Renters’ Rights Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure and privilege to follow the noble Baronesses. They are clearly very powerful advocates for private rental tenants, who very much need them.

I will speak specifically to Amendment 257, to which my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb attached her name; it having passed the lark hour, we are now into the Green owl hour of the evening. Before I do that, I want to mention that the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, made a hugely powerful argument on the inequality of arms in the rental tribunal. The judgment level the noble Baroness suggested is clearly the right one.

I will mostly speak to Amendment 257 which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, clearly outlined, would enable the tribunal to make a rental repayment order where a landlord has failed to join a landlord redress scheme or have active entries in the private rented sector database. This is a simple and clear process in which the tenant can get what they are owed when the landlord has failed.

In preparing for this, I had a look at the Citizens Advice website and the advice it provides for tenants. It is telling that there has been real progress on some issues—for example, recovering rental deposits—in the past decade or so, but there are still far too many cases where renters are left stranded. People are in situations where they are left homeless or desperately trying to find a new rental property. Do they have the time, energy or resources to chase, go through the courts and take all of the procedures that they need to? This approach has worked well for tenancy deposit schemes. Renters get their money back from the landlord and all landlords know they need to register deposits or else pay the price. This is a proven system; it is a case of extending a proven system to deliver justice. Both the non-government amendments in this group are terribly important.

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Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

259: Clause 134, Page 155, line 27, at end insert—
“Energy Act 2011”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment gives authorities the power to use this data to enforce minimum energy efficiency standards.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, I will move Amendment 259, a three-word amendment that provides argument for the value of explanatory statements. As this explanatory statement says, the addition of “Energy Act 2011” would give local authorities

“the power to use this data”—

about home energy efficiency—

“to enforce minimum energy efficiency standards”.

As we have discussed often on this Bill, many renters are stuck in cold, damp, leaky homes. Sometimes there are very simple and cheap fixes, such as adding or topping-up loft insulation. Sometimes they are more complicated and challenging fixes, such as insulating solid wall properties. This amendment gives local authorities the power to obtain and use energy efficiency information to help private renters. This could allow housing officers to support tenants in the most poorly insulated homes or, importantly, it could support councils to develop the street-by-street insulation programmes that can bring economies of scale and support widespread installation of insulation.

The case study is quite an old but lovely one. In Kirklees, a Green councillor, Andrew Cooper, was one of the driving forces behind a street-by-street insulation programme. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, claimed credit for it, which may be the first time that we have seen a Green achievement being so claimed. I saw reports on how that worked out afterwards. One of the things that really came through was how much people are concerned about cowboy builders, which might be true of landlords as well as tenants, but that they trust their local authorities. That street-by-street process works well, but to make that happen you need the data. That is what this modest amendment is designed to achieve. It builds on the positive Clause 134, which will give local authorities more data to support tenants and take enforcement action against failing landlords.

Given the hour, I will leave the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to explain Amendment 274, which is related to this. I hope that the Minister can set out—briefly, given the hour—how the Government plan to ramp up support for domestic energy efficiency, especially for private renters. As we have just heard, so many are in vulnerable situations. Given the cost of living crisis, this is often seen as an environmental measure, but it is a crucial anti-poverty measure. We need to make this as easy and simple for local authorities to achieve as possible. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a previous chair of Peers for the Planet and a director of that organisation. I will speak to my Amendment 274, which is supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, who cannot be in the Chamber this evening. It continues the theme of energy efficiency that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has just spoken about on her Amendment 259. She dealt specifically with the issue of data on energy efficiency. I wish to contribute particularly on the issue of financing energy-efficiency measures. This is the first time that I have spoken in Committee on this Bill, mainly because of my interaction with the Minister and her officials in the run-up to it, during which several issues were clarified very helpfully.

The issue of improving energy efficiency in the private rented sector has been discussed at length and on multiple occasions in this House. I hope that the current consultation will go some way to address the lack of coherent and consistent long-term policy certainty in this area, because it has suffered from stop-go and from changes of administrations and forms of assistance that have been incoherent and stopped us making progress. Of course, one of the main issues preventing progress in this area is funding, so my amendment seeks to break through some of the barriers to progress by requiring the Government to publish a road map on how private finance initiatives could be scaled up to support the funding of energy-efficiency measures.

Other speakers in the Committee have pointed out the problems that exist because of the quality of the stock in the private rented sector. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester pointed out, nearly half the housing stock in the private rented sector has an EPC rating below C. Although fuel poverty has fallen 35% among owner-occupiers and 54% among council tenants since 2010, it has fallen only 4% for private renters. Their homes are still disproportionately damp and cold, causing both short- and long-term health issues, with higher bills adding insult to injury. Of course, this is an issue where we should take action not only because of the need to help people in this situation but because of the detrimental effects this has on our achievement of net zero and improving our energy security.

