13
Examination of witnesses
James Prestwich, Adrian Swan, David O’Leary and Councillor David Renard.
The Chair: I thank the panel very much for coming. I am sorry that we are running behind, but you observed most of that session and can see how much interest was created. Let us get on with our questions.
Q10 Viscount Chandos: You heard us discuss the target of 300,000 new homes a year. What is your assessment of the construction industry’s ability to deliver that target and do so without the sort of inflation in prices that we have seen in recent years?
David O'Leary: In principle it is achievable. Today, we have broadly doubled housing supply since six years ago, when that looked pretty much impossible. Certainly, when the Government announced their target of 1 million homes over five years, it received a lot of criticism for being unrealistic, but we look like we are on course to burst through that well in advance of the end of the five-year period.
The good news, therefore, is that the industry is pretty resourceful. It is able to find ways of delivering big increases in housing supply. Probably the biggest challenges relate to labour and access to the skilled workforce that we require, particularly in the context of Brexit and what might happen there. We also have the challenge of the ending of Help to Buy, which has supported effective demand for new homes over the past five or six years in particular. Those big increases in housing supply have occurred since Help to Buy was introduced. My concern is that, when the scheme ends in 2023, access to the higher-LTV mortgages that are required by first-time buyers in particular will not be there. There is a lot to do with the mortgage market to normalise lending practices and have something in place that allows first-time buyers to access mortgage finance.
In principle, the industry is capable of delivering 300,000 homes. That is not our target or one we have subscribed to, but if it is deemed to be the number that is required, it can be achieved. That also requires further improvement in the planning process. The planning system generally works really well now, post—
Viscount Chandos: That is not really the question, is it? The planning is through and there is demand, but can the construction industry deliver? As you say, there are questions about labour, because the regime is likely to be very different in 11 months’ time.
David O'Leary: The planning is through, but having outline planning permission is very far from being able to start building. That is the position we are in. In particular, if you are a smaller developer, that process is unending, potentially.
James Prestwich: There are a couple of points there. First, there is the capacity of the sector to do it. Certainly, things like modern methods of construction offer the potential to build homes less labour-intensively and in a non-traditional manner. I guess the other point is about whether the business model of volume housebuilders will enable us to get to that kind of number.
It is very clear from the National Housing Federation’s point of view that, if we are going to get to 300,000 homes, a significant proportion of them need to be affordable homes. Genuinely affordable homes help, particularly in terms of absorption rates. Our own analysis suggests that we need 145,000 affordable homes a year. The government figure is 300,000, but we put it at around 340,000 homes a year. When you take account of that backlog every year, you do not make that number. A significant proportion of those homes need to be genuinely affordable, with a focus on social rent as the most affordable tenure to be able to get there.
Councillor David Renard: From local government’s point of view, clearly, we want to work with the developers to deliver as many of these houses as possible. However, if we look back to when we last built 250,000 homes in a year, 40% of those were delivered by local authorities. Over the years, for different reasons, that figure has diminished, but councils are now very keen to start delivering as many as they can. The lifting of the housing borrowing cap has been really helpful, and we expect to deliver about 10,000 of those homes in the coming year.
From my perspective and the LGA’s perspective, there is a potential shortage of skilled workers and we need to work with colleges and other education institutions to make sure that we can train enough people to meet the demand.
The Chair: Why do you think the Government increased the rate of interest from the Public Works Loan Board? They lifted the cap but increased the rate of interest from 1.8% to 2.8%, making it more expensive for local authorities.
Q11 Councillor David Renard: I agree. I do not know the answer to that. However, the UK Municipal Bonds Agency has been launched recently and it has more competitive rates. I suspect that local government will start to look to other sources of finance, but we have seen a dip in borrowing from councils as a result of that policy change.
Viscount Chandos: Maybe it was to stop councils buying shopping centres on the arbitrage between the PWLB rate and the initial rental yields on shopping centres.
Lord Livingston of Parkhead: They were the last buyers of shopping
centres.
The Chair: I can think of ways to stop them buying shopping centres other than making it more expensive to build council houses.
Councillor David Renard: I quite agree. While I accept that that may well be a reason for the decision, we need access to those funds to build the houses we need.
Viscount Chandos: Councillor Renard, has not one of the problems been that that decline of council housebuilding over three decades has really reduced councils’ capability to deliver the volumes that would be necessary for them to play their part in meeting the overall target and particularly the affordable housing target within it?
