Housing and Regeneration Bill

I, too, support the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. Amendment No. 1A has come in at the last minute and has put back later amendments for which I was better prepared. My name is down to support an amendment to leave out ““and”” in an obscure part of the proceedings. I support all the amendments which contribute to raising the profile of design. The question is the extent to which the Homes and Communities Agency could use powers, if provided through this legislation, effectively to change the design of all the homes that will be built. I am sure that that starts at the point the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has started it; that is, on the board of the new agency, which takes us back one small step to the discussion of membership of the board. I should declare a past interest: I was the chief executive of what is now called the National Housing Federation—the former National Federation of Housing Associations—for many years, including the years when the Housing Corporation first came into its new form in 1973 ready for the 1974 Act and thereafter. I was consulted regularly on the membership of the board in relation to those people who might be said to represent in a loose way the housing associations. I wonder whether here, in relation to the suggestions made by the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, it is not a matter of compelling in legislation a list of organisations to be represented, but of an amendment to require consultation with a number of organisations whose interests should be represented. If that were the case, one of those organisations could well be the RIBA. This would ensure that someone selected—or suggested, if consultation there was—through the networks would champion a design perspective on the board. I declare an interest as an honorary fellow of the RIBA. Such a mechanism would ensure consultation. For 15 years I was consulted on a regular basis by whoever might be there from the housing association world, which was helpful, but it was never enshrined in legislation. One had to make all kinds of difficult judgments such as whether the position should be for a non-executive board member without a financial interest or for one of the great chief executives with a passion to be there. What kind of a person should it be? A consultative process in the Bill—which any sensible chair of the new organisation would go for—might bolster the HCA’s input on this side. As to the ways in which a power, let alone a duty, given to the HCA to take account of design might operate, an obligation in the Bill for the agency to take these matters on board could be a highly effective mechanism. Wherever, at its simplest level, it is making a grant, or wherever it is passing over money, the HCA would be able to specify the design qualities that must be taken into account. For example—we shall probably discuss this later—with the lifetime homes’ accessibility standards, which are so important, the HCA could insist that, in return for a grant, the full lifetime homes’ requirements are rolled out now, without waiting for the mechanisms that have been put in place to achieve the Government’s expectations for lifetime homes—in 2010 for housing associations and 2013 for builders. The HCA could get on with this through the mechanism of the grants if it had an obligation for design. The HCA will also have control of land. Because of EP’s way of working, it can insist that on land that has been assembled, acquired, reclaimed or remediated through its own powers, design factors should be taken into account in the development that follows. The HCA could also use the mechanism of Section 106 agreements. These require site developers to incorporate various matters in their projects and so, when the HCA is involved in a scheme which has a Section 106 agreement requiring affordable housing to be built alongside the housing for sale, it could insist on the same standards across the piece of the development. Design falls under different headings, which we will explore—sustainability may be encapsulated already in some of the other issues—but this is a foot in the door. The HCA could say to housebuilders, ““You have an agreement to provide 50 per cent affordable housing within your development as a whole; the rest may be for sale. We are insisting that, as we have some lien in this, 100 per cent of these homes satisfy the design criteria which we think is right for the development””. Affordable housing as well as other homes should meet the same standards. Why should the people who buy have lower standards than the people who come in through the social housing route? These amendments are for real. There are opportunities for the HCA to have some muscle in influencing directly the way in which a good proportion of the 3 million homes of tomorrow work their way through the pipeline.