Baroness Coffey (Con)

My Lords, 10 groups done; 10 to go. I turn to Amendment 135. I am doing this in the name of a friend of mine, Richard Bacon, who used to be the Member of Parliament for South Norfolk. He retired at the last election and is watching proceedings now—I am delighted he is—and he has spent a lot of time on self-build, which is what this amendment is about. To pay credit to my friend Richard, he had managed to get issues about self-build into primary legislation. It had been commenced, but there are still elements that seem to be holding back this potential of self-build. Recognising, as the Minister said earlier, the words of her latest Secretary of State, to “Build, baby, build”, we should unleash the self-builders, where it is appropriate, right across the country. As my friend has pointed out, this is tenure neutral. There are great examples. Anyone can read his report that was commissioned by the previous Administration. He has written extensively on this, so I do not need to repeat everything he has put in the public domain. To give a sense, there are good examples of this in the Netherlands, where groups of people have come together. They have actually built high-density and multiple-storey by some housing being particularly desirable—the penthouse may have got more of a price. You see multi-generational homes being built. To some extent—recognising what has been already pointed out in several parts of the debate, not only today, but in earlier consideration of the Bill—self-build is certainly a sector which needs to have the opportunity to at least be given a go. I recognise what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, has just said about permitted development rights, with her neighbour building something which sounds rather extraordinary. That said, as someone with a large garden, perhaps that persuaded them that this was a way to reduce the amount of gardening; but that is a different story. The Bacon review recommended that a range of regulatory reforms be brought forward to support the scaling up of self-build and to help boost much-needed housebuilding across England. I have already referred to the fact that the amendment to the 2015 Act through LURA, which came into force last year, made it clear that only planning permissions that are specifically for self-build can count towards meeting an authority’s statutory duty. Despite that amendment, there remains considerable uncertainty over what types of permissions should be counted towards the duty imposed on local authorities to permit enough plots of land to meet the demand on their self-build registers. The LURA therefore provided for this new power to allow the Secretary of State to specify in regulations the types of development permissions that can be counted by a relevant authority to comply with its duty to meet demand as defined under Section 2A(2) of the 2015 Act. This has not been taken forward yet by the Government. Amendment 135 proposes to insert a new provision into the Bill to require the Government to amend the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Regulations 2016 to clarify the types of development permissions that must be counted towards the duty of local authorities to meet their local demand for service plots of land for people to build their own homes. The amendment would have the effect of implementing the provision in Section 123(1)(a) of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 that enables the Government to specify regulations on the types of development permissions that can be counted by local authorities to comply with their duty to meet demand under Section 2A(2) of the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015. The Government’s plan for change set an ambitious target to build 1.5 million new homes over this Parliament. They say they are committed to reforming the planning system, that they are pro-growth and that they back SME builders to get Britain building. In May of this year, the former Deputy Prime Minister said that smaller housebuilders “must be the bedrock of our Plan for Change” and to get “working people on the housing ladder”. She also said that she was committed to making the planning system “simpler, fairer and more cost effective, so smaller housebuilders can play a crucial role” in building the homes we need, improving choice and boosting tenure mix on larger sites to improve buildout. To deliver against these objectives, the Government must surely look to operate all possible levers at their disposal, yet so far they have chosen not to bring forward much-needed further regulation to support more people to build their own homes. The Competition and Markets Authority’s 2024 housebuilding market study report concluded that self-build and custom housebuilding is one of the main models in the UK housing market, with some 15,900 homes completed in 2021-22—admittedly, that was just as we were coming out of the variety of lockdowns. It concluded that, by enabling more alternative, private and non-speculative models, such as self-build and custom housebuilding development, dependence on the speculative housebuilding model can be reduced and market diversity improved, which in turn helps to speed up housing delivery. This could allow for more homes to be absorbed within local markets without housebuilders needing to reduce house prices, thereby speeding up housing delivery. The Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015 places a statutory duty on local authorities in England to hold a register of people who want to acquire land to self or custom build in their area, and to grant planning permission for enough plots of land to satisfy that demand. The Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Regulations 2016 set out that authorities must meet this demand—that is, grant sufficient planning permission within three years. Despite these provisions, the Government’s own data shows that the gap between the supply of SBCH plots and consumer demand continues to fall. Self-build and custom housebuilding data released by the Minister’s department in February showed that the number of individuals on local registers had risen by 4% to over 64,000 and that group registrations are near to 1,000. Despite this increase, planning permissions have continued to fall, reaching just over 5,000 a couple of years ago—the lowest level since legislation was first introduced in 2016. A key cause of the decline in supply plots is that many local authorities—including, I am led to believe, Winchester, Uttlesford, Dacorum, Rutland and South Kesteven—refuse planning applications on grounds that they are meeting local demand. Yet, when they are tested, it is often clear that they are counting planning permissions towards their annual targets, when they are plainly not for self-build or custom housing, to avoid releasing more land to meet growing demand. Such practices are frustrating delivery and costing taxpayers and developers many thousands of pounds in fighting planning appeals to prove councils wrong. It is not unusual for planning barristers, consultants and local authority officers to debate at length at appeal whether a council has correctly counted the number of such permissions it has given to meet local demand and for inspectors then to have to interpret the evidence submitted and decide what weight they should give to the arguments.