Westminster Hall
Tuesday 3 November 2009
[Robert Key in the Chair]
Affordable Housing (Rural Areas)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.-(Kerry McCarthy.)
9.30 am
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Key. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to debate affordable housing in rural areas. I shall start on a controversial note, and say that I am happy to take on any Member, here or not, in defence of my assertion that Westmorland and Lonsdale is the most attractive constituency in the country.
It is my privilege to represent a vast part of the Lake district, large parts of the Yorkshire dales, and vast swathes of south Cumbria that are so attractive that they could not find a national park for them. I am a fourth-rate fell runner in those lands, and my normal running route takes me to the top of Heversham head. At that vantage point, I often stop to compose myself and take in the view. From there I can see nearly all of my patch. It is stunning. One can completely understand why people who have plenty of brass should choose to join us and move to the area. We are delighted that people should choose to move to our area, to work or to retire, but I put in a bid for today's debate because of my concern for those who have to move away. They go not out of choice but because they have no choice, and they leave communities much the poorer for their departure.
The average wage in South Lakeland, the district in which my constituency is based, is £19,000 a year. The average house price is just over £250,000. Responsible lenders give mortgages of up to three and a half times annual salary, but the average house price is 13 times the average wage. The average family is stuffed-I apologise, Mr. Key, if that is an unparliamentary word-when it comes to buying a home.
South Lakeland district council has 4,000 council properties and an extra 1,500 housing association homes to call upon. There is a waiting list with 4,000 names on it; it is growing all the time as a result of repossessions and the ever-widening gap between incomes and house prices. At that rate, most people on the list will never find a social rented property. I said that there were 4,000 council homes; once upon a time we had 13,000 in the South Lakeland area, but some clever so-and-so decided to sell them off without replacement. Council houses built for local families are now on the market for as much as £400,000. It is depressing, dare I say it, that we are 12 and a half years into-and very likely six months from the end of-a Labour Government, but have seen no action to undo the outrageous ideological assault made on rural communities by the last Conservative Government.
The lack of affordable housing exists nationwide, in urban as well as in rural areas, but the problems that affect rural Britain are acute, and they require action
specific to the needs of rural communities. The National Housing Federation reported in July that residents in rural areas faced the prospect of waiting more than a lifetime for new affordable homes. The report stated that rural housing waiting lists had hit a record level of 750,000. However, the rate at which new affordable homes are being built means that families in the 10 most challenged local authorities would have to wait an average of 90 years before getting a home, and in one case a staggering 280 years. That figure, of course, is academic, but it is none the less depressing.
For people like me who live in and have the privilege of representing part of rural Britain, it is clear that Government policy largely fails to address its specific needs and challenges. Hon. Members will, I am sure, be familiar with the Rural Coalition, which represents non-partisan groups such as the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the Country Land and Business Association. The Rural Coalition states:
"For 50 years or more, policy has undervalued the countryside and failed to meet the needs of rural communities...the result is starkly apparent. Rural communities have slowly but relentlessly become less and less sustainable and less and less self-sufficient."
I agree with that statement. As the Rural Coalition says, that is not just the result of the present Government's failure; it is a failure of government across the board over half a century. It falls to us to reverse that.
I return to South Lakeland's housing waiting list, which is 4,000 strong. Where do 4,000 families go while waiting for affordable homes? Well, they live in often overcrowded and inappropriate private rented accommodation. I was recently in Kendal knocking on doors and I came across a household of eight people-three families-squeezed into a two-and-a-half bedroom house. We have a hostel in Kendal that is clean and well run. It was built to provide temporary accommodation for young single people. Today, it is crammed to the gills with families, who are there indefinitely. It is heartbreaking.
Many of those 4,000 families simply disappear, especially the young ones, and the community loses its lifeblood as a result. What is more, the housing waiting list is just the tip of the iceberg; countless more families never apply to get on the list because they do not see the point. As a result of the affordable housing crisis, we in south Cumbria lose 30 per cent. of our young people each year, and they do not come back. The average age in Britain is 39, but in South Lakeland it is 50. That evidence shows that the community is losing its youth because it cannot house it.
The social rented option is the quickest and most reliable way of providing affordable homes, but it is not the only way. The council in South Lakeland has led the way by enabling the building of shared ownership and shared equity properties, and other affordable homes for purchase. However, as the recession bites, the very people for whom those homes were built are being excluded.
The village of Holme in my constituency recently gained a new development, yet several of the affordable homes built there stand empty because the banks, including those that the taxpayer now owns, refuse to give mortgages on properties with an affordability restriction on them. Those banks that will do so demand a minimum 30 per cent. deposit. If people could afford a 30 per cent. deposit, they would not be in the market for an affordable home. My first request is this: will the Minister agree to
ask the Chancellor to instruct the taxpayer-owned banks to lend responsibly, to ensure that people seeking to buy affordable homes are given the same mortgage deal as any other buyer?
