Housing: National Tenant Body
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts(3 days, 3 hours ago)
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Baroness Thornhill
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the case for establishing a national tenant body, as recommended by the Housing Ombudsman.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, with strong landlord bodies in both the private and social rented sector, we agree that tenants should also have a strong voice in influencing and scrutinising social housing policy. The Government are committed to listening to tenants and acting on what we hear. The social housing resident panel was established in 2022 to give social housing tenants direct access to Ministers and officials during policy development. We expanded its scope in 2024 beyond its initial focus on quality reforms to all social housing policy. However, our engagement with tenants has shown that they want a national body that is tenant-led and independent of government and landlords. We will continue to work with tenant groups as they explore how best to establish a national tenant voice.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
I thank the Minister for that Answer and am pleased at the positive response. We could be forgiven for thinking that everything in the garden is rosy and it is all going well—hurrah!—so why did the ombudsman, the National Housing Federation, the Commons Select Committee and other prominent voices feel the need to advocate publicly, loudly and recently for such a body? Why do Ministers refuse to meet two nationally significant tenant groups, G15 and Stop Social Housing Stigma, claiming the “no diary availability” excuse? I would like to think that this is simply a communications failure. Does the Minister see a role for government in creating the independent national body that we all seem to want to see, yet nobody knows about it or how it is going to happen?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question and for championing this issue on behalf of tenants. I have met with G15; I went to its parliamentary session and had a look at its very good report on social housing stigma. I agree that we need to make sure that the tenant voice is heard. I have also met with the regulator of social housing twice, I think, since I took over the regulators. The social housing regulator is looking very carefully at how to increase the emphasis on the tenant voice. It is very important that this national body, whatever it is going to be, is tenant-led. I am happy to meet any tenant groups to move this forward. We all want to see tenants having a powerful voice in designing social housing policy.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I wonder whether I can support the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. A lot of work is being done already in the social housing sector by the NHS, and in the private-rented sector by Shelter, Generation Rent, Acorn and the NUS. It is very important that all types of tenants are represented in this national body. There are a lot of organisations involved here. Is my noble friend prepared to go a little further and suggest that the Government have a role—maintaining distance, obviously, because that is clearly needed—in setting this organisation up, perhaps with a little seed corn to supplement the rather meagre resources that many of these organisations have?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for her question. The important thing is that we get the balance right between ensuring that tenants feel this body is genuinely tenant-led and doing what we can to help convene the right people around the table to bring this forward. I will continue discussions with all the relevant housing organisations and bodies to make sure that we are doing all we can to help move this forward. It is time we had some real action in this area.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
My Lords, many housing associations and local councils already have tenant panels and dispute resolution mechanisms. Can the Minister explain how a new national body would avoid unnecessary duplication while genuinely improving outcomes for renters? If such a body were established, can the noble Lord the Minister—the noble Baroness the Minister; I do apologise, but we are gender neutral—explain whether the Government would envisage it as a mandatory authority or a voluntary advisory service, and how would it interact with private landlords and housing associations that already have tenant engagement schemes?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The noble and learned Lord puts his finger on one of the issues. It is very important that at local level, at a specific housing association level and for local councils that have their own housing, tenants are able to have a voice in what is going on with that organisation. The movement towards a national body is more to help work with Ministers and officials on national housing policy where it relates to social housing. As the Government have committed £39 billion of spending on this revolution in social and affordable housing, it will be particularly important that we have a proper body to advise on national policy on social housing. I look forward to working with all those who want to move this forward, but that does not mean that the local voice will not retain its importance.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
It is very good news from the Minister that she is aware of this, but it is obvious since Grenfell and other failures, and since the Renters’ Rights Bill, that this is absolutely necessary. Where is the sense of urgency to get this up and running? Is it simply a case of tenants’ organisations not having the money to convene a proper conference to make proper decisions about the way forward?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I agree with the noble Baroness. Following the findings of the Grenfell inquiry, it is clear that the social housing system was not fit for purpose and that tenants were ignored. It is quite right that apologies were made, and those failings definitely contributed to the Grenfell tragedy. As the noble Baroness will be aware, we are delivering an extensive programme of reform to drive up standards in social housing through regulation and enforcement. We are about to bring Awaab’s law before the House, strengthening the tenant voice and improving access to redress. Those new standards put the tenant voice at their heart. My understanding is that the tenants themselves were very keen that this be both funded and driven by the sector itself. The Government are very keen to do whatever we can to assist with that.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I am not usually very keen on quangos, but at the heart of this is the issue of trust. Tenants feel as though they are getting mixed messages: when the Housing Ombudsman suggests something, the Government say it is a good idea but then dilly-dally, and trust is undermined. The Government should be clearer on this. Also, there are issues involving tenants that need a national voice. Could the national body, for example, deal with the challenges of rental properties being turned into houses in multiple occupancy—an issue that I know worries tenants—and with the rumours that Serco is repurposing HMOs for asylum seekers, to replace hotels? I am not saying that is happening, but there is a lack of clarity. Can the Minister clarify this, and does she see the need for a national body that will help reassure tenants, rather than simply being a dead quango?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I can only repeat what I have said: if tenants want this body, we will work with them and do our best to make it happen. I do not think that anyone is dilly-dallying, but it is very important that the tenant voice be made clear in how this is set up, what it will do and how it will move forward. I am very pleased to work on that and to do what I can to move it forward, as I know my fellow Ministers in the department will be. It is particularly important now, given the massive investment the Government are bringing forward in social housing. The Secretary of State has already said that she wants 60% of the housing from that £39 billion to be social housing. We need to move this forward as quickly as possible, so I will do everything I can to move that on.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, the Minister said in some of her answers that the tenant’s voice is heard, but it is often heard and then ignored, as was so cruelly exposed by the Grenfell Tower tragedy and other social housing-related deaths, where complaints were made about the need for repairs but nothing was done. It is all right being heard, but tenants need to have their voice respected and acted on. How on earth can the Government make those changes?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I hope I can be clear in responding to the noble Baroness that, for too long, landlords in all tenure types have not always taken tenants’ complaints as seriously as they should. Bringing forward Awaab’s law is part of the response to that. Many noble Lords will have heard social landlords say that damp and mould were caused by lifestyle issues. I fundamentally disagree with that, and I am very pleased that Awaab’s law is coming forward to deal with it. We have also put in place a number of other steps, including the £1 million tenant experience innovation fund, supporting social landlords and tenants in working together to test and scale up innovative projects to engage social housing tenants; and our Four Million Homes training programme, which supports tenants with the skills to form organisations that can challenge their landlords at local level. So there is a lot going on, but there is a lot more to do.
