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Housing and Regeneration Bill

Those are important questions. I shall say a few words about the state of the housing market. Under present conditions it is not surprising that we have seen a drop in housing starts, but the important thing is that we have had sustained economic growth and a high employment level over the past 10 years. The fundamentals of the economy remain strong. Demand for housing is strong. Affordability is, and will remain, an issue; there will be no ease-up in the pressure or the need for us to be ambitious about our housing supply. The role of the HCA therefore becomes more important because it brings together all the partners and the forms of investment, whether that is in funding affordable homes, putting together public-private partnerships, land investment or skills packages for local authorities to help them identify and meet their local needs or, through the Academy for Sustainable Communities, putting skills into the community itself. The HCA provides a very timely opportunity for us to focus on this issue and drive it forward at a time when things are not as easy as they have been. I appreciate what the noble Lord said about the probing nature of the amendment and the meaning of ““improving””. I did not think that he would simply want to substitute ““increasing supply”” for ““improving supply”” because clearly ““increasing supply”” is about volume and having more homes. We seek to have more and better homes, which is implied by ““improving””. The agency also wants to create strong and sustainable communities. ““Improving”” implies having the right numbers of homes of the right kinds in the right places. That goes beyond increasing the supply and covers all aspects of the delivery chain such as land acquisition, building, selling, renting new housing and working with local authorities and the business sector. Its work also takes into account people’s different needs; for example, the need to ensure that demographics are reflected in our housing market so that the needs of older people and of disabled people are met, as we shall discuss on the next amendment. We could not meet those needs simply by volume building new housing. For example, we would not meet those objectives by building luxury executive homes in areas where affordable homes are desperately needed. Obviously, that is not what the intention behind the noble Lord’s amendment. The Bill makes clear in Clause 2(2) that, "““improving the supply of housing””," means providing different types of homes. As I said, that is shorthand for affordable homes, family homes, homes for older people and the needs of localities. It is no good building hundreds of blocks of flats in areas where the crucial need is for family homes of different sizes. I hope the noble Lord will accept that ““improving”” includes the activity of which he will be aware in the part of the country that he knows well. We need to be able to decrease as well as increase the number of homes. We are reconfiguring some neighbourhoods so that we can build larger homes for larger families. We need to have the flexibility to do that and to change the supply of housing in a way that attracts into those areas people who will invest in them and help the community become more diverse and more prosperous. The noble Lord is familiar with such situations. All that is implied by ““improving””, which we used deliberately. It also includes the decent homes programme, which we are transferring from the DCLG to the Homes and Communities Agency. That is a massive programme. As I have said many times in the House, we have 1 million fewer non-decent homes which we have achieved by investing £23 billion in modernising council houses by putting in new bathrooms and kitchens and installing insulation, thus making them warm, safe and comfortable. That was rightly a priority when we came into office. The noble Lord asked about the strategic nature of the HCA’s decisions. The relationship between the DCLG, which remains the sponsoring body, and the agency, which is the delivery body, will be made clear in protocols but essentially the responsibility for setting and meeting the country’s affordable housing need must rest with government and the DCLG. We will continue to set the high level objectives and the strategic priorities, which will be delivered on our behalf by the HCA. It is right that delivery programmes such as decent homes, for which we have traditionally taken responsibility, are transferred to a body tasked to deliver on behalf of the Government.