Councillor David Renard: There is no doubt that the people with those skills who worked in local authorities have gone elsewhere or retired by now. We need to re-employ people with the right skills. Now that the tools appear to have been made available to local authorities, we are very keen to make our contribution towards the national effort.
Lord Fox: Before I ask my main question, may I just follow up on something Mr O’Leary said? I think I heard you say that the planning system is working well now. Then, at the end of that section, you said that small and medium-sized developers get stuck in this planning loop, which makes it seem that it is not working well. Which is it? What is working and what is not?
David O'Leary: It might sound like semantics, but I draw a distinction here. The planning system as a whole is the overarching framework that governs everything from the centre and works its way outwards. If you look at things since the NPPF was introduced, with the kind of ratcheting-up of pressure to deliver on expectations of local authorities it is starting to work and feed through with more housing and more planning permissions being delivered.
The process is still really tricky. This probably answers the central question of why we have moved towards a much more concentrated industry, because you need to be well equipped and capitalised, and have the expertise required to navigate the planning process. That was not the case in the 1980s when it was a much more entrepreneurial system of identifying a bit of land, putting a bit of investment in there and working through the system. Those kinds of opportunities do not really exist anymore for SMEs, so we are more and more reliant on ever-larger builders. That is not a healthy place to be, but those are the builders that can manage this.
To take a simple example, if you are an SME with three sites and two of them experience planning delays post initial outline approval, you will really struggle. That is almost a business-ending situation. If you are a national housebuilder with 300 sites, you can afford to allow some of them not to go through the process at the right pace. That is the position we have ended up with after 30 years of policy.
Q12 Lord Fox: This question plays into the question that I was going to move on to anyway, so that is very helpful. Liam Halligan put the proportion of housing being built by big volume builders at around 59%. How is that affecting the power relationship between local authorities when it comes to Section 106 and CIL money? We have heard stories of developers withholding or renegotiating those things. How is it affecting the release of land from the developers’ land banks? Will you describe, from your relative positions, how you see that power relationship, given the size and strength of a small number of developers?
Councillor David Renard: From my perspective this is a really important point. If we look at the number of planning permissions given, back in 2012 nearly 200,000 were given by local authorities. We are now up at more than 360,000 but the number of completions has increased from 118,000 to 213,000. There are a large number of permissions out there that are not being built out by developers.
In terms of the finances around the land, a lot of developers are paying over the odds for the land, then they get planning permission and come back to the local authorities to renegotiate the Section 106 and other contributions. The one thing we know is that if infrastructure is funded and, ideally, put in up front, that not only helps with the speed of housebuilding but makes it a bit easier for SMEs to play their part in the overall effort.
My uncle was a small housebuilder many years ago. He used to be able to acquire a piece of land, build a house, sell it and then move on to the next one. I agree that it is not as simple as it used to be, and we need to get those small builders back in the market.
David O'Leary: I agree with some of that. I do not see the power imbalance in that way, as you might expect. There is probably a distinction to be drawn between a viability negotiation at the outset and a renegotiation of an agreed Section 106. From our perspective, the builders we represent want simplicity and a streamlined process. To go back and renegotiate a Section 106 after it has been agreed does not represent that. There were quite a few renegotiations of Section 106 in the immediate post-financial crisis environment. I think there are ongoing negotiations over viability.
Lord Fox: Do you recognise the point about overpaying for land and then offsetting it by renegotiating Section 106 money?
David O'Leary: There have been examples. We often hear of private developers, particularly SMEs, who claim they are being outbid by housing associations, for instance, which have overpaid for land. There have always been examples in the market of people who have made a bad call and have overpaid for land, but I do not think it is as widespread as is sometimes implied.
James Prestwich: That is the nature of the market, with housing associations increasingly looking to move towards more land-led development, which gives us greater control and allows us to plan over the long term and ultimately build more homes. The importance of Section 106 should not be understated as far as affordable housing delivery is concerned. Last year, 57% of homes built by housing associations were delivered through Section 106, and any changes to Section 106 could put that number in jeopardy. We await details of the Government’s first homes plan that was announced in the manifesto, which looks as though it is tinkering with the existing Section 106 system. It will be interesting to see what the implications of that policy will be for affordable homes.
