Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
We now come to the Select Committee statement on behalf of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. Florence Eshalomi will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of her statement, I will call Members to ask questions on the subject of the statement. These should be brief questions, not full speeches. I emphasise that questions should be directed to the Select Committee Chair, not the relevant Government Minister. Front Benchers may take part in questioning.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this statement.
This week, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee published our fourth report, on the condition of homes in the social rented sector. This report is the first of a series of outputs from our broader inquiry on the condition of homes. We have also been looking at the condition of homes in temporary accommodation and in the private rented sector, and we hope to publish reports on that in due course. In this first report, we focused on social housing.
Over the last 25 years, there has been substantial progress on improving the condition of social homes. In 2001, the last Labour Government introduced the decent homes programme to address the large backlog of disrepair that had built up for council homes. They set the target of bringing all social homes up to a decent standard by 2010. To achieve this, registered providers were given nine years to bring their homes to a minimum standard. That target was ultimately missed, but the programme was not without its successes. Over 1 million homes were improved by works carried out through the programme. By April 2009, the percentage of homes failing to meet minimum standards of decency had fallen to 14.5%, down from just under 40% at the start of the decade. That was a significant improvement.
Progress in bringing social homes up to a minimum standard has continued under successive Governments, albeit at a slower pace. However, as our report states, progress has now stalled, with very little improvement being seen since the pandemic. The latest findings from the English housing survey estimated that around 430,000 social homes still fail to meet the basic standard of decency.
Overcrowding continues to rise. Our report highlights that high energy prices mean that tenants struggle to heat their homes sufficiently in the winter. Cold homes and overcrowding can exacerbate hazards such as damp. Two thirds of social homes are at the highest risk of overheating during the summer months. Those are really concerning trends.
The Government have been clear that they want to deliver transformational and lasting change to the quality and safety of social homes over the next decade. They have made good progress. Following recent announcements, registered providers have more certainty about the standards that they will be expected to meet, and the increased resources available to enable them to do so.
Many Members will remember the tragic case of Awaab Ishak, who died aged two from a severe respiratory condition caused by prolonged exposure to mould in his parent’s home. During his short life, Awaab had recurring cold symptoms and respiratory tract infections, and he had to visit the GP surgery more often than most children. Awaab’s parents reported the mould to their housing association in 2017, before Awaab was born. The coroner’s report states that
“no action was taken to address the mould before Awaab died”
in December 2020, at which point the mould was present in every single room.
During our inquiry, we heard from a mother whose 18-month-old baby started getting chest infections because of the black mould behind her bed. The mould had spread everywhere, but complaining got her nowhere. Awaab’s law is now being rolled out across social housing. It enables tenants to take legal action against their social landlord if they fail to remove hazards in a timely way. On balance, we thought that the Government’s decision to introduce Awaab’s law in phases, starting with the most dangerous flats, was right. However, tenants and housing providers would benefit from a clearer timeline of when the next phases of Awaab’s law will apply. Our report calls for the Government to set that out. For many residents, taking legal action against their landlord is not a decision they want to take. We will be keeping a close eye on the effectiveness of Awaab’s law to ensure that it delivers meaningful protection to tenants, especially the most vulnerable tenants.
By 2030, social landlords will need to make sure that their homes comply with new minimum energy efficiency standards. That is a positive step, though the pace of retrofits will need to accelerate if the sector is to upgrade the remaining homes by 2030. Under the official definition of fuel poverty, a household is not considered to be fuel poor if their home has an energy performance certificate rating at band C or above. However, those living in the homes that comply with the new minimum energy efficiency standard may still struggle to heat their home sufficiently if their energy prices are too high. Our report calls on the Government to amend the definition of fuel poverty in their forthcoming fuel strategy to reflect this. Otherwise, the Committee is concerned that the new energy efficiency standards, while necessary, will provide false assurances that tenants are protected from the multiple risks that arise from living in a cold home.
We welcome the Government’s new decent homes standard. Today’s standard was last updated in 2006, and it is in desperate need of reform. Shockingly, almost 430,000 homes still fail to meet the basic standard, 25 years after it was introduced.
The Government plan to bring the new decent homes standard into force by 2035. A lot of work needs to take place over the next nine years. The Building Research Establishment has estimated that about 45% of social homes will need to be brought up to the new standard. Although the last Labour Government’s decent homes programme was successful, many homes failed to meet the decent homes standard. The Government’s new decent homes standard will improve the quality and safety of homes, but we do not want to find that by 2035 a large proportion of homes have still not been upgraded.