However, while there has been widespread agreement about the value of improving energy efficiency, finance has always been an obstacle to progress. The costs of improving the quality of housing will be substantial, as others have said, given where we are starting from, and it is not realistic to expect the Government to foot the bill in its entirety, nor to put intolerable burdens on landlords. We need to find a way to finance these improvements that will work for tenants, landlords and the public purse. I recognise that the Government are doing some work on this and looking at how barriers can be overcome. The green home finance accelerator fund, due to end in June, has a number of projects looking specifically at rented properties and a number of pilot schemes. I would like to hear from the Minister what steps the Government plan to take in response to what they are learning from the experience of the fund and to what timetable they will be working.

There is also a growing number of innovative private sector finance mechanisms that deserve serious attention. As the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association recently reported, the high upfront costs of installing energy-efficient technologies remain the biggest challenge for landlords, and ensuring that there is private capital to support this process, and investment to help drive down the costs of energy efficiency, is paramount. To meet this challenge, a number of policy proposals have been made that my amendment would prompt the Government to consider. The UK Green Building Council, for example, has proposed a warm home stamp duty incentive, where stamp duty would be adjusted up or down depending on the EPC of a property and a rebate would be triggered within two years of purchase if the energy efficiency of the home had been improved.

The Local Government Association has recently recommended that the Government should incentivise landlords through tax rebates. France has added energy efficiency improvements to the list of deductible costs of managing a property, such as legal fees or insurance. Within the UK, Scotland has introduced low-interest loans for landlords. Such loans could be linked to the property, rather than the individual, for which there is the precedent of the interest-free loans that were available to install renewables.

Property-linked finance has been deployed in several other countries, and these are all measures that deserve serious consideration by the Government. They could cut through the Gordian knot of all agreeing that a great deal needs to be done but no one being able to see how it could be financed.

I hope that when the Minister responds, she will provide a little more detail on the Government’s thinking in this area, particularly on ways of incentivising landlords and how the Government intend to make progress in an area about which much has been said but too little has been done.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Hayman, for their amendments relating to minimum energy efficiency standards, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett—who I think described herself as the Green night owl—the noble Baroness Lady Grender and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, for contributing to the debate.

I turn first to Amendment 259 in the name of noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. This amendment would allow information given to local authorities by tenancy deposit scheme administrators to be used by local authorities for a purpose connected with their functions under the Energy Act 2011, including enforcement against breaches of minimum energy efficiency standards under the Energy Efficiency (Private Rented Property) (England and Wales) Regulations 2015. I reassure the Committee that local authorities are already equipped to enforce the private rented sector minimum energy efficiency standard of an EPC rating of E.

In February, a consultation was published to amend regulations and raise energy efficiency standards in the private rented sector, addressing fuel poverty and carbon emissions. The consultation proposes that local authorities will be empowered to issue fines of up to £30,000 for non-compliance with the new minimum energy efficiency standards in the private rented sector. To respond to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, officials from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero are exploring support for enforcement in collaboration with stakeholders, including local authorities.

Local authorities often identify non-compliance during other property engagements and can take appropriate action. A local authority may issue a compliance notice to a landlord suspected of breaching the energy standard. If the landlord fails to comply, the authority has the power to issue a penalty notice. Of course, I recognise the value that data plays in aiding enforcement, which is why we have widened access to information for other enforcement purposes through the Bill. For these reasons, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 274, from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, would require the Secretary of State to publish a road map for scaling up private finance initiatives to support the funding of energy-efficiency improvements in privately rented homes within six months of the passage of the Bill. I strongly support improvements to energy efficiency in privately rented homes. The Government have pledged to take action to stand with tenants and deliver the safety and security of warmer, cheaper homes. In February, we published our consultation on improving energy-efficiency standards in the private rented sector in England and Wales. The consultation closed on 2 May. We are analysing the responses and expect to publish a government response later this year.

I appreciate the intention behind the amendment, as we recognise the important role that private finance will play in supporting the private rented sector to meet the proposed energy-efficiency standards. We are currently considering the consultation feedback and options to further support landlords to make the necessary improvements to their property. I believe that the amendment is not necessary as the information on support, including private finance to fund energy-efficiency improvements in privately rented homes, will be available shortly.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response and everyone who has taken part in this short debate, which was marked by a remarkably strong degree of agreement. Everyone agrees that home energy efficiency is something on which we really need to take vital action. I was reminded of a stat, which I learned probably a dozen years ago, that British homes were, in terms of energy efficiency, the second worst in Europe, behind Lithuania. I am not quite sure how Lithuania has done in those 12 years since then, but I know that we have made very little progress.

