To ask His Majesty’s Government what their plans are to address the housing crisis in rural and coastal communities.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter
My Lords, as bishop with pastoral care of one of the largest rural dioceses in England that boasts not one but two coastlines, I have become concerned about the escalating housing crisis in rural and coastal communities. If this is the true situation in Devon, I suspect it will be true for other parts of England, which is why I am encouraged by the number of colleagues from across the House who are speaking today. My hope is that we can distil wisdom that will reshape the housing policies of His Majesty’s Government.
We are all familiar with the problems of affordability caused by the chronic housing shortage that is having a disproportionate impact on people with low incomes. The Government, as they have admitted today, are falling woefully short of their own homebuilding target and, as a result, people are suffering, because they have nowhere to call home. Their health is diminished and community spirit is being eroded. In coastal and rural areas, particularly in tourist hotspots, the situation is compounded by second home ownership, holiday rentals and Airbnb lettings.
In Devon and Cornwall, there is a huge gap between properties listed for short-term holiday lets and long-term rentals. Last year, ITV highlighted the fact that in the whole of Devon, there were only 936 properties to rent, compared with more than 15,700 holiday lets—16 times as many. Revisiting the same data ITV used last year, the ratio has now risen to 22 times that number, with available rental properties having slumped to under 700. The situation in Cornwall, as no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, will confirm, is even worse, with a staggering ratio of over 90 times as many holiday lets. Only 208 rental properties are listed, compared with more than 19,000 holiday lets.
Too often, local people are forced out of the areas where their families have lived for generations, fracturing their support networks, to the detriment of individuals, families and whole communities. Tourism is an important industry. No one begrudges those who have the privilege of choice in enjoying the countryside and our fabulous coastline—but without systemic change, including regulating the Airbnb industry, our rural and coastal communities will be hollowed out. In my diocese, the impact of second home ownership in Salcombe, for example, has meant that there are now so few locals resident in the community that they are struggling to recruit volunteers for the lifeboat crew.
A report published jointly this month by the South-West Social Mobility Commission and the University of Exeter highlights how the housing crisis, in combination with poor public transport, is contributing to low educational attainment across the region. Transport investment in the region stands at £308 per head of the population, compared with the national average of £474. Inadequate public transport disadvantages poorer residents and young people who wish to engage in educational and apprenticeship opportunities. In combination, this exacerbates the cycle of deprivation and stifles aspiration.
My Lords, I have lost count of the number of times we have debated the housing crisis in this House with the same conclusion: we are not building enough homes, particularly affordable and social homes. The Government have ambitions to do more, but their policies have only tinkered with the problem. We have a shortfall of 4 million homes. I am grateful to the National Housing Federation for its briefing for this debate, which is clear that the number of homes built each year is not enough to reduce this backlog or to meet demand in the future.
As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter so powerfully outlined, the problem is particularly acute in rural and coastal areas. Demand for social homes in rural areas has grown by nearly a third in the past three years. Young people and those on low incomes cannot find anywhere they can afford; families are split up; homelessness is rising; people leave, so jobs cannot be filled; and tourism, often the key economic driver in these areas, is undermined.
DLUHC data, as well as research by the Rural Homelessness Counts Coalition, found a rise of 24% in rural rough sleeping in just one year as the cost of living crisis continues. The NHF has found that the number of rural households on local authority waiting lists in England increased by 31% between 2019 and 2022, far exceeding the increase of 3% in predominantly urban areas. This is an invisible crisis unacknowledged in policy decisions, as the right reverend Prelate has said, but it is in plain sight to those who work and live in these areas.
We all love getting out into the country, exploring England’s green and pleasant land. It all seems bucolic, affluent even, and the real situation of many families and communities is hidden unless we know what it is really like to live there. As Angela Gascoigne of SHAL Housing in rural Somerset has said:
My Lords, I will not follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter on the wider canvas he has painted with such great skill, but I thank him for tabling this debate. My full title is Lord McNally, of Blackpool. I serve in a pro-bono capacity on the national advisory board which advises Blackpool Council and Business in the Community on national and local development policy, and on a special advisory group on housing.
Although Blackpool’s problems, especially those in housing, are deep-rooted, housing has been particularly blighted by a housing benefits system that makes the old boarding houses which were the heart of Blackpool’s earlier seaside prosperity profitable to convert to multi-occupancy. However, in recent years, with closer co-operation between the local authority and government and a broader and longer regeneration strategy for the town being adopted, it has not all been bad news. A number of government departments have contributed to this, as well as the awarding of funds under the levelling-up policy to deliver decent homes.