I juxtapose the 4,000 families on the waiting list with the 6,000 or 7,000 properties in my constituency that lie empty for most of the year. I am talking, of course, about the real problem of excessive second home ownership in rural areas. I am not talking about holiday lets that add real value to the local tourism economy, but about properties that just lie empty for most of the year. I was in Chapel Stile in the Langdale valley the other day. The last time that a property in that village was bought by someone who actually chose to live there was 20 years ago. Every property bought since the 1980s was purchased as an investment, or a bolt hole. Meanwhile, local families look on in despair. Where are they meant to go? In Coniston, 50 per cent. of properties are second homes. In Dent, the figure is 50 per cent., and in Troutbeck it is about 60 per cent. In the Langdales it is around 70 per cent.
Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD): Does my hon. Friend accept that the knock-on effect is that such communities-I empathise with them; my constituency has similar problems-become seasonal service providers? As a result, the banks shut, the post offices shut and many stores and other shops shut, which means a worse quality of life for those who are able to stay in those communities.
Tim Farron: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I shall refer to the problem in a moment. Many of the rural communities that I represent-like those represented by my hon. Friend-are seasonal communities when it comes to the provision of services. Many permanent residents are older and disconnected from services. In one village-I shall not name it today-the closure of the post office, which was the last all-year-round service in that community, effectively meant that half a dozen older individuals whom I can think of ceased to be able to live independently. They then needed a care package, and have had to move out of the village over the past year or two, because there is no longer the infrastructure needed to look after them throughout the year. The cost of that to the taxpayer-unseen, of course-is much greater than the cost of ensuring that proper services remain available.
It is an outrageous tragedy that local families should be forced out of the community in which they grew up simply because the two-up, two-down cottage in the village is sold for an inflated price to a Mancunian barrister, a London banker or, as happened on one recent occasion, a Government Minister. It is not that I have anything against such people, but when someone's right to a second home compromises someone else's right to buy a first, I know on whose side I am.
As my hon. Friend mentioned, the impact of excessive second home ownership on the community as a whole is immense. Every community can absorb a few second homes, but beyond a certain level, the very sustainability of the community is threatened. In the village of Satterthwaite in my constituency, more than half the houses are simply not lived in. Demand for the local bus service, the post office and the school sunk to such a
low level that all of them were lost. It is now three years since Satterthwaite lost its primary school. The tragic irony is that the old school is being converted into seven affordable homes. If there had been seven affordable homes three years ago, the school would never have closed.
Given the damage that excessive second home ownership does in rural communities, through lost services and inflated house prices, will the Minister consider allowing local authorities to end the council tax subsidy that we pay to second home owners, and consider allowing them to set a higher council tax level for those with second homes in areas where second home ownership has become excessive and detrimental? Will she then allow those local authorities to plough that money into the creation of affordable homes for local people? My local authority has made an excellent start in that area. Members will know that second home owners automatically get a 50 per cent. discount on their council tax, but councils now have the power to reduce that discount to 10 per cent. I should say something positive here: I congratulate the Government on introducing that power some years ago.
In South Lakeland, the council has used the additional funds that that extra 40 per cent. has brought in to provide grants of up to £30,000 a time to encourage farmers and housing associations to get together and convert disused and underused farm buildings into affordable homes. The council has also varied its planning policy to allow such conversions to take place. With Government support, that scheme, which we call "Home on the Farm", could allow hundreds of families to be housed affordably in rural areas, and would breathe new life into rural communities. Will the Minister agree to back the scheme, so that we can build thousands of affordable homes across rural Britain, in the backyards of people who actively want them there?
On top of the issue of excessive second home ownership, there is the additional problem of properties that are used not rarely, but never. Those empty properties should be brought back into use. Will the Minister strengthen the powers of councils across the country, and provide them with the resources forcibly to bring those houses into use as affordable homes for rent?
In Haverthwaite, 20 homes on a newly developed site are lying empty because the firm of developers collapsed. We should have the power and the resources to bring such properties into public use at once. Will the Minister allow South Lakeland district council to do so? Over the past four years, South Lakeland has put an end to the annual net loss of social rented properties by building new affordable homes. It was a great honour to cut the ribbon around the five new housing association homes in Hawkshead. South Lakeland council has already met its housing target for 2012 and is now going on to meet the needs of some of the 4,000 people who are still waiting to be housed. However, most of those developments have happened despite Government policy, and not because of it. As many hon. Members will know, we are forced to go through the processes of the Government's dictatorial and counter-productive regional spatial strategies, when we should be empowering local communities to build homes with community backing.
