Category Archives: Housing

Historical housing delivery in Oxfordshire

In recent month, everyone’s been talking about how many houses we’re going to need to build in Oxfordshire between now and 2050. Now that the OxPlan50 project has stopped, the work to determine those needs reverts to the 5 local planning authorities: Cherwell, Oxford City, South Oxfordshire, Vale of white Horse, West Oxfordshire.

I explored the councils historical housing delivery numbers. I took a look at the ten years to see how housing delivery is going in the local authorities. Figures are from the published Authority Monitoring reports.

Since about 2016, local authorities have been delivering to a very high housing figure, which was derived from the Strategic Housing Marketing assessment (SHMA) that came forward as part of the Oxfordshire Growth Deal. That deal required ambitious growth targets beyond anything ever seen here before.

Cherwell

Oxford City

South Oxfordshire

Vale of White Horse

West Oxfordshire

Houses for Oxford – my view

This post is long, sorry, not sorry. It’s a complicated topic, and I want to be thorough when I share my opinion. It has to do with how neighbours to Oxford are expected to provide new housing to meet Oxford’s needs.

Local authorities have a so-called ‘duty to cooperate’ with each other in establishing local plan policies in cross-boundary areas. This is the law, but it’ never been really well defined. Here in Oxfordshire, the main duty to cooperate lies between Oxford City council and its neighbouring districts: Cherwell, West Oxfordshire, South Oxfordshire (SODC) and Vale of White Horse.

Today, we read in the Oxford Times that SODC are proposing to include a controversial Green Belt site (referred to as Grenoble Road) in their most recent version of their local plan. This site is in the Oxford Green Belt, and seen by some as a rather unattractive housing site (as it has high power lines and stanchions throughout) but nonetheless is located close to Oxford on its southeastern boundary). But it is in the Green Belt, established deliberately to provide a green space for the city and also to prevent future urban sprawl.

Here’s a link to the newspaper article: https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/17279902.big-build-1700-new-homes-planned-as-grenoble-road-picked-for-huge-development/

Local authorities are having financial difficulties now in many areas, with major cuts in Government funding in the past few years, and more cuts expected. (Bear with me; this is relevant.) There are three primary income sources for local councils:

New Homes Bonus scheme (expected to end next year). Basically local authorities were awarded a bonus based on the number of homes delivered. Vale of White Horse District Council is a top performer in this area; when Govt said our income depended on the houses we built, we built lots of houses.
Business rates (based on growth over a certain baseline). Vale of White Horse had some bad luck in this area; just after the baseline was taken, Didcot power station closed down, and Culham science company became a charitable enterprise, so no longer paid business rates. Both these actions hit our business rates income for years, because our rates are always low compared to our baseline. Government were asked if they could provide relief; they said no.
Council taxes that we pay. This is a politically driven decision. Conservatives are proud that they froze council tax in the Vale for many years of the eight years they’ve been in charge. But in spite of the other sources of income being volatile and uncertain, and not under our own control, Conservatives took no action. Over the years, more and more houses were built and more people moved here. But the cost of providing services continued to go up, and the council tax stayed the same. As a result, Vale has lost millions in income every year, and over the years. These loses will continue to accumulate; there’s an annual limit to how much councils can raise council taxes without a referendum (and we know all about referendums now.) Currently we pay £126 per annum to Vale (Band D). In 2011 we paid £116. Councils are allowed to raise taxes by the higher of 3% or £5 per year. Vale has about 50,000 band D properties. You can do the maths.

There used to be a Government grant to local authorities, but that was systematically reduced over a few years and then it stopped altogether last year.

We are all worried about our ability to continue to provide services with these drastic cuts.

So, Oxford has nearly full employment; It doesn’t need more employment sites; but remember the income from business rates. Oxford DOES need more houses that people who work in Oxford can afford to rent or buy; but remember the demise of New Homes Bonus. So Oxford’s Local Plan will have a shortfall of about 10,000 homes (when compared to their assessed need). These 10,000 homes must be provided by the neighbouring districts; remember ‘Duty to Cooperate’.

By earmarking more land for employments sites, Oxford cannot meet their own housing needs, and so neighbours must do that for them. This is one side of the duty to cooperate. Local Plans will not be found sound if they do not provide enough housing to meet Oxford’s unmet need. That’s one of the main reasons for SODC allocating the Grenoble Road site.

