Examination of Witnesses (Questions
400-415)
MR ALAN
BENSON
12 DECEMBER 2005
Q400 Martin Horwood: The ODPM have from
Barker and elsewhere national targets for increasing the supply
of housing. You seem to have enormous potential within London.
Has the ODPM underestimated the potential within London itself
or overestimated it?
Mr Benson: I would guess that
the figure they would assume is in their previous planning guidance.
Given that the London plan is the statutory planning guidance
for London, they should be adopting that figure. At the moment
an alteration out for consultation so they will be reviewing their
figures on the basis of whether they accept that our figures which
are out currently for an alteration in the London plan, to put
those figures into it. Once that is adopted, I assume that they
will use those figures.
Q401 Martin Horwood: What is the situation
now?
Mr Benson: The figure is presumably
based on the 23,000 per annum, which is in the London plan currently.
Q402 Anne Main: Given that many people
commute into London and you would like to encourage people to
live in London near where they work, has the ODPM got it right
in looking at expanding in all the areas based on housing need
when the housing need might be where they work? In Hertfordshire,
18,000 people commute, mostly to London. Should we be perhaps
looking more on, if that is where people work in London, we should
be putting the development there rather than people saying in
Hertfordshire or the surrounding counties they would like to have
a house there and you say, "Put it in London. That is where
you work. It is more environmentally sustainable." They are
not commuting all around job miles.
Mr Benson: The 31,000 is the capacity
in London in terms of land to deliver. Our housing requirements
in London are higher than that. Just to meet London's own housing
need in terms of its existing backlog and the likely growth in
households living in London over the next 10 years, it is about
35,000 a year. What we are not including as well is a figure for
additional people who might decide to stop commuting from the
home counties.
Q403 Chair: I am being told that the
gross annual migration of people out of London apparently is 80,000.
Mr Benson: That is within the
UK, yes.
Q404 Chair: How could you ever possibly
build enough homes in London to stem that flow, never mind encouraging
people from Hertfordshire to move into London?
Mr Benson: The population in London
is growing. That migration is the net figure for people who move
out of London to other parts of the UK and people who move into
London from other parts of the UK. Like most big cities in the
world, it is a negative figure because more people tend to leave
London than come into it. What it does not take into account is
two other factors. One, the indigenous growth in London, which
is the very young population in London. That is very high. A lot
more people are born in London ever year than die. The second
thing is international migration which is a large increase too.
The overall population in London will grow significantly every
year. We do not expect to stop all the people that migrate out
of London but we may be able to stop some of those people. One
thing you do notice is that we have the richest people in the
country and the poorest people in the country living cheek by
jowl in London. What we are losing increasingly are those people
in the middle—the second, third or fourth income quintiles,
who are moving out of London. We would like to stem some of that
loss. We do not expect to stem the loss of 80,000 people. People
have very good reasons for migrating in and out of London but
if we can stem some of those people we would have a more sustainable
community.
Q405 Lyn Brown: In your written submission
you talk about how changes to the Mayoral powers will help you
to direct local plans and impact upon local housing supply and
affordability. Can you tell me how you think that might happen?
Mr Benson: In two ways. There
are a number of changes in the Mayor's powers which are currently
out for consultation. The two that are most germane to this are
housing and planning changes. The housing changes are to a large
extent already on the table because of the Barker review and previous
announcements that they will merge the regional housing boards
and planning boards which, in London, means in effect the Mayor
will take responsibility for writing the housing strategy and
making recommendations to government on the investment that flows
from that. What the Mayor would also like very strongly is to
be able to make decisions on this investment, not just recommendations.
To him that is key in many ways because he does not want to be
in the position you currently have where the housing board has
91% of its funding pre-allocated by government to various schemes
before the housing board can make any decisions. He wants to be
able to make a decision without civil servants second guessing
whether he is right or wrong and advising ministers whether he
is right or wrong. More importantly in making things happen is
putting these housing powers together with the planning powers
that are being consulted on in the review of powers, which should
give the Mayor a degree of positive planning power. At the moment,
he only has the power to say no to large developments if it is
agreed by boroughs and that is only the large, strategic developments.
Only 0.3% of all planning applications in London go to the Mayor
for review. They are the large developments. One of the reasons
why we think it is important that the Mayor should have positive
planning powers is that, over the last 10 years, there has been
a significant increase in London of planning applications, about
a 55% increase, for new housing. There has been about a 6% increase
in the number of planning applications approved. There has been
a massive growth of planning refusals in London over the last
10 years and we think a lot of that is because of some boroughs
that just do not want the housing developed in their local area.
It would be extremely important for the Mayor to put together
the ability to invest in housing and to make decisions to pull
planning through, both on the large, strategic developments, which
come to him for review anyway, and secondly to have the ability
to make sure that the local planning documents are in accordance
with the Mayor's London plan.