There has also been a standard enforcement pilot, with an enhanced team of enforcement officers, and a decent homes standard for the private sector, with a “Blackpool standard” for housing which is above the legislative minimum but easy to meet if you are a good landlord. The Blackpool Housing Company—part of the local authority—has brought in 600 units of good-quality affordable stock by buying up old property. It is continuing to build affordable housing with grant support from Homes England.
The key message I took from the right reverend Prelate’s speech and would like to emphasise is that close partnership between local and national government can and does work. New funding and beefed-up measures to improve housing standards to drive out unscrupulous landlords along with plans which see derelict areas transformed and good-quality homes provided will enable Blackpool to respond to the housing and related challenges it faces with a strategy which is both locally determined and long term in its impact. I emphasise that as the lesson.
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter for initiating this tiny debate and for his excellent speech. I declare my housing and local government interests; in particular, I chair the Devon Housing Commission, which is an initiative of all the local authorities in the county, supported by the University of Exeter, to address Devon’s acute housing problems.
Let me cut to the chase with some suggestions for easing the housing difficulties for rural and coastal areas. First, the Government need to address the loss of properties available for long-term letting in the private sector, particularly in tourist hotspots, where these have been replaced by Airbnb-style short-term lets. To give local authorities the opportunity to curb this loss of homes for local people, the Government’s current proposals for change—a registration scheme by all local authorities that wish to, and for a new planning use class so that consent is needed to convert a property into a short-term let—deserve support.
Secondly, I commend the recent Defra announcement of funding for rural housing enablers, with rural community councils hosting the service, as in Devon. These enablers do a brilliant job, liaising with landowners, parish councils, local planning authorities, housing associations, community land trusts, et cetera, to secure small parcels of land for the development of affordable housing.
Thirdly, rural areas have their secret weapon of rural exception sites, which I recommend planners should utilise to the full. This takes away the unwinnable competition for land by agreeing to development exclusively because it will serve local needs. Witness the scheme in the little village of Powerstock, Dorset, where a community land trust and an enlightened landowner, in partnership with Hastoe Housing Association, has built eight delightful, affordable, sustainable homes for local people, replenishing the local primary school and rejuvenating the local community.
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for initiating this important debate. The starting premise for a debate on rural and coastal homes is that everyone deserves a quality home they can afford that meets the needs of themselves and their families.
The issue the Question highlights is not about attacking those who choose a staycation in a holiday let; it is about what can be done to ensure the housing crisis in rural and coastal areas is recognised and addressed by government. Some 10.3 million people live in coastal communities. From small villages to larger towns, properties remain out of reach financially for those working in roles supporting the community; nurses, police officers, social workers and teachers simply cannot afford decent homes. Public services and the tourist and service industries are struggling to recruit as a result. Social housing waiting lists are, as has been noted already, growing much more quickly in rural than urban areas. What are the Government doing proactively to address the shortage of homes of all types of tenure in coastal areas? What are the Government doing to ensure people can afford homes, not least given the comparative low incomes in many rural and coastal communities?
It is welcome that the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill recognises the second home issue, by bringing down the time that qualifies a house for an empty home tax premium from two years to one, and allowing for doubling council tax when second homes are not being let—but we can do more. Wales are Scotland are running empty homes programmes. In England, 120 councils take part in National Empty Homes Week, promoted by Action on Empty Homes.
Noble Lords may find of interest the Council for the Protection of Rural England project in Bridport, Dorset, where a co-housing project will provide 53 affordable homes for sale and rent, including energy-efficient measures and nature-friendly features. This project has taken 13 years to develop. What more will the Government do to make similar projects happen more quickly?
My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of Wessex Investors and Anchorwood Developments.
On the evenings that I have to get back to Cornwall—the train journey to St Austell from Paddington is about four-and-a-half hours—I cannot always get back, so I have to drive to Exeter, in the right reverend Prelate’s diocese; an excellent city. To get there, I have to drive up the Bodmin bypass. For as many years as I can remember—certainly for the last five—there has been a big sign on the Bodmin bypass saying: “NHS: Apply for jobs in Cornwall. We’re here, we want people”. There is a reason that sign has been there for so long. What better place could you work in the National Health Service than in Devon or Cornwall? There is no better place, and yet those vacancies are not filled. The reason is that people come down, they have their interviews, they are inspired and then they visit an estate agent—and that is the end of the story. That is why there are those vacancies, because house prices in that part of the country are significantly higher than the national average.
For people who live there, the problem is even greater. The ratio in Cornwall of salary to house prices is 11 times, whereas nationally it is nine, and in many other places it will obviously be a lot less than that. Outside of London, the Isles of Scilly has the highest level of empty and second homes as a proportion of all dwellings. That is the situation there.
