My Lords, it will come as no surprise to my noble friend when I indicate that I have some support for these two amendments. What we are basically seeing is two worthwhile government initiatives coming into contact. On the one hand, there is the rural exception sites policy and on the other hand the starter homes initiative. I quite understand why the Government take the view that they do not want to deprive rural communities of the benefits of starter homes. However, the interface between the two policies is quite difficult. If I did not conceive the rural exceptions policy, I was certainly one of its midwives when it was brought forward in the 1980s. To use an analogy used earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Best, the real risk about this is that the cream will disappear in the form of the sites becoming available.
I know from my own experience of representing a rural constituency in the other place that there were villages where a benign local landowner made land available under the rural exception site policy, in the confidence that the homes provided would be available in perpetuity, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has just said, and at affordable rents. If the landowner feared that those homes would disappear into the market, I am not sure that those sites would ever have been made available.
The features of the rural exception site policy were that, first, you have to do a survey to establish a local need for affordable homes for rent. Secondly, those homes have to be available in perpetuity—normally, for rent through a housing association. In some cases, they are for sale but with a lock such that the discount has to remain there in perpetuity. The starter homes initiative is different in that 80% of market value will still be beyond the reach of many local people, who would have been able to afford an affordable rent under the rural exceptions policy. Also, under the starter homes initiative, after the first time the second purchaser need have no local connections at all.
I understand that the Government are aware of the sensitivities on this. The briefing that we got says that their proposals included,
“using rural exception sites to deliver starter homes in rural areas”,
and allowing,
“the flexibility to require a local connection test on these sites”.
That is an important concession and, as we heard in earlier debates, it is not a requirement for the starter homes initiative anywhere else. None the less, some extra flexibility is required by either giving discretion to the local authority, as in Amendment 50C, or exempting sites below a certain level from the requirement to have starter homes.
When my noble friend replies to these amendments, I hope she can indicate that the Government are aware of the risk of losing the additional supply which the rural exception sites can provide and of the sensitivities in local areas to the change in the occupancy of these sites via the starter homes initiative, which were well represented by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. I hope that there can be some flexibility in response to these two amendments.