I will briefly pick up a couple of technical points. The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, and the Minister both talked about local authorities having enforcement powers or, indeed, enhanced enforcement powers. But you can take enforcement only when you have the information—the data—that enables you to know when to take action. Just guessing which might be the homes that are not great is not a really effective way to proceed.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for the Lib Dem support for this amendment and also for embracing Kirklees. Everyone wants to embrace Kirklees, and really where we want to get to is a situation where we can embrace every town and city in the country with the same kind of project, particularly with those street to street-type arrangements.

I have one final comment. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, spoke about long-term policy certainty, which reminded me of going—I think it was in 2012—to the Insulate UK presentation. It was the insulation industry’s annual expo, and the whole industry was shutting down because the funding had disappeared. That boom-bust, boom-bust has been an enormous problem. We have not mentioned this yet, but, of course, we are talking also about huge numbers of opportunities, particularly for small independent businesses in every town and city up and down the land, if we find the funding and if we find the data and the push to make it happen.

I reserve the right to come back to this to look technically at the details, but in the meantime, of course, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 259 withdrawn.

Renters’ Rights Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

206: After Clause 63, insert the following new Clause—
“Mediated rent pauses (housing conditions)(1) This section applies where—(a) there is a tenancy to which section 9A of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 applies;(b) it appears to the tenant that the landlord has breached the covenant implied by that section; and(c) it appears to the tenant that the landlord has failed to carry out works necessary to remedy any such breaches within the timeframes set out in regulations made by the Secretary of State under section 10A(3) of that Act.(2) A tenant is entitled to make arrangements to pay rent to an independent individual, rather than to the relevant landlord.(3) The independent individual must not pass any rent paid under subsection (2) to the landlord until there has been a determination or agreement between the landlord and tenant as to the landlord’s liability for any breach of the covenant implied by section 9A of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.(4) Where a determination or agreement under subsection (3) sets a time by which works are to be completed, the independent individual will—(a) release any rent paid under subsection (2) to the landlord if the works are completed by that time;(b) release any rent paid under subsection (2) back to the tenant if the works have not been completed by that time.(5) In this section an “independent individual” means the independent individual responsible for investigating complaints made against members of a landlord redress scheme under section 65.”

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, all the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Members of the House who are still here at 12.47 am will note that I am not the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. My noble friend is the Green lark, and I am the Green owl, so you get me after midnight.

I agree with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford. The hashtag I often use is #Nowaytorunacountry. I take the systematic approach to this and suggest that your Lordships’ House urgently needs to think about a reset of our sitting hours.

I rise to move Amendment 206 in the name of my noble friend. This is a very straightforward, positive, friendly amendment aiming to assist the Government to ensure that this legislation can be enforced and can make a real difference. We know that so many renters are trapped in mouldy homes with leaking roofs and heating and hot water systems that are not working. When renters find themselves in those kinds of situations, this amendment would give them the right to pay the rent to a third-party body. My noble friend Lady Jones has suggested the new ombudsman, but we are very open to other suggestions as well. There are other ways of doing it. The amendment is written in a neutral way.

This is to deal with the situation where a landlord refuses to carry out essential repairs, yet the tenant is in a situation where they still have to keep paying for this utterly inadequate accommodation. The arrangements under this amendment would be that, if a landlord carries out the works and ameliorates the problems, the independent third-party would send them the full amount of rent due. If not, the tenant could get a full or partial refund, which they might well otherwise have to go to court to try to recover.

This is both a fair and an effective provision. It punishes the bad landlords and does not impact on the good ones. From the Government’s point of view, this is a constructive suggestion to help make sure that this legislation delivers on its stated aims. With those brief remarks, I beg to move.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, this in effect creates a formal escrow process. One of my proudest achievements was to organise a student rent strike, admittedly some time ago, as noble Lords may recognise. At the time, the university accommodation was due to be dismantled at the end of the year and as a consequence it felt like the university was not taking various matters very seriously.

I happened not to be a paying student at the time; I was a vice-warden in a hall of residence. So I did help them, but I insisted that, if I was to help them, they would have to pay over their rent to avoid being evicted. We did that by handing the money to the student union, to effectively act in escrow. As a consequence, repairs were made and everyone ended up happy—apart from the university, which did not like my role in that at all.

The reason I tell that story is that it matters that tenants should be able to withhold cash going directly to a landlord when the landlord is, frankly, taking the mickey. Awaab’s law has already been mentioned and Clause 63, which we did not specifically address, is already extending that to the private sector, and I welcome that. We need to work out a much easier way for people to effectively deploy this escrow approach. That is why I am supporting the amendment.

