Clause 27
Housing and Regeneration Bill
6:14 pm
Iain Wright (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Communities and Local Government; Hartlepool, Labour)
Personally, I think that the clause is important because it empowers the HCA to charge. In doing so, we get a bit of a sneak peek into what it will do and how it will help local authorities and others to step up to the plate. I would like to refer you to the objects of the HCA, Mr. Benton. It is tasked with supporting
“in other ways the creation, regeneration or development of communities in England or their continued well-being”.
It will do that by working with local authorities and other stakeholders by being an expert delivery partner. The expertise and experience that already exist within English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation will transfer to the agency. That means that the new agency has the potential to be incredibly innovative in the way in which it takes regeneration forward. That could be in providing advice, training and consultancy services to drive forward projects that otherwise would never get off the ground.
Additionally, something that I am interested in and that we do not talk about often enough is the Academy for Sustainable Communities, which will go into the agency and effectively act as an operating arm of the HCA. That will carry forward its work to improve the skills, knowledge and behaviours that are needed to deliver and to maintain sustainable communities. The power in the clause will enable the academy, and then the agency, to charge for the information, advice, education and training support services that they provide.
The clause is intended to enable the HCA not to make a profit from providing those services, but to make reasonable charges to recover the costs that it incurs as a result of providing advice or operating a particular service. It would be unreasonable to require the agency to provide such services without allowing it to recover costs, where it considers it to be appropriate. If the agency were to provide these types of services free of charge, it could lead to it being exploited. We do not want that to happen. It was suggested earlier that we do not want private sector developers and others to see this as a green light and a cash cow. We believe that the agency should be able to make a reasonable charge for those services. That is only right and fair.
I want to come on to an intriguing point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich made with regard to the power to charge under clause 47, and the reference to “project”. We may return to that matter when we consider clause 47, but my understanding is that the word “project” is used to suggest a time-limited involvement. To remove that word may suggest that the HCA would be involved indefinitely, and that is not the best use of resources. The intention—this will be true for a range of things that the agency does—is that the agency will provide support to schemes to enable them to get to a position where they are either complete or self-sufficient. The duration of that will vary quite widely depending on the scheme, but “project” is deliberately not defined, so as to ensure that it has its natural meaning, which suggests a time-limited span with particular outcomes.