Housing and Regeneration Bill

moved Amendment No. 1A: 1A: Schedule 1, Page 148, line 12, after ““HCA”” insert ““(including design)”” The noble Lord said: In speaking to Amendment No. 1A, I will also speak to the other amendments in this group, because they are all intended to promote good design in social housing. I am grateful to the Royal Institute of British Architects for its stimulus and assistance in formulating these amendments and declare my interest as an honorary fellow of the RIBA. I am also grateful for the encouragement from Members on all sides of the Committee for holding this debate on design at an early stage of Committee proceedings and I am most grateful to noble Lords, again from all sides of the Committee, who added their names to the amendments that I have tabled. That is a reflection that all of us recognise that design is important. I do not think that it is a party-political issue. That was evident in the debates that we held at Second Reading and on architecture and planning on 27 March. Amendment No. 1A, which would amend Schedule 1, would require the Secretary of State to appoint to the board of the Homes and Communities Agency a person with experience of and capacity in design. I suppose that the distinction between experience and capacity is between experience and ability—both seem desirable. Amendments Nos. 29 and 32 would amend the objects of the HCA to include the improvement of design quality in new housing. Amendment No. 47 to Clause 5 would require the HCA to use its powers to provide housing and land to contribute, "““to high quality design in the built environment””." Amendment No. 95 to Clause 39 would enable the Secretary of State to require the HCA to supply information drawn from post-occupancy analysis to help make it normal practice that design should be evaluated by asking the residents of these homes what their experience of the design has been. Amendment No. 97 to Clause 49 would enable the Secretary of State to require the HCA to provide that applications for housing provided by it or facilitated by it should be submitted to design review in the planning process. We have debated the importance of design very fully in our recent debates and I will not repeat the arguments that I put forward. Noble Lords from all sides of the Chamber were eloquent about the damage caused by poor design and the importance of good design to quality of life and value for money. Nobody was more eloquent in contributing to those debates on this matter than my noble friend the Minister. It has also been profoundly encouraging that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the right honourable Hazel Blears, gave a speech at CABE recently in which she powerfully articulated the importance of good design, insisting that new homes should be ““not brutal, but beautiful””, as she put it. The Government intend that 3 million new homes should be built in this country by 2020. Already, we have planning policy statements 1 and 3 and many other statements of different status from Ministers, making it clear that they expect good and indeed very good design to be the norm in new housing development. They are fully aware how crucial it is that we do not repeat the errors made in previous decades—that we do not create a new generation of slums for the future—in our haste to achieve this ambitious home-building programme. The Government have already stipulated that lifetime home standards should be achieved in publicly funded housing by 2011 and it is their aspiration that this should be achieved in all new housing by 2013. They have also stipulated that new homes should be carbon-neutral by 2016. So they have already made important commitments in those aspects of design. If the quest for good design is motherhood and apple pie, my noble friend may reasonably ask, why do we need to legislate? If we were to include these amendments in the Bill, would they be workable? She is also entitled to ask whether they would achieve anything worth while. Needless to say, it is my view that we should legislate to reinforce our drive towards good design. There can only be benefit in using this legislation to reinforce the values and guidance that have been expressed in the planning policy statements. There will otherwise be a wide gulf between the aspirations of Ministers in Whitehall and practice and decision-making on the ground. Of course it is not appropriate for central government to specify particular designs or to interfere everywhere in the detail of decision-making, but I believe that it is right that we should require in legislation that appropriate people are in place and that procedures are followed that will conduce to good design. These amendments would ensure that there would be people in key positions in relation to social housing and regeneration who had serious knowledge of and commitment to design; that in its methods of working and decision-taking the Homes and Communities Agency, which will be under many conflicting pressures, should constantly bear in mind the importance of design; that the minds of independent, knowledgeable, public-spirited people would be brought to bear through design review, making for best practice and for the continuous raising of standards; and that the views of the people who will have lived in these homes should be properly taken into account by the HCA and social housing providers so that they should continuously be learning and improving the quality of provision. These amendments are reasonable, workable and down to earth. I have no reason to suppose that the HCA would not welcome a strengthening of its arm through this legislation. Those of us who had the privilege of meeting Sir Bob Kerslake, at the meeting that the Minister so helpfully organised for us last week, heard him expressing himself imaginatively and constructively in relation to design. There is no doubt that the predecessor organisations—the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships—have in recent years and, in the case of English Partnerships, when my noble friend Lady Ford was chairing the organisation, committed themselves to better design. However, they may well have encountered resistance because housing providers find themselves under many conflicting pressures. Therefore, it is important that the HCA should be enabled through this legalisation to insist rather than simply exhort that there should be high design quality. Unless we legislate, there is no guarantee that these things will happen. My noble friend may possibly take the view that my amendments are too vaguely worded or might lay the HCA or other providers open to judicial review. If that should be the case, I hope that she will be able to improve the drafting. I contend that by introducing the expression ““design quality”” I have made the definition of the objects of the HCA rather more specific than the Government have in the unqualified use of the word ““quality””. It could be argued that ““sustainability”” is a fairly loose term, and other terms that we are familiar with in legislation—““equality””, to take an example from a different field—are generalised terms but we know what we are talking about. Design in this context is a term of art. It is code, if you like, but it is very well understood in its purport by professionals in the fields of architecture, planning, housebuilding, traffic engineering and landscape design, and a considerable quantity of documentation has been promulgated by DCLG and CABE defining the principles of good design, producing illustrations of how those principles are to be applied, proposing best practice and establishing expectations of the relevant professions. The Government cannot do it all by themselves. They have relatively few levers with which to promote good design. The ability and motivation of professionals will probably be more important than anything else. I wish that the professions in question—the architects, surveyors, planners and engineers—would agree a foundation design curriculum common to the formation of these different professions before they diverge into their specialisms. As it is, each professional institute has its own accredited programme for initial education. It is true that efforts are being made to build in interdisciplinarity, and I am encouraged that there is a pilot model for a curriculum on urban design, which has been funded by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, with the RTPI, the RIBA, the Landscape Institute, the IDA and the Prince’s Fund, as well as the Academy for Sustainable Communities coming together, with the University of Strathclyde taking the lead academically. But that work is intended to design post-qualification studies. It would be enormously helpful if we could have a common curriculum for these various professionals as they learn their trade, their art and their profession, so that they would understand each other better and more of them would have a more highly developed awareness of the nature of good design and its importance. The fruits of that, if it were to happen, would be as important as anything that the Government could do—although, of course, the Government could continue to play a useful part. The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and HEFCE could continue to incentivise and encourage that kind of work. Meanwhile, we here in Parliament must do what we can. This important legislative opportunity is a prime occasion for us to add to the levers available. I commend the amendments to the Committee and I beg to move.