It is fair to say that we need to make sure that any such processes are easy to administer. Going a little bit further, there is a regularly read out statistic that something like 15% to 20% of housing benefit—or housing support, whether as direct housing benefit or through universal credit—is thought to go to properties not deemed fit for rent. I went into a reasonable amount of detail on this with officials.

The philosophy explained to me by the Permanent Secretary and other officials was that the state thus far should not determine on behalf of the renter where they are going to live; it is an important right for the renter to make that choice—even though it felt repulsive to me that taxpayers’ money was being spent in, frankly, some pretty ropey places. From my visits to some different housing, I have to say it was quite extraordinary what was going on. Sometimes, I am afraid, the dilapidation was the consequence of the tenant not allowing repairs to be undertaken—but that is a minor aside. The point is that—whether it is private money, your own money or the state’s money going to a private landlord—it matters that we have habitable accommodation. Therefore, I strongly support the amendment from the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for tabling Amendment 206, ably supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who moved it, and I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Scott, for taking part in the debate.

Amendment 206 would allow a tenant to pay rent to the ombudsman rather than their landlord if the landlord had failed to meet legal requirements on housing quality. I strongly agree with the desire of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, to ensure that landlords remedy hazards in good time—we all know the outcome when that does not happen—but I feel that the Bill’s existing provisions are the best way to achieve that. The Bill will allow private rented sector tenants to challenge their landlord through the courts if they fail to comply with the Awaab’s law requirements, such as timescales for remedying hazards. Alongside that, it will allow us to apply the decent homes standard to the private rented sector, which is an important move.

The PRS landlord ombudsman will provide a new route of redress for tenants and will be able to investigate complaints about standards and repairs. The Bill will also strengthen rent repayment orders, including by increasing from 12 months to two years the amount of rent that a tribunal will be able to award a tenant. Tenants can seek rent to be repaid where a relevant offence has been committed, including offences related to housing standards, such as failing to comply with an improvement notice.

The amendment has the potential to be administratively complex and risks unintended consequences that might lead inadvertently to worse outcomes for tenants. For example, rent being held by the ombudsman could delay repairs in some cases if it made it more difficult for landlords to fund the required works, a point that I believe the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, referred to. Existing measures in the Bill place legal expectations on landlords about the quality of their properties and give tenants access to compensation if their landlords have not met obligations in relation to standards, as well as providing mechanisms through which landlords can be required to carry out repairs. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response, and those who have taken part in this short but perfectly formed debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, in particular for her support for the amendment. It is something we might come back to and look at the working of down the track. I also thank her for the fascinating tale of student days which, I think, took many of us back to our own student days. I think there was an expression of support from the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for the intention if not the exact drafting of the amendment. I would stress that we are not wedded to the precise drafting, as we are in Committee; we would be delighted to work on the detail of the drafting as we go forward.

In response to the Minister’s response, I am afraid there is a phrase that I am sure is in the Civil Service handbook: “inadvertent consequences”. That seems to be the response that every Minister gives. More substantively, what the Minister said is that tenants can challenge through the courts and appeal to the ombudsman, and orders for action can be done. Those are all things that have differential levels of access depending on people’s capacity, people’s awareness, people’s ability to access those things—their time and energy and costs. The action proposed by this Amendment 206, however, is a really straightforward and simple way to give tenants the power to have control and agency for themselves, not relying on other bodies.

Having said all that, this is of course Committee, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment while reserving the ability to come back on Report.

Amendment 206 withdrawn.

Birmingham City Council

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I absolutely agree with the premise of the noble Lord’s question. The audit situation right across local government, not just in Birmingham, has deteriorated beyond what should be tenable. The audit function assures the public in an area that their council is what I described: legal, decent and fit for purpose. Unfortunately, due to the changes to the audit regime, that is not the case. I was horrified to find that whole of government accounts have been qualified because of a lack of assurance on the local government audit situation. We cannot allow that to continue. The Government are looking at what we need to do about audit. We will bring forward something in the English devolution Bill that covers the audit regime, and we will attempt to make it better than it is now. It is so important that the public can have confidence in the money spent not just by their Government but by local government as well. We will aim to make sure that that is the case. It has been a bee in my bonnet for a long time, and I hope to put it right.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in responding to Front-Bench questions, the Minister said that councils must “provide essential statutory services”. One of those statutory duties for councils, under the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964, is to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service. Birmingham Council is planning to slash library opening hours, cutting them by a third and potentially closing seven libraries in a city where 46% of children are living in poverty and 43% of residents live in neighbourhoods that are part of the poorest 10% in the country. People need libraries for children to do their homework, old people to go somewhere warm and for everyone to access digital services. Does the Minister believe that, with these new cuts to libraries, Birmingham is going to meet its statutory responsibilities, given that it is actually under central government supervision?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Baroness will know of my fondness for libraries, because I am sure she has heard me talk about them before in the Chamber. As I said earlier, nobody stands for election as a councillor to cut any services, particularly libraries, which we know are so important to people.