But in my opinion, the other side of Duty to Cooperate is that Oxford must do all it can to meet its own housing needs. I think they aren’t doing that.

My response to the Oxford Local Plan (now out for it’s pre-submission consultation) is that they need to plan for fewer employment sites, and provide more houses that people can afford to buy or rent. I think the ‘duty to cooperate’ needs to run both ways; Oxford must to do its best to meet its own housing needs, and then the neighbouring authorities need to help Oxford meet the needs it cannot meet for itself. Simples.

Oxfords Local Plan doesn’t do that well enough. So SODC and other districts are having to take up the slack. Hence the Big Build of Grenoble Road, and also Dalton Barracks near Abingdon, also in the Green Belt.

Growth Board statement about affordable housing

In Feb 2018, I received a Scrutiny report that shed light on the problem of unaffordable housing in Vale of White Horse. This report and what we learned about our housing situation was the highlight of the 2017-18 Scrutiny programme, IMO.

In April, I used this information in a statement I made to the Oxfordshire Growth Board. Here’s what I told them:

“I’m Cllr Debby Hallett, Chairman of the Vale Scrutiny Committee, and co-chairman of the joint SODC and Vale Scrutiny Committee.

“Today, we’re creating an opportunity for the Oxfordshire Growth Board to collaborate across boundaries to help solve the most intractable problems we face: 1) our main highways are regularly operating over their capacity, and 2) houses here are too expensive for the people who work here to be able to afford them.

“I recently asked for a report to come to Vale Scrutiny on the state of housing affordability locally. It came in Feb 2018; it’s called ‘Houses that People Can Afford’.

“Vale’s report confirms what’s previously been anecdotal evidence. Here are some main points:

The affordability level as defined by SHMA, is higher than as defined by Institute for Public Policy; SHMA uses gross income, IPP uses net income, so income is considered after tax. We need a consistent definition of ‘affordability’. Basically, a useful heuristic might be this: housing is unaffordable if a household spends more than 35% of its net income on housing.
There was no data available for Vale or Oxfordshire housing specifically, so we used data from all of Western England, as the closest comparable area. Housing in Vale is more expensive though, so the affordability is likely even lower than what’s quoted in the report.
We looked at house prices and rents in quartiles. In order to buy a lower quartile property costing £255,000 in Vale, an income of £57,000 is needed, which is an upper quartile income. So only the highest income levels can afford to buy the lowest priced properties.
Only 18% of ownership options are comfortably affordable at all, and then only to the highest incomes. (Ownership options are shared ownerships, first time buyers, help to buy, starter homes etc.) So four out of five ownership options are basically unaffordable to everyone.
Help to buy schemes make houses affordable only to top earners (over $56,000).
Private rentals and any sort of ownership tenure are unaffordable to lower quartile income households. Only social rent is affordable to them, and we don’t have enough social housing. (Social rents are approximately 50% of market rents.)

“The whole report is available here: http://democratic.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/documents/s43516/Housing%20that%20is%20truly%20affordable%20FINAL.pdf

“Last month (March 2018) Parliament published a useful report: https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7747

“I urge the leaders of Oxfordshire’s councils to do all you can under these new rules of working and within upcoming new planning policies to make some measurable headway into solving Oxfordshire’s housing problem. Explore the options, be courageous and creative, and find sustainable solutions that improve people’s lives here in the county.”

I think only the Leader of South Oxfordshire District council listened. Cllr Jane Murphy wrote a letter to the Secretary of State for Housing, James Brokenshire, asking him to hold a debate on how affordable housing is defined, especially in areas where property values are exceptionally high.

82 Westminster Way – vacant and derelict, for now

For years this property has been empty and derelict. For months I’ve been working with Vale officers to get the property cleared up; it’s the best we can do without legal action. But in the long term, I’d really like to see this house put back into use, either by making it habitable and ensuring there are occupants, or by demolishing it to build some new affordable residences.

This week I met with the head of planning, who agreed to seek advice from the legal team and housing team to begin to move forward on efforts to bring this long-term vacant house back into use. I feel renewed optimism.

Here’s the short history:

Before this year, Vale enforcement officers served notices on the homeowner to clear up the property. There was no response to the orders.

There have been fires set, causing the fire brigade to respond. Windows and doors are broken, blighting that part of the neighbourhood. Environmental health have been called-out to deal with vermin infestation. Young people find it an attractive place to vandalise; police have been called to deal with brick throwing, for example. (Thanks to Emmett Casley for the photo.) It’s all made worse by being right beside the pedestrian under crossing children use to get to North Hinksey Primary School.

