My Lords, the two amendments in the group concern exception sites and, for the purposes of clarity, they contain definitions of such sites. If you agree with the definitions of affordable housing in perpetuity to accommodate local households and so on, then the amendment needs little explanation. However, this is the House of Lords and so I shall proceed to give one anyway.
The key point is that these,
“sites would not normally be used for housing”.
They are outside the village envelope and are usually ordinary farmland or open countryside. In terms of planning, our countryside has two major conflicting pressures. First, there is the desire to keep England both green and pleasant—for the fifth most densely-populated country in the world, we do very well at that. Secondly, we need to resolve the biggest worry of many rural families, namely where on earth their children are going to live.
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Housebuilding is restricted, obviously. Eighty per cent of the population want to live in the countryside—at least the last survey I saw of southern England indicated that—and many people who have worked all their lives in cities want to retire there. So, market forces dictate that rural homes are very expensive. As we all
know, average rural wages are lower than their urban counterparts. There is a conflict in priorities here. As a result, exception sites have been born, allowing building outside the normal restrictive rules of planning. This has happened with the strong support of the CPRE, whose very aim is to preserve our green and pleasant land.
These sites are almost always limited in occupation in perpetuity—that is a very important word. They are limited to people who either live or work in the parish or contiguous parishes. Sometimes there is a cascade of choices rippling out from the parish in question, but usually one with a limit. I should add that the houses are usually occupied either as tenancies with affordable rents or under some form of shared equity or shared ownership arrangement. In my village the site is on a 50:50 basis.
Landowners who value the integrated and diverse mix of their communities donate the land, either for free, or for a little over its agricultural value. Occasionally they donate it in exchange for a cottage to house a keyworker, or on some of the larger sites for the right to build one or even two commercial dwellings. Meanwhile, the parish supports these sites because they are assured that the new properties will be for locals in perpetuity, and are not—to quote a phrase I heard at a village meeting—“cheap housing for city misfits”. They do not want that.
Sometimes elderly parish councils or communities are the most difficult to persuade. They are terrified that some organisation—dare I say some thoughtless organisation, although I am not trying to point any fingers?—will undermine all the commitments that have been given or are being demanded. As I said at Second Reading, unless there are rules about the permanency of the purposes of these exception sites they will no longer exist. Neither landowners nor parishes will agree to them. That, for instance, is why a decade or so ago we fought so hard to ensure that tenants involved in shared equity deals were not allowed to staircase above 80% equity. If they had been, and had been allowed to get full ownership so that they could sell, it would have killed this very important supply of affordable housing stone dead.
In an ideal world I would not allow starter homes on exception sites at all. This is not only because landowners and parishes would be reassured if this were in the Bill, but also because they serve very little purpose for the normal exception site candidate. They will merely reduce the availability of genuine affordable homes on these small, typically four to 12-house sites. In the spirit of compromise normal to this House, we have proposed that either local planning authorities should be able to ban starter homes from their exception sites, as in Amendment 50C, or else—but preferably in addition—the legislation should insist that all houses on exception sites should be subject to “in perpetuity” arrangements, as in Amendment 50A.
Exception sites provide a much-needed service in rural villages. In 2014-15, some 45% of affordable housing in rural areas was delivered on exception sites. When a village is relatively cut off due to intermittent public transport, or is truly remote, the importance of being able to retain family members within a community
is vital for making that community tick. Family members and long-term neighbouring families are able to look after each other and thus save social services and the local health service unnecessary expense.
Young families housed in these exception sites also tend to be the ones who do all the voluntary work around the parish—running and repairing the village hall, for instance, and mowing the children’s play area or the graveyard. There is no one else to do that sort of work in the countryside, where there are rarely council workers to be called on or seen. Exception sites are also vital for providing housing for key workers who need to be nearer their place of work, enabling much-needed local businesses to survive within a rural community. When I say “much-needed”, these businesses often provide the only jobs available to local people who are without their own transport.
I hope that the Government will look favourably on our message in these two amendments. We all want to create many more affordable homes in rural areas, if we possibly can. Our point is that exception sites are an important source of such homes. They have an invaluable and proven track record, so please let us not do anything to upset that record. I beg to move.