It is important for residents of Birmingham that their council gets back on a safe and stable financial footing. I add that the potential of Birmingham to contribute to the growth mission and regeneration is enormous. Once the commissioners working with the leadership of the council have stabilised the finances, it will be able to support services. I am very pleased that it has not actually cut all its libraries, as we have seen in some other areas, as the noble Baroness will be very well aware, but the closure of any library is a sadness. Once our Birmingham colleagues have stabilised the finances—and with the growth agenda that they will be able to participate in—I am sure that they will want to restore that service as soon as they can.

We should not underestimate the importance of libraries. I practically grew up in my mobile library; it was a great comfort to me. They are important for all the reasons that the noble Baroness said. I hope that Birmingham will be able to restore them as quickly as possible.

Plan for Neighbourhoods

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I entirely agree with this Statement that, in the former Government’s levelling-up programme, the Tories’ instinct was to “hoard power”, and that “inflexible restrictions” were placed on how this money could be spent. I entirely welcome what the noble Lord just said: that it is up to the town’s boards and the local communities to decide how money will be spent, which appears to be the opposite of what the Tories were doing. Except that is not what the Statement actually says. It talks about the broadened objectives, which I think are the three long-term aims elsewhere in the Statement:

“These new, broadened objectives will give communities the tools to make informed decisions, with a list of interventions aligned with this Government’s central missions”.


So, which is it? Do they have to be aligned with the central missions—the famous five pillars we have all heard about many times—or with the long-term aims in this Statement, or is it that the communities can decide for themselves what to spend the money on?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have already spoken about our three main objectives and what we want to do, but it is ultimately up to the local people to decide what they want to do. It is not mutually exclusive for local people to decide areas of improvement in their local communities which are not in our missions. The whole idea is to drive growth, to have safer streets and to have neighbourhoods that people take pride in. That is the focus of this announcement: to ensure that people can feel pride in their area but can also take control and decide for their future.

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[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

The relevant local authority will act as the accountable body for the funds, with the responsibility for ensuring that public funds are distributed fairly and effectively. A monitoring and evaluation strategy will be published in the summer. This will set out the framework for assurance and accountability expected from grant recipients, so watch this space.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I apologise, I should have declared that I am vice-president of the Local Government Association and the NALC before that last question. I am still looking for a bit of clarity, so perhaps I can come at this question another way. If a local community decides that it wants to prioritise public health, improving its green spaces, or tackling child poverty, then none of those things, without a great deal of verbal gymnastics, appears to line up with the Government’s five missions. Focusing on public health and improving green spaces can be made to look as if they are good for growth, but they are not clearly directed at it. Can the Minister confirm that the Government would consider any of those things entirely appropriate to spend this money on?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot pre-empt what local authorities and local neighbourhoods will want to do in their particular areas. The whole idea behind the exercise is to give more power to local people. However, on the point that the noble Baroness is alluding to, there will be a plan called the regeneration plan, which will be submitted to central government. More guidance and a framework will come out on this. The regeneration plan will set out the board’s vision for the next decade, alongside a more detailed investment plan for the first four years of the programme. The submission window for regeneration plans will open in spring 2025 and close in winter 2025. Further details as to the content, form and submission timetable for the plans will be set out in the forthcoming guidance.

We know that places have worked hard to engage their communities and develop their long-term plans for the previous Administration’s long-term plan for towns. That progress is not for nothing and should not be undone, nor should places undo their governance arrangements. Communities should feel empowered to build and adapt their existing plans. Our reforms seek to build on and improve the previous programme with a new set of strategic objectives aligned to this Government’s plan to kick-start growth to be delivered by a broader range of policy interventions.

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[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord asks in particular about an issue of devolution. I say again that whichever council is established through negotiations as per the usual channels, it is up to the local area and the neighbourhood board to establish whether it is to be the recipient of funding. I cannot comment on any individual examples—it would not be appropriate—but it is for whichever area has received the funding to decide how it wants to move forward its proposals. There are boundaries as well, and there is clarification that it can receive about what is and what is not its boundary.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will follow on from the questions about the membership of the neighbourhood boards. The Statement says that they

“will include representatives from social housing and workplace representatives and, in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the representative in the devolved legislature”.

I have no objection to any of those, but it is a rather limited list. Does the Minister agree that these neighbourhood boards should have representatives for young people, disabled people and, where relevant, minoritised communities?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes an interesting and good point about having diversity and inclusion from a cross-section of society. We will set out further guidance on this issue. I will say again that it is for local neighbourhood boards to come out with proposals that will benefit their area, and the best benefits are where everybody is included as part of the whole deliberation, discussion and finalisation of neighbourhood boards.

