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Mr. Elletson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the quality of life on many council housing estates has been transformed by the right-to-manage scheme, whereby the Government have transferred the management of estates to their tenants? Will he examine closely the actions of the Labour-controlled Blackpool council, which has deliberately sought to frustrate the wishes of the tenants of the Queen's Park estate in my constituency? They want to exercise the right to manage and they have been trained to do so by Department of the Environment schemes, but they have been confronted by the underhand tactics of Blackpool council's housing authority. Will my right hon. Friend investigate their complaints?
Mr. Curry: My hon. Friend is right: that is an important issue. Since 1990, 112 tenant management organisations have been set up, and more than 100 are in the process of being formed. I hear what he says about the problems in his constituency, and I am willing to examine any difficulties there. As a matter of fact, this morning I signed the order making Blackpool a unitary authority. Perhaps the extra responsibility will bring additional openness to the council's actions. I also signed the order for Blackburn.
Mr. Elletson indicated dissent.
Mr. Curry: I know that my hon. Friend takes a somewhat different view but, as Blackpool will now have additional responsibility, perhaps it will review its behaviour and we will find that responsibility brings some improvement.
The estate renewal programme makes an important contribution to difficult estates. Several hon. Members have said that we should not become fixed on one form of institutional solution, and I agree. Large-scale voluntary transfers have a significant role to play. The estate renewal programme is based on the need to help the worst estates which, frankly, must be given away if they are to be transferred. That approach involves a mixture of demolition and renovation.
Sandwell was one of the first authorities to be included in the scheme and to go to a new social landlord. Two or three of the first schemes in that programme are planning transfers to the new housing companies which will shortly be made possible by new legislation. We are therefore beginning to see diversification in the forms transfer can take and the nature of the social landlords to which property can be transferred. I think that that is a welcome flexibility and I hope that all the mechanisms will be used in the circumstances which seem most sensible for a particular estate.
Hon. Members are right when they say that a sense of ownership is important. The Bonamy estate in Southwark, which is also known to the hon. Member for Greenwich, has benefited from demolition, rebuild and recreation of the street pattern. People there have gardens. The hon. Gentleman and I shared a platform at Central hall, Westminster, where, to our mutual distress, we found ourselves on the same side on a number of points. We found ourselves defending people's right to have a garden as a means of expressing their identity. A garden is often an individual and personal thing. We had a detailed discussion with one tenant about what was the best form of winter-flowering cherry. For anyone who is particularly interested, it is a prunus subhirtella autumnalis.
Holly street in the east end of London, a deck access estate, had all the social problems with which we are now familiar, but it is now an attractive area. However much we might scorn the eponymous Acacia avenue, the Acacia avenues work better in social and human terms than the tower blocks of the 1960s and 1970s. They were created with the best of motives, and I will not scorn what was then believed to be an answer to a difficult problem until we are confident that the ones that we now espouse will be better.
The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish raised the crucial issue of where we should put houses, as did my hon. Friends the Members for Blackpool, North (Mr. Elletson) and for Shoreham (Mr. Stephen) because of their concern about the countryside. The brown-field sites must play a significant part. We need to knit it into the programmes to rebuild the cities and to make them work better.
I have no responsibility for planning matters, but occasionally I venture into the realm of planning policies. Planning policies and their revision are buttresses of that wider policy. Without them we would find it more difficult to build houses in the cities, to have people wanting to live in the cities and to create the demand that flows from the city centre. It is too easy to think that a 24-hour city is achieved by keeping the pubs open until 2 am. That is not the case. The demand needs to be generated by people of different sorts, different tenures, different backgrounds and different occupations living in cities.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hallam described what has happened in Sheffield from a historical perspective and from his own experience, and he gave particularly apt examples of what makes the city work. We are trying to make the cities much more attractive, but the concern for the countryside is real. I represent the Yorkshire Dales national park, so I appreciate that. I understand the problems of summer and winter lets and the problem of second properties--a matter my right hon. Friend the Member for City of London and Westminster, South raised, as did the hon. Member for Hillsborough from a completely different perspective.
