THE “deep roots” of the UK housing crisis mean that it requires a long-term strategy, in addition to immediate solutions for homeless people and people living in rural areas, Bishops have told the Government.
They were speaking within the House of Lords last week in the course of the first of six days of debate on the King’s Speech (News, 19 July).
The Bishop of St Albans, Dr Alan Smith, who leads on rural affairs, welcomed government plans to tackle pollution in rivers, lakes, and waterways. In his diocese, which covers Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, he said, “we’re home to several of this country’s beautiful chalk streams, which, despite being extraordinarily rare and precious habitats, have been utterly devastated by each extraction and pollution.”
The River Ver, in Hertfordshire, had been found to have six times higher levels of E. coli than was acceptable in bathing water; between March and June, he said, sewage had been discharged directly into the river for greater than 2400 hours.
Agricultural run-off was a part of the issue, he acknowledged, and asked the Government to work closely with British farmers and invest “in research and development for higher fertilisers and solutions to cut back the quantity of manure and slurry”.
On the related topic of food security, he welcomed the pledge to source a minimum of fifty per cent of government-procured food from British producers. He called for “an increased, multi-year agricultural budget” to secure the long run of the farming industry, including environment targets.
Another rural issue was the closure of retailers, schools, and other services, which, he suggested, was linked to “the shortage of genuinely inexpensive housing” which was a “drain” on young people and families.
He called on the Government “to think about, as a part of their reforms to planning, introducing a planning passport for rural exemption sites which have been highlighted as an avenue of great potential for mitigating the housing crisis”.
That there was a housing crisis with “deep roots” was “undeniable”, the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, lead bishop on housing, said in a while within the six-hour debate. “Too often, housing has been viewed as a financial asset quite than a fundamental human need.”
Introducing the controversy, Lord Hunt, Minister for Energy, Security and Net Zero, had said that the problems faced by the department were “undoubtedly more profound” than they were before the Conservatives took power 14 years ago, and that the shortage of housing was a key issue, affecting the standard and price of living, and livelihoods.
Dr Francis-Dehqani expressed gratitude for the commitments on this opening speech, “however the housing crisis has been escalating for a long time; so we must always not underestimate just how long it’s going to take to repair,” she said. “Therefore, I cannot overstate the necessity for long-term pondering in tackling the housing crisis.” This point had also been made by Baroness Warwick.
The Bishop drew attention to the brand new church-backed vision for housing, Homes For All, published in April (News, 3 May). Recommendations include a limit on rises in house prices and rents “consistent with inflation”.
One example of the necessity for strategic pondering, Dr Francis-Dehqani told peers, was the allocation by the previous Government of £11.5 billion to the inexpensive homes programme between 2021 and 2026; “but, in the identical period, the New Economics Foundation estimates that the Government are set to subsidise private landlords by greater than £70 billion through housing profit and the housing element of universal credit.
“We clearly have the balance unsuitable here. We needs to be using more of that funding to accumulate our stock of social homes, locking within the affordability for good, quite than subsidising private landlords, month in, month out; otherwise, the housing profit bill will proceed to rise without giving anyone in housing need the safety that they deserve.”
And while it was true that a long-term fix was needed, “people living on this crisis need change now.” Rough sleeping had risen, and hundreds of youngsters remained in temporary accommodation.
She asked for more clarity on how this might be tackled, and reassurance that any housing policy wouldn’t inadvertently make it difficult to supply retirement housing for clergy.
She concluded: “Housing shouldn’t be just bricks and mortar. Our housing system mustn’t primarily be a possibility to amass assets and wealth. It is about people’s homes and their lives.”
In a wide-ranging maiden speech, the Conservative peer Lord Fuller said: “Not constructing latest homes does nothing to scrub up our rivers. Wheeling out rogue algorithms on bat numbers mustn’t blindly condemn communities to congestion for ever. Forcing councils to rent people in yellow coats to inform ramblers how you can walk their dogs within the name of GIRAMS* regulations is solely pointless posturing. Preening, self-serving bureaucracy by unaccountable agencies acting as activists quite than as regulators should be rolled back if we’re to progress.”
He continued: “Ah, the targets — now we have been on this place before. All I’ll say is that simply wishing for houses to be built shouldn’t be a method; to make progress here, we want to recognise that there’s a world of difference between funding latest homes and financing them.”
Responding on behalf of the Government, Baroness Hayman said that it had pledged to deliver 1.5 million homes during this Parliament. On rural issues, she said: “As someone who lives in a really rural a part of Cumbria, I completely understand their concerns. We have rural communities at the guts of every thing we do, as we do urban: that is designed for all communities to thrive, but I’ll, in fact, be talking about rural matters right across other departments as a part of my transient.”
*Green Infrastructure and Recreational Impact Avoidance and Mitigation Strategy