Q406 Lyn Brown: Do you not think that
possibly one of the reasons why local governments are knocking
back some of the housing applications is they are not pertinent
to their local communities? You talked earlier about looking at
housing mix and making sure that we have mixed tenures and sustainable
communities. You spoke about that being a neighbourhood decision
to be made and not a borough-wide decision. I have a lot of sympathy
with that but I fail to understand—I would love you to tell
me how—how having it at a regional level, which is a step
above the borough level, is going to combat the difficulties you
yourself raise.
Mr Benson: This is an issue raised
by the boroughs quite often—that the local councils are
far more in tune and in touch with local people than the Mayor
is. They are absolutely right. There is no way you can argue against
that because they are directly accountable to local people. But,
everyone is guarding their local area and, when you have all those
local decisions being made, the aggregate of all these decisions
is that again and again what seem to be perfectly reasonable planning
applications get turned down because of local opposition. A piece
of work we are doing is picking out what is behind those planning
development refusals. It is quite clear that a lot are turned
down for questionable reasons which may not amount to much more
than NIMBY-ism.
Chair: Could you provide us with a brief,
written summary afterwards, to back up what you have said, of
the planning applications turned down—I do not mean each
one—as to which boroughs and which of those you think are
turned down for NIMBY reasons as opposed to perfectly reasonable
planning reasons?
Anne Main: I would hate to think that
we could have spurious reasons to turn down planning that would
not then be overturned on appeal. If councils are throwing away
their local taxpayers' money by doing that, they are mad.
Q407 Alison Seabeck: How many have been
overturned on appeal?
Mr Benson: I can provide that
information.
Q408 Anne Main: Are you making it very
clear that you want to override local considerations on planning
and have imposed planning for a much higher level?
Mr Benson: No.
Q409 Anne Main: That is what it sounds
like to me so I would like some clarity.
Mr Benson: The applications the
Mayor sees at the moment are 0.3% of planning applications in
London. That would not change. But, on the large, strategic developments,
the Mayor would have the power to say yes as well as no. These
are the Wembley stadiums and King's Cross and these sorts of things.
Q410 Chair: We are not really talking
about housing; we are talking about economic development?
Mr Benson: A lot of them are large
housing developments.
Q411 Anne Main: What about the calling
in of the ODPM of large developments? That is what happens now.
Are you saying the Mayor should come in on that?
Mr Benson: No. On those large
developments it is quite difficult for boroughs to have a reasonable
approach, because they are so high profile. The issue about appeals
is important. What happens is that all the small housing association
developments are very easy to turn down. Those housing associations
will not go to appeal. It will cost them too much. It is not worth
them ruining their relationship with the local authority.
Q412 Alison Seabeck: Could you tell us
how many additional houses the Mayor has eked out of those which
he oversaw and took a decision on?
Mr Benson: Not off the top of
my head.
Q413 Alison Seabeck: I would like that
information.
Mr Benson: I can send that in.
Q414 Lyn Brown: In 12.1 of your written
submission you talk about there being too few players in London
who lack the competition and that the supply and demand within
that sector is causing concerns that you believe additional powers
for the Mayor would assist with. I presume this is in your economic
strategy but I would be grateful if I could have further information
about that because I am lacking clarity. One of the difficulties
with the new builds as I understand it in the east of London up
and down is about the size of tenure and the density. Given that
the communities are young and are not necessarily at the top of
the priority for housing policy allocation—young, single
people in particular who live locally in Stratford and the east
end—can I ask you the same question I asked earlier? Would
you believe that there is a need to use public money in order
to incentivise and enable young people from an area to get onto
a housing ladder of whatever sort?
Mr Benson: Yes. The Mayor does
support the government's aim to invest public funds to help people
get onto the home ownership ladder for very strong reasons. But,
you need to be clear why you are doing it. If you are going to
invest public funds, you need to be clear why and what you want
out of it, not just opening up public funds to anyone who wants
some money as a subsidy to buy a home, but be clear who you are
investing in. These could be people who are coming out of social
housing, who will not inherit a deposit from their parents to
buy a home. Those are the people we should be investing in to
get them onto the home ownership ladder or people who would perhaps
leave London as they have families and settle down. We need family
sized, intermediate housing for them. The Mayor does not support
the wide open market homebuyer programme in the way that the key
worker scheme has done, where it is just giving people £50,000
loans to buy existing houses on the open market generally. However,
one thing that programme has shown is that there is a huge appetite
for those people to buy family homes and keep themselves in London.
That is the one part of the programme which has been successful
in its original aim about supporting recruitment and retention
in public services.
Q415 Chair: Can I ask you about the proposal
in the pre-Budget statement about increasing housing supply by
allowing ALMOs and three star local authorities to use their assets
to build additional homes? Do you think those initiatives would
significantly add provision in London?
Mr Benson: I do not know. It is
a welcome opportunity and the Mayor would welcome the fact that
the boroughs could be given a chance to do so. Whether they have
(a) the development capacity within the borough and (b) the resources
available to them to do so we do not know. That is as yet unproven
but it is good that they have the opportunity and the chance to
try to do it. That is a very positive step for the government
to take.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed, Mr
Benson.
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