Agenda item

1.            The Chairman referred to the previous session with Tim Marchant, Tim Woolmer and David Godfrey, for which Mr Horton had also been present, and thanked him for taking the time to attend. Mr Horton said he was very pleased that a select committee was looking at the issue of affordable housing in Kent as he knew from his 30 years’ experience in housing how important an issue it was. He was keen to speak to the committee and thanked them for inviting him.

2.            Mr Horton set out his experience before he had started his current consultancy role. He had previously worked for 3 - 4 years as a Strategic Housing Advisor to the County Council, and his role included encouraging joint working between the County Council, District Councils and Medway Council.  Before that, he had been the Chief Executive of the Swale Housing Association and the Head of Housing and Property at Thanet District Council.  His current role was to run a very small independent housing consultancy retained by the SELEP and other public and private sector clients.  The work was similar to what he had done with the County Council but had been scaled up to cover the whole of the SELEP area. He was also a Board member at West Kent Housing Association, based in Sevenoaks, working with commercial clients, advising them on how to work with the public sector. He was also the Chairman of the Kent and Medway Sustainable Housing Partnership Board.

3.            Referring to his role in the SELEP, he was involved in supporting the development of the strategic economic plan for in the south east. Housing and jobs shared equal priority within the original SELEP Strategic Economic Plan and housing remained the key priority for the SELEP.  He was currently working on the local industrial strategy (LIS), of which housing was a very important part. The LIS for the south east resonated with the Kent and Medway Housing Strategy (KMHS) and provided a strong strategic platform to support local ambitions, including accelerated housing delivery. The methodology for this work had been provide by the Government.  SELEP had invested in his work as it saw housing as a priority, although it was not a direct deliverer of housing as it did not build. Instead, it worked with other partners to create an environment which was conducive to good development.

4.            Mr Horton then responded to questions from the committee, including the following:-

a.    asked if the priorities of the SELEP, a business-led strategic board, aligned with the priorities of local government, Mr Horton explained that priorities needed to be a matter of balance.  LEPs were in conception business-led, but the priorities of both they and local authorities needed to be based on an agenda for improving economic viability and improving productivity. Housing was a priority for the SELEP Board and  this prioritisation had  been welcomed by providers, supporting the idea of Kent being ‘open for business’ for good quality development;

b.    asked if the size of the SELEP helped with achieving its ambitions, as it was the largest LEP outside London, Mr Horton said the LEP could indeed use its size to its advantage.  The large economy of the area covered by the SELEP gave it an influential voice with the Government. The three historic county areas covered by the SELEP – Kent, East Sussex and Essex – were united in the shared aim of achieving quality growth and infrastructure. It was important that infrastructure be developed first to support house building as this reduced the level of risk and uncertainty for housing providers and would encourage and enable them to include more affordable housing units in a development;

c.    asked about the role of Government funding allocations in supporting the building of affordable housing, Mr Horton advised that a rule with Government funding was ‘use it or lose it’; any unspent allocation should never be returned at the end of a financial year but should be spent fully on delivery. This would emphasise that such funding was much needed;

d.    it should always be possible for authorities working together to find common ground and achieve their shared aims. Trust and respect were both important; the SELEP had managed to overcome any adversarial element of their joint working and, as a result, had been able to build confidence and move ahead with a clear purpose.  This allowed them to spend all available funds and resources on developing a healthy local economy rather than wasting them on in-fighting. Good joint working between developers and the planning authority would build confidence that Government funding for development was being used for its intended purpose.  It was part of the role of the LEP Board to ensure that funding across the south east was consistent and the responsibility of the funding recipients to ensure that money was used for the purpose for which it was allocated to them;   

e.  a member of the committee said that, when he had been involved with the SELEP in the past, the relationship between its members had been adversarial and asked if that relationship had since improved. Mr Horton replied that, given the large size of the SELEP, some tension and difference of opinion was inevitable. Resources should be allocated to achieve the most good at SELEP level; it was the responsibility of Federated Boards and the Kent and Medway Enterprise Partnership (KMEP) in Kent to identify and advocate for priorities;

f.    asked about work to address the problem of accommodation for former members of the armed forces, to stop them becoming homeless, Mr Horton explained that a Service Personal Sub-group had run for a while, to support the Kent Civilian and Military Partnership Covenant.  Ex-service personnel could experience a problem proving a local connection in order to qualify for housing assistance.  They may have been born in an area but then spent their adult life serving abroad and, when asked where they had lived most recently, the answer would be their last forces posting. Under the Covenant, they would be passed on to a local connection to be housed. Similar initiatives existed for other groups with special needs, for example, older people needing specialist or extra-care housing.  Mr Horton added that he had served on the judging panel of the Kent Design Awards and had seen some good projects going on, run by coalitions of like-minded people who were willing to do their bit;