Renters’ Rights Bill
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts(6 days, 3 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for their amendments on pets and for their continued engagement on these issues, which has been incredibly helpful. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate: the noble Lords, Lord Trees, Lord Pannick, Lord de Clifford and Lord Fuller, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes. I have heard the passion of noble Lords on the issue of keeping pets. I hope there is overall support for the aim of the Bill to make it easier for tenants to keep pets but to get the balance right between tenants and landlords.
Amendment 47 seeks to set out a list of circumstances in which it would be considered unreasonable for a superior landlord to refuse consent for a tenant to keep a pet. These include personal opinions, general fears of damage or complaints and previous negative experiences with other tenants. While I completely understand the intention of the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, to provide clarity and guard against unfair refusals, I must respectfully say that I do not believe the amendment is needed. Our letter in response to the noble Baroness’s questions in Committee was sent on 15 May. I am really sorry if she has not had that letter, but I will make sure it gets sent out to her again today.
We do not believe it is appropriate or practical to draw superior landlords into the day-to-day running of the tenancy. Requiring them to engage directly in case-by-case decisions about pets risks creating serious administrative burdens. We believe it could also lead to complex and costly delays in decision-making, particularly where superior landlords are difficult to identify and contact or are located overseas. The noble Baroness cited experiences where they have responded quickly, but I know from personal experience of having tenants trying to contact superior landlords that it can be a very complex business.
That said, we intend to publish guidance alongside the Bill to assist landlords in understanding what might constitute a reasonable refusal by an individual’s immediate landlord. This will help ensure clarity, without locking specific examples into primary legislation. For these reasons, I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, will consider withdrawing the amendment and not pressing for a Division.
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for tabling Amendment 48 and discussing this important issue further following Committee. Like the noble Earl, this issue is very close to my heart, and I absolutely would not want to see a two-tier approach. It is right that requests from tenants across all sectors to keep pets be considered fairly, especially given the valuable role pets play in people’s lives. Whether they be corgis, or the veritable zoo quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, pets can provide a great deal of comfort and company to those who wish to keep them.
Following Committee, my officials have explored the issue further. I can confirm that many social landlords already set out and publish their policies on pets in their tenancy agreements, allowing tenants to keep pets where appropriate. We have not been able to find any significant evidence that social tenants requesting a pet are not having their requests considered fairly. Although tenants in social housing do not generally experience the same barriers to keeping a pet as those in the private rented sector, I recognise that it is important to have clarity and consistency across sectors. Therefore, I intend to write to social landlords to ensure that they are fairly considering tenants’ rights to request a pet, and to share existing best practice in this area.
However, for the reasons I have set out, I do not I believe it is proportionate or necessary to add further provisions to the Bill regarding a social housing tenant’s right to request a pet. As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, pointed out, even if legislation were required, this Bill is not the right vehicle for it as it would create inconsistent rules within the social rented sector. That is because the provisions in the Bill would apply only to tenants of registered providers who grant assured tenancies and not to the majority of local authority tenants, who are granted secure tenancies. Given the current approaches taken by landlords in the social rented sector, the lack of evidence of issues warranting further regulation, the additional engagement by my officials and my undertaking to continue to monitor this—and if there does seem to be a need, we will look at that if we bring forward future legislation—I hope the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, will consider withdrawing his amendment.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
I am very grateful for what the Minister has said all round. Before she sits down, I wonder if I could push her just a little more. I think she is saying that there will inevitably be a suitable Bill on social housing at some point, and that it will be the Government’s policy to bring forward at that stage an amendment similar to this, so that there will be a legal necessity for social housing to offer availability of pets on the same basis as this Bill.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
We need to continue to look at the evidence, and to look at the response to the letter that I will write to social landlords. We will then take further action, as necessary and if it is needed, in future legislation.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, I thank everybody who has contributed to this debate and thank the Minister for her reply. I found very helpful her response to the amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull—which we do support—saying that she will write to ensure clarity and consistency.