Until 2035 is already too long for many tenants to wait. They must not be told to wait longer. That is why we are recommending that the Government introduce interim targets stipulating the percentage of social homes that should be upgraded to the revised decent homes standard in each year before the standard comes into force in 2035. That will help to reassure and demonstrate to the public that progress is being made. We are also asking the Government to introduce a process to review and if necessary update the decent homes standard periodically, at least every 10 years.
As I say, the Government have made good progress, which is welcome. The sector now has clarity, which it needs to meet the standards. Changes to the rent settlement will help registered providers to improve the quality of their homes. However, we are concerned that those steps alone will not be sufficient to deliver the improvements that the Government want. Our view is that there is a strong case for the Government to establish a new, modern decent homes programme to support social landlords to raise standards.
Even with the investment from the Government and the changes to the rent settlement, we are concerned that the sector will not have sufficient resources to meet the new standards. There is a real risk that the cost of new regulation will lead landlords to sell their homes instead of adapting them. Although we welcome the Government’s plans to make a transformational and lasting change to the quality of social homes, they do not address the long-term, systemic drivers of poor conditions, especially the need to replace ageing stock. We hope that the Government’s long-term housing strategy will be an opportunity to fill the gap, and we urge them to publish the strategy as soon as possible.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
The quality of social housing is a huge issue across my Woking constituency, and residents and constituents contact me about it daily, so I was pleased to help draft the cross-party report. I sincerely thank the hon. Member for her leadership on the issue. What response has she had from the Government since the publication of the report, particularly to our request for a new and modern decent homes programme?
Florence Eshalomi
I thank my fellow Committee member for his work to ensure consensus on this important cross-party issue, which many of us see in our inboxes. We hope for a full, detailed response, so we will allow the Government to come back to us, but I hope that they will recognise that this is a really important issue. If we want to ensure a lasting legacy for Awaab, it is important that the Government enact our recommendations and ensure funding for them.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)
As the chair of the recently formed all-party parliamentary group for council and social housing, I welcome the report’s conclusion about the importance of boosting the supply of social housing to meet the huge demand for new, high-quality, genuinely affordable homes and to replace older, lower-standard homes that are long past their lifespan. It is a daunting task, but we know that it can be done: the great reforming post-war Labour Government built more than 800,000 council houses between 1946 and 1951. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need bold policies now to match the scale of that achievement?
Florence Eshalomi
My hon. Friend, like many of us, is a proud advocate for ensuring that this Government honour their commitment to build new social homes. It is important that we look at the range of avenues available to house builders, councils and developers, and that the Government continue to fund them. My hon. Friend may be aware of the affordable homes programme prospectus, which opened just this month. The Government are asking councils, developers and housing associations to come forward with bids; we very much hope that a number of those bids will be for new, high-quality, family-sized social homes.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Chair and the Committee for their report; I declare an interest as the chair of the healthy homes and buildings all-party parliamentary group. Finding a way forward is critical. As a Northern Ireland MP, I see this issue every week. Given the importance of the recommendations and details that the hon. Lady and her Committee have set out, I ask that they be shared with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, the major social housing provider in Northern Ireland, and with the housing associations. This is significant, and they need to know about it.
Florence Eshalomi
I always thank the hon. Member for his wonderful, timely interventions on many issues across the House. Conditions in homes have an impact on all constituency MPs across the UK: it is a big issue that we see weekly in our inboxes and our advice surgeries, so it is important that we share best practice and learning from other regions in the UK.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for her excellent report. Does she agree that housing associations sometimes try to get the heat taken off them by employing managing agents? When constituents approach them for repairs and so on, they are often sent back from one to the other. I have had particular incidents at the Darcus Howe apartments on Brixton Hill, where Notting Hill Genesis, which is the housing association, and Crabtree keep shirking the responsibility for providing some vital changes. For example, people could not get heating between November and January, the coldest months. Does my hon. Friend think that more should be done? Perhaps we should be better able to hold people criminally liable for the situations in which they put our constituents.
Florence Eshalomi
I thank my constituency neighbour for highlighting just one of the many examples that Members across the Chamber will have seen in their inboxes. We need to recognise how some housing associations that receive Government grants to build homes are treating their tenants. It is important to direct residents to the Regulator of Social Housing and other avenues. I hope that the management issue will come up in the forthcoming commonhold and leasehold legislation.