What do we have today? When I was driving up that Bodmin bypass I heard that there had been a government announcement from the Levelling Up Secretary. What was it? They are going to solve the housing crisis by investing and building in cities—full stop. I waited to hear the rest of the announcement, but it was not there; there was nothing at all about rural communities. That is deeply depressing and misunderstands—if I am kind—the equation between urban and rural areas. I suggest it is probably more political than based in reality.
My Lords, housing for this and the next generation is the biggest problem facing rural communities. The problem has been bad for decades but it is getting worse. In Cornwall now, the price of the average home is 12 times the average wage; people cannot possibly get a mortgage on that basis. Everywhere, so-called affordable homes are not affordable to most rural workers. Furthermore, there are no houses to let. Rural council houses were the first to go under right to buy. As others have said, the private let sector has now found that Airbnb et cetera is more rewarding than long-term ASTs.
Private landlords are also threatened by everything from costly energy efficiency rules to threats of not being able to get their property back if they need it. So they are motivated to sell, and thus take another rural home off the market because it is a given that no local will be able to afford it. In Cornwall now, no business—including the NHS, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, just said—can get staff because there is absolutely nowhere for them to live. This is now not only a social problem but an economic one.
What is the answer? For too many decades the standard government answer—from all Governments—has been to build more houses for sale. They have set targets that have never been reached, often because they themselves undermined the ability of the planning system and the developers to deliver. In my view, we need a whole new approach. Never mind about home ownership, just help every rural local authority to build their own houses, preferably on their own land to make them cheaper; after all, most county councils own large swathes of land in one context or another. Then, encourage them to let these houses to local tenants. Hey, they could even call them council houses—what a wonderful new idea.
Of course, the right to buy will have to be delegated down to the local authority—it is probably too much of a political gamble to remove it altogether—and the local authority can then leave the rules as they are or extend the minimum term of pre-purchase occupation to, say, 10 years or more. After all, few mortgage holders own their own homes until at least 15 years after they have moved in. However, the most important bit about the right to buy is that the money received absolutely must remain with the local authority housing department so that it can continue to provide more houses for local people. I believe that any Government providing such a solution will sweep the rural polls.
My Lords, like other speakers, I thank the right reverend Prelate for introducing this debate. I think I agree with everything that has been said so far, particularly with the preceding remarks about the important role of council housing.
I want to add something about rural district councils. They are long gone but they should be our heroes today, for they showed us what needs to be done. However, they have been betrayed. Their housing legacy is there in many or most of our villages. Little remarked and too often forgotten, often set in green spaces, semi-detached or short terraces, good-sized front and back gardens: three-bedroom family homes. Typically simple in design, they provide just the sort of house in which people would like to live—joyous family homes. They are distinct and a distinctive part of rural life, and they were created by and for local people, often replacing what could have been described only as hovels. It was the rural districts that achieved this at a time when local government was more truly local.
The betrayal to which I refer comes of course from the destructive impact of right to buy, or, more specifically, the way it was implemented, with the deliberate intention, along with other measures, of destroying council housing on ideological grounds. The result has been that those houses, built by the community, were removed from the social sector with no replacement, as has been explained. Once sold off, they are now, whether owned or rented, usually out of reach of local people in need of social housing. Instead, too often, they are second homes, or homes for retirement or short-term lets.
None of these things is wrong in itself but in excess, as previous speakers have explained, they have destroyed local communities. My question for the Minister is how she can justify that lack—that loss—of good-quality social housing when we know what works. Local government did it between the wars and in the 1950s and 1960s; it should do it now.
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The human and societal cost of the housing crisis is accelerating. Employers struggle to recruit for the hospitality and retail industries. Healthcare providers and community services suffer shortages because key workers cannot afford to live in rural and coastal areas. In his 2021 report, the Chief Medical Officer for England noted the high proportion of the worst health and well-being outcomes for individuals that are concentrated in coastal communities, and access to quality affordable housing is a contributory factor.
The demand for social housing in rural areas is growing at 10 times the rate of that in towns and cities. In Devon, with the current rate of net additions to the affordable housing stock, even if housing waiting lists closed tomorrow, it would still take over 32 years to clear the backlog. A report for the universities of Kent and Southampton notes the dramatic rise of homelessness in rural areas, with a 24% increase in rough sleeping in the last year alone. Rural and coastal areas often fall through the cracks in our national data gathering, but research by the Rural Services Network shows that, if our rural communities were aggregated into one region, its need for levelling up would be greater than any other region in the United Kingdom. It is why the current housing crisis merits action, not just sympathy.
The report of the Archbishops’ commission on housing entitled Coming Home points out that housing is not just a matter of putting a roof over a person’s head. It is about creating homes in communities where people can live with dignity and feel secure. It is about enabling the diverse communities that make up our United Kingdom to thrive and have a real community spirit, and this is where I believe the Church has a significant part to play. Sadly, my colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, who chaired the Archbishops’ commission on housing and who intended to speak this afternoon, is unable to be here because of a family bereavement. I know she would join me in welcoming the various practical responses that are being developed to address the current crisis, whether by landowners, local authorities or charities, including by the Church of England in the use of its land assets to promote truly affordable homes.
