Memorandum by the West Midlands Regional
Assembly (WMRA) Secretariat (AH 55)
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The West Midlands Regional Assembly's
(WMRA) Regional Housing Partnership has previously lead WMRA agreed
responses to ODPM on the Barker Review of Housing Supply and "Planning
for Housing Provision". In responding to this call for evidence,
we refer to these responses (which are enclosed as Appendix 1
& 2) and also to the Region's Regional Spatial Strategy approved
by the Secretary of State in June 2004 and the Regional Housing
Strategy submitted to Ministers in June 2005.
2. BRIEF SUMMARY
OF COMMENTS
2.1 WMRA's response to the above consultation
exercises have focused on how the proposals appear to have been
devised to address South East of England growth pressures and
would thus be applied out of context in the rest of the UK, including
the West Midlands. WMRA's responses have made it implicit that
the proposals in Kate Barker's Review of the Housing Supply (Appendix
1) and ODPM's Planning for Housing Provision (Appendix 2) could
reverse our recently approved Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS).
2.2 The West Midlands is seeking to halt
the out migration of households from the conurbation. The proposed
approach by ODPM is market led with the potential for increased
development on Greenfield sites in areas of high demand. The West
Midlands RSS may be ambitious, but is realistic and there is now
good evidence of it beginning to work, eg developers increasingly
providing more new housing in the Major Urban Areas. WMRA fears
that ODPM proposals will undermine developer confidence in the
growth of the Major Urban Areas and lead to demands for an ever
increasing rural residential land release and further out migration
to the Shire Counties. This approach would be highly unsustainable
and wholly against the principles of the West Midlands RSS.
3. WEST MIDLANDS
REGIONAL HOUSING
STRATEGY 2005 AND
SUPPORTING RESEARCH
3.1 The Assembly's Regional Housing Partnership
has undertaken a great deal of work on behalf of the Regional
Housing Board, particularly in ensuring the Regional Housing Strategy
2005 was based on robust empirical evidence and research. This
research can be accessed from the following website: http://www.wmra.gov.uk/page.asp?id=66
and some of the key elements of the research are referred to below
in response to the specific questions raised by the ODPM Committee.
A copy of the Regional Housing Strategy 2005 can be accessed from
the weblink below: http://www.wmra.gov.uk/page.asp?id=63
4. RESPONSE TO
THE SPECIFIC
QUESTIONS RAISED
BY THE
ODPM COMMITTEE
4.1 The potential benefits of and scope to
promote greater homeownership
In certain parts of the West Midlands Region,
for example, its South Housing Market Area the scope to promote
greater homeownership is limited by the affordability ratio. Local
communities want affordable housing in perpetuity and through
a system of "staircasing" with such units going back
into the system as affordable housing.
Solutions to promoting greater homeownership
in areas of high affordability problems (often in the rural parts
of the West Midlands) are to raise incomes for local people via
Rural Renaissance (WM Regional Spatial Strategy) and rural employment
opportunities. Building more housing will not reduce the price
overall sufficiently for local people to be able to afford to
buy.
4.2 The extent to which home purchase tackles
social and economic inequalities and reduces poverty
It needs to be recognised that home purchase
does not necessarily tackle inequalities and reduce poverty as
many people can be made worse off through home ownership—Right
to Buy is an example of this as there have been examples, whereby
people have been left unable to cope with the properties they
have bought, unable to afford renovations and repairs and thus
trapped in poor condition owner occupied housing.
Home purchase can also create inequality and
exacerbate problems as wealthy homeowners push up prices in particular
areas often forcing out local people and causing the gentrification
of areas.
There are also concerns that the introduction
of the inclusion of property portfolios for private pensions under
SIPPS will make this problem considerably worse and drive up prices
further still, as pressure will be placed on the housing market
by private landlords buying up properties for investment purposes.
The proposal for property portfolios under SIPPS may be more appropriate
if there was a way of ensuring rents on such properties were affordable.
