My Lords, I shall speak also to my Amendment 213 and Amendment 504GJA in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock, and will also speak in support of Amendment 274A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. Amendment 208 simply tries to ensure that the important roles of SMEs in our communities are recognised; that we incorporate in Schedule 7 a provision for plan-making authorities to include specific provision for small-site opportunities for SMEs.
I have some great figures from the Federation of Small Businesses, which provides wonderful, up-to-date information on its website and which I worked with very closely as a council leader. It says that SMEs account for 99.9% of all businesses; 5.5 million businesses; three-fifths of all employment and half of the turnover in the United Kingdom. They employ 12.9 million people. Surely, we simply cannot overlook this sector in our local plan-making. I cannot see any reason why the Government would not want to incorporate an amendment like this to encourage the allocation of sites for SMEs.
Amendment 213 again refers to Schedule 7 and suggests, first, the incorporation of provision to meet the housing needs of the local authority’s area so as to secure the long-term health, well-being and safety of residents. We have had extensive discussions during the debate on the previous group and on previous days on the Bill on similar amendments, but this would be an opportunity to ensure due consideration of all the issues raised in previous groups and their incorporation into the planning process.
The second part of the amendment refers to the critical issue that planning authorities should be able to take proper account of the affordability of both
house prices and rental costs in their planning process. Your Lordships have heard many figures cited on the affordability of housing in recent months, and I am most grateful to Shelter for its continued attention to this and its excellent briefings. It points out—without apology, I shall quote it:
“These days, the prospect of saving for a deposit for a home isn’t just a far-off dream; for many, it is nearly impossible. Not only are house prices prohibitive but soaring private rents can make it difficult to sustain a tenancy.”
That has added to the increasing homelessness numbers that we have seen.
Home ownership is declining. The English Housing Survey shows that 63.5% of households owned their homes in 2017-18; that is down from 68% a decade ago. The average home in England in 2018 cost eight times more to buy than the average annual pay packet. The average share of income that young families spend on housing has trebled over the past 50 years. The steep decline in social housing and a fall in home ownership have led to heavy reliance on the private rented sector. The number of people living in the private rented sector has doubled over the past 20 years. The cost of housing, which has risen much faster than incomes, has put immense financial pressure on people, adding to pressures on the health service, including mental health services, and other services.
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Private renters on average spend 41% of their household income on rent. The majority—57% of private renters—say that they struggle to cover their housing costs. One in three low-earning renters have to borrow money to pay their rent; 800,000 people who are renting cannot even afford to save just £10 a month. Those are shocking figures in our country.
In response to your Lordships’ Built Environment Select Committee report on meeting housing demand, the Government said that they shared the committee’s concerns about long waiting lists for social homes and the number of families housed in temporary accommodation. In mitigation, they said that 154,600 social homes had been built, but the independent commission, convened by Shelter, called on the Government to recognise that 3.1 million new social homes would be needed over the next 20 years. There cannot be any disagreement: we have a long way to go to meet the need for truly affordable housing. This small step of incorporating an amendment into the Bill to allow local authorities to properly consider the affordability of housing as part of the planning process is a long overdue measure.
In relation to the earlier comments of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, perversely the Planning Inspectorate will push back on any authority that wants to put more than what it considers to be the norm for affordable housing in their plan. Then, when applications come before a planning committee, it is not able to specify the inclusion of social housing, even where it is able to demonstrate that the housing needs for its area are ones that only social housing can meet.
We support Amendment 274A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, which makes provision for small sites to be used for affordable development. My noble friend Lady Hayman’s amendment—
Amendment 504GJA—inserts a new clause after Clause 214 to ensure that information on rogue landlords and property agents is made public. With renters now spending huge sums of money to secure rental properties— some of it just as a finder’s fee—it seems only fair that they should be able to access data that is already held to reassure themselves that the landlords and property agents they are dealing with are bona fide and will not put their money at risk or deliver the associated risks of them being housed in substandard properties. This will also help ensure that the majority of landlords who act in good faith do not see the market undermined by rogue landlords and agents who do not act in the interests of their tenants. I beg to move.