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Housing

My Lords, I think that I detected in those responses a welcome for some of the things that the Government are doing, although in some cases it appears to be a question of too little, too late. Nevertheless, I think that there is a consensus across the House of how important it is to meet the needs of young people who are falling off the property ladder or not even being able to get on it, and to address the very serious problem of housing. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, and the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, criticised the fact that we may have glossed over the history of this problem. It is not recent; over the past 30 years, there has been a 30 per cent increase in household formation and a 50 per cent drop in housebuilding. The problem is not 10 years old; it goes back much further. But in the past 10 years patterns of family change and formation have been accelerated and different. The major pressure is coming from single people choosing to live alone, and many of those are now part of our ageing population, so we have new pressures and patterns in the system to which we must respond. There has been a significant increase in housebuilding in the past year, with a net addition of 185,000 homes. It is therefore important that we look seriously at the history, but also acknowledge the significance and scope of what we are trying to do. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, for listing some of our efforts on brownfield sites and in bringing forward public land. Not only do we have a good record on brownfield development, but surplus land now goes much further. We are looking for new approaches to toughen up the register of surplus land, which will have to be much more reflective of housing policy. In planning policy statement 3, we made clear to local authorities the need to bring forward land for five and 15 years’ supply, so that they can predict and plan much more robustly. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, described the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit and some other organisations as bureaucratic, but they are about delivery. The Community Infrastructure Fund has delivered just over £1 billion to the new growth areas in this country for infrastructure. We have these vehicles for a purpose. I can assure noble Lords that we are not in the business of inventing new bureaucracies. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, asked what steps we are taking to ensure a reconciliation of ambitions between local authorities and national government. That is an important question. The final part of my Statement was about the need for a partnership between everybody who is concerned about housing supply. It is entirely proper that the Government should set ambitious targets for housing, because it is their responsibility to enable people to live in a decent home. That is where the buck stops. The process of deciding with local authorities and regional organisations where, and what sort of, houses should be built is tested in public and by examination, and negotiated through the regional spatial strategies. It is a robust process over which local authorities have great influence. We said in the announcement on the sub-national review last week that planning would move to the regional development agencies—the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, made a point on this—because we need a regional economic strategy that brings everything together, including housing, planning and skills. That has implications for the regional assemblies, but it has implications also for local authorities being able to play a much more robust role in the beginning. That is what the Local Government Association wanted. On social housing, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, that, wherever we build, we have to have a proportion of affordable housing. No developer is going to get away with not building affordable housing. Social housing is as much needed in rural areas as it is in inner cities. We take the risk of flooding very seriously, as the previous Statement made clear. We must prevent it. Our new flooding statement, PPS 25 of last December, pointed to the need to ensure that flood risk from all sources—not just from rivers but also, particularly in today’s instances, from surface water—is taken into account at all stages of the planning process. Inappropriate development must be avoided; development must be directed away from high-risk areas. We have announced a review of the lessons learnt from the 2007 floods and will see whether there are implications from its findings. Yes, we need to make space for water as well as to deal with floods, just as the noble Lord described. Our building in the Thames Gateway and other growth areas is tested against that. I was pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, drew innovative schemes to our attention. Throughout what we have said about local authorities’ capacity to build more in different ways with different partners, we are looking for and at innovation. I was asked about equity sharing. We aim to help 120,000 people through equity-sharing arrangements by 2010. In addition, we have come forward with a new product, which involves a government equity loan of 17.5 per cent, which will make matters even easier. I have spoken about the accountability of the spatial strategy. I was asked about green homes. Our ambition for new homes is simply for them to be carbon free by 2016. The homes in which we live now can be hugely improved, which is why we have brought forward energy performance certificates and why we are advocating better ways of conserving water in different systems. In addition, schemes such as Warm Front will help people not only to reduce their bills but also to be safer and warmer through the winter. I hope that I have addressed most of the questions raised by noble Lords. I shall certainly make sure that I do so in writing if I have not.