I had a slight dread when the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, got to his feet, because I thought it would be something really tricky, which of course it was. On the circumstances in which superior landlords can have an opinion on specific pets, I am trying to include superior landlords in the same way as the Bill already includes landlords. I understand the issues the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, raised, but they are for direct landlords, not superior landlords, and we debated those very fully in Committee. It is people with portfolios of hundreds of flats having a blanket refusal—or not—I am concerned about. The noble Lord talked about a simple detached home in the countryside.
Member’s explanatory statement
This removes provision inserted into the Housing Act 1988 making it an implied term of an assured tenancy (other than a tenancy of social housing) that a tenant will comply with conditions relating to pet insurance where the landlord has consented to the tenant keeping a pet and given written notice of the condition.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their rigorous, detailed and good-natured engagement on the matter of pet damage insurance. In particular, the extensive knowledge of the insurance industry of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has been of great assistance in ensuring that we get this policy right.
Following much debate in Committee and further discussions with sector stakeholders, including the Association of British Insurers and the British Insurance Brokers’ Association, we have reflected on our position and I will now speak to government Amendments 49, 54, 55, 57 and 73. I have listened carefully and recognised that, while the insurance market adapts to public policy, there is a risk that relevant insurance will not come on to the market sufficiently following implementation of the Bill. To avoid a situation in which landlords could essentially veto a tenant’s reasonable request to keep a pet, we are withdrawing the pet insurance provisions from the Bill. Tenants will still be able to request to have a pet in their home, but landlords will no longer be able to require insurance to cover property damage caused by a pet. Although our view was that a new market will develop for insurance products, following further engagement with the sector we now accept that this may not happen at the scale necessary. We are committed to supporting responsible pet ownership in the private rented sector and we do not want to leave tenants in a position where they are unable to comply with impractical conditions that a landlord may place on the tenant as part of their pet consent.
Noble Lords will rightly want to know what this means for landlords with concerns about potential property damage. I reassure the House that we are also now satisfied that landlords will be suitably protected from damage caused by pets, particularly after noble Lords shared evidence in Committee—for example, the University of Huddersfield report showing that three-quarters of pet-owning tenancies result in no claim against the deposit. As such, I am content that the existing five-week deposit for typical tenancies will cover any increased damages caused by pet ownership. We will, however, continue to monitor this closely after the implementation of the Bill. If tenants with pets are regularly causing more damage than deposits can cover, we have existing delegated powers to allow higher deposits for tenancies with pets under the Tenant Fees Act 2019. I hope the House recognises that we have listened and responded to the debate with pragmatism. Private renters should be treated fairly if they have reasonable requests for pets, and our legislative framework should support that. I am grateful to all colleagues who have helped us to get to the best position possible, and I beg to move government Amendment 49.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Geddes) (Con)
My Lords, before putting Amendment 49, I must advise the House that, if it is agreed to, I will not be able to call Amendments 50 to 53 due to pre-emption.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, the issue of pet-related damage is understandably a source of concern for landlords. This group of amendments raises important questions about how we balance—that word balance again—the increased rights granted to tenants to keep pets with the responsibilities and protections that landlords need.
It is simply not reasonable to argue that the existing tenancy deposit, which is designed to cover damage under current arrangements, is also sufficient to cover the additional risks introduced by granting tenants a new right to keep pets.
The Government have already accepted that pets pose a greater risk by including pet insurance measures in the Bill. That was a clear recognition that pets are likely to cause additional damage. However, as we consider these provisions, it is crucial to reflect on the experience already gained in Scotland, where tenants’ rights legislation has evolved to allow pets in rented properties, while seeking to balance landlord protections. In Scotland, the introduction of pet-friendly tenancy provisions and related insurance requirements has offered valuable lessons. While these measures have expanded tenant freedoms and encouraged pet ownership, they have also revealed challenges, particularly in ensuring that landlords are adequately protected against damage and in making sure that any additional costs or deposits are fair and transparent.
Either pets cause additional damage or they do not. If the Government now claim that they do not, they must provide clear and compelling evidence to justify overturning their original assessment. Without such evidence, it logically and fairly follows that the landlord should be permitted to take a separate pet damage deposit.
We believe it is inevitable that some damage will result from pets. That is why we support Amendment 53A, which would introduce the option of a dedicated pet damage deposit. This would provide landlords with an essential route to recoup costs, while also protecting tenants from unfair charges by clearly defining that this is a separate and transparent element of a tenancy agreement and that, as we have already heard, if no damage is done, they get this charge back.
We recognise that some landlords may choose to welcome pets without requiring additional deposits—or, in the future, insurance—and they should be free to do so. But where landlords require further protections, there must be a fair and transparent mechanism for tenants to provide it at the outset of the tenancy.
Finally, the experience in Scotland reminds us that implementing pet-friendly rental policies is a delicate balance that must be tailored to the practical realities that landlords and tenants face. As the Bill moves forward, it is essential that it draws on such lessons to achieve frameworks that work fairly across the whole United Kingdom.