English Devolution and Local Government

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a very good point. I have been working with the parish and town councils and their organising bodies: NALC and the society of town council treasurers. We started on a process of working out their role in this new model. I think it is a very interesting opportunity for them. I know my honourable friend in the other place is very keen on developing the role of community councils, so they definitely have a role to play in this new system.

The other exciting opportunity is for community councillors in this new picture, because they will have exciting opportunities in their local area to drive forward local issues. They will be working with one council, instead of having the split responsibilities that I have experienced during my council life in a two-tier area. So there are great opportunities for both town and parish councils and community councillors.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referred to the iron grip of Whitehall. What we have here is a plan for not devolution but concentration of power, and the Statement says as much:

“the Government will have the tools to ensure delivery. We will create strong accountability measures … to ensure that mayors deliver the housing, transport and infrastructure that their residents need”.

This is explicitly a Statement making mayors the agents of the priorities of central government. If a Green Party mayor was elected with the priorities of improving the health and well-being of the population, focusing on a healthy local food supply, looking after green spaces and biodiversity, tackling poverty and inequality, particularly affecting children and pensioners, and improving local economies built around small independent businesses rather than exploitive multinational companies, would the Government then impose their priorities against those of the local people?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am sorry, but I think the noble Baroness has misunderstood the wording that she just read out. The point is that the Government will set the growth agenda and say that we want every area of the country to grow, and it will be for mayors to determine how that works in their local area. She is shaking her head, but that is the idea behind the policy. The whole drive of it is that each local area will be driven by people who know it and its economy, people and communities well, and they will take forward the right proposals for growth for their area. If, for example, we look at what has happened in Manchester in terms of its transport schemes and at some of the other mayoral authorities which have developed skills programmes that are relevant to the needs of the local area, I think it is clear that those people acting at local level will best drive forward the growth of this country.

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, we all know that 14 years of austerity have left local government on its knees and, in many cases, reduced local government to little more than an agent of the Westminster Government. Huge percentages—almost all spending—are forced to go on statutory measures: that is, what is decided here in Westminster, not what is decided in local communities. Can the Minister tell me, either as a percentage or as a figure, how much extra money will be available in this financial settlement to local councils to spend on the non-statutory elements of their duties, such as protecting local green spaces, supporting and funding local libraries and looking after the local public realm rather than having to make expensive bids for pots of money to be able to improve it? How much non-discretionary money will be in this settlement?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point. I pay tribute to my colleagues in local government, who do an amazing job of continuing to deliver some non-statutory services in spite of the incredible financial pressures they have been under. For example, we still managed to keep a theatre open in my area. That happens all across the country, so all credit to local government for the work it does on this. The noble Baroness mentioned constant rounds of bidding for pots of funding. We think that is wasteful and unnecessary. It just sets authorities up against one another in competing for pots of funding. We will do our very best to get rid of that approach. As we develop the spending review proposals, we will build what local authorities need for the future into core funding.

Building Homes

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Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord. I gave an explanation of how we set the targets in response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson. The fact is that everyone and every area has to play a part in this if we are to deliver these challenging housing targets. It is important that the new formula takes account of affordability and the demand for housing in local areas. Where they have challenging targets, it is because there is a demand in those areas, including a demand for more affordable housing.

We all know that statutory consultees play an important role in the planning system, providing advice on technical matters to ensure that new development is good quality, safe and situated in the right place. It is important that statutory consultees play their role too, to ensure that the planning system supports the housing and infrastructure development that we need. We will work with them over the next year to achieve that. Part of our work on the new homes accelerator will be to look at the statutory consultees to try to understand why the delays have come into the system, in relation to the responses of statutory consultees, and to see how we can work with them to alleviate some of those blockages and barriers.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. My first question follows on from that of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and her focus on social housing and genuinely affordable housing. The Green Party has a target of 150,000 homes a year for that. This Statement is all about so-called affordable housing. Have the Government taken account of the housing Select Committee report from March this year, which looks at the increasing and deeply concerning problems with shared purchase, also known as “part rent, part buy”? That is very much included in those so-called affordable targets. The report finds that

“rents, service charges, and the complexity of … leases make shared ownership an unbearable reality for many people”.

Will the Government take action to deal with this issue, which surely has to be a big part of the affordable housing target?

