My Lords, the amendment amends Clause 32, relating to building requirements imposed through building regulations and planning conditions. This is all about quality for the new homes that we build and included in this are standards required from housebuilders for homes to be accessible and easy to enter and move around inside, not least for a parent with a baby in a buggy or the teenager temporarily on crutches after a football accident, but particularly for those who have a disability or, as we do as we all get older, a mobility problem.
I congratulate the Department for Communities and Local Government on its extensive housing standards review, which has been going for more than two years and will finally be concluded early next year. This has already reached a point at which we can see some excellent progress in raising and rationalising housing standards. I pay tribute to Simon Brown at the DCLG and the key architect on the review team, Julia Park, from Levitt Bernstein architects. I welcome the work being done and am sure that it will push up standards in some key respects and save a lot of money. The outcome will be better standards because more of the requirements will move from being planning conditions, which are hard to enforce, to being within building regulations, whereby building inspectors will see that they are actually achieved. There will be substantial savings for those housing associations and housebuilders creating the homes that we so desperately need because the plethora of current requirements from different public bodies will be compressed into a simpler and clearer set of standards covering all tenures equally. Bearing in mind that we have been building the smallest homes in Europe—we are simply miles behind Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands and France—getting to grip on space standards, for example, is a real step forward.
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So far, so good. The hazard here is that, of the standards that cover accessibility, security, water and energy—and, in a newly defined set of standards, space—some key ingredients will be optional. That is of particular significance in relation to that important issue of accessibility. Although local authorities will not be able to devise and require variations on standards, they will have the option of requiring a higher-tier standard when they believe it is justified. Thus, in terms of accessibility, covering steps up to the front door, the width of that door, provision for a downstairs WC, a walk-in shower, and so on, all homes will have to accord with a basic level of standards, but the option will be there for local authorities to require housebuilders to move to a higher level, incorporating features of the lifetime homes standards devised by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the 1990s and adopted by the Greater London Authority, the Welsh Assembly and a number of local authorities. It will be possible for the local authority to stipulate a third and higher level of accessibility for a proportion of all homes, which would make them suitable for people using wheelchairs.
Of course, those of us convinced of the value for all families and individuals of the lifetime homes standards and the savings for the occupiers, the NHS and social care, all want to see local authorities opting for the level 2 accessibility standard as a matter of course. It is the one that is more or less the same as lifetime homes. That will be an option for the local authority. The extra expense of achieving this level 2 standard will eventually come out of the price paid for the land although, in a transitional period, for those who have already acquired sites, there could be an additional expense. It is most unlikely that this would be more than £500 per home, but I can understand that there is nervousness, even if the costs are modest, about requiring the higher standard in all cases immediately.
The problem, which Amendment 36 would remove from the Bill, lies in the housing standards review’s consultation suggestion that planning authorities would be allowed to require that important level 2 only if a rigorous test is passed. That stipulation is embedded in the Bill through Clause 32(4), which the amendment would remove. It is a considerable anxiety among organisations such as Leonard Cheshire Disability. The hazard here for future housebuilding is that local authorities will find this test, which at present is rather vague, hard to meet and will have to dumb down to the lower level because they have failed it.
We are not sure yet what this test will involve. I am hopeful that the Minister will be able to provide some reassurance that the intention is indeed to move standards upwards, not to allow housebuilders or developers always to argue that a scheme is not viable or that there is no local need for the standards that so many authorities now accept as the norm. Can we assume that those authorities leading the way will be allowed to continue with their current approach for any developments already in the pipeline? Can those currently requiring lifetime home standards maintain this requirement for those projects where people have started
on the planning process? How will planning inspectors judge whether the higher standards are strictly necessary and justifiable?
It is certainly important for local authorities to undertake proper assessments of the needs of their population. Any such assessment will quickly demonstrate the demographic change which means that so many of us will live to an age at which our homes need to be more accessible than in times past. Will the Government provide guidance on what evidence is compelling enough for councils to require the level 2 accessibility standards across the piece? It would of course be reassuring to have confirmation that the Government want an increased supply of accessible and inclusive homes, which are not only disabled-friendly but would better suit us all during our lifetimes.
I hope that the Minister will be able to give reassurances, because good progress has been made in achieving higher standards and setting them out clearly, by getting rid of a plethora of currently very varied standards. However, if this is a dumbing-down and it will be possible to wriggle out of the requirement which I know many local authorities want to put in place—that in all cases one can move to the middle tier of level 2 for accessibility—then it will have all been for nothing. This important exercise will not have been worth while.