If the noble Lord, Lord de Clifford, is minded to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 53A, we will support him.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. I know it is a hugely emotive and important issue for so many people, and we have had a good debate on it today. I thank the noble Lord, Lord de Clifford, for introducing his amendment, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, the noble Lords, Lord Trees, Lord Howard, Lord Pannick and Lord Fuller, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Miller and Lady Scott.
I turn now to the amendments in the names of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Lord, Lord de Clifford. As we have discussed, Amendment 50 is not required as our government amendments remove the insurance requirements altogether. I understand fully the intention of Amendments 51 and 53A, with the aim to ensure that landlords are protected from potential damages caused by pets. However, we are content that existing deposits, which are capped at five weeks’ rent for typical tenancies where the annual rent is less than £50,000, or six weeks’ rent for tenancies over £50,000 per annum, are enough to cover typical pet damages.
The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, illustrated very clearly some of the complexities of this issue. Allowing a further three weeks’ deposit would cost the average tenant in England over £900. This is unaffordable for many tenants, who will have worked very hard to save for their deposit for their property, and greatly exceeds the average deposit deduction for pet damage of £300 reported in the study we have already spoken about. That study found that 76% of landlords reported that they did not encounter any damage caused by dogs or cats in their rental properties. Where there was damage, it was an average of £300 per property, compared with £775 for non-pet-related damage.
The report also shows that renters with pets tend to stay longer in their properties than those without pets, indicating financial and social advantages for landlords in fostering those longer and more stable tenancies. In the very rare cases where the insurance and deposit do not cover the cost of damage caused by a pet, a landlord can of course take the tenant to the small claims court by bringing a money claim to recoup any outstanding funds.
In relation to the issues mentioned about Scotland, housing is of course a devolved matter in Scotland, and it is for the Scottish Government to set deposit limits for private rented properties. I note that the right to request a pet does not yet exist in Scotland. In England, we believe that the five weeks’ deposit will be sufficient to cover damages. We also have concerns that in some cases it will be impossible to distinguish between damage caused by pets and that caused by tenants themselves. This could leave pet owners with more exposure to large, unreasonable deposit deductions compared with other renters. As I said, we have an existing power under the Tenant Fees Act, which we could use to allow landlords to require a larger deposit where they have consented to the tenant having a pet. We want to closely monitor how the pet provisions work in practice following implementation, and will consider using the power in the Tenant Fees Act if we see that the cost of pet damage is frequently exceeding the value of deposits.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, the Minister just said that the situation has changed. I have listened very carefully to the debate. The Government thought it was necessary to have insurance; they now say it is not necessary. Therefore, the Government have already admitted that there needs to be something additional to protect the landlord in the case of somebody having a pet. Frankly, the argument does not stand up to say that that is not so. I hope that the Minister will accept that she really has to go back and say that if there is no insurance, there has to be a greater degree of protection for the landlord.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I hear what the noble Lord says, and I have listened to other noble Lords, but the evidence in the study that I cited is that three-quarters of landlords of those tenants who have pets do not report any damage. Where there is damage, the cost is around £300, which is perfectly within the scope of the normal deposit. We are content that landlords would be suitably protected against the cost of pet damage through existing tenancy deposits.
Finally, I turn to Amendment 53. As I stated in Committee, “premium” is already commonly understood to include any insurance premium tax, so this amendment is not strictly required, in our view. However, following the Government’s amendments, which remove the ability of landlords to require tenants to obtain insurance to cover the risk of property damage caused by a pet, the noble Lord will, I am sure, recognise that this amendment is no longer required. I therefore request that these amendments not be pressed.
Member’s explanatory statement
This is consequential on the amendment in my name which would remove the provision to be inserted into the Housing Act 1988 relating to indemnity and insurance for pets.
Member’s explanatory statement
The amendment removes the provisions to be inserted into the Tenant Fees Act 2019 to allow tenants to make payments relating to pet insurance in consequence of the amendment in my name which would remove the provision to be inserted into the Housing Act 1988 relating to indemnity and insurance for pets.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I thank both noble Baronesses for speaking in this debate. It is a sensitive issue. It concerns adaptations for some of the most vulnerable in our society and touches on those who require the greatest compassion and care. We do need to support people to live independently in their own home. As a council leader, I was proud that we built a number of fully accessible, affordable homes for the disabled.
However, I must express some concerns about Amendment 56, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender. This Bill is focused on the private rented sector, yet the amendment introduces provisions relating to social tenancies. As my noble friend Lady Scott alluded to earlier today, social housing providers have not been widely consulted in the lead-up to this Bill. Imposing new requirements on them without proper consultation and discussion would be inappropriate. Any such change rightly belongs in a dedicated social housing Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, said earlier that she would seek to write to social landlords and perhaps this is another opportunity for her to do so.
Furthermore, the amendment is riddled with gaps. It lacks clarity on important matters such as what happens when a tenant leaves, who is responsible for reinstatement, its cost and the loss of rent while work is carried out. There is also the issue of ensuring work is carried out to a high standard and that structural integrity is maintained. These issues are vital to maintaining the value and usability of the property, and the amendment fails to address them adequately.