g.  asked about the variety of arrangements for social housing across the districts of Kent, with some District Councils being directly involved with housing associations and some having a more arms-length relationship with this area of provision, Mr Horton pointed to the County Council’s role as neither a landlord or a housing provider but an active partner in groups such as the Kent Housing Group, and party to much good work. The County Council owned much land, which it disposed of from time to time, and was required to achieve the best consideration on such sales. As a landowner, it had influence on how the land was to be used and could use its land holding strategically to achieve added value and support its wish to encourage the development of more affordable housing. The way in which it worked with District and Borough Council partners to achieve this would be instrumental to its success. The Select Committee would be interviewing the Director of Infrastructure, Rebecca Spore, at a later session and could ask about how the County Council sought to add value by taking a strategic view;

h.  asked about the use of the Kent pension fund to buy housing, and the duty upon the Superannuation Fund Committee to deliver the best value for money for Kent pensioners from its investments, Mr Horton advised that some pension funds had invested in property as a good long-term revenue stream. Pension funds were a big pot of money, which needed to generate the best revenue return to benefit their pensioners, for example, in the form of income from rents, so property could well form part of a mixed portfolio of investment;

i.    asked about the need to take a measured approach and identify the best way forward, for example, by building larger houses at a prestige site such as Discovery Park to attract scientists from aboard, what criteria would be used, and about the approach taken in the UK, where the need for infrastructure tended to be addressed later, whereas in the USA and Canada it was always built before new housing, and what options there were to change this arrangement, Mr Horton explained that the best developments relied on the certainty of the related infrastructure being readily developed before housebuilding started. Local Plans should reflect this. Local authorities should be brave in making a case for affordable housing to serve the needs of the local community, and to take proper account of patterns of housing need and demographic factors.  The quality of housing should never be compromised, and if good affordable housing could be established, this would give the best of both worlds; Government housing figures would be met and the community need would be served. The approach taken was important. If a Parish Council and local people were to be asked to comment on a proposal to build 100 new houses in their area, they would most likely object. However, if they were asked if they wanted their children and grandchildren to have the choice to live locally, and if they wanted to be able to keep their local pub, shop and school, they would be more likely to support a good quality, mixed development as they would see the context and benefit of it. There was a ‘sweet spot’, a point at which a balance could be achieved in advocating for infrastructure to give some certainty of a development being successful, with the ultimate outcome that the local authority would achieve the housing provision it wanted;

j.      asked about the County Council’s ability to direct how s106 funding should be used, Mr Horton explained that the community infrastructure levy (CIL) would help. 25% of the CIL went to Parish Councils. Many local communities were not aware of what was available to them as an outcome of development, for example, s106 funding, and how this could be used.  It would be helpful if developers could give information about this on the hoardings they erected around a site; alongside the number and type of houses being built there, the community benefits and resulting projects for that area could be outlined.  Local politicians could play a vital leadership role in raising awareness and highlighting these benefits;

k.    asked about what could be done to satisfy a need for more affordable housing in an area which may not meet the criteria for such a development, Mr Horton advised that some areas, for example, coastal areas with poor quality housing, could benefit from special funding, for example, in projects such as ‘live Margate’.  Other areas having benefitted from similar projects were Hastings and Tendring. In the case of Margate, the economic boost arising from the location of Turner Contemporary and associated economic regeneration had led to positive improvement in an underperforming housing market. Thanet District Council had also invested to provide social housing for local people. The communities in many coastal areas had a transient element, in part related to poor quality private rented homes. The concept of better housing for better health had arisen from efforts to address public health issues, as being homeless or in poor quality housing was known to significantly harm a person’s health. The County Council was responsible for public health so had a role in supporting the improvement of housing standards;

l.      asked about small rural developments, Mr Horton explained that smaller rural sites could be delivered as Rural Exception Sites.  From the point of view of a landowner, the permitting of appropriately-sized mixed-tenure developments offered the best use of land and hence gave encouragement to bring sites forward;

m.  asked how the delivery of affordable housing could be accelerated, Mr   Horton advised that the front-funding of infrastructure would help as this would support the viability of a site and reduce the potential for the development to stall. He chaired an Affordable Housing Round-table Group, on which he would seek to have this issue discussed. Developers would only build at any particular site if they could achieve a sufficient profit margin there;

n.    asked to clarify the order in which a development should be approached, ie securing infrastructure first, or putting a charge on the land, and what would constitute the best use of funding, Mr Horton said that securing infrastructure first and putting a charge on the land as the approach followed by Homes England,  for example, at the Peters Village development near Wouldham.   Ashford Borough Council had applied an infrastructure-first approach to a new junction on the M20, which would enable delivery of a considerable number of new homes, based on a deal with Homes England on  receipts covering the reimbursement of infrastructure costs; and

o.    Mr Horton advised on the potential advantages of enabling the application of Homes England grant to s106 elements of developments where this enabled the accelerated delivery of otherwise-stalled sites.  

5.            Mr Horton asked if any Member of the Select Committee had previously visited any type of affordable housing development, built by either a local authority or housing association, and offered to arrange a visit. 

6.            The Chairman thanked Mr Horton for giving his time to attend and help the Select Committee with its information gathering and advised him that a written summary of his interview would be sent to him for checking and approval.