In January this year the Enforcement Team began the process of procuring a contractor to come and clear the site of overgrown shrubs and rubbish, secure broken doors and windows, and basically make it look not so derelict. Of course this is a short term solution, and will need to be repeated periodically as long as the property is neglected. Vale are realistic in not expecting to recoup these costs from the homeowner; apparently there is a long list of creditors with liens against the property.

One bit of good news: in the opinion of building inspectors, the building is not unsound and is unlikely to fall down. It’s not known what all the scaffolding at the site is for.

I’m concerned about three things, basically:

that we minimise the amount of taxpayers’ money used to make the property safe and reduce its attraction for more vandalism
that we explore legal options for bringing this house back into use
that action is ultimately taken to either make the house habitable, or demolish it and provide some new dwellings

As to what happens next, well the Vale is obliged to give the owner 30 days notice to retrieve any personal property from the site, and then the site will be cleared up. Notice was given in early March, so that clear up should happen in April. I consider this to be a reasonable use of our tax money to arrest decline.

(Have you heard of the broken windows theory? In areas where there are broken windows, graffiti, and other vandalism and signs of dereliction, it somehow acts as implicit permission for more of the same behaviour. If we don’t clear up our neighbourhood messes, more messes appear. So I bang on about litter, graffiti, derelict houses and the like. Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)

The 2016 Housing Act: no action in Vale so far

Here’s the question I asked at the Feb 2017 Vale full council meeting.

E. Question from Councillor Debby Hallett to Councillor Roger Cox, Cabinet member for planning.

In December 2015, Council passed a motion in support of the Housing Bill, which would build starter homes, grant automatic planning permission to build on brownfield sites, sell off high value vacant council assets and use the money to build more affordable homes in the same area, and extend right to buy to housing association tenants. How many starter homes have been sold in the year since? How many automatic permissions have been given for brownfield development? How many council assets have been sold off, and how many new affordable houses have those sales funded? How many housing association tenants have exercised their right to buy?

Answer

Councillor Cox responded that the Bill became the Housing and Planning Act 2016 in May last year. We are waiting for the relevant Regulations to come into force so we can implement or act on the proposed changes.

Cllr Emily Smith, on the Government’s Housing Bill

At the Vale council meeting Weds 16th Dec, Tories tabled a motion that ‘Council endorses the Government’s Housing Bill’ (or something similar — it was much longer and panglossian (as Cllr Bob Johnson said.)

Emily Smith had this to say in her first speech to council:

The Housing Bill includes some welcome elements, such as better protection for renters from rogue landlords and new measures to bring ‘abandoned’ properties back in to use.

However, I share Shelter’s concerns that as currently drafted this Bill could actually lead to a net loss of around 180,000 affordable homes for people on low and middle incomes. The forced sell-off of council homes to fund right-to-buy discounts for housing associations will mean affordable homes currently set aside for local people could be sold on to speculators and buy-to-let landlords.

My understanding is that there is no requirement for replacement homes of the same value to be provided in the local area which could lead to the break-up of established communities and is a concern for people in rural areas especially. The Bill fails to recognise that Housing Associations will simply be trying to catch up with replacing homes rather than focussing on building new affordable homes.

The Bill seems to be driven by an ideological obsession with home ownership, but surely we still need rental homes and social housing too. We need a mix of tenures to suit people moving to the Vale for employment and affordable rents for local families saving for deposits, so that communities are not broken up. Even if everyone did want to buy a home, my understanding is the Housing Bill states an affordable home can be worth up to £450,000*. In the Vale the average salary is under £30,000. Are Cllr Cox and Cllr Murray suggesting that £450,000 is affordable for local families? [*Cllr Murray explained that the cap for affordable homes outside London is actually £250,000]

We clearly need to build more homes to the tune of 300,000 a year to have a real impact on housing availability and costs. If all the developers that have already been granted planning permission for housing got on and built them, we would probably be able to achieve that. So what does the Housing Bill offer in terms of making sure that those developers start building? Does it address the problems with supply of building materials? I am in regular contact with construction firms who tell me they struggle to recruit builders, but the Bill does not address the skills shortage we are faced with in the Vale.