In the 1980s, Michael Heseltine referred to planning as DADA-decide, announce, defend, abandon. The regional spatial strategies are a recipe for more and
more DADA. Will the Minister agree to scrap the regional spatial strategies and give the communities the power to create the homes that they need, in the places where they are needed? Do not doubt that we will build the homes that are needed. In South Lakeland, we have proved that we are not nimbys, but imbyps-"in my backyard, please."
To that end, I applaud the Government's decision to give a small amount of funding to help the establishment of community land trusts; £500,000 was announced in August. However, given the value that community land trusts can have in freeing up land for the development of affordable housing and in ensuring that local people have control over the allocation of such housing, should the Government not take a more proactive role in making the community land trusts a substantial and regular part of the armoury when it comes to providing affordable homes, rather than allowing them to be the rarities that they are? What about backing organisations such as the Cumbria Rural Housing Trust, which is leading the way in providing advice and support to community land trusts? Such trusts are struggling financially, largely because of the Government's withdrawal of support for the rural housing enabler scheme. Will the Minister agree to consider ways in which we can strengthen such organisations, as they have done so much to win community support for what might otherwise have been controversial housing schemes? The lack of affordable housing in rural areas is only half the problem; the other half is the lack of well-paid work.
Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire) (LD): I congratulate my hon. Friend on his erudite and insightful speech. Does he agree that the issues that he raises are common to areas such as mid-Wales and Montgomeryshire? On house building, has he investigated the work of certain companies, including J-Ross Developments in my vicinity, which have introduced the impressive concept of modular house building? That means that we can have very high quality and environmentally friendly houses for relatively low prices.
Tim Farron: I do not know the company that my hon. Friend mentions, but I am familiar with modular housing as a concept, and with companies in my area that are trying to push ahead with it. We must look very carefully, particularly in national parks and areas of national or international beauty, at how we can strike a balance between attractive properties and affordable homes. We need to make some compromises. In my constituency in the Lake district and the dales, we are always delighted to have visitors, but how likely are people to visit such communities if those communities are dead? We must find ways of building homes that are affordable to the builder and, therefore, to the buyer.
Lembit Öpik: Just to reassure my hon. Friend, the modular constructions that I have in mind are of high quality, and are attractive, too. Perhaps at some point outside the debate, I can introduce him to those ideas, because they may go some way towards providing a solution to his problem.
Tim Farron:
If my hon. Friend has a chance later today, I should like to discuss the matter with him. He is absolutely right. Many of the homes in my constituency have been built affordably. The recent developments in
Hawkshead, and the Northern Affordable Homes development in Kirkby Lonsdale, were built affordably but to a very high specification, and they are very attractive homes that will stand the test of time.
I will finish in a moment, Mr. Key, but let me touch on the other side of the problem, which is the need for well-paid work to enable people to live in and sustain their families in rural communities. The Government must look to rural Britain as an engine room of creativity, on many fronts. The right hon. and learned Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), when Minister with responsibility for renewable energy, kindly met me, and representatives of the business community in Cumbria, to discuss our attempts to create a new, green business park for the renewables industry near Kendal. If successful, that would create 900 jobs in south Cumbria. The Government must get behind such schemes and be imaginative about ways in which we can exploit the hydro energy industry.
What better way to boost local economies and provide the homes that rural families are crying out for than to scrap the artificial barriers that prevent the building of new local authority housing, so that councils can respond seamlessly and without delay and bureaucracy to the needs of their communities? The Minister has six months to undo this most appalling hangover of Thatcherism. Will she ensure that her name goes down in history as the one who made that happen?
I started off by mentioning the national parks, which were created by a Labour Government who wanted to preserve the countryside for the benefit of the whole nation and ensure that our most beautiful places were accessible to working people. The problem today is that a combination of Government ignorance of the challenges faced by rural Britain and the continuation of a doggedly free-market, laissez-faire approach to the development and protection of affordable housing has led to a situation in which people on middle and low incomes are being squeezed out of those beautiful places.
I want the countryside to be accessible to all, and it should be home to those on modest incomes, as well as those who are wealthy. I want a countryside with balanced, thriving communities of young and old. We will not achieve that if we continue as we are. As I said, the Government must tackle the problem of affordable housing in urban and rural areas. They must understand that rural areas have significantly different problems, when it comes to providing affordable homes, and that we therefore need significantly different solutions.
9.49 am
Mr. David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op): I am delighted to take part in this debate, which is on a subject that seems to be debated regularly. Hopefully, we will make some progress today.
I certainly agree with the analysis of the problem by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), although I have some slightly different solutions to those that he put forward. Nevertheless, many of the solutions will cross over.
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