Advice for Renters responds to House of Lords Built Environment Report, Meeting Housing Demand
The House of Lords recently released this report: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/518/built-environment-committee/news/160142/housing-crisis-needs-action-on-planning-smes-and-housing-for-elderly-says-lords-report/
Read our reply below:
10 January 2022
Baroness Neville-Rolfe DBE CMG
House of Lords
Westminster
London SW1 0PW
Dear Lady Neville-Rolfe,
Fairer Housing brings together families who are hardest hit by the housing crisis and the community groups who support them. We believe that the housing crisis is not inevitable and must be ended.
We were therefore very pleased to see today’s report from the Built Environment Committee, ‘Meeting housing demand’ and whole heartedly support your view that the Government must change its approach to spending on housing.
Like you, we believe that there need to be fundamental planning reforms. Specifically, we believe that local planning authorities should be expected to take responsibility for all the development in their area, within national guidelines and a framework set by each Region, taking account of the views of their residents when compiling concise Local Plans. To encourage development, we believe that local authorities should also be able to take an equity stake in developments and benefit from their increased value when developed; such increases to be invested in more Council homes.
We were also pleased to see your recommendations to support SMEs which might avoid the massive developments such as those proposed in the OPDC which completely destroy local communities and drive out long-term residents. It might also help to reduce the problem of land banking.
In high need areas, it would be extremely helpful if your Committee could support local authorities to demand that 50% of all new housing developments are social rented homes. It is very hard for the families involved in Fairer Housing to believe that such requests make developments unviable when they see that large property developers are making astronomical profits, much of which is invested in off-shore companies which does nothing to support the post-Covid, post-Brexit recovery of the UK economy.
We also share your Committee’s view that Right to Buy Schemes are not good value for money, and propose that local authorities should be allowed more flexibility in how RTB is implemented, as set out in our summary attached. We very much hope that your Committee might feel able to endorse our proposals, which we believe should be more acceptable to those who aspire to own their homes than outright abolition of RTB.
We also believe that Help to Buy is not appropriate in areas where there is an acute shortage of social rented homes. We work with a number of families in temporary accommodation, much of which is very unsatisfactory and often poorly managed. This is often due to the fact that Housing Associations lease the accommodation from private landlords who retain responsibility for repairs. This often gives rise to the housing association landlord being in breach of their repairing obligations.
Many of these families have been in such ’temporary’ accommodation for more than eight years, including those with disabled or special needs children, yet they appears to be no end in sight. Few if any of these families would be in a position to raise even a 5% deposit in high house price areas like Brent; and would actually prefer to rent. If we are therefore to address the hardship caused by long periods in temporary housing, not to mention the astronomical cost to the public purse, it is vital that priority be given to social rented homes at genuinely affordable rents.
We completely agree that there must be a step change in the amount of social rented homes, which should where possible, be high quality modular housing to speed delivery and save costs. However, given the acute scarcity of social rented homes in London and other cities, we hope that the Committee will also look to encourage the use of Empty Dwelling Management Orders and consider how the CPO process could be reformed and speeded up without jeopardising the opportunities for owners to appeal during the process.
Finally, we hope that the Committee can take a closer look at the regulation of Airbnb which we believe requires tighter regulation. This is particularly important at this time, as we know that private landlords are currently considering a switch to this sector in the light of recent tax changes and the approach of the Renters Reform bill.
Thank you again for producing such a useful report.
Yours sincerely,
Jacky Peacock
Fairer Housing/Advice for Renters