My Lords, I, too, rise to support the amendment, brilliantly moved, as usual, by the noble Lord, Lord Best, who asked fundamental, awkward questions about the impact that this will have on standards in the future. I want to make some general points about what the Bill signals about the Government’s strategic approach to housing for an ageing population.
The noble Lord, Lord Tope, has already pointed out that establishing lifetime home standards in the first place was an extremely long and very challenging process, but it is accepted and the best developers take it as a matter of course. In fact, we have tried to learn from the mistakes of the past, when we assumed that people would not want to age in place. Part of the crisis that we have at the moment in finding homes of
sufficient quality and appropriateness for an elderly and frail population is because in the past we simply did not understand that this would be necessary.
What troubles me about the standards review, for which the noble Lord, Lord Best, made a very good case, is that there is a real paradox in the language that the review uses in one respect. It is concerned with local authorities not pursuing standards which are simply nice to know, but standards which are strictly necessary. The point is that in building for an ageing population with disabilities, we should be building every home across the piece to lifetime standards which are strictly necessary. It is a misreading of the situation we are in and the challenge of the future.
I also see a real paradox in the situation that the Government has posed in this clause. It is a paradox in logic. To make lifetime homes standards and other accessible standards statutory, and yet to make higher standards optional, simply does not make logical sense. If we are assuming that we all want the highest standards and to maintain the highest standards, why is there an optional extra? Good developers and local authorities are already pursuing the best and highest standards and are doing so with conviction. Is it a question, for example, of the Government trying to obtain the moral credit while making it more difficult in practice for local authorities to enforce? We have to ask about the unintended consequences. We know that local authorities are strained and strapped for cash, resources and expertise. When developers approach these second-level standards, who will advise the developers and implement the standards?
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The case for the clause turns on the evidence that local planning authorities will have to demonstrate if they wish to apply for that standard. I am seriously concerned that local authorities simply will not have the capacity to do that. We have far too much evidence to the contrary.
As the noble Lord, Lord Best, has already asked, where are the standards laid down? Where will the universal authority be? How will we protect against more postcode lottery? Where are the criteria stated? Sadly, although local authorities are under some obligation to plan for demographic change and lead, they do not do so with great intelligence or conviction, if you look at some of the local authority area needs plans and so on. There is an absence of vision, there is an absence of incentive and there is a real issue about not rising to the occasion and understanding the genuine challenge in the housing market for planning for the future.
I am disappointed in this clause. Finally, as we have pointed out in discussion on other parts of the Bill—a Bill that is ostensibly deregulatory—this is not deregulatory. This requires local authorities to do more, to use more resources and achieve different sorts of standards, possibly at the expense of those which have already done their best and shown the way to other local authorities that are more laggard.