Report, I recall making it clear that receipts from the sale of higher-value vacant houses will be used only to fund voluntary right to buy and the provision of new homes. Where a local authority enters into an agreement with the Secretary of State to retain a portion of the receipts to build new homes, where the authority does not enter into an agreement, those receipts will be returned to the Government and will be used to build new homes. I hope that clarifies things for noble Lords this afternoon We need to build new homes in this country, and these amendments would limit the ability of the Government to ensure that they are delivered. Therefore, I hope that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord will not press their amendments.