Whatever this Bill is about, it is not about growth. I have the authority of the Prime Minister on that, as he said in May this year:
“If you could legislate your way to growth, obviously we would. The truth is you can’t.”
I am afraid that, as many hon. Members have said, it is about turning localism on its head and an utter centralisation of planning policy that has served us fairly well over the past sixty years. The question therefore is why the Government are doing it. I fear that this is about finding ways in which the rights and interests of local communities can be overridden in the interests of private profit and of vested interests. I will explain why I say that on the basis of my own experience. Given the time constraints, I will speak about clauses 1 and 5, with perhaps a digression on village greens if I have time.
I represent an area where the local authority already practises the policies that the Secretary of State would like to see in operation nationwide. That is not a coincidence; he describes Hammersmith and Fulham as the apple of his eye. The Government have already adopted many of the housing policies that that authority has set out. Near-market rents, no security of tenure, no obligation for permanent re-housing, little or no capital investment, and discrimination in allocations against those in housing need: all these policies were pioneered in Hammersmith and Fulham. Similarly, the two guiding principles of planning there are to make every decision on the side of the developer under the catch-all title “Open for business”, and to ensure that not a single new social housing unit is built in the area despite there being 10,000 people on the housing waiting list. One might describe this approach as a little pimping for developers on the one hand, and gerrymandering on the other, and both seem to be admirably reflected in clauses 1 and 5 of the Bill. We therefore have a warning of what is to come if these policies are adopted nationally. There is some irony in the fact that local authorities currently have huge discretion in being able to put into practice many of the things that the Bill aims to achieve.
There are three opportunity areas, primarily in my constituency, on which the local authority intends to construct 22,000 new homes—in one of London’s smallest and most densely populated boroughs. These are not sustainable homes. Generally speaking, two and three-storey Victorian or Edwardian houses, or similar, are being replaced with 30-plus-storey blocks of flats. The guiding principles are that not one of those 22,000 homes
should be a new social home for rent, that very few of them should be for families, and that very few should be for occupation—they are, in effect, investment properties that are principally advertised abroad. This is the developer’s agenda. These types of development, which replace affordable or low-rise housing, generate the maximum profit.
Let me give an example. The largest inner-urban development outside China is called Earl’s Court and West Kensington. It is an £8 billion development involving the demolition of 760 newly modernised affordable homes and the construction of 7,500 primarily luxury high-rise homes by Capital and Counties, a large property developer. That is a matter of such contention that there are already three judicial reviews under way or planned—on the consultation process, the planning process, and the viability issues. There is a Scotland Yard inquiry and a separate inquiry that is being run by the council’s chief executive into misconduct in public office on the basis that with the residents of the area having voted four to one against the new development, there are 22 witness statements saying that individuals were offered, as a bribe or an incentive, an early mover home in the new development in order to induce them to move. The local authority will receive £105 million as a capital receipt for giving vacant possession of an area in which 760 tenants, leaseholders and freeholders currently live. The development will take 20 years and there is no guarantee that it will ever be finished. It is being organised by shell companies, and in part by a company whose principal shareholders are the Kwok brothers, currently under arrest in Hong Kong. At best, thousands of my constituents will spend up to 20 years effectively living on a building site.
The Secretary of State talked about viability, but that cuts both ways. He meant, I believe, that local authorities are over-demanding when asking for affordable housing on sites, but equally we have the spectre of developers doing a deal and knowing that their final profit—particularly over a 20-year period—will be excessive. How do they maintain that position? They do it by ensuring that agreements contain confidentiality clauses that no one can see other than members of the council’s planning committee. Once the clauses have been viewed—under conditions of great security—members of the committee are not allowed to repeat what they have seen. Although an independent valuer suggested reappraising the public benefit, over a 20-year period, of the development I have mentioned, that was not reflected in the planning report. Members of the planning committee were not informed that that was the case, and the officer’s recommendation was to turn the suggestion down.
The Secretary of State has a role in that scheme, not just in planning call-in, but in approving a significant land sale. He has refused to meet me to discuss that, however, on the basis that the matter should be dealt with locally, and there is some irony there. In such cases, when developers snap their fingers, local authorities that take the same view as the Secretary of State in this Bill simply jump.
I wish to give three examples of how section 106 planning agreements have been renegotiated in my constituency. First, a 100-unit housing development near Hammersmith Broadway was given planning consent that included provision for 10% affordable housing. The
developer came back and said, “I’m sorry, we can’t afford any affordable housing in this development”, and the local authority said, “Yes, that’s fine.” The development was advertised not locally but in The Straits Times as a location between Heathrow and Harrods for people who wish to have a property in the UK. Clearly, the elimination of any affordable housing units in that area helped to ensure that the development was more prestigious and luxurious.
Secondly, several areas of affordable housing were granted as part of the planning consent for the Westfield development—a major shopping centre in my constituency. The first was built when there was still a Labour authority, and is an award-winning development of 80 affordable homes. The other two areas were returned to the developer in return for other benefits, because they were “not needed” in an area with 10,000 people on the housing waiting list. Thirdly, at the St George development at Imperial Wharf, another 250 properties—affordable rented homes in the main—were handed back to the developer because they were “not needed.”
That is what can happen under present legislation if the local authority wishes. Anyone who saw the front page of The Guardian today will have seen that thousands of people are being evicted from properties in London, and in some cases made to move hundreds of miles away because there is a shortage of affordable property. Last week, The Daily Telegraph ran a story that Hammersmith council, along with two neighbouring Conservative-controlled boroughs, wished to build a middle-class housing estate using the borrowing power it would obtain because of the value of its council housing stock. At the same time, that council is selling 300 properties on the open market and hopes to raise £100 million. The money is, in part, being used to assist developers to assemble sites by compulsory purchase, in order—again—to demolish affordable homes and build luxury homes on the site. I admit that is clever, but I do not see that it is either moral or the way in which planning policy should operate.
We do not have a lot of village greens in Shepherd’s Bush, but nevertheless the local authority wishes to “sweat the asset”—its own phrase—and build on public parks. In one case, it wanted to sell a third of a public park in Hammersmith to build a car park, a bar, and commercial sports pitches that would be unusable by local residents. We do, of course, have recourse to existing legislation. When the council tried to build on Shepherd’s Bush green, for example, a successful planning inquiry was held and because it was common land, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs had the final say and the Planning Inspectorate became involved. I do not claim that the power to designate something a village green is never misused, but it is one of the few weapons in the armoury of the David and Goliath battle that takes place every week and month between local residents and developers. I would, therefore, be loth to see it legislated away in this way.
Even without the heavy hand of central Government coming in on the side of the developer, current planning policy can still be used by bandit local authorities such as mine, and by dodgy developers, to ensure that local residents always come last. Any development that takes place is unsustainable and does not serve the interests of local residents, just those of private profit. It is a great regret that, as I said in my intervention, such things are done by a number of developers who are also significant
contributors to the Conservative party, and I believe that the Government have lost their way on the issue. They are putting residents last and developers first, and this Bill is another nail in that coffin.
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