My Lords, I beg to move this amendment standing in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Bakewell and to speak to Amendment 13. I have been listening to the debate with great interest, both today and earlier in Committee, and I have three key concerns about this part of the Bill. The first is that starter homes, notwithstanding the attempts being made by the Government to change the definition, are simply not affordable homes. All the evidence from Shelter and others shows that they will be out of reach for most middle-income families.
My second concern is that starter homes will largely be built instead of, rather than as well as, the affordable homes that would previously have been built under Section 106 agreements. If enacted, the Bill will see the end of truly affordable housebuilding in this country. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, put it, we are robbing Peter to pay Paul because over the last 10 years, planning obligations such as Section 106 have helped to deliver some 250,000 genuinely affordable homes for purchase and rent. This will cease if the planning obligations are abolished and replaced with a starter home-only obligation.
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The Minister will of course argue that we have not yet seen the regulations which will set out the percentage of starter homes that local authorities will be required to deliver on different-sized sites and in different areas. I suspect she will argue that we cannot claim that there will be a starter home-only obligation. But we know, as already discussed during our deliberations on Amendment 8, that it is the Government who want to impose the number of starter homes on each site. They have already consulted on the 20% figure, which we have heard about. We also know that they acknowledge, as the impact assessment makes clear, that:
“This may reduce or alter the mix of affordable housing provided which could impact on those individuals seeking affordable housing”.
The Government themselves acknowledge that this is going to change the whole nature of the mix of different tenures and so on. If the figure of 20% starter homes goes ahead, it is clear that there will be very little remaining scope for other forms of genuinely affordable housing. It will, in effect, mean a starter homes-only obligation.
My third concern is that local discretion is being trampled over and the vital role of local plans ignored. Local plans are vital so that councils can ensure truly integrated communities, in which new houses are built with a range of tenures and prices for rent and for purchase. Additionally, they ensure the sustainability of such integrated communities, so that alongside new housing there is the appropriate infrastructure—from shops, schools and GP surgeries to roads and public transport. Achieving such sustainable, integrated communities has required the judicious use of Section 106 agreements and, more recently, community infrastructure levies. If developers are exempted from the community infrastructure levy and from some aspects of Section 106, the planned 200,000 starter homes will place additional pressures on local schools, roads and other infrastructure, creating an additional non-funded burden for already hard-pressed local councils.
I note that the Government acknowledge this in the Explanatory Memorandum and the impact assessment; they say that it will be reflected in the new burdens principle. When the Minister sums up, I wonder whether she might say a little more about how that will be reflected when we get the local government finance settlement towards the end of the year.
These two amendments are ways of trying to mitigate the concerns I have expressed, but it is genuinely difficult to get to grips with what the Government’s plans for Section 106 and the community infrastructure levy really are. In relation to starter homes on exceptional sites, the impact assessment is totally silent. It was left to a later ministerial Statement by the Minister, Brandon Lewis, to say what was to happen. He said that,
“local planning authorities should not seek section 106 affordable housing and tariff-style contributions on Starter Homes; and they should be exempt from the Community Infrastructure Levy ”.
While he said that local planning authorities will be able to seek other forms of Section 106 contributions to mitigate the impact of the development, he also said that tariff-based contributions to general infrastructure pots will not be permissible. The impact assessment makes it clear that this approach will apply to starter homes on conventional housing sites.
The claim by Mr Brandon Lewis that the process of agreeing planning obligations would change little as a result of the Bill is therefore certainly not one that I share, nor is it shared by many experts; nor is his further claim that the mix of tenures contained in Section 106 agreements would remain a matter for negotiations between town halls and developers. If it is the Government who are going to impose a percentage of starter homes on a site and restrict community infrastructure levies and Section 106 obligations, then things will change significantly more than a little—as Mr Lewis put it—and town hall negotiations with developers will be very seriously curtailed.
These two amendments, in different ways, seek to do something similar to Amendment 8, which is to return power to our local councils. The Minister said that she has confidence in local councils, so I hope she is confident that they will use the opportunities of Section 106 judiciously. They want to get houses built, and will want to get starter homes built as well as other forms of housing, but they will also want to be able to carry out their duties as local planning authorities to plan for sustainable, mixed development. They will not be able to do that if the restrictions in the Bill in relation to Section 106, for example, go ahead. I beg to move.