The Chair: You would be against what Mr Halligan was suggesting: some kind of development tax that simply transferred the resources to local authorities to build social housing, rather than going through the complexities of Section 106?
James Prestwich: The important thing is that genuinely affordable homes are built. Housing associations will adapt and work with the system that is in place to try to bring those homes forward as quickly as they are able.
David O'Leary: I would just add that if you look at the statistics around Section 106 and go back to 2015-16, MHCLG published a study that showed that there was about £6 billion-worth of developer contributions or private-led contributions from landowners, depending on how you want to define it. That has now increased, I guess, to around £8 billion. That is also the source of half of all new affordable homes that are built and the source of pretty much all the social rented homes that are being built. Those genuinely affordable homes are now pretty much exclusively funded through Section 106. There are lots of arguments for land value capture changes, and some of those are very valid. I am not entirely sure that the case has been proven that the current scheme is failing. It is all very well to change it, but I am not sure we are necessarily in a terrible position.
Q13 Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted: To what extent are demographic changes considered when planning new housing developments?
Councillor David Renard: All local authorities have to do a planning assessment and they want to ensure that they have the right mix of housing, with a mix of tenures for the local market. Any demographic considerations will be taken into account as part of that process.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted: You feel confident that houses are being built where they are wanted, and of the right variety.
Councillor David Renard: That is a judgment for each local authority to make. Certainly, my local authority will do a housing needs assessment and, as far as possible, we will work with the developers to make sure that the right types of homes with the right tenures are produced. But that is easier said than done.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted: What research tells you what the right type of house is? We discussed with the previous panel the question of elderly people still being in four-bedroom houses and probably wanting to downsize. They might want to downsize, say, the number of rooms but not the size of the largest living room. Who is researching those kinds of things?
Lord Livingston of Parkhead: It is also about the availability of supported accommodation for these older people. I should declare that I am on the board of a social care charity. Some of them get trapped in larger housing because they do not have anywhere to go, rather than wanting to stay there. When we talk about social housing provision we tend to mean a particular end of it, rather than affordable assisted living for older people, which also plays to the social care agenda. Is that something you recognise? Are local authorities participating actively enough in this area?
Councillor David Renard: I absolutely recognise all the points you have made, and I think it is absolutely right that it should be part of the housing needs assessment that local authorities are doing. In my own area, we are providing those sorts of opportunities for people to downsize in the way you have suggested.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted: How long does it take for you to bring them on once you recognise that you need to build those kinds of facilities?
Councillor David Renard: That often depends on the number of developers in that particular market. You will be aware that some of them are quite specialist and there are not many who can deliver that type of accommodation. That is sometimes why local authorities have to do some of it themselves. There is not an easy answer, but I think all councils need to make sure that they do that work and, in so far as they are able, bring it on-stream as quickly as possible.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted: Are the builders keen to do this kind of building, or they always trying to nibble away and build something else?
James Prestwich: Housing associations have a very strong track record of building and managing supported accommodation, particularly for older people. We have asked for £1.4 billion of ring-fenced funding to enable our members to build supported accommodation. There is a very specific demographic issue that needs to be looked at: the increasing numbers of older people in the private rented sector. What will be the offer, or the means of support, for people when they are relying on their pensions and they still have significant private rent coming out each month?
David O'Leary: In the private sector, there are obviously specialist retirement developers and developers of a range of types of housing for older people or those with specific needs. They would like to see at local planning stages greater emphasis put on their products and local people’s need for retirement housing, for instance. They have made cases at various points for a use class and those kinds of things within the planning system to support that kind of housing, and they continue to do so.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted: Do they still have the attitude that they want to put as many in as possible and therefore make them small, or are they thinking of some larger ones to tempt people away? You have people who want more at the affordable end, but you also have a lot who could afford to move to these places if they existed.
David O'Leary: My sense is that there is a growing market or range of supply in this space. There are the traditional apartment schemes and then there are the more retirement village-type concepts. Increasingly, they are also looking at non-owner-occupied housing and whether people downsizing would be happy to rent an apartment or home for X number of years to release some capital for loved ones—that kind of thing.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted: Is this as a replacement? At the moment, when you sell a home in some of these villages, there is quite a big charge of 15% or 20%. When you die or go into care, your family find that they cannot do this. I think that is becoming more unpopular and it might even have been curbed.
