Peter Aldous outlines how he believes we can meet the challenges to address the need for new homes, and consequently increase homeownership, improve public health and urban regeneration, and support levelling up efforts.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing and leading it.
Before I came to this place, I practised as a chartered surveyor for 27 years in Suffolk and Norfolk. Much of my work focused on the residential development sector, advising landowners, house builders and local authorities. Today, my involvement revolves around meeting the needs of often desperate constituents seeking a decent home, addressing concerns about the pressure on infrastructure that arises from developments and working with local authorities to regenerate town centres.
The extent of the national housing crisis has been graphically illustrated by what we have heard across the Chamber this evening, and by the briefings provided by Crisis, the National Housing Federation and Policy Exchange. They all illustrate the advantages of a vibrant and dynamic house building sector. In the time available, I shall briefly highlight how I believe we can meet this major challenge.
First, it is important to focus on all sectors of the housing market, including the elderly. We need to ensure that we have sufficient and properly laid out and designed homes for older people. I mention that as I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on housing and care for older people, along with Lord Best, who does much vital work in this sector. We have an ageing population who need and deserve properly adapted and comfortable homes. The provision of more such accommodation will free up other homes for others to move into.
Secondly, we must also build more homes for social rent. Crisis and the National Housing Federation both calculate that we need to build 90,000 homes for social rent each year if we are to tackle the current homelessness crisis. Policy Exchange also highlights that if we invest in and expand social house building, we will also restart the stalled conveyor belt of home ownership.
Thirdly, there is a need to improve the planning system, to ensure that all local planning authorities are functioning properly, have up-to-date local plans, supplemented by local design codes, and that they all determine planning applications promptly. Planning departments must be properly resourced and adequately staffed in order to do that, which means they need funding from national Government.
Fourthly, one of the solutions to the housing supply crisis is already in place in the form of Homes England, which does good work in facilitating development on challenging sites in urban areas and provides development finance through the levelling-up home building fund. It would help if its role and resources could be increased, so that it can do more to facilitate urban regeneration.
My fifth point is that we should consider whether there is a need for investment zones to promote the redevelopment of derelict sites in urban areas. In Lowestoft, in my constituency, the enterprise zone, which is focused on commercial development, has been a great success, although to a degree it has run out of steam and is in need of re-energising. The proposed investment zones, announced last September, provided a vehicle for doing that. The proposals, worked up by Suffolk County Council and East Suffolk Council, included three large, primarily residential redevelopment sites—the Sanyo, the Jeld Wen and the Brookes sites. It is disappointing that the plans for investment zones announced in the March Budget were much more limited than those originally proposed.
Finally, I am mindful of another challenge that confronts us in towns and cities across the country: the decline of our high streets and town centres, which urgently need revitalising. In those locations there are millions of square feet of former office and shop space, often on upper floors, and we need to promote and encourage their residential reuse. If we do that, we can provide customers for the shops and leisure facilities that remain in those town centres. Invariably, such properties can be difficult to convert, so developers prefer greenfield sites, too readily at times. We need to work with those developers to remove the barriers to carrying out town centre projects. As a start, the Government could consider the zero-rating of VAT for conversion and refurbishment work, so as to put such projects on a level playing field with new build.
In conclusion, increasing the supply of new housing opportunities is a panacea for many of the challenges that we face: providing people with warm and decent homes, enabling them to get that first important step on the housing ladder, improving the nation’s health, regenerating urban areas and town centres, and delivering meaningful levelling up.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
In many ways, what my right hon. Friend is saying cuts across what I am going to say, which I think is because property values in Chelmsford are much higher than they are in Lowestoft. We are therefore illustrating what my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) said, which is that we actually have lots of different property markets throughout the country. Would she not agree with me that what is right for one place may not necessarily be right for another?
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
I absolutely agree that what is right for one place may not be right for another. I would just like to point out that the purpose of all my suggestions is to enable local authorities to make the right decisions for their area. These would not be top-down quotas set by Government; they would not set the proportion of affordable homes to be put on which office block development. That would be the decision of the local authority in line with the local plan. At the moment, however, the local authority does not have that power at all.