My Lords, I support the noble Lords, Lord Tope and Lord Jenkin, and pledge the Local Government Association’s support. Is its support stronger than that of London Councils? It is equal to that from London Councils.
I talked at Second Reading about the growing national housing deficit. I was trying to get into common parlance the idea that, every year, we are building up a bigger and bigger deficit. We are adding another 100,000 homes a year to the deficit that we already have because we are building at least 100,000 less than we should. We must do something dramatic to try to turn the deficit into a positive.
Local authorities are sitting on assets against which they could borrow. A lot of housing associations have run out of space to borrow any more, and they have used up the opportunity to borrow against the properties that they own. Many local authorities have plenty of headroom to borrow more against that security. This is prudential borrowing that will be repaid out of rents. It is not frightening to overseas investors and bankers to see another £7.4 billion, which is the amount estimated by the report Let’s Get Building, produced by John Perry from the Chartered Institute of Housing. Over a period of five years, £7.4 billion is not enough to frighten the horses but it would produce 12,000 homes a year—60,000 homes in all. That is about 5% of what we need each year, but it is about 10% more than we currently provide. That is one relatively dramatic way in which, without any subsidy, we could get at least a few thousand more homes built every year.
I chaired a commission for the LGA and the Department for Communities and Local Government called Easing Housing Shortages: The Role of Local Authorities, which sent me around to see what local authorities had been doing. Were they up to it? Did they have any sites on which they could develop? They were using what was called local authority new-build funding, and I saw how councils can demolish those garages on the end of the site and put in 14 bungalows, perhaps, for elderly people, who can then move out of underoccupied council housing into those bungalows, thereby releasing 14 family houses on the council estate. It is creative action; the land is already there; the garages do not get used any more; it is a place where people congregate for nefarious purposes—everyone is delighted to see the development. Local authorities could get on with schemes of this kind up and down the land. I support this amendment.