On the other side of the target issue, are the Government taking adequate account of the physical limits of this country? In Cambridge, a major development was recently turned down because there was no water supply. Many places are thinking about building on flood plains. The flood plain is not beside the river; it is part of the river. Where will we find suitable locations and how will we have the resources needed to make this possible?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness. She will know that we are working through a process—for example, some changes were made to leasehold arrangements. She is quite right to say that the tenure of a property is critical, and we do not want to trap people into tenures that cause them problems. We are working through the process of designing a new Bill on commonhold. Where there are issues with shared ownership, we will look at them. We are trying to eradicate some of the more knotty issues people have had with that type of property ownership. Sometimes people think that they are buying a home, but some elements of leasehold tenure mean that they do not have the ownership of the property that they thought they were buying into. We are very aware of that and have taken account of it, and we will work on that further in the new year as we make our way towards the new commonhold Bill. There will be plenty of opportunity to comment on that as we go through the process.

I turn to the physical limits that the noble Baroness described. I made two recent visits to Cambridge: one to visit the development forum of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and another to look at South Cambridgeshire. The great thing is that some very good and innovative solutions are coming up there to look at the water issues. That does not mean that that is everything we need to do, but solutions are coming forward. I do not have time to repeat it all now, but there is a big section in the report about flood mitigation and how we are tackling the issue of flooding. That is all contained in the new NPPF. I hope the noble Baroness will look at that. If she has further questions afterwards, she can by all means come back to me.

These problems are not going away. We need to be creative with the solutions we provide, because we have to build the homes that people need. I add that about 10% of the country is currently built on, while 13% is green belt. There should be land to build these houses on.

Housing Supply and Homelessness

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Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, for securing this debate, which has been so well attended by noble Lords.

When we talk about housing policy, what is really noticeable is that the Government’s focus is on supply. For the Green Party, the focus is on what kind of homes the homeless need and how they will get them. We can all agree that fixing the current crisis of homelessness is a crucial priority for our society. It not just the people we see right here on our doorstep, on the streets of Westminster and in the Tube stations, sleeping increasingly uncomfortably and at danger to themselves, as winter draws in. There are also—and what damage is this doing?—the families in temporary accommodation. For England, the numbers are at the highest level since records began 22 years ago, with a 15% increase in the year to June. There are also the young—and not so young—people forced to rent a room in overcrowded shared housing. They are inadequately housed, with no realistic hope of future improvement, as reluctantly tolerated couch-surfers or in homes with several households squeezed in to them.

Yet when we hear the Government talk about housing, the focus is always on housebuilding. The milestone that Sir Keir Starmer set out with much fanfare this morning was “building 1.5 million homes”. The talk was about foisting homes on unwilling communities, with planning “reform”, despite the fact that a third of homes receiving planning consent are not being built. That means that more than a million approvals handed out since 2015 have not resulted in homes. Had all those homes which were granted planning permission been built, the previous Government would have hit the target of 300,000 new homes a year in eight out of the past 10 years.

So why are these homes not being built? They are mostly large-scale schemes of a handful of mass-market developers, whose entire aim and whose legal responsibility to their directors is to maximise profit. Their responsibility is not to build homes. What generally makes the most profit? It is so-called executive homes, often free-standing and wasteful of the scarce resource of land, built to poor energy-efficiency standards on greenfield sites without public transport provision, and feeding into already congested roads. What will those do for the homeless people on our streets, for the families crowded horribly into B&Bs without housing facilities, and for young people who have moved back home with the family, for want of a rental deposit?

The Government are applying the theory that suitable housing will eventually trickle down to those who need a decent, secure and affordable place to live. But, just as trickle-down economics has been a total failure, so has trickle-down housing policy. We need to build, or repurpose and refurbish, genuinely affordable and high-quality homes close to transport and other facilities, that meet the needs of people rather than focus on the profit for the market.

Of course, relying on an underregulated and non-competitive monopoly in the private sector to supply housing has not resulted just in a failure of housing numbers. The Grenfell tragedy exposed, in a huge disaster, the deadly failure of quality and safety. The campaign group End Our Cladding Scandal estimates that 600,000 people in Britain still live in homes at a heightened risk of a fatal fire, and 3 million own homes that they cannot sell, for fire safety reasons. Since Grenfell, more than 15,000 people have been forced to move out of their homes indefinitely.

What is the story behind that? I go to an account from James Meek in the London Review of Books of the now infamous Skyline Chambers in Manchester. The building was completed in 2007 by a company called Space Developments UK, which was bought by the multinational Ireland-based housebuilder McInerney. When it went down in the financial crash, Skyline was picked up from the creditors by Wallace, a company owned by an Italian investor sometimes styled “Count di Vighignolo” in official documents. It is a Cambridge-based network of companies owned by a Gibraltar-registered company, Perseverance Ltd, which in turn is owned by the Guernsey-registered Hauteville Trustees. That is what is supposed to supply housing.

