Government: Draft Legislative Programme

My Lords, I warmly welcome the priority that the Government have given to housing in their legislative programme, particularly the emphasis on more affordable and more social housing and on environmentally friendly ways of building new homes, eco-villages and towns. I want to focus on an area of development which I believe would contribute to achieving those aims. I refer to the potential of co-housing communities, or resident-led neighbourhoods, to deliver the Government’s agenda of sustainability. I declare an interest, as my partner facilitates a co-housing group in North London. What is co-housing? It combines self-contained housing with shared facilities where people live as part of a group which manages itself along co-operative lines, but it is far more than a housing co-operative. Each household lives independently with its own front door, but the community usually owns the freehold. Common space, or even a community house, enables residents to meet and eat together when they wish. The major benefits of co-housing include: affordability through shared facilities and living costs; sustainability, as a co-housing group can live more ecologically than a single household, for example, through pooling resources and making significant reductions in car use; and community, as co-housing creates many of the qualities of a traditional neighbourhood or small village by providing a safe and mutually supportive setting, which is especially helpful for older people, disabled people and young families. In terms of cutting energy use, technology can take us only so far. It is housing and the way people live that is so profligate in fossil fuel. That is why innovations such as co-housing, which can reduce lifestyle energy use dramatically, are so important. Co-housing can reduce environmental impact because it is based on people collaborating and sharing resources and because using and managing shared resources in turn helps strengthen a sense of community. I believe that sustainability should be understood not only in the sense of a low-carbon economy, but also in a social sense, as community and neighbourhood, where social connections deliver commitment to common goals and shared resources. I warmly endorse the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford about the importance of building social capital. Think of the advantages if a street or block of flats becomes a community place where individuals and households know each other, where they share the school run, organise a car pool, run an electric car charging facility, need only one lawnmower, jointly invest in a district heating system and in grey water recycling, keep an eye on frail neighbours and sign up to a range of communal responsibilities. You can meet variants on this model at the Community Project, near Lewes, at the Springhill Co-housing Community in Stroud and at the Threshold Centre in Dorset. They have all striven, within the limits of affordability, to reduce their footprint on the planet. For those three successful and innovative developments, there are scores of other groups around the country, including the one in North London, which have struggled for years to maintain their momentum against the odds. A recent survey by the UK Co-housing Network identified the barriers experienced by some 60 struggling co-housing groups throughout the UK. They are: prohibitive land prices; local authorities claiming that their hands are ““tied by government””; planning rigidity; the difficulty of obtaining social housing grant to include affordable housing; and the lack of familiarity of housing associations with resident-led developments. The survey found that these local groups aspire to be socially inclusive and environmentally friendly, but it is difficult and defeating for a group of ordinary people to stay motivated and focused throughout the long time frame—it can be years—in which they seek sites and planning permission. In a speech to the Fabian Society earlier this year, the Minister for Housing, Yvette Cooper, announced a number of initiatives to progress the Government’s sustainability agenda. She said that they represented an ambitious battery of tools aimed at: "““People seeing that they have a role in building strong, cohesive and sustainable communities””" and at building up, "““the role of local people in shaping their place””." It is exactly that goal of ““local people shaping their place”” that concerns me. That is what co-housing is. As Ministers have said, PPS3 gives local authorities the tools to deliver high-quality housing by providing more flexibility in how they plan. While wholeheartedly applauding that progress, I urge that this new flexibility is taken even further actively to explore how planning guidance can encourage local authorities to facilitate developments such as the sustainable co-housing community, even if it means allowing exceptions to standard planning controls. Other measures, such as releasing surplus public land and encouraging community land trusts, could be extremely helpful to co-housing groups. I have tried to set out how locality-based developments, such as co-housing communities, are uniquely placed to take forward the Government’s agenda. Combining as they do, investment in lifestyle sustainability and investment in social well-being, they fulfil Yvette Cooper's aspiration for, "““local people in shaping their place””" and, "““People seeing that they have a role in building strong, cohesive and sustainable communities””." I hope that the Minister can give me an assurance that decisive action will be taken to incorporate them in the Government’s programme.