There are villages in my constituency where I suspect that the majority of properties are second homes. The election material of all parties at the last election is probably still on the doormat of some of them. The national park even embarked on a policy of trying to restrict new building in the park to people for whom it would be the principal home, and we are engaged in a debate with the national park authority about that policy. That policy demonstrates once again that we must
recognise that house building is an activity in which it is too easy to believe in theory, but which it is difficult to accept in practice when it is too close.
The hon. Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) talked about private sector renovation and housing renewal areas. I think that he acknowledges--I am glad that he got the right Bill this time; I recall that he once started a speech but then realised that he had chosen the wrong occasion on which to make it--that the mandatory grants system was not working. We need a more strategic approach. His local authority will be able to use the new legislation as part of an area renewal programme.
Quite frankly, I am not surprised that local authorities said, "It would be nice if we could meet all the demand," but they know that that is not realistic, so the measures that we have taken are sensible in the circumstances.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Mr. Thomason) that housing investment trusts are important. It is right that the balance of housing in the United Kingdom is different from that on the continent. Since taking this job, I have constantly said that we need a better equilibrium in the housing market between owner-occupation--about which I do not have a particular hang-up--private rented and social rented to try to create more diversity and choice.
I am particularly concerned that young people, when looking for accommodation at the start of their working or married life, should have the choice of high-quality private rented accommodation. What distinguishes the housing pattern in Britain from the continent is that many young people here go into owner-occupation, partly because they do not have the necessary choice. The pattern for the older age ranges is much more common across the European countries. We need diversification.
The hon. Member for Christchurch and others mentioned the elderly in community care. I have asked the Government offices to hold discussions this year with some local housing authorities in each region, specifically to discuss their action to co-ordinate work on housing with work on social and health services. They will take place either when the Government offices visit the authority to talk about the housing investment programme submissions or at meetings specially set up for the purpose. As I have mentioned to the hon. Lady on a number of occasions, we have to produce the guidance to accompany the Housing Bill, and we are anxious that it should reflect best sensible practice.
Mr. Bennett
: With the leave of the House, I should like to thank the Minister for his reply to the debate. I also thank the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison), who has been on the Front Bench for much of the debate. It is appreciated in the House when Ministers come to listen and not just to participate.
I thank the other members of the Select Committee for their contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) seemed to apologise for entering into the debate. I stress that one of the functions of Select Committees is to carry out the inquiry and produce a report so that the whole House is better informed. Sadly, too often, the House does not take a blind bit of notice of the report, and all that happens is that members of the Select Committee further debate the report that they have produced. The contributions from hon. Members who were not members of the Select Committee were very welcome.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Sir I. Patnick) reminded us of the importance, which we stressed in the report, of trying to bring people back into the city centres and bringing shops that are empty back into residential use. He also stressed the problem of local authority rates of relet. I have a slight reservation about that. It is possible to lump the figures together and say that an authority is reletting properties in four or five weeks; a more interesting question, however, is not how long it takes overall but how long it takes to relet the really popular properties. We cannot be too critical of an authority that takes 12 weeks to relet an unpopular estate, but I am worried when it takes six or eight weeks to relet popular properties.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn ran down deck access flats, as did a number of other hon. Members. I understand the problems, but when I am in London I stay in a set of deck access flats in the Barbican. It is some of the nicest housing in London. If we knock down all the deck access flats, we may well have to take away a bit of the green belt. We must put a bit more effort into ensuring that all deck access flats are as nice to live in as those at the Barbican. The crucial thing about the Barbican is the amount that is spent on services and looking after the area. It may be better for the nation to spend money on introducing good services and maintenance in deck access flats than for us to knock them down, going for low densities and taking up more of our countryside.
The hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Mr. Thomason)--whose support on the Select Committee I appreciated--expressed enthusiasm for housing investment trusts. We must wait and see whether they manage to deliver. The Select Committee visited the west midlands and looked at some of the green belt around some of the hon. Gentleman's constituency. I understand why he and other hon. Members passionately want to protect the green belt--indeed, I share their views--but we must find somewhere for the houses to go.
The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mrs. Maddock) referred to lifetime homes. I have made the same point, and I hope that the Government will consider it with much more sympathy. The hon. Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Elletson) reminded us just how much of Britain could disappear under housing. We must go for high- density housing, and make it work.
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