4.3 The economic and social impact of current
house prices
A great deal of research has been undertaken
by the West Midlands to support the development of a robust evidence
base for the WM Regional Housing Strategy 2005 and of particular
interest to this question will be the work undertaken by Sheffield
University on identifying distinctive Housing Market Areas within
the Region and also the Stage 2 Report produced by the University
of Birmingham's, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies. Below
is the weblink to the research:
www.wmra.gov.uk/page.asp?id=66
4.4 The relationship between house prices
and housing supply
As stated above in response to question 3 please
refer to the extensive research undertaken by the West Midlands
Regional Housing Board which can be downloaded from the aforementioned
website.
4.5 Other factors influencing the affordability
of housing for sale including construction methods and fiscal
measures
WMRA welcomes the use of modern methods of construction
if manageable and guaranteeing long life and sustainability of
the housing in question.
4.6 The scale of the Government's plans to
boost housing supply
Please refer here to the comments in summary
above in section 2 and also the Assembly's full response to ODPM's
"Planning for Housing Provision" which is appended (2)
at the end of this paper.
4.7 The relative importance of increasing
the supply of private housing as opposed to subsidised housing
It is important to note that the need to increase
the supply of housing overall is due in part to the limited amount
of Social/subsidised housing being built over the last 25 years
at least. This has helped to produce a situation where more and
more households are unable to afford a home, either private or
social/subsidised. It is considered unlikely that increasing the
supply of private housing in the West Midlands could contribute
as much as building new subsidised housing towards meeting housing
need.
The lack of subsidised housing has been exacerbated
by Right to Buy initiatives which have not only reduced the availability
of accommodation but also resulted in the residualisation of the
remaining housing stock.
4.8 How the planning system should respond
to the demand for housing for sale
In the West Midlands this depends on where in
Major Urban Areas we want the open market to respond with more
supply, subject to design, type, size and sustainability and creating
pathways of choice in the housing market. In regionally unsustainable
areas the planning system should address local needs only and
not inward migration pressures.
The planning system needs to consider how to meet
all housing needs and requirements, including the creation of
a new Social Housing Use Class under Town Planning legislation
in order to secure a market value at less than the owner occupation
open market level. This would help to achieve more affordable
housing. A Social Housing Use Class could be made to relate to
the intermediate market housing making new build Shared Ownership
more affordable in high priced urban and rural locations, where
even now it is often irrelevant in meeting affordability requirements.
4.9 The scale of housing development required
to influence house prices and the impact of promoting such a programme
on the natural and historical environment and infrastructure provision
The South West part of the West Midlands Region
is overheated therefore adopting a Barker style solution would
be to build vast quantities of housing over South Warwickshire,
the Vale of Evesham and Worcestershire and this would be totally
unacceptable environmentally and in terms of sustainability. It
would accelerate out migration from the Conurbation requiring
the duplication of huge infrastructure provision that already
exists in the Conurbation and as detailed further in our response
(Appendix 2) WMRA doubts the approach would reduce house prices
and serve only to undermine our Regional Spatial Strategy. This
approach will also exacerbate the significant homelessness issues
faced by many urban local authorities.
4.10 The regional disparities in the supply
and demand for housing and how they might be tackled
The Regional Spatial Strategy and Regional Housing
Strategy are the West Midlands' solution approved by the Secretary
of State for re-shaping the market demand and social housing oversupply
and poor quality in the West Midlands. As mentioned previously
our concerns are that ODPM proposals will undermine our Strategies.
It is important to be aware of the very different
problems facing parts of the West Midlands Region, whose markets
are often described as mirroring those of the UK itself, ie high
demand, overheating and high affordability problems to the South
West of the Region and low demand and poor stock condition problems
in part of the Central and the Northern parts of the Region.
The research on Housing Market Areas accessible
via the weblink below will be of interest to the Committee in
response to this question.
www.wmra.gov.uk/page.asp?id=66
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