My Lords, I add my support to what I think is an excellent amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. It absolutely goes to the heart of the practical challenge of estate-based regeneration. Typically, in those situations, you are dealing with stock that is either time-expired or very badly designed, and the only solution there is to redevelop and re-provide on the site. Anybody who has been involved in such schemes will know that the viability of doing this is extremely hard. It is compounded, as the noble Baroness said, by the proper requirement—I emphasise the word “proper”—to ensure that those who live on the estate at the time of the redevelopment can stay on the estate when the development is completed. It typically involves a phased process of redevelopment, decant and then development of the properties that have been freed up.
Yesterday, I was at the unveiling of public art for a scheme in St John’s Hill, where the leader of the council, Councillor Govindia, was in attendance as well. That is the first phase of a scheme there. What we have secured on that site is an increase in supply from 351 homes to 528. Of those homes, 249 are for sale and 279 are affordable. The point I make is that that scheme took over five years to get to a point of viability. We had to provide for those who were already living on the estate and we had to cross-subsidise the whole initiative through the market-sale properties on the site. We have there a scheme that we at Peabody can feel genuinely proud of. However, I can tell the Minister that if another requirement was superimposed on that scheme that itself involved the loss of value in the form of starter homes, I do not think that we could have delivered both a viable scheme and met the needs of the tenants. These issues will be replicated up and down the country. We have had a long debate about the pros and cons of this, but it is crucial that in the introduction of starter homes we do not inadvertently create a problem for the practical regeneration of estates that so desperately need it.