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Housing and Regeneration Bill

In the north-west over the past decade the housing scene in our large cities and towns has changed from one of low demand, and even of abandonment in our older terraced streets, to one of affordability. Affordability is not only a matter for London, the south-east, York and Chester, because it hits all our areas today, including my town of Bolton. Regeneration has been one of this Government's successes—if hon. Members visit Manchester today, they will see all the cranes on the skyline—and it has extended to housing in our older urban areas. Whereas once we had street after street of decaying and deeply unpopular terraced housing stock from the factory eras blighting the lives of the people who lived there, today we have a new hope in most of those areas. I urge the Government not to take their foot off the accelerator of regeneration, especially in the pathfinder areas of the north-west. Our region still faces the greatest incidence of low-quality private sector housing in the entire country. We need to invest both in providing new homes to meet increasing demand, which is partly driven by substantial demographic changes, and in valuing our existing stock, which needs the refurbishment that this Bill will hopefully provide. As economic growth accompanies urban regeneration, people are—fortunately—being attracted back to live in our town centres. Town centre living has been positively encouraged in Bolton, where we have built on brownfield sites, such as the recent use of an old picture house, and converted old mills and churches into affordable accommodation for purchase. However, the speculators have moved in, too, and we have our fair share of buy-not-to-let properties in Bolton. Cities such as Leeds and Salford report that between 40 and 50 per cent. of new private sector flats in the city centre are empty, which is a scandal considering what we have heard this afternoon. The Government must try to tackle that. Are we building for sale far too many one and two-bedroomed flats, rather than much-needed family accommodation? Rising prices have restored confidence in recent years in the older end of the private sector market. Young people are now buying in areas that they would not have considered 10 years ago, and they are spending money on refurbishing homes at the cheaper end of the market. I joined Bolton's housing committee in 1977, and after that we rightly abandoned general improvement areas, which were vehicles for tarting up run-down areas. Instead, housing action areas were introduced under the Tory Government, which were a way of not only substantially improving older properties, but investing in the surrounding environment. Our first HAA was declared in the Castle street area in my constituency in 1977. We promised the residents a further 30 years of life for their properties, and it is ironic that we are having this debate 30 years later. Those properties in Castle street, and many thousands more throughout Bolton that were refurbished after that under the HAA, must last for many more years given the current rate of regeneration. My fear is that if we do not tackle that problem large clearance areas will reappear at some point. I am in favour of limited clearance, but not on the scale at which we used to do it in Bolton in the '60s and early '70s, when 1,000 properties were cleared every year. We must slowly regenerate our towns by replacing some of the clapped-out houses, otherwise we will face the major clearance problem that I have mentioned. Although Bolton has supported the need for housing market renewal, which is clearly demonstrated by those areas chosen as pathfinders, it has meant a considerable slowing down of the regeneration of older properties in Bolton and throughout the north-west. The danger is that we will return to a point at which private sector housing falls into disrepair faster than we can improve it. I welcome the formation of the Homes and Communities Agency under the Bill. Its focus will be on regeneration as well as the provision of more rented social housing. The Government have some tough challenges to face, but I hope that they will commit themselves to meeting those challenges. In the north-west, house price rises far outstrip wage and salary growth, and there is an urgent need to develop a higher-wage economy in our region. In 2002, only four districts in the north-west were experiencing lower quartile house prices to lower quartile earnings affordability ratios of above five, but by 2006 only eight districts had a lower ratio, and a significant number had a ratio in excess of six. Those facts, along with the sub-prime crash in the United States, are having an increasingly serious effect on the British housing market as credit becomes harder to acquire, which is making buying a home much more difficult today. I have been worried for some time that if the economy slows, stagnates or crashes—I hope that that does not happen—there will be nowhere to house those people who lose their owner-occupied houses. In my opinion, we have concentrated too much on home ownership, which is currently far too high at over 70 per cent. I ask Ministers how much further we can go beyond 70 per cent. Of course, it is most people's ambition to own their own home, but the problem is that many of those who have been persuaded or even cajoled into buying their own home can no longer afford to maintain it. Today, for example, I visited a refurbished council estate, where it was easy to pick out the houses that had been bought in previous years, because they desperately need refurbishment. There is a desperate need for more affordable rented accommodation in the private and the public sectors: both have a role to play. The problem is that one third of our former council homes have been sold off through the right-to-buy policy. There is not much point in building more affordable rented homes if the right to buy will be applicable to them. Shelter shares my concern about that. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to find a way of protecting such homes from sale in the future. We need to replace those lost affordable rented homes as quickly as possible, as the housing market again changes rapidly. It is noticeable that the turnover of council properties has slowed down significantly and that, as a result, waiting lists have risen—in Bolton, from about 5,000 in 1997 to more than 18,000 today. That figure is very up to date, because we have just cleared out the dead wood in the waiting list by writing to everybody. It is a joint waiting list held between the council and all the housing associations in the town. Like Shelter and many Members who have spoken, I am completely opposed to the application of a means test for social rented housing. Social housing should not become residual housing only for the very poor. In 1997, the new Labour Government faced a backlog of £19 billion-worth of repairs of the council-owned stock caused by 18 years of gross neglect of that stock by the Tory Government. In the 10 years when I was chairman of housing in Bolton, from 1986 to 1996, I lost 70 per cent. of housing investment in our town. Is it any wonder that we face this crisis today? The decent homes standard will be met in Bolton by 2010, and Bolton Homesforyou, the arm's length management organisation that manages the stock, has gone well beyond the standards laid down by the Government. I am pleased to announce to the Minister that the SAP—standard assessment procedure—ratings on Bolton's refurbished ALMO-managed properties averages 72 per cent., which is exceptional. Today, 27 November, is Lancashire day, when, in 1295, the first elected representatives from Lancashire were summoned to Westminster by King Edward I to attend what became known as the Model Parliament. It has been a particular pleasure for me to take part in this debate, because although I live in Bolton I regard myself as a Lancastrian.