Short-life Homes (Lambeth)
Debate between Baroness Hoey and Lord Stunell(12 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) on securing this debate and on the diligent work that she has done in support of her constituents and residents. She spoke very eloquently.
This is the first time that the situation that the hon. Lady described has come to my attention. I understand that Lambeth has a proposal that is designed to dispose of properties to help to fund renovation, perhaps of those properties but certainly of other stock in the borough, some of which is being let for short-term tenancies. She described the confusing development of the phrase “short-term” to mean something quite different and gave illustrations of the very long length of tenancies that some people have had in these properties. I want to make it clear that I am working from the description that she has given. I do not have first-hand information, and the Department has not been formally notified by Lambeth, or anybody else, of any transactions taking place.
The House will know that the Government fully understand the need for a radical and comprehensive approach to housing. That is why we published our housing strategy for England last week. That strategy covers a broad range of housing topics, including social housing, the reuse of empty housing, and a number of other factors of which I am sure that the hon. Lady is well aware. I want to stress that it is for the London borough of Lambeth to decide its own strategic approach to its housing, and not for Government to comment on it. Speaking in this debate as a member of the Government, I have to stick strictly to that rule. In the privacy of the Members’ coffee room, I might say something else. The reality is that the Government’s job is to provide the strategic approach to housing policy and it is for the London borough of Lambeth to decide its approach to its housing. Of course, the Government want all local authorities to adopt the effective management of assets, including in their disposal of stock and reinvestment.
To go back, perhaps I should say that the basic assumption is that local authorities will plan for holding or redeveloping all their council stock. Clearly, the right to buy entitles tenants to purchase properties. The hon. Lady asked whether the right to buy would apply to these particular tenants. The nub of that issue is that it depends on the nature of their tenancy agreement. If they have a standard council tenancy, which it seems they may not have from her words, they would be entitled to exercise their right to buy. Otherwise, they would not have a statutory right to buy.
As well as tenants buying stock, councils can engage in partial or whole stock transfers, but those require the consent of the Government. There can be no question of wholesale disposals without the need for some consent or approval. Similarly, housing associations registered with the Tenant Services Authority need consent to dispose of their properties. I want to reassure the hon. Lady that in this system, there is a strong degree of control over what happens to social housing stock.
Andrew Stunell
I certainly want to cover that point. There is a regime known as general consents, which means that if certain preconditions are met, specific consent over a particular transaction is not required. The key point is that money arising from such disposals must be reinvested in affordable housing or regeneration. That would be within the general consent. Use of the money elsewhere would not be suitable. The meaning of investment in affordable housing is perhaps self-evident, but regeneration has a technical meaning. It means projects or activities on land where the land is
“vacant, unused, underused, ineffectively used, contaminated or derelict”
and where
“the works or activities are carried out in order to secure that the land or the building will be brought into effective use”.
The hon. Lady has mentioned the possibility—obviously I have only her words to go on—that it was proposed to provide more school places with some of this money. It would be a matter for examination whether that was a regeneration activity. If it was not, the expenditure of the money from this projected sale would require specific consent from the Secretary of State. If it was regeneration, it would come within the general consent. I am happy to write to her to spell that out, because it is a complex area to get across in this debate.
The treatment of properties that are occupied by secure tenants is tightly controlled and it always requires specific consent, unless the disposal is to the occupant. In other words, if it is not a right-to-buy sale, a secure tenant’s property cannot be transferred without specific consent. The nature of the tenancies that these constituents enjoy again depends on the intricacies of the story that the hon. Lady has presented to the House.
The Government do not have any intention of changing those arrangements. Of course we are keen to see run-down properties passed on to landlords who are able to invest in them while retaining them for social tenants. I have had the opportunity to announce to the House a £100 million fund for bringing such empty homes back into social and affordable use for social tenants. Those disposals can be to other bodies or individuals, and they could be covered by the general consents in the situation that I have previously outlined.
No application has been received in respect of the schemes that the hon. Lady has mentioned, and I cannot comment on what decision the Secretary of State might take unless one is submitted and there is a proper investigation into the circumstances by the Secretary of State.
The Government have put significant support into social housing in Lambeth. We have committed £18 million this year and next to bring homes up to a decent standard there, with a further £82 million provisionally allocated for the next two years, making a total of £100 million to be invested in Lambeth to bring its backlog of non-decent homes up to a decent standard. A significant amount of money is available to Lambeth from the Government to improve its homes, and she may want to consider encouraging the council to direct some of those resources to the homes that she has mentioned today.
London has been allocated 27% of the new affordable homes to be provided through the affordable homes programme. Combined with the existing commitments, that means that the target of 50,000 new affordable homes by 2012 set by the Mayor is very likely to be reached. I am not in a position today to say how many of those homes will be built in Lambeth, because that is subject to contracts, not all of which have been sold.
Lambeth currently has 25,000 council homes, and according to the housing strategy statistical appendix it has a waiting list of 23,000. In other words, there is an acute demand for social housing there. It is also true that Lambeth has an above-average number of empty social homes, or voids. In April, 4.1% of its stock was vacant compared with a national average of 1.5%. According to the council tax database, Lambeth has 1,676 long-term empty homes, which are those empty for longer than six months.
The hon. Lady might like to consider the fact that given the £100 million that is being provided to Lambeth over the next four years for decent homes, given the investment that we are making in new and affordable homes and given Lambeth’s higher than average number of empty homes and long-term empty homes—