David O'Leary: My understanding is that those exit fees have not been charged by any of the mainstream retirement developers for some years now. The changes there have been positive and the industry has moved on.
Q14 The Chair: Councillor Renard, you say that local authorities have their plans and take account of this, but the NAO’s report on housing last year said that local authorities struggled to produce up-to-date local plans. Only 40% had an up-to-date local plan, meaning a plan that is less than five years old. How can we expect the planning system to take account of that if the kind of assessments that should have been made have not been made?
I also have a question for Mr O’Leary. Is not the problem that you would much rather build executive homes on which you have big margins than this kind of housing? I regret to say that I have now got to the age at which I get unsolicited emails asking me if I would like to go to a retirement home of some kind, and they are not referring to the House of Lords. In London, these homes cost £1 million and are aimed at a particular group of people, whereas the people we are concerned about are those whose means are different and who might be living on their pension, as you described. It is not an attractive section of the market, so unless local authorities require the provision of it, rather like they do with social housing, it is hard to see how entrepreneurial housebuilders will do it. Am I being cynical in my old age?
David O'Leary: I would never say that. I honestly believe that there is a growing range of products available for downsizers.
The Chair: But they are aimed mainly at higher-net-worth people, are they not?
David O'Leary: Until recently, they have been aimed primarily at homeowners who are downsizing and have some equity to use. I am not sure it is necessarily income-rich or cash-rich people, but it is typically people who are under-occupying a large home—empty nesters and all that kind of thing.
Councillor David Renard: On that point, this is where local authorities come into their own, because if the market is not providing, local authorities should step into that space to try to develop that housing.
To come back to your first question, I was talking particularly about a housing needs assessment, which is a separate piece of work that informs the local plan. I would certainly expect all planning authorities to have an up-to-date local plan and would very much encourage them to get that, so that they then have control over development in their area. The consequence of not having it is that developers can come in and make speculative applications, and either local authorities are obliged to approve them or they go the inspector who will approve them anyway. If, as a local authority, you want control over development in your area, make sure you have an up-to-date local plan.
Q15 Lord Skidelsky: I want to ask about the ability of SMEs to compete with larger developers. It seems from what we heard from Mr O’Leary that the planning system is all right in general terms but is biased in favour of big builders. That raises the question of whether it is all right or not.
The other argument is about the access of SMEs to finance. That has been a long strand of discussion in British economic history. The Macmillan gap was identified in the 1930s and showed that SMEs had difficulty accessing finance from the British banking system. First, what is the problem for SMEs? Is it planning bottlenecks, a matter of finance, or both, and in what proportion?
David O'Leary: I would characterise it as having three strands. There is the availability of land. As we have heard, local authorities are increasingly putting local plans in place. They have housing targets that they need to meet and so we have seen ever-larger sites coming through the planning system. From the local authority perspective, it is potentially easier to have two or three arguments with local residents, rather than lots of them.
We have seen a movement towards larger sites being put into site allocations in local plans. Obviously, that acts as a disincentive for small homebuilders. However, more than that, the inefficiency of the system works disproportionately against SMEs. It is not just to do with planning departments, which we all agree are under-resourced, but with the highways that are required. You cannot get approval for the road design until the highways department signs it off. Those departments also seem to be under-resourced and do not have skin in the game of meeting housing targets. All those things work against all builders, but they disproportionately hit SMEs.
Then, as you rightly say, there is finance. We have seen an improvement in the volume of finance available to SMEs over the past five years or so, which is welcomed. However, the terms available make it really difficult for developers to recycle their equity, getting their equity out of one scheme and moving on to the next one, until they have pretty much finished one scheme.
In times gone by, while you were finishing a scheme of, say, 15 homes, you might be able to get started on the next one. At the moment, they are not able to take out their equity from the scheme until it is pretty much finished. Those terms are being imposed by development finance providers, particularly the mainstream lenders.
Lord Skidelsky: But of course the bias in favour of the big builders also biases the kind of housing built. I do not know whether the assumption that the big builders want to build higher-end houses, not social housing, is correct, but if it is it means there will be a deficit in social housing as a result of the structure of the development market.