Turning to Amendment 72, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, I note that it defines “minor changes” as including structural alterations. Structural alterations hardly seem minor. While I fully appreciate the noble Baroness’s intentions and her compassionate approach, which we all share, this is a complex issue. I strongly believe that we must strike a careful balance between compassion, cost and deliverability, and we must do so in a thorough and considered manner. I hope that your Lordships’ House agrees.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tope, for his amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for moving it so ably, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for her amendment. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson. He may remember that I visited some of the housing that he developed when he was a council leader to pinch some ideas for my own local authority. It was indeed very accessible.
Amendment 56, from the noble Lord, Lord Tope, would require landlords to allow disability adaptations when a local authority has carried out a home assessment and recommended changes to be made. While the Equality Act 2010 already provides protections for disabled renters, I completely accept that they are not always as well understood as they should be. It is right that we consider how to address barriers preventing disabled renters getting the home adaptations they need. However, as I stated in Committee, I do not consider that this amendment is the right way to do this. A new requirement linked to local authority home assessments would create a confusing two-tier system. As a consequence, even these well-intentioned measures might make it harder for people who are not eligible for disabled facilities grants to access adaptations.
As I previously set out, the Government have committed to take steps to clarify matters further to support disabled renters. We all recognise what a vital issue this is and the difference it can make to someone’s life to have adequate access to their property. We will look to ensure that the written statement of terms that landlords will have to provide to new tenants includes the duty on landlords not to unreasonably refuse tenant requests for disability adaptations.
We also intend to work closely with the sector to deliver a communications and engagement programme to raise awareness of disability-related rights and obligations among tenants and landlords, and we will explore enhancing guidance to help landlords and tenants better understand the current system. This is in addition to existing provisions in the Bill that empower disabled tenants to request the home adaptations they need. For example, by abolishing Section 21 evictions, we will remove the threat of retaliatory eviction, and the creation of the new ombudsman will give tenants a new route of redress when their adaptations are refused.
The Government have also increased funding for the disabled facilities grant, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, mentioned. We have increased the grant by £86 million, bringing the total amount to £711 million. On the role of local authorities, they must provide a decision on the disabled facilities grant application within six months of receipt and the works must usually be completed within 12 months of the approval date. I appreciate that that can feel like a long time when you are waiting for an adaptation, but the Government have published guidance for local authorities in England to help to support the efficient local delivery of the disabled facilities grant, including speed of delivery. I appreciate that in some areas the availability of occupational therapists to do the assessments has proved an issue. Many local authorities are looking carefully at this issue, and I know we will be taking steps to address it.
Member's explanatory statement
This is consequential on the amendment in my name which would remove the provision to be inserted into the Housing Act 1988 relating to indemnity and insurance for pets.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 90 and 93 in the name of my noble friend Lady Thornhill, who, unfortunately, cannot be here. These are thoughtful and constructive proposals that seek to strengthen the effectiveness and accountability of the Bill.
Amendment 90 would require a review of the impact of Part 1 within three years, specifically addressing its effect on renter security and stability. Given the significance of the reforms introduced by the Bill, it is entirely reasonable to build in a mechanism to evaluate whether these changes are achieving their intended outcomes and put it before Parliament. I am aware that the department conducts its own review processes for legislation of this kind, but I would welcome assurances from the Minister that these reviews will be thorough and fully account for the various impacts of the Act across the private rented sector.
Amendment 93, also tabled by my noble friend Lady Thornhill, proposes a review of how well tenants understand their rights and obligations under the Bill and where they are most likely to seek that information. This speaks to a critical issue. The Bill makes a number of positive reforms, particularly in strengthening the rights of renters to challenge unfair practices such as unlawful rent increases, poor property standards or breaches of their tenancy agreements through accessible routes such as the First-tier Tribunal. However, as we have discussed again and again in Committee and at Second Reading, far too many tenants either are unaware of these rights or lack the practical information and support needed to exercise them. Without clear and accessible communication, even the most well-intentioned reforms risk falling short. This amendment would ensure that the Government are proactive in identifying how renters seek advice and whether current methods of communication are effective at reaching them. It is only through this kind of follow-up that the Bill’s protections can be meaningfully realised in practice.
Amendment 60, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, would require the Secretary of State to produce an annual report on financial assistance provided to local housing authorities. As drafted, in our view, the amendment does not clarify the contents of the review and the information it suggests is already available. We are much more supportive of Amendment 118, which would require a broader review of the impact of the Bill on the housing market. We attempted to introduce this on day 1 of Report; we argued then that, given the scale of the reforms to the private rented sector, a review of this kind would provide a useful opportunity to assess the Bill’s wider consequences.
We hope the Minister will take these considerations into account. These amendments do not seek to undermine the Bill but rather to ensure that its implementation is informed, effective and fair. A commitment to review the impact on renters’ stability and to assess how well tenants understand and can access their rights would demonstrate that the Government are serious about delivering lasting change in the private rented sector. It would also offer a valuable opportunity to identify where further support or clarification may be needed, helping ensure that the reforms achieve, as we all hope, their full potential.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Thornhill, for their amendments, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for again ably speaking to them.
Amendment 60 would require the Secretary of State to publish a statement of the financial assistance provided to local authorities in connection with their powers to impose civil penalties for breaches and offences relating to assured tenancies. The statement would need to be laid before Parliament within 12 months of Clause 16 coming into force, and then annually for an indefinite period. It is clearly important that local authorities are prepared to fulfil the duties placed on them by the Bill. However, requiring the Government to produce an annual statement of the nature outlined in this amendment would create a significant administrative burden for little benefit.
