Bill paves way for 3m new homes » Housing » 24dash.com

The Government today set out measures to help tackle the housing shortage by creating three million new homes.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made tackling the crisis in the supply one of the key planks of his strategy, pledging to build 240,000 homes a year.

Housing Minister Yvette Cooper said the Housing and Regeneration Bill will turn the "ambition for three million new homes by 2020 into a reality".

Opening the Bill's second reading debate, she said: "These homes are desperately needed by first-time buyers, by families on council waiting lists and by those who are frustrated by a lack of sufficient affordable homes.

"But the Bill isn't simply about building more homes, it's about building better homes; underpinning the timetable for new homes to be zero carbon and also about building stronger communities by better linking housing and regeneration."

She added: "In my view, for over a generation this country has simply not built enough homes to keep up with demand."

Ms Cooper said the Government's strategy was to build 240,000 homes a year, creating two million new properties by 2016, with a further million by 2020.

The Housing Green Paper published in July set out measures for new eco-towns, and the use of public sector brownfield land.

Ms Cooper said: "The Bill we are debating today is critical to helping us to deliver this vision."

The Bill will create a new organisation, the Homes and Communications Agency (HCA), which will be charged with improving the supply of new housing.

It will also set up a watchdog for social tenants, the Office for Tenants and Social Landlords.

The Bill was opposed by Tories, who tabled an amendment claiming the HCA will be "unaccountable" and will "ride roughshod over local communities".

The amendment said the Bill "creates a top-down, centrally-driven approach to development".

Ms Cooper said she did not criticise the Tories for opposing "bad development" but she did criticise them for opposing an overall increase in the level of housing and urged them to back the Bill.

But shadow housing minister Grant Shapps branded the Bill a "missed opportunity" and condemned the Government's record on housing a "dismal failure".

He said: "This Bill could have done something truly historic. A progressive approach could have delivered millions more homes by working with local communities."

But instead ministers had "misjudged" the housing challenge facing the country "by creating a bulging piece of legislation which simply replicates the failed measures of the past.

"Top-down, Whitehall-driven, centrally-controlled, big government knows best - while local people and their communities have their powers quite simply stripped away."

Mr Shapps said home ownership had fallen for the first time since records began under Labour.

There was less social housing being built every year now than in any year under Margaret Thatcher or John Major.

He complained that while the Bill deleted two quangos it created two new ones and warned that there was no limit to the remit of the new "power grabbing" HCA.

For Liberal Democrats, Paul Holmes said Government proposals to deal with the housing crisis were welcome but "ten years too late".

He called for ministers to devote 25% of their promised quota of three million new homes to social rented housing and for a further 25% to be affordable housing.

Mr Holmes said: "It would have been much better if the Green Paper from July had been published in 1997, rather than waiting ten years for the crisis to get worse and worse."

He told MPs the booming rise in house prices, particularly in urban areas like London, had led to key workers such as police, teachers and nurses being priced out of getting on the property ladder.

"If key workers in steady responsible jobs with reasonable wages can't afford it then there's a huge chunk of the population who haven't a hope in hell."

A huge decline in social home building had taken place under Labour.

Waiting lists for social rented housing had risen 63%, bringing a climate of "human misery".

Mr Holmes urged the Government to re-examine the definition of overcrowding as the criteria were set in 1935, in an "entirely different world".

Labour former local government minister Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) gave the measures in the Bill a cautious welcome.

He said: "Inevitably in a Bill as long and complex as this there are points of detail which will require amendment and I hope this can be achieved as the Bill makes progress.

"But that is no reason to oppose measures which will be vital to delivery of the Government's commitments on one of the most important social issues facing our society."

Labour's Ken Purchase (Wolverhampton NE) said at least a third of the three million new homes should be built, controlled and managed by local authorities.

Mr Purchase said there was a direct correlation between the loss of publicly rented housing and present housing problems.

"In my own constituency I regret to say that, under a Labour Government, the waiting list for local authority dwellings is longer now than at any time under the Thatcher government.

"I'm almost ashamed to stand here and say it and I cannot help but draw the conclusion that this is directly related to a disastrous policy, not of selling council houses, but giving them away," he said.