What do we need to do to tackle homelessness to reshape our housing policy and our society, so that they work for people and the planet, rather than human needs and planetary essentials being ground down by the demand for profit? We need to shift our understanding to housing primarily as homes—affordable, secure and quality places for people to live—rather than simply as financial assets. We need to tackle the financialisation of our housing supply, just as we need to tackle the financialisation of our public services and our whole economy.

The Government are starting to demonstrate, just a little, that they realise that these old 20th-century economic models are not working. In Sir Keir’s speech this morning, we saw something of a shift, as previewed by Politico’s London Playbook, starting to realise that just talking about growth provokes the question: who is it for and who benefits from it? The same question must be asked about our housing supply.

High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill

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2nd reading
Friday 17th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I am afraid I bring a somewhat different perspective from that of the earlier speakers. It reflects the views that I presented in much discussion on the levelling-up Bill. The last thing our local communities, particularly the most disadvantaged, need is more meddling and more statutory requirements laid on them from Westminster, without the resources to deliver them. As the noble Lord, Lord Mair, pointed out, the Government are offering money to draw up the plans but not to deliver them. It is not within the power of your Lordships’ House to put down an amendment to demand that there also be funding from the centre, but, were it within our power, I would be very tempted to do so. I direct this comment particularly towards those on the Labour Front Bench: should they be in the position of implementing the Bill, I hope they would look at providing such a financial provision.

We need Westminster to get out of the road of local communities: to stop sticking its oar in and give people the power and resources to make decisions locally. One example from the framework of the Bill is that artificial time periods for review are set out here in Westminster, saying, “You will review this every five years”. But it may be that local circumstances are different: maybe everything is going swimmingly and everyone can see it, or maybe something is going wrong in another area and resources need to be moved. That is an artificial imposition from Westminster.

I note that we are in a situation where councils overwhelmingly need a long-term funding settlement—they face a £4 billion gap over the next two years—to protect their statutory services and to provide what is needed on the high street, such as cleaning and maintenance. They are under enormous pressure because there is simply not the money, and this is just one more imposition being laid on.

It is interesting to think about what the guidance will say. There is a question of powers but there is possibly some ability to use the guidance for an issue that was also raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mair: permitted development rights. Your Lordships’ House has heard from two noble Lords not currently in their place—the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Crisp—who highlighted the terrible nature of the housing that has been developed under permitted development rights. Some 100,000 dwellings have been created since 2013, but many lack fire safety standards, adequate ventilation and natural light—imagine housing without natural light. They do not have the facilities, such as schools and health facilities, that are needed. The Government have ruled out giving councils control over this within these zones, but is it possible to put anything in the guidance that might help to address this issue?

I will particularly focus on privatisation, because public land ownership in Britain is in crisis. Since the late 1970s, half of all of what was public land has been sold off: 2 million hectares in total, or 10% of Britain’s total land area. Can the Minister—or the Labour Front Bench in the future—comment on whether the Government would consider making a recommendation in the guidance that there be no further privatisation of public space in these high street plans? That is absolutely crucial to our politics.

I am going to declare an interest here, because I believe that our high street should be a place of political activity —something that privatisation has often led to the exclusion of. My declaration of interest is that I was with Occupy London on day one, when it was driven out and unable to occupy what many people think of as a public space, Paternoster Square—a long-term historic political space in London. Now, of course, it is owned and managed by the Japanese group Mitsubishi Estate, which was able to close that square off, and Occupy London ended up in front of St Paul’s instead.

I hope that we might see some guidance on this. I hope that we might also see in the guidance whether the Government are going to provide all kinds of prescriptions to make sure that we protect small independent businesses against large multinational companies.

Finally, I will put on the record that I did really struggle with this—but eventually I decided that, however limited and controlling from Westminster it is, it provides a little bit more in the way of resources to local councils. So it is not my intention to seek to slow the progress of the Bill, despite the very deep concern of the Local Government Association and local authorities.

Traveller Site Fund

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Wednesday 15th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Bourne for all his work when he was a Minister in my position. I do not have an update on the Bourne review, but I will certainly write to the noble Baroness and the House with an update on it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, next month is Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month, and I hope that all Members of your Lordships’ House will take the opportunity to learn a little more about the many centuries of history of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people in the UK. In that light, I am sure that the Minister is aware of the High Court judgment this week against the Police Act 2022 that said that 12-month bans from an area for Gypsy and Traveller people were incompatible with Article 14 rights within Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Noble Lords may remember that a significant number of your Lordships’ House voted against that provision in the Police Act. There now has to be a legal review. Can the Minister tell me what the Government’s plans are for it?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No. That is a very recent decision. I do not know that there are any plans but, certainly as soon as we have them, I will let the noble Baroness know.