David O'Leary: Yes, this is interesting. I hear that argument made both ways. I often hear that private housebuilders are being driven towards much smaller homes, because they want to build rabbit hutches and cram in as many as possible. Then we hear that they are too focused on family homes, because that is supposedly where they make the biggest profit. I think they are responding to local markets, but I would say that.
On the affordable housing side, as I say, 50% of all new affordable homes are coming through developer contributions in one form or another, and some of that is on-site. That is all part of the mix. I do not think there is a tendency towards bigger, smaller, or whatever.
The only potential intervention by the Government that has incentivised larger family homes is Help to Buy, which has improved affordability for first-time buyers. Typically, people in their 30s now, rather than buying a one or two-bedroom flat, are buying a two or three-bedroom house. I have sat on committees like this and had arguments about whether that is a good or a bad thing, or just part of the market. It is not for me to say whether it is good or bad.
Lord Skidelsky: If it is a good thing, and you have a more competitive market in which builders of all sizes can compete, how will you increase the share of SMEs in the construction of housing? What reforms in the planning system do you think would be required? We have had evidence that it was much easier 30, 40 or 50 years ago for SMEs to be part of the building programme. Why has it become so much more difficult? You have given one set of reasons, but what could be done about it?
David O'Leary: You could require a certain proportion of new homes to be developed on small sites. That is one way you could do it. We have had those conversations and looked at the options. Ultimately, since the early 1990s we have created a system in which entrepreneurialism in the sector is not really welcomed by local authorities. Everything we have done to the planning system over the last 30 or 40 years has created a necessity for scale. There have to be higher levels of expertise and it is far too risky for the average SME. Most of our members are SMEs, we see them all the time, and there are barriers to entry. Broadly, you have to have a lot of expertise from having worked with a large developer previously, and a lot of cash. That is not a positive or constructive place for us to be.
Lord Skidelsky: David Renard, local authorities do not welcome entrepreneurship.
Councillor David Renard: I would challenge that, but clearly we have seen improvements over many years in building standards and requirements. There is a lot of national and local planning guidance that planning officers need to comply with. I do not think most planning authorities would turn something down because it was a bit novel or different, but it does have to comply with those national and local policies.
David talked about the capacity of planning departments. At the moment, planning departments cannot recoup the full cost of doing planning applications. The taxpayer currently subsidises this to the tune of about £200 million across England. There is a need for the Government to review the level of planning fees that can be charged to ensure that the cost of providing the service is recouped.
The Chair: That was one of our Committee recommendations.
Baroness Harding of Winscombe: Mr O’Leary, you present a rather fatalistic view of the planning system. What do you think of the Policy Exchange recommendation, which Warwick Lightfoot sets out, for a radical change in those to simplify them and create more opportunities for SMEs?
David O'Leary: We published a similar report a couple of years ago that looked at the changes to the planning system and the planning process that need to occur if we are to get back to a better level. One thing we found in that research is that by 2007 we had already had two decades of decline in SMEs, and even when the industry overall is doing well and building more homes the number of SMEs has been declining. If we just got back to 2007 levels, we could be talking about SMEs adding 20,000 additional homes to the stock each year.
One thing we looked at and proposed was a presumption in favour of development on small sites within an existing settlement. That apes some of the environment that existed in the 1970s and 1980s. There is a lot of concern about the concentration of the industry. Some of the household names among the largest housebuilders began in the 1960s and 1970s pretty much as one-man bands and have grown into enormous national companies. That cannot happen today, because those opportunities do not exist. That is why we favour a presumption in favour of development on small sites.
Lord Fox: On that point, the rules have changed and there is more relatively small infill development going on in villages and small towns. Has it continued to be the relatively large builders that have tended to dominate that? My anecdotage in seeing these is that this has been where the SMEs have managed to gain a foothold. Is that one area of hope?
David O'Leary: It is. Increasingly, the availability of large sites, because of the planning system changes, means that we have seen lots of larger builders look at bigger schemes, so those small opportunities do exist. Some of the changes to the NPPF this year and the imposition on local authorities of providing more housing if they have fallen behind on their housing targets will help.
Previously, you got five years to build a certain number of homes. Then if you reached the end point and found that you had not built them, you said, “Oh well, let’s try better next time”. We are now moving to a system where, year on year, a local authority will be held to account. We think that presents more opportunities for SMEs, because if there is a small shortfall you can identify a new site and that will work for an SME. So it is positive.