Liberal Democrat Mike Hancock (Portsmouth S) said there were more people on the waiting list in Portsmouth than in 1945.

The council was telling potential tenants it was "pointless" joining the list as the wait was going to be so long.

"What is it when a country like ours can't give people somewhere decent to live?" he demanded.

The nation should be proud of the number of homes built by councils in the past and and "we should trust them enough to give them the opportunity to do it again".

Labour MP Julie Morgan (Cardiff North) praised the Bill for boosting the rights of travellers and gypsies.

The Bill proposes to give the gypsies and travellers living on local authority run sites similar rights to people living in mobile homes.

Ms Morgan said the introduction of security tenure for travellers living on these council run sites would help improve their lives.

She said it would help them gain access to better schools, jobs and healthcare through greater stability given through security of tenure.

She explained: "The lack of security of tenure that exists at the moment means that site residents can be evicted even if they have done nothing wrong at all."

She said that gypsies and travellers would not be given any special rights under the new proposals but "..it would simply give them the same rites as other people living in caravans and mobile homes.

"It's grossly unfair that there has been this disparity up until now."

She said the new clause in the Bill would undo a serious injustice that has affected gypsies and travellers for much too long.

She added: "To have a decent home is one of the most important things for all of us and there is one section of the population who have suffered very badly in this field and I'm very pleased that the Government is now addressing this."

Plaid Cymru's Adam Price (Carmarthen E and Dinefwr) said that while the Bill showed some acknowledgement of the housing problems facing the country, it allowed for "nowhere near the level of new build in council housing that we need to see".

Labour former minister Michael Meacher (Oldham W and Royton) welcomed the Bill but said it fell "distinctly short" of what was needed.

"For more than a quarter of a century, public housing has been starved of investment in this country," he said.

"It has plummeted - it started under Mrs Thatcher's government - from 6.1% of government spend a year in 1981 to just 1.6% in 2005.

"That is a staggering drop."

Mr Meacher said: "What I think is needed is a return nearer to the historic levels of housing investment and a major construction drive which is targeted at good quality council housing made available at construction-cost related rents and entirely unrelated to the ballooning prices in the private sector.

"I fear that the Government's proposals for increased house building, very welcome as they are, are well short of matching this demand."

Labour's John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) said the Bill went "nowhere near" tackling the housing problems in his area and called for an emergency council house building programme.

Mr McDonnell said there had been a return to "Rackmanite landlords" and in his constituency some were even housing people in outbuildings and sheds.

"It shouldn't be like this after 10 years of Labour Government. I think we have let down a generation that's living in quite dreadful conditions."

The solution, he said, was straightforward. "It's not a new invention. It's called council housing. We need an emergency programme of building. In this legislation I don't see that happening."

Condemning the number of council houses that would be built under the Bill's provision as "trivial" compared to the need, he urged the Government to consider even the compulsory purchase of private accommodation that was left empty.

Winding up for the Tories, Alistair Burt said the Government had "comprehensively failed" in its duties on housing and regeneration.

But he also acknowledged: "None of us come to this with clean hands. That people face the housing conditions they do should be a matter of sadness and disappointment to all of us."

Winding up for Tories, Alistair Burt said of the Government's housing record: "We quote example after example of how money could be used better, of unnecessary waste, of targets quoted and not reached."

He added: "Regeneration and housing in this country deserve better, the people affected in poor areas deserve better, this Bill could have been so much better but the chance has been missed."

Junior communities minister Iain Wright said: "The Opposition in their contributions showed their narrow mindedness and their parochialism.

"They want to pull up the drawbridges at their castles and their country homes, and in some cases quite literally, and limit opportunity for millions of people to get a decent house."

The Bill "will widen opportunity, it will reduce inequality and it will ensure that no-one gets left behind in poor inadequate unaffordable housing".

A Tory bid to oppose the Bill's second reading on the grounds that "it creates a top-down, centrally-driven approach to development and regeneration" was defeated by 339 votes to 151, a Government majority of 188.

The measure then gained its second reading without a vote.

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