My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, was absolutely right when he introduced his amendment in saying that this is the most important part of the Bill and is at the heart of the housing debate we have been having. I am very fortunate to be following the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who has given this whole debate a new dimension and a new focus for our thoughts, on whether we should be fixated on numbers or considering other elements of housing provision.
There is complete agreement across the House and support for building the homes that people need and the country needs. It means building homes in all parts of our country. I agree with the argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Young, about how we will provide the homes that folk need, and the analysis of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, on how vital it is that homes be provided for social rent so that families can have a stable background, and with a housing cost that they can meet within their tight family budgets. Like her, I am a councillor, and I am saddened by the number of families where I live who are pushed into renting in the private housing sector on short-term lets and every six months are having to post on Facebook, “Is there a home to rent in this locality at this price with this number of bedrooms, so that I don’t have to move schools for my children?” That is not the sort of country we want to create, in my opinion; we ought to be providing stable homes for people whose incomes restrict their housing options to homes for social rent.
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The answer that the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Lansley, and even the noble Lord, Lord Best, give is to provide a big target for housebuilding, which the country needs, and to hope that it will somehow be fulfilled. Unfortunately, history tells us that this is not what happens. We know that the Government have dictated housing targets for many years and failed to achieve them for at least 50. If those targets had been fulfilled, we would not be in the desperate state we are now. Targets do not build homes. Targets do not build the homes that people need; they tend to give power to developers, who build homes that people want, which is why we are so short of affordable housing and housing for social rent. Top-down targets are not the answer. The problem with top-down targets is that communities and, indeed, councillors do not like being told exactly how many homes they have to build. Top-down targets enable arguments about census figures, household sizes and demographic trends, and these cast doubt on the need for new homes. The consequence of that argument is that land allocation for sites is hotly contested. Because the targets are top down, there is no general discussion with communities about the type of homes needed as well as their number. When communities have those discussions, as they do when developing neighbourhood
plans, the result is that more homes are allocated in those areas than the targets suggest, because communities have the opportunity to think about it and rise to the challenge. The people in the community—local families—need those homes and communities respond to that by enabling those sites to be allocated for new build.
My other challenge for the advocates of top-down targets is that they can be implemented only where councils adopt a local plan. On Monday, in discussion on another group of amendments, we heard that only a third of local councils currently have an up-to-date plan. That means that two-thirds of councils do not have allocated sites for housing. It is not surprising, therefore, that the top-down targets do not provide the lever for councils to allocate sites. What is needed is for those councils to have those discussions and be encouraged—perhaps not as far as the Minister would like—to step into the difficult territory of a combined county authority dictating to district councils what should be built. That is difficult territory, which I suggest others would not wish to tread in. If, as I think we all agree, we want new homes built, we must be willing somehow to provide the means by which that happens, rather than simply saying, “These are the targets: get on with it”.
Housing targets and numbers do not reflect different types of tenure, types of home and household sizes. Some parts of the country desperately need housing with extra care for older people so that they can retain independence and downsize without having to go into residential care. Where is that in any top-down target? It does not exist, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Best, in an earlier debate about social housing numbers. That is as important as a single top-down target dictated by the Government.
I shall state at every opportunity that the Bill is about levelling-up and regeneration. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said on the previous group about how important it is to link economic investment and housing development. That is how we achieve levelling up in some of our more deprived communities, but that is not what is here. What is also missing is any incentive for local communities to accept new building. As a local councillor, whenever a big housing site is allocated, people say to me, “Where is the allocation for school places, new doctors’ surgeries and new transport, and what about our parks?” I know the Minister will say to me, “You can put them into the conditions of a planning application”. Of course you can but, more often than not, they are not fulfilled within that community—they are off site, somewhere else. That is at the heart of this problem about housebuilding. Incentives must be in place to encourage communities to accept new homes.
Then there is the issue that we have forgotten about: currently, more than 1 million homes with planning consent are not being built. In my small ward, planning consent for nearly 800 homes has been there for two or three years. The homes are not being built because it does not suit the developers to do so. Unless we also overcome the issue that there is too much power in the hands of developers, we miss the whole point about top-down targets. I repeat: top-down targets do not build homes. We need to talk to communities, discussing
how inward investment and housebuilding will help them thrive and help their high streets come to life. That is why, if the noble Lord, Lord Young, is moved to press his amendment to a vote, we will be unable to support him. We will abstain. We agree that more houses are needed, which is where I started. There is complete agreement on that, but we disagree on how you achieve it.