We know that the enforcement duties created by the Bill will present an additional net cost for local authorities. That is why we will ensure that the additional burdens created by the new system are funded in line with the new burdens doctrine. We will continue to work closely with local authority stakeholders as the Bill is implemented to ensure a smooth transition to the new system. For these reasons, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, to withdraw her amendment.
Amendment 90 from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, seeks to prescribe the groups with which the department would be required to consult as part of this process. I know there is a large amount of interest in this House on the impact of this legislation, and I have previously set out to the House the approach we will be taking to monitoring and evaluating the impact of the Bill.
The use of a broad range of data is at the heart of our approach. As well as existing data, we will use data from stakeholders such as local authorities, and data generated from the reforms themselves. I agree that it is important that our evaluation makes use of interviews, surveys and focus groups, and we have committed to conduct these with a range of stakeholders. This amendment would require the Government to speak to renters, landlords and local authorities as part of our evaluation. We have already committed to speaking to these groups. In fact, we plan to go further and draw on the experience of letting agents, third-sector organisations, delivery partners, the courts and tribunals service and government officials. The information we collect from speaking to these stakeholders will be used as a key part of our evaluation of the programme.
I also recognise that this amendment places a particular focus on the impact of the Bill on levels of homelessness and the use of temporary accommodation. We already collect robust data through the Homelessness Case Level Collection. Local authorities provide quarterly data returns on their actions under the homelessness legislation. This allows us to effectively monitor homelessness, including temporary accommodation breakdowns.
No approach to tackling homelessness can rely on a single action. Instead, we are determined to address the homelessness crisis we inherited and deliver long-term solutions. That is why we have already made a £1 billion investment in homelessness and rough sleeping services this year—2025/26—a £233 million increase on the previous year. In addition, we are developing a cross-government strategy to get us back on track to ending homelessness. We are committed to moving away from a system focused on crisis response, taking a holistic approach to preventing homelessness in the first place and driving better-value-for-money interventions.
Amendment 93—also from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill—would introduce a legal requirement for the Secretary of State to conduct a review of the extent to which tenants in the private rented sector understand their rights and obligations. I know the House will share my view that the successful implementation of the Renters’ Rights Bill is firmly rooted in how widely its provisions are known and understood, and I completely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, in that respect. I therefore want to reassure the House that the Government are committed to raising awareness of the full range of Renters’ Rights Bill reforms across the private rented sector. This will be done through robust and extensive stakeholder engagement, providing the sector with a full suite of guidance on the reforms and an overarching communications campaign, along with partnership marketing. This extensive and targeted work will ensure each part of the sector fully understands its new rights and obligations.
The Government have already committed to a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation programme of the reforms, drawing on a wide range of data sources and stakeholder input. Including a requirement for a review of tenants’ understanding of the rights and responsibilities in the Bill therefore represents an unnecessary step. On the basis of these arguments and our clear commitments, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, not to press her amendments.
Finally, I turn to Amendment 118 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. I appreciate the concern that underpins Amendment 118, namely the potential impact of the Renters’ Rights Bill on the housing market in England and whether it might discourage landlords from remaining in the sector. As we consider this issue today, it is important to reflect on the evidence already available. The 2023-24 English Housing Survey shows that the size of the private rented sector has remained broadly stable since 2013-14. This suggests that, despite ongoing discussions about reform since 2019, landlords have not exited the market in significant numbers. The Government remain confident that the measures in the Bill will not destabilise the rental market. On the contrary, our proposals make sure that landlords have the confidence and support they need to continue to invest and operate in the sector.
I will not repeat the details I set out in Committee of this Government’s commitment to thoroughly monitoring and evaluating the private rented sector reform programme using a wide range of data sources and stakeholder input. However, for the benefit of the House, I will briefly set out our plans for publishing the findings from this evaluation, which I believe is what the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, was asking me.
In accordance with the policy set out in our evaluation strategy, the department will publish its assessments of the Renters’ Rights Bill on GOV.UK at two key intervals: two years and five years after implementation. To ensure the reports are publicly accessible, copies will be formally lodged in the Libraries of both Houses of Parliament at the time of publication.
I reassure the noble Baroness that we are committed to carrying out a robust evaluation of the Renters’ Rights Bill. We will disseminate its findings widely so that parliamentarians, tenants, landlords, local authorities and wider stakeholders will be able to see and scrutinise the impact of the reforms in a timely way. For these reasons, I ask the noble Baroness not to press her amendment.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley for her Amendment 61 and for bringing her expertise and experience to both today’s debate and discussions we have had previously on this issue—as did my noble friend Lady Lister when she moved a similar amendment in Committee. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Fuller and Lord Jamieson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for speaking.
The use of guarantors within the private rented sector is an issue which I know is of great interest to the House. Let me start by saying that the Government recognise that obtaining a guarantor can be a difficult task for some prospective tenants, and I understand concerns that it can be used as a further barrier to tenancy in some cases. As the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, indicated, where it is being used to discriminate, equalities law may apply. I will consider, for our information-sharing exercise on the Bill, whether there is more we can do to inform people in this regard.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, this group of amendments relates to joint tenancies and the procedural requirements for serving and responding to notices to quit. These amendments, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, seek to ensure that the provisions in Clauses 21 and 22 apply expressly and fairly to all assured tenancies. The spirit of these amendments is to promote transparency and fairness, ensuring that no tenant is left unaware of or disadvantaged by unilateral actions.
