It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George). I echo what he said about the bedroom tax, not only because of its effect on those it directly affects, but because of the attitude that it shows to the 8 million people in this country who live in social housing, which is that they are effectively second-class citizens so far as the Government are concerned. I am sorry that so many of his colleagues voted for the bedroom tax, although he did not, which is entirely to his credit.
The hon. Gentleman’s constituency is very different from mine, and I hope he will not mind if I move the subject on to London, where housing problems are writ large and are intensifying. We see that in every indication, from the gap between housing demand and supply—the gap in London is some 30% of the gap in England as a whole—to rough sleeping, which has gone up 75% in London over the past three years; that is more than twice the increase in the rest of the country. It is tempting to say that the problems are too difficult to solve, and that house building should therefore take place in areas where land values are cheaper. I am well aware of that, because the median rent for a three-bedroom property in my constituency is £550 a week, which is more than the average London wage. The average purchase price for any property is approaching £750,000, which is completely unaffordable even for those on several times the average income.
Why have to address those problems, including in central London, because Government policy—and certain local policies, too—has intensified them. Local housing allowance for three-bedroom properties has been capped at £340. That is supposed to cover the bottom third of rents, but the valuation office’s up-to-date figures tell us that the lower quartile of rents in Hammersmith for a three-bedroom property is £459. The net effect of the change, and indeed of all the other changes the Government have made to benefits policy, is that it is almost impossible to find any property in the private sector that would be covered by housing benefit. We have therefore had an exodus—a process of social cleansing—that has forced people who, in many cases, have lived in London for generations out of the city, and away from where their homes, schools, jobs and families are.
That was intensified by a deliberate policy. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) for mentioning what happened at the local election in Hammersmith, which was a breath of fresh air to almost everyone who lives in the area. There was a deliberate demolition of council properties. Whole blocks of 200 or 300 good-quality council properties were held empty for six or seven years before being demolished to be handed to the private sector. Council properties were sold off as they became empty. Over the past four or five years, 500 homes have been sold that could have been used by families on the waiting list, had the waiting list not also been abolished.
I cannot understand the mentality of the Government or local councils, who want to exacerbate an already serious housing problem. I am therefore delighted that a Labour council came in, and the first thing it did on the day after the election was to cancel the demolitions and the sales. The first thing the council did at the first cabinet meeting was to say, “From now onwards we will again prioritise social rented housing, which for eight years has been excluded from the types of housing that could be constructed.”
I want to be a bit more optimistic, and talk about how we can achieve decent affordable housing in high-value areas. Our local plan envisages 50,000 new properties being built over a 20-year period. That is perhaps slightly over-ambitious, if anything, and somewhat unwise, in the sense that it means demolishing hospitals to build housing on their sites. I think that is somewhat short-sighted.
There are three opportunity areas in Hammersmith and Fulham. One is on the site that will be used for High Speed 2; it is envisaged that 24,000 new homes will be built there. The second is in White City, on the site vacated by the BBC, where it is envisaged that 6,000 properties will be built. The third is in the Earls Court and West Kensington area, where it is envisaged that 8,000 properties will be built. The problem is that under existing policies, not a single one of those almost 40,000 properties will be a social rented home. Clearly that will change with the planning policy, but many planning consents have already been given.
I draw attention to two facts. First, across London, and probably outside London, too, developers are relying on viability assessments, which are confidential documents that are not disclosed to the public, or even to councillors on most occasions. Developers typically say that they can afford to build 5% or 10% affordable housing at 80% market sale or 80% market rent. Every time that
has been challenged and taken to the Information Commissioner, the documents have eventually been revealed. In the case of Earls Court, for example, we had to go to not only the Information Commissioner but the first-tier tribunal. It was only at that point that the local authorities gave in. Guess what? The viability assessments did not support the idea that there should be little or no affordable housing in those developments.
Secondly, much of these developments are on public land in the widest sense. If they are not on council-owned land or Government-owned land, they are on land owned by the BBC, Network Rail or Transport for London. If we cannot build decent affordable housing on publicly owned land, we are saying to developers, “In those cases, you can also get away with building 95% market housing.” In inner London, that means that properties are for sale abroad, off-plan. Most properties currently being built in my constituency are advertised on websites in the far east, Russia and elsewhere. One-bedroom and two-bedroom properties begin at £1 million-plus. Those properties are not affordable to anyone, by any means, which is why there is effectively a coalition between those who need social rented homes and those who could afford quite a lot on the private market. All my constituents say to me, “When will the Government act to ensure that houses are built that are affordable for the people who live and pay taxes in this country?”