My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord German, for initiating this debate. I am grateful to the Minister for his time on Monday, together with the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. I declare my property interests, as set out in the register.
As we have already heard, PDR is a complex subject which is not easily understood. It was conceived to bring back into use otherwise redundant office buildings, thereby reducing blight and increasing the housing stock. To do so quickly, it bypassed the planning process. As with many short cuts, it came at a price—a price which planning officers and their departments could do nothing about.
Reports written over the past two years or so by the RICS, by architects Levitt Bernstein, and by Shelter have illustrated a lot of the problems. In short, the provision of some of the worst housing seen in Britain for decades came through PDR mark 1—if that is the right way to describe it: crushingly small flats lacking adequate daylight, with windows out of position for suitable residential use, designed to squeeze the maximum number of bed-sits into a given floor area, cramming in as many rent payers as possible with little regard for the quality of life, mental health or general well-being of the people there. The image of a modern Rachman comes to mind. Let us avoid these well-documented mistakes; it is never too late. As we have heard, the forthcoming business and planning legislation is certainly the right place to deal with this.
The rights of leaseholders have also been touched on. I am not going to dwell on these, though I think others will. However, with additional floors added to occupied properties, there will be nuisance, breach of quiet enjoyment, issues of adequacy of lifts and services, and future service charge issues. Many landlords will negotiate with their tenants—they are the responsible ones. Others will not. It is likely to become a minefield of legislation and only a small percentage of tenants will be able to afford it. There is no regulation of landlords, no minimum standards and no best practice of building management. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, mentioned Section 106 agreements. Local authorities do not even get those, though they do have a greater involvement than with PDR mark 1. There is no contribution from developers, notwithstanding the super profits handed to them by government through this arrangement.
Finally, this PDR will lead to further abuses, if not checked now. It is important to learn the lessons from PDR mark 1. This proposal may add a few flats to the housing stock, but potentially at a great social cost.
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