Debate on the Address

My Lords, we on these Benches welcome the increase in new house-building proposed in the Housing and Regeneration Bill. We hope and believe that this proposed new housing will begin to address the shortage that has been allowed to build up—some believe deliberately—over the past 20 years, resulting in average house price inflation in excess of 20 per cent a year over that 20-year period. The result is that housing today is unaffordable for many people. Many in your Lordships’ House will have children and grandchildren who simply cannot afford to buy a new house in the place that they want to live. The average first-time buyer’s house in England costs £154,693, according to the Nationwide Building Society. In London, the average is £260,244, and in the south-west of England it is £163,773. These are all more than five times the average gross income of first-time buyers, and it means that only those with high incomes or substantial deposits are able to consider buying their own house. Therefore, we very much welcome the projected increase in what has been called social house-building to 45,000 new homes a year by 2010. This will begin to address the enormous shortage of supply for families who are unable to afford the market price for houses and it will at least begin to offer hope to the 1.6 million families who are currently on council house waiting lists. It is vital that new houses are constructed to meet identified need, rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all policy. Of course we need homes for single people and young couples but, in particular, we must consider the needs of families. As many as 500,000 families, including a million children, live in overcrowded housing, which has a major impact on children’s ability to prosper at school. All of this can and does seriously affect their performance in later life. As the Bishop of a largely rural diocese, I think it is particularly important that rural areas are not overlooked in any new house-building programme. All this is profoundly true in the south-west, where housing has been shown to be the least affordable across the whole country. The area is made up of people on comparatively low incomes, often attached to seasonal employment. In Cornwall, this is made more difficult by the fact that, county wide, 10 per cent of houses are second homes—the highest proportion in the United Kingdom. In certain parts of the county, particularly on the north coast, the percentage is much higher; some parishes have 50 to 60 per cent second homes. This means that local people simply cannot afford to live in the area in which they were born and brought up. It is not for nothing that the area around Polzeath is known as ““Fulham and Chelsea-on-Sea””. The Rural Housing Commission does not realise, even yet, the seriousness of the situation. The problem will not come in the future, it is with us now. It is breaking up rural communities as well as families, as younger families are simply being forced to leave, causing bitterness and division. Ultimately, this may lead to the death—as we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Roberts—of rural communities. This is already particularly noticeable where there are small village schools threatened with closure. Often, too, people with essential jobs—police officers, firefighters, nurses and teachers—simply cannot afford to live in these rural areas. They are all ultimately needed if we are to sustain an organic community in the way suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts. A solution to the lack of affordable housing in rural areas might be the widespread adoption of community land trusts, which have been developed so that housing can be kept for the benefit of the community rather than sold for a profit. The Church of England, like other landowners, has an essential role—a duty—to bring forward land for development. The organisation Housing Justice is currently working with the Arthur Rank Centre and others to develop ways in which church land can be more easily used for the provision of affordable housing. We all know that there are profound divisions of opinion over the green belt and its place in planning. However, it is clear that there must be vigorous debate in which all the issues and priorities are understood and appreciated by as many people as possible. We welcome plans to make new housing more environmentally friendly, because we have a duty to be good stewards and care for the environment. Because of this, we must improve the existing housing stock and ensure that everything is done to make it more environmentally friendly. We hope that people already living in this housing stock can be given incentives to improve their own homes in ways that make them more eco-friendly. On their own, however, good new houses are not enough. The necessary infrastructure must be thought about and developed at the same time as the housing, as we have already heard. We must understand that, if we are going to help to create sustainable, organic communities, there need to be facilities such as schools, medical centres, shops, pubs, halls and churches; all of them are an essential part of the whole enterprise and cannot be added later as a kind of afterthought. As we are thinking about sustainable communities and new housing, we must simultaneously consider—as we have heard once this evening—the needs of Gypsies and Travellers, who are on the edge of all sorts of communities and are often misunderstood and even hated. Perhaps there needs to be a real effort to address their needs, and the Government could take a lead in encouraging local authorities to carry out their duties to assess need and find appropriate sites. In other words, this is a good curate’s egg.