I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken so eloquently on this subject already. Amendment 200, in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman, recognises the need to reinstate the provision for housing targets through the NPPF and associated guidance, and through the housing delivery test, which, I agree with noble Lords who have spoken already, is incredibly important. Similarly, Amendment 195, in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Lansley, Lord Young and Lord Best, and my noble friend Lady Hayman, and Amendment 196, in
the names of noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Young, see the essential part that local plans have to play in the delivery of housing need. It is, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said—rightly, in my view—one of the most important amendments to the Bill that we have discussed on Report.
The much-respected organisation Shelter reports that there are 1.4 million fewer households in social housing than there were in 1980. Combined with excessive house prices making homes unaffordable, demand has been shunted into the private rental sector, where supply has been too slow to meet needs. That means above-inflation increases in rents.
On the affordable homes programme, the National Audit Office reports that there is a 32,000 shortfall in the Government’s original targets for building affordable homes. It goes on to say that there is a high risk of failing to meet targets on supported homes and homes in rural areas. Progress will be further confounded by double-digit inflation, soaring costs of materials and supply disruption, yet the Government seem to have no clue how to mitigate those factors, and in those circumstances the decision to scrap housing targets last December seems even more bizarre.
The National Audit Office is not the only one with concerns about the delivery of the programme. In December last year, the Public Accounts Committee outlined that DLUHC
“does not seem to have a grasp on the considerable risks to achieving even this lower number of homes, including construction costs inflation running at 15-30% in and around London”,
although that is not far off what it is in the rest of the country.
We had extensive debates about the housing crisis during Committee on this Bill, but there was nothing in the Minister's responses to reassure us that the vague promises to deliver 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s would feed through into the planning process—points made very clearly by noble Lords who have already spoken. I do not need to point out to your Lordships’ House that we are just 18 months away from that deadline and the target has never been met. It is being missed by almost 100,000 homes a year, and more in some years. If they are not in the planning process, what chance is there of them being delivered? According to one estimate commissioned by the National Housing Federation and Crisis from Heriot-Watt University, the actual number needed is around 340,000 new homes in England each year, of which 145,000 should be affordable.
Let us consider the latest figures from the National House Building Council. The number of new homes registered in quarter 2 in 2023 was 42% down on 2022. The number of new homes registered in the private sector in quarter 2 in 2023 was 51% down on 2022. The number of new homes registered in the rental and affordable sector was down 14% in quarter 2 2023—declines across most regions compared to the same quarter last year, with the north-west experiencing the sharpest decline of 67%, followed by the east of England at 56% and the West Midlands at 54%. Only London and Wales bucked this trend.
The consequences of not delivering the right number of homes of the right tenures that people actually need are devastating. Those of us who are councillors
or have been councillors all know that our inboxes, surgeries and voicemails are full of families with horrible experiences of overcrowding, temporary and emergency housing, private rented homes that are too expensive for family budgets and insecure resulting in constant moves, more young people having to live with their parents for longer, impaired labour mobility, which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, mentioned and which makes it harder for businesses to recruit staff, and increased levels of homelessness. All this is stacking up devastating future consequences for the families concerned, and no doubt a dramatic impact on public funding as the health, education, social and employment results of this work down the generations.
There is increased focus on addressing affordability as distinct from supply—subjects that we discussed in the earlier group. In the foreword to a 2017 Institute for Public Policy Research report, Sir Michael Lyons said:
“We would stress that it is not just the number built but also the balance of tenures and affordability which need to be thought through for an effective housing strategy”.
With local authorities charged with the responsibility for ensuring that their local plans drive economic development in their areas, we simply cannot afford to overlook the place that housing development plays in local economies.
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Policy Exchange has set this out very clearly in its paper. The housing crisis does not simply have localised effects on regional markets; it is holding back growth everywhere. Addressing the housing shortage offers immense economic opportunities to the country. As in previous historical periods, like the 1930s, the 1950s and the 1960s, expanding housing supply could provide a platform for sustained growth that balances the economy and spreads prosperity widely. It could help to reduce government expenditure on benefits and make our urban areas more productive.
Equally importantly, it could restore faith in the aspiration of home ownership. The fact is that we need a renewed national effort to fix the housing market and fulfil the dream of an affordable, secure and sustainable home for every family and the promise of owning one’s own home to the next generation. That national effort might well have to wait for the election of a Labour Government, but what is certain is that we cannot let that effort be confounded by a few Tory Back-Benchers in the other place, nervous about their majorities.
The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said that if the Government have a target, they must have a mechanism for delivering it. I completely agree with that. Without a clear plan for each area to meet its assessed housing need, there is little likelihood that it will happen at all.