In Bracebridge Heath in Lincolnshire, to give one example, the Church commissioners have just obtained planning permission for 1,000 new homes, of which 20% will be affordable. The plans include infrastructure that will enable people to live in a community with dignity, and facilities to promote their well-being. All this will be integrated into a town of some 5,800 people. Things happen when government, landowners and communities come together in partnership to promote the common good.
Rural exception sites open up new opportunities for affordable housing, often with community land trusts being instrumental in enabling tight-knit rural communities to be integrated into decision-making about housing developments. Research shows that policies are not always applied consistently across local authorities. There are challenges with the current planning system to make agreement fruitful for all parties. The complexity of the situation means that we cannot afford to tackle this crisis piecemeal. This is why the Rural Coalition has called on the Government to create
“a cross-departmental strategy for rural England, setting out a vision and policy framework to deliver sustainable growth for its communities and businesses, and encompassing farming and environmental concerns”.
In welcoming the noble Baroness to her new position —I congratulate her on her appointment and her debut at the Dispatch Box this afternoon—I ask whether she will commit to going back to her department and colleagues to press for such a comprehensive rural strategy.
I note with approval the renewed commitment of the Prime Minister today to achieve the Government’s housing target by the end of 2024. However, I regret that in the statement by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the focus is on cities and, once again, there is no recognition of the scale of the housing crisis in rural and coastal communities.
It is a privilege to live in one of the most beautiful counties of England. Heaven is Devon—but the picture-postcard view of rural life is only half the story. This housing crisis is not restricted to a few beauty spots, and it is not something that the market can solve by itself, as some people believe. The absence of housing supply, the diversity of people’s needs and the immense pressure in the system mean that neither the market nor any single organisation or individual can make the difference that we all long for.
Without partnership and systemic change, the spiral of deprivation will become more acute. The Government need to recognise the scale of the problem. We need cross-departmental working and cross-party agreement to forge a coherent long-term strategy that will secure good housing and the flourishing of our rural and coastal communities. I hope that such a coalition of good will will begin here and now, today.
“The rural … myth is strong, so rural poverty and rural homelessness can be unimaginable … The extent of the problems faced by people in rural communities to access homes where they have … grown up and work is truly shocking”.
The right reverend Prelate referred to Homelessness in the Countryside: AHidden Crisis, an impressive report from the universities of Kent and Southampton, which was commissioned by a coalition of housing and homelessness organisations. It highlights the extent of this growing yet unacknowledged problem and documents vividly through a number of individual voices the extent of the harm being done. What more evidence is needed before this problem is acted on? Does the Minister accept that rural homelessness requires targeted and specific interventions that are different from those in urban areas?
Rural teachers, nurses, and workers in care, hospitality and agriculture cannot afford a home close to their work, but rural communities need them. We need to make sure that people are able to live, work and bring up their children in a quality home that they can afford. Does the Minister agree that building homes where people need them is the key to resolving this?
As has already been referred to by the right reverend Prelate, a cross-government national strategy to improve health and well-being for coastal communities is recommended by Sir Chris Whitty—not least because many of our ageing population will continue to move to the seaside, bringing their health and care problems with them. No longer do you necessarily go to Blackpool just to look for the problems; you can go there now and see some of the solutions.
There are more solutions here: incentives for landowners to part with suitable sites; an increase to a fairer level of government funding for rural social housing from Homes England; support for neighbourhood plans, which can reconcile local communities to support new development; and, for some coastal communities such as Blackpool, the tough enforcement of decent standard in the PRS, all within an overall strategy for housing in rural and coastal areas.
While problems might appear to be intractable and are certainly in danger of getting worse if action is not taken, there are opportunities here that can make a real difference. There are now some great examples of inspiring success. Let us have lots more.
My final point is that rural and coastal communities also need to be fit for the future in the context of climate change. However, they currently receive only 1p out of every pound spent by the Government on energy efficiency. Will the Minister look into how the Government could redress this imbalance?
In conclusion, the Government have options available to help those from, or working in, rural and coastal areas. I look forward to hearing from the Minister what the Government intend to do to address the housing crisis that too many individuals and families face.
I was on the Economic Affairs Committee of this House a few years ago and we did a study into housing. One thing that struck me was a graph. During the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher, when public housing stopped, the line on the graph came down immediately and never went up again. The Government have to liberate local authorities to bring back those houses, particularly in rural communities. If we did that, I believe we could start to solve this crisis—and maybe save some of the £15 billion we spend on housing benefit.