Q16 The Chair: Mr O’Leary, you presented the problem for smaller builders as being caused by the local authorities wanting to have large sites. Is it not the case that the large builders have been going around buying up options on sites? One hears tales of farmers being offered Range Rovers in return for an option. If that is going on, then by definition the supply of smaller sites will be less available to the smaller operators because they have already been acquired indirectly, through options. That may or may not result in houses being developed.
We listened to Warwick, who suggested that there should be a kind of laissez-faire approach to planning, but is not the problem that there are large amounts of land with planning that have been taken up by large developers who are limiting the supply in order to maintain the price?
David O'Leary: I do not think that is the reason for them buying up large sites.
The Chair: I am not talking about large sites, I am talking about them buying up options so that the supply of possible land that could be given planning permission is held by a small number of people who then limit the availability of that land in order to maintain the price and the value of their houses.
David O'Leary: That comes back to the land banking accusations we dealt with as recently as the Letwin review and as far back as the Barker review, the Callcutt review and the OFT investigation. If you look at the business model of the typical housebuilder, sitting on land and waiting for the value to go up does not really make much sense, because that capital has a cost. Sure, if you get some huge increases in house price inflation—double digits year on year for several years—you may end up with a situation where you do well, but it is not the business model of the average housebuilder.
The Chair: I was referring to builders taking out options, where you go along and say to a farmer, “We’ll pay you some money if you give us an option”. That reduces the capital availability and the availability of that land for smaller operators.
David O'Leary: But, typically, those options will have a clause that says the builder has to promote that site through the local planning process. Whether the landowner or another builder would be able to promote that site through the local plan process is questionable. A hell of a lot of work is done by the promoters, often in the form of housebuilders but often not, of those large sites.
The Chair: This is an urban myth?
David O'Leary: I am not sure it is an urban myth—
Lord Fox: It is a rural myth.
James Prestwich: We at the National Housing Federation have been pretty clear on this point for a while. We do not necessarily take issue with land banking—having a pipeline of land to enable you to build out over five years. What troubles us about options is the lack of transparency in that market. If greater transparency could be brought to bear on options, some of the practices that may or may not go on—
The Chair: Because they are not disclosed? Do you think they should be required to be disclosed?
James Prestwich: Greater transparency is certainly something we have called for in the past, and a register of who holds options on land.
Q17 Lord Tugendhat: I have a much more straightforward question. What do you think are the biggest constraints on building more social and supported housing, and to what extent? Can you give me an order of magnitude as to how much more is needed?
James Prestwich: The big issue at the moment facing housing associations and local authorities is the lack of certainty over the new affordable homes programme. We have had some encouraging statements from the Secretary of State say that the new affordable homes programme will be bigger than the last and that details will be announced soon. We really need to understand the composition of that affordable housing programme in order for our members and local authorities to be able to start to take some of the long-term business decisions that they need to take.
The lack of certainty over the new affordable homes programmes that has existed over the last year or so has meant that housing association boards have had to decide whether to go ahead with purchasing land or starting developments. That level of uncertainty will have a consequential impact on homes being built. For me, certainty over that affordable homes programme is absolutely key. Then we can start to think about the tenure mix and the composition of that.
At the National Housing Federation, we have been very clear about the important role we think social rent needs to play. We think that we need to build 90,000 social rented homes a year as part of that overall figure of 145,000 homes a year. Building social rent at scale is still the best way to tackle a housing crisis.
Councillor David Renard: I agree. Local authorities with housing revenue accounts would want to keep 100% of the right to buy money. At the moment, they only get to keep about a third, so it is impossible for local authorities to replace like-for-like numbers of social housing. That would be one request that we would put in. At the moment, local authorities are allowed to invest only about 30% of that into replacing a new house. We would want to see that increase to 40% or 50% under current regulations.
Something else that is contributing to homelessness—it was touched on by the previous panel—is around local housing allowance. It is not enough to permit people who are privately renting to cover the rents in a particular area. We think the Government need to look at it again, because people are being forced into financial hardship because they cannot pay the rent, and they are then presenting to local authorities as statutorily homeless, which puts even more pressure back on to the social housing system.
The Chair: Does anyone have any other questions? I thank you very much indeed. Thank you for those last two points, Councillor Renard, which we will certainly follow up on.
