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Localism Bill

My Lords, I rise in support of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. Given the range of the amendments that are about to be debated, having the context to them is very important in understanding the strategic problem around housing and homelessness. We have a rising number of households. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is absolutely right; we should be building somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 new homes a year to keep abreast of new household formation. We got half the figure—around 139,000—last year. Meanwhile, the housing market is volatile. There is a rising number of mortgage repossessions. There is 1 million more people renting their homes now than were renting six years ago, largely because of the economic situation and the difficulty of getting a mortgage. There are now more people wanting to rent than there are vacancies. In some parts of the country, rents are rising much faster than inflation, reducing individual capacity to save. Disposable incomes are declining, which adds to the problem. While short tenancies might be acceptable for many single people, they are not at all good for families where continuity and security matter, or for neighbourhoods where continuity builds social cohesion. There will be very great pressure on the rented sector over the next few years. It is crucial that we ensure the protection and rights of tenants rather than seeing everything from the perspective of supply. We are not building enough homes, which is a failure of successive Governments over many years. This situation must be addressed urgently. It is the context of my view that we need to have local housing strategies because each part of the country will be different. Unless we understand the problem that we are trying to solve, we will not have the evidence base, making housebuilding programmes, the modernisation of homes and so on more difficult to achieve in the right numbers.