And finally, we as a council have a duty of care for our most vulnerable residents and a responsibility to prevent homelessness. We have already starting to see a rise in homelessness and government changes to welfare and cuts to local government grants now threaten the funding received by homeless hostels and organisations like the Citizens Advice Bureau who help people at the bottom of the housing system. At the Housing Strategy Workshop for councillors in October, attended by many of the members here, there was cross-party consensus that the only way the Vale could guarantee that no vulnerable residents are homeless would be to increase council owned or managed housing stock. But this bill encourages the selling-off of council and housing association properties – the opposite of what we need right now.

In my opinion, this Housing Bill is ill thought through and a missed opportunity to ensure the affordable homes we need are built. It is also undermines our ability to provide for the Vale’s most vulnerable residents and low income families. Therefore I cannot support this motion to endorse the Bill as a whole.

Oxford Mail Issue: Should Vale build houses in Green Belt between Abingdon and Oxford?

Oxford Mail invited me to write the NO! response. It took them a bit longer than they thought it would to find someone to write the opposing view. Matthew Barber eventually agreed. (He would have to, wouldn’t he?)

Neither of us saw what the other one wrote. But there’s a surprising amount of overlap.

Check it out ( I do repeatedly send them a new, nicer photo, but they keep using these olde crone ones) : http://bit.ly/1VtmIfG

Cabinet: Meeting Oxford’s Unmet Housing Need 7 Aug 2015

(I’ve edited this post after the Cabinet meeting, to include an update.)

About 25 people came to the Vale Cabinet meeting Friday morning (7th Aug 15). The agenda item was the report from head of planning about options for high level approaches to Vale’s commitment to duty to cooperate to meet Oxford’s unmet housing need.

Six spoke: CPRE, SPADE, Sunningwell PC, Radley PC, keep Cumnor Green, and I.

Cllrs Barber and Murray gamely tried to answer questions from an obviously opposed audience. I got that they were trying to reassure people that no decisions were going to be taken and this was the beginning of consultation on the subject. I also got that they see the BIG opposition to Green Belt development. (But I think they’re going to go for it anyway.)

You can find the report within the agenda on the Vale’s website here: http://democratic.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=507&MId=1980&Ver=4 Scroll down to item 6. Once the minutes are published, you can see what everyone had to say to Cabinet.

Here’s what I had to say:

Vale’s report specifically refers to a ‘proven’ need for more housing than Oxford can accommodate.

Although I understand that Oxford isn’t being seen to be doing enough to help itself, as far as I’m aware there isn’t any legal provision for determining if any declared need is ‘proven’ or not. When the Oxfordshire Growth Board’s process for handling disagreement reaches its effective limit, the issue is dropped into a filing cabinet and nothing further is done. I would encourage the Growth Board to re-address this problem amongst yourselves. Personally, I expect Oxford will do little more that it has already done, and their neighbours will have to provide. It puts to question the meaning of ‘cooperation’.

I, and my Lib Dem group, remain opposed to piecemeal removal of bits of the Green Belt for housing development. We still seek a proper, independent and public Green Belt review, where the questions asked are honestly answered. There’s no sign of that forthcoming.

How can the various districts begin to consider options to meet Oxford’s unmet housing need before we have a completed Green Belt review, particularly, as in the case of the Vale, where Green Belt land is being considered as an option to meet the unmet need?

Once the number of extra houses neighbouring districts must build is ultimately agreed, then what? Where would the houses best be placed? To divide them equally between the four neighbouring districts seems amateurish, unfair, and ineffective. I’ve been reading that City’s housing need is greatest near their employment sites, on the eastern side of the city. That should be a consideration in deciding how best neighbouring districts can together meet the need. Consideration of proximity to jobs and provision of transport is relevant. If we build somewhere other than on the eastern edge of the city, then Oxford needs a modern and effective transport system to get people from home to work, not a old system (even an expanded OLD system) that continues to rely on the over capacity A34 and local roads.

And finally, housing need is explicitly not an exceptional circumstance that would allow for developing the green belt. If we needed green belt land in order to meet SHMA figures, then that fact should have been considered as a constraint when determining Vale’s housing targets for the Local Plan. What evidence has Vale produced to support the case for exceptional circumstances that would support development on the Green Belt?

The Oxford Times covered the story: http://m.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/13582632.Applause_as_Vale_council_are_warned_not_to_destroy_villages_for_new_Oxford_homes/