I am grateful to noble Lords for such an interesting debate on a crucial topic central to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill. As a result of the discussions we have had, the National Housing Federation’s figure for people in need of social housing is now 3.8 million—that is 1.6 million households. That is around 500,000 more households than the 1.16 million that are on official waiting lists. We all know the reasons for that: not everybody who is in need of housing will necessarily want to spend the next 20 years on a housing waiting list. In so many areas it is impossible to see people ever being housed as a result of those housing lists.
I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds for his important comments, particularly about us needing to understand what genuinely affordable housing means. It certainly does not mean the definition that is used in planning at the moment. I agree with his comment that we are under an illusion that housing built under the “affordable homes” category will resolve the housing crisis—it will not. I totally support his comments about unfreezing local housing allowance levels, which would be an important step. Over many decades, we have seen sticking-plaster approaches to tackling the housing situation in this country, which consequently continues to deteriorate.
The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, rightly said that all of the amendments in this group are aimed at the same destination. Neither in renting nor in homes for sale does “affordability” mean what it says on the tin. We are all trying to make sure that we do what we can in the Bill to change that to some extent.
It is misleading to say that the Help to Buy schemes, which the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, mentioned, will tackle the issue for those most in need of housing. Taking a little risk, I will mention a conversation I had with a former Conservative Minister, who said, “I don’t know why you keep banging on about social housing, Sharon. Everyone can afford to buy a house under our Help to Buy scheme”. That is clearly not the case. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, quoted his noble friend who said that, in Southwold, the affordability ratio is 17:1, and 13:1 after a 20% discount. That is the case in quite a lot of the country, although not everywhere.
More than 50% of social homes have been transferred into the private rented sector, which is a great grievance to those of us who deal with the impact of that. Where that rent is paid by universal credit or other benefits, instead of DWP paying—I shall use the figures I quoted earlier—£110 a week rent for those properties, the public purse now pays £235 a week for them. That does not make any sense at all, so we need to do all we can to address this situation.
As ever, I was pleased to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Best, about his amendment. I thank him for reminding us about the Affordable Housing Commission report, which is very good and we all need to take account of it. I am afraid I found the Minister’s comments on the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Best, a bit disappointing. None of us, including the Government, want this measure. The
noble Lord, Lord Best, called it an “obnoxious” and “offensive” legislative provision, which it is. He pointed out that it has hung over local government since 2016. We could use this legislation to get rid of it. Why do we not do that? Under that legislation, local authorities were expected to raise the rent to market levels where tenants improved their financial situation. When that happened, it greatly concerned me that this would not benefit local communities or our housing stock but would tip into the bottomless bucket in the Treasury. It is time that that provision was scrapped. I absolutely support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Best, about local decisions being taken on right-to-buy discounts. That measure is way past time, and we should absolutely have it.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, spoke about unfreezing local housing allowance, which I agree with. He also mentioned discretionary housing payments. In many local authorities, the allocated amount of discretionary housing payment runs out in Quarter 1, and then various bodies, including government advisory bodies and Citizens Advice, often send tenants to their councils to request discretionary housing payment, when in fact it has run out in the first three months of the year. That is simply because of the cost of living crisis and the level of rents that are putting so much pressure on those discretionary housing payments.
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The noble Lord, Lord Young, also rightly raised the issue that we are often faced with the difficult choice of low rents or increasing rents and having enough funding to provide new builds. I support that, but there are other ways of doing this. The Government have provided some funding for new housing, but local authorities and other public sector bodies can also 3be creative about the way they use their land and property to deliver social housing and use their assets to contribute to resolving the housing crisis. For example, there can be mixed developments where the authority uses the surplus from private sales to fund the social housing on those developments. In my own borough, we had closed-down pubs and we did a land swap with a doctors’ surgery, so the doctors got a new surgery and we got a housing site. We also used a low-demand garage block to build specialised housing for street homeless people. There are solutions, but he is right that we have to get round this point that you either have high rents or you do not have any new build. That requires government intervention, and we need to think about that.
The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, said that he did not know how anyone could listen to this debate without wanting to scrap right to buy. I have to approach this cautiously, but I am very sympathetic to that point. He also spoke about affordable housing being abused by developers on the often spurious grounds of viability. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, mentioned that these calculations are still allowed to be kept secret and they absolutely should not be. Communities should know why developers are saying that they cannot put affordable housing in their developments.
As ever, I was grateful to the Minister for her very detailed response on the debate. However, to defend the status quo, which is how her comments could be
interpreted, is very difficult in the circumstances of the housing situation that many people in our communities face. I think there is an increasing burden on the rental income stream and the Minister is correct to say that. The regulatory burden is not helping. I completely understand why the Government are increasing the regulatory burden, but this puts additional pressure, which is not covered, as I understand it, by new-burdens regulations.
It has been a very good discussion on all these housing points. I will withdraw the amendment for now, but I hope the Minister recognises the strength of feeling in your Lordships’ House on some of these issues. This means we will want to come back to this on Report. I think we may want to push for Report stage not to be held until we have the benefit of detail. We keep being told that these things are going to be in the NPPF and the NDMPs, so it may be that we want to consider whether Report stage should be before we have sight of those documents. But, for the moment, I withdraw my amendment.