Housing and Regeneration Bill

My Lords, I am delighted to welcome the Bill. We had not been building enough housing for 35 years. More decent homes are one of our most pressing social priorities. By ““decent””, we should understand ““well designed””, within the sustainable development of thriving communities, whose facilities, infrastructure and institutions make for safe and satisfying places. A house by itself is not necessarily a home. A home is a place to live, with all that that means. I shall speak about where design comes in in the making of homes out of houses. I shall also welcome the provisions that will enable Gypsies and Travellers to have security of tenure. The new organisation, the Homes and Communities Agency, will do much to create decent homes. It has almost all of the right objectives and considerable powers. Among its objectives, I focus on, "““to improve the supply and quality of housing””," and regeneration. It will absorb the former Urban Regeneration Agency and the former Commission for the New Towns, as well as English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation. It will be the major national agent in delivering the central but ambitious target of 3 million homes by 2020, conforming to enlightened environmental standards. None of that can be achieved without high standards of design. It is not a case of not allowing numbers to squeeze out quality, it is that sufficient numbers can simply not be managed without good design. The HCA will be the facilitator and it must set out from the outset clear and consistent expectations about the importance of design. It must, of course, have the capacity to deliver the quality commitment. How is the design imperative factored in to the operations of the HCA? It would send the right signal to give it a statutory duty to ensure the design quality of new housing in England within its remit, and to add a parallel duty on those who consider planning applications. That would give local planning authorities greater confidence in refusing planning applications on design grounds and encourage them to entrench design quality into their decision-making processes, rather as the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act places a duty on those exercising planning functions to do so with the objective of contributing to sustainable development. Sustainability, following amendments in the other place, is far more buttoned down in this legislation than is attention to design quality. Secondly, the commitments to housing design quality built into English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation must be maintained and appropriately strengthened. They are that all development on HCA land must meet at least 14 of the 20 ““Building for Life”” criteria developed by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, better regarded as the national standard for design quality in new housing developments; and that all grants made are dependent on at least those 14 being met. Thirdly, development on HCA land or funded by it should be subject to independent expert review to ensure that what is built properly implements the Government’s own excellent design policies, such as planning policy statement 3. Probably the most effective way to bring that about would be to ensure the right funding for regional design panels. At present, there is a fair amount variation in their quality and capacity. Two regions, the North-East and Yorkshire and Humber, do not have a panel at all. The HCA will have a regional organisation, so it would make sense to match its role with an immediate and high-impact design entity. I hope that my noble friend, who has shown herself to be a friend of good design, will also consider encouraging local design review panels to be available. Design consideration might then be embedded in the system wherever applications were judged, for villages as well as for cities and towns. The president of RIBA, Sunand Prasad, has tellingly said that, "““design is about much more than aesthetics ... It attracts people, investment and activity to places and brings social, environmental and health benefits. It must, therefore, be one of the most important considerations in housing””." The Calcutt review asked for a nationwide system of design review for house building. I hope that my noble friend can assure us that that will be taken forward. Will my noble friend also think again about space standards? England and Wales are the only countries in the EU that have no minimum space standards for housing. English Partnerships has just decided to introduce them for its land, and it would be a great pity if that improvement were lost in the transition to the HCA. I saw at Consort Road, public housing at the Southwark end of Peckham, the extraordinary impact on the attractiveness of social housing made by appropriately generous space dimensions. Following amendments in the other place, how will attention to design be incorporated into the regulation of rented social housing, with the Secretary of State’s new power to direct accommodation quality? Finally, Clause 316 at last provides that Gypsies and Travellers will have the same protection against eviction as any other mobile home-site dweller. I congratulate the Government on this far-sighted and fair provision, which will enable children to continue at school, sick people to have consistent medical care, and families to have that ordinary contractual security in their home afforded by law and enshrined as a human right, which is part of the fabric of our society but which has been denied hitherto to a whole community. It will be beneficial for such sites, together with sites owned by registered providers, to be within the remit of the regulator. It may be that more consultation needs to take place about the nature of the tenancy agreements, perhaps with a model agreement promulgated. We still need to go further in equal treatment in granting planning permission, whether or not the Gypsy or Traveller has a nomadic lifestyle. The very welcome site-licensing scheme envisaged by my honourable friend lain Wright will also be necessary to deter unscrupulous site managers. Perhaps residents should also have the right to take site disputes to the courts rather than to the site owners’ choice of arbitrator. But these are for later debates. Meanwhile, I congratulate the Government on this most promising and deeply needed legislation.