My Lords, my name is on Amendments 50A and 50C and I rise to support my noble friend, Lord Cameron, to whom I pay tribute, not just for his eloquence today but for setting a perfect example of a landowner who has made available land on very favourable terms, to ensure that local people get decent housing. There are other Members of your Lordships’ House who have done the same; all of them deserve absolute credit.
I was delighted that the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Deben, have also joined in. If tribute has to be paid to the actual founder of the feast, Nicholas Ridley, as Secretary of State at the time, must get the laurels for inventing this particular piece of policy. It is the hope in these amendments that local authorities would not be required always to insist upon starter homes on rural exception sites, knowing that these will be lost to the locality five years later if the purchasers sell up, perhaps to second-home owners, for holiday lets or to better-off commuters.
Last year I chaired the Rural Housing Policy Review, which was conducted with the noble Lords, Lords Cameron of Dillington and Lord Taylor of Goss Moor. This review was promoted by Hastoe Housing Association, which is a leading player in the housing association world in this regard. It joined forces with the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the Country Landowners Association to take forward these issues. Our report set out the special position of rural areas, which others have outlined today. From the report I would only add the following additional points.
First, promoting home ownership in rural areas, where people often put down roots and stay for a lifetime, is particularly important. However, a 20% discount will not, on its own, do the trick for affordable starter homes. Shared ownership can be of particular value in those circumstances, with young households buying for half or less than the market value and paying affordable rent on the remainder. The problem, as in so many other cases,
would come from the Government requiring local authorities to push out other contenders to make way for starter homes.
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Secondly, as the statistics have made so clear, many of the people whom rural areas require to sustain local economies and local communities are not going to find even shared ownership to be within their means. Good old-fashioned affordable housing for rent is of special value in rural areas because the level of affordable rented homes, council houses or housing association properties reaches only 8% of the stock in these localities, compared with 19% in the country at large. The right to buy has led to a greater loss of rural council housing than urban housing. I know that there are many villages where all the council housing, often on the edge of the village, has now been sold. Where housing associations can obtain land at a substantial discount from its open market value, and maybe also where they cross-subsidise with some profits from sales of one or two homes sold outright, the rented option can still be feasible, and we must have the opportunity to continue to pursue it.
Thirdly, since we are not able to have one of our colleagues from the Bishops’ Benches with us today, I should add to the comments about helpful landowners by saying that the churches can be invaluable players in rural areas. We know that the Church of England and other denominations can be persuaded to part with sites on excellent terms, but only if the resulting homes are kept available for local people in perpetuity. Glebe land can be ideal for small infill schemes of cottages for local people, and redundant church buildings, such as the church hall that is no longer fit for purpose, may represent the only available opportunity for development in the village. Like other responsible landowners, though, the churches are likely to be unsympathetic if they are asked to make over land on the basis that the initial occupiers can sell in five years to more affluent people and outsiders of the village itself.
Fourthly, the support of the village—not least through the production of the excellent new neighbourhood plans, of which 1,600 are now in the pipeline—as opposed to vociferous opposition will be forthcoming only if housing is being developed for local people and can be held for that purpose in perpetuity. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, says, without that opportunity it may be that we do not see development at all, and the Government, in quite properly going for greater numbers of new homes being built, will be thwarted by that local opposition, which, as we all know, can be so incredibly powerful.
Lastly, I note that the Government are consulting on the issue of whether starter homes should be required on rural exception sites, and are thinking about an additional test that only those with a local connection can buy these properties. Simply requiring a local connection but still switching the supply from shared ownership and affordable renting to starter homes would, I fear, be of very limited value. We know that in many villages the relationship between the value of village homes and the earnings of those wanting to live and work there are so out of kilter that
a continuing insistence on the starter homes model would miss the target in most places. I strongly support the amendments.