As we have discussed in this debate and in Committee, joint tenancies are an important and increasingly common form of tenancy arrangement, particularly among families, couples and shared households. Given that multiple tenants hold equal rights and responsibilities, it is only right and fair that the Bill reflects this reality by requiring all parties to be kept informed of significant developments affecting their tenancy.
These amendments propose sensible procedural safeguards. The requirement that any notice to quit served by one joint tenant be communicated in writing to all other joint tenants is fair. Similarly, where a landlord serves notice, all joint tenants should be notified promptly. It is also noteworthy that some amendments specify that certain agreements, such as those shortening notice periods or withdrawing notices to quit, must involve the consent of all joint tenants rather than just one. This is a balanced recognition of the collective nature of joint tenancies and the importance of mutual consent in such decisions.
As the Bill continues to evolve, it is our shared goal to ensure a rental market that is fair and workable for all parties involved. Although we fully understand and respect the intentions behind these amendments and welcome the constructive debate they have sparked, it is important to consider the practical implications. Requiring unanimous consent or detailed notice procedures could, in some circumstances, add complexity or delay, especially in situations where tenants’ circumstances change rapidly. Therefore, although we support the principle of ensuring fairness and transparency in joint tenancies, we urge careful consideration of the balance between protecting tenants’ rights and maintaining workable, efficient processes for landlords and tenants alike.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his amendments on joint tenancies; Citizens Advice, which has provided the benefit of its significant expertise in this area throughout the Bill’s passage; and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, for his contribution.
Turning first to Amendments 62 and 66, the Government’s intention is not that tenants on a joint tenancy can unilaterally end that tenancy sooner than expected, nor should a tenant be able to trap another in a tenancy indefinitely by withdrawing a notice to quit. As such, I am pleased to confirm that the Government have tabled Amendments 64 and 67, which achieve the same effect as those laid by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley.
Government Amendment 64 will apply where a tenant who wants to serve a notice to quit in a joint tenancy seeks to agree a shorter notice period with the landlord. All other joint tenants will need to agree the shorter notice period as well for the notice to quit to be valid. This will ensure that tenants will not be able to agree short notice periods for a notice to quit without their other joint tenants being aware, preventing tenants finding out at potentially very short notice that their tenancy is ending. This was not the Government’s intention, and I am pleased to be able to clarify this issue beyond doubt in the Bill.
Government Amendment 67 will clarify that all joint tenants must agree, alongside the landlord, for a notice to quit to be withdrawn. This will ensure that it is clear that tenants must all agree to sustain a tenancy and make absolutely clear that one tenant cannot trap another in a tenancy indefinitely. These changes will ensure that joint tenancies can continue to operate effectively in the future tenancy regime and ensure maximum clarity for all parties. As such, I hope the noble Lord will not press his amendments and will instead support the government amendments.
Turning now to the noble Lord’s other amendments, Amendment 63 would require a tenant to inform all other joint tenants of their serving a notice to quit, and the landlord to do the same. I have great sympathy with the noble Lord’s intent. We all agree that tenants and landlords should communicate transparently with one another and take action to ensure that all parties are aware that a tenancy is coming to an end. With regret, however, I am unable to support codifying a requirement for this in law. The Government are concerned that, in certain circumstances, this may place individuals at risk. This is particularly true for victims of domestic abuse, who may not be able to safely inform a perpetrator that a notice to quit has been served. Indeed, some victims may choose not to serve a notice to quit at all. I also have practical concerns about the amendment. It might give rise to frustrating and counterproductive disputes between tenants. It might also cause tenants to question whether a tenancy has been validly ended if the requirement is not complied with.
Amendment 65 would allow a tenant to serve one month’s notice to end a tenancy if a landlord has served a possession notice on grounds 1 and 1A. That would be a reduction from the usual two months’ notice required by the Bill. Although I appreciate that the intent is to offer tenants greater flexibility to find a new property, we think the Bill strikes the right balance. Landlords must now give four months’ notice when using these grounds, and we think it is reasonable that the property be occupied for at least two months of this period, unless there is specific agreement to a shorter period.
I note that allowing a shorter notice period automatically might place other joint tenants in a difficult situation—for example, if they have not been able to find alternative accommodation as quickly as their housemates. This is recognised in the noble Lord’s other amendments. In many cases, the landlord will be supportive of a tenant moving out sooner than would otherwise be permitted. In those cases, there is nothing to stop all joint tenants and landlords agreeing a shorter notice period.
I hope that the noble Lord recognises that we have given very careful consideration to these amendments and have accepted those where we think the Bill could be strengthened, although I fully appreciate the intent behind his other amendments. I therefore ask him not to press those amendments for the reasons I have set out.
“(1ZB) In the case of a joint assured tenancy, an agreement under subsection (1ZA)(a)(i) is not valid unless it is made between the landlord and all of the tenants.(1ZC) That does not affect the validity of any notice to quit premises let under a joint assured tenancy that is given by only one or some of the tenants.(1ZD) In this section “joint assured tenancy” means an assured tenancy where two or more persons are tenants under the tenancy.”Member’s explanatory statement
The new subsection (1ZA)(a)(ii) inserted into section 5 of the Protection from Eviction Act 1977 enables the landlord and tenant to agree that notice to quit of less than two months can be given. This amendment would ensure that, where there are joint tenants, all of them must make such an agreement with the landlord.
“(4) In the case of a joint assured tenancy, an agreement under subsection (3) is not valid unless it is made between the landlord and all of the tenants.(5) That does not affect the validity of any notice to quit premises let under a joint assured tenancy that is given by only one or some of the tenants.(6) In this section “joint assured tenancy” means an assured tenancy where two or more persons are tenants under the tenancy.”Member's explanatory statement
The new section 5A(3) inserted into the Protection from Eviction Act 1977 enables the landlord and tenant to agree that notice to quit can be withdrawn. This amendment would ensure that, where there are joint tenants, all of them must make such an agreement with the landlord.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for bringing this group of amendments to the attention of the House. However, we do not believe that these amendments are necessary. Tenants already have clear rights and remedies when it comes to deposit protection. A tenant can easily check online whether their deposit has been lodged in a government-approved protection scheme. If it has not been properly protected and the issue remains unresolved, the tenant has the right to take the landlord to court.
In such cases, the court may order the landlord to return or protect the deposit, and may even award the tenant three times the value of that deposit as compensation. These are significant penalties and they serve as a strong incentive for landlords to comply with the law. Given that eviction proceedings are already subject to considerable safeguards and restrictions, we are not convinced that removing Section 8 grounds in these circumstances is either proportionate or necessary.
In particular, we must ensure that where a genuine error has been made and later rectified, especially where there is no actual harm or financial loss to the tenant, landlords are not barred from recovering possession of their property. To do so would seem unjust. A more flexible and proportionate approach would promote better compliance while avoiding unnecessary hardship or deterrence to good-faith landlords.
Although we fully understand the intentions behind these amendments, having heard the reasoning of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, we believe that existing protections for tenants are robust and that further restrictions of this kind risk being disproportionate.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I am once again grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for raising these points, as well as to Citizens Advice for discussing them directly with our department, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for her comments. Although I have great sympathy with the intention of Amendments 68 to 71, Clause 27 already ensures that deposits will be protected at the time of the possession hearing, which we think is a more proportionate approach.
Landlords have until the court hearing to comply with deposit protection rules. This ensures that landlords can still gain possession when it is reasonable, while ensuring that the tenant’s deposit is protected before the tenancy ends. I also note that this approach is far stronger than current restrictions, which prevent only the use of Section 21, and not Section 8, if the deposit is not protected.
However, I believe the noble Lord’s approach goes too far. Most notably, if a landlord had failed to protect a deposit within 30 days of receiving it, they would be permanently prevented from serving notice for possession on any ground except anti-social behaviour. Let me be clear: such a landlord should have complied with the law—of course they should—but there are other, more proportionate, mechanisms available to enforce that compliance, including an ability for a court to award tenants up to three times the amount of the deposit if it was not protected properly.
In conclusion, the Bill balances tenant protection with the need for legitimate possession cases to proceed. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s reply but it has extended the doubts that I have had about this, because it is still not clear to me why the Bill is weakening the current safeguards.
It is not clear why a valid defence cannot be assured for a tenant who has to go to court when the court case may not be necessary—in other words, they do not know whether the landlord has managed a tenancy deposit scheme correctly on their behalf. Citizens Advice has produced a strong case here, and it is not clear why the current safeguards are not being continued. I am advised that the tenancy deposit protection scheme will be significantly weakened if it remains the case in the Bill that landlords will not need to protect tenants’ deposits prior to serving notice. That is a departure from the current position. If that is required to happen in future, it will simply encourage wasted court time.
I shall withdraw the amendment and not move the other three, but I hope that the Minister and the Government will look very carefully at this issue because otherwise, I fear that tenants will not be properly protected by the tenancy deposit scheme. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Member’s explanatory statement
This is consequential on the amendment in my name which would remove the provision to be inserted into the Housing Act 1988 relating to indemnity and insurance for pets.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, on this amendment, I think we are unanimous. I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for this amendment. I approve of his technical knowledge on this and can agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Grender—just occasionally.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I hope that the next day of Report will go just like that. It will be wonderful.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for Amendment 74. As he noted, I have added my name to it, and I am delighted to do so. The Government are very pleased to support the amendment, technical as it is. As the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, said, it will make a positive difference. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for bringing this forward. The amendment is a positive step towards creating a fair and transparent rental market with a more streamlined regulatory process. We want to ensure that letting agent businesses are able to receive reliable and tailored advice on complying with regulations under the Tenant Fees Act 2019.
The amendment will allow a primary authority scheme to be set up for the Tenant Fees Act 2019. The reliable and tailored assured advice issued by the primary authority is recognised by other local authorities. This helps businesses avoid costs and difficulties caused by different local authorities interpreting and enforcing the same rules inconsistently. The primary authority scheme also promotes great co-operation between businesses and regulators, fostering a collaborative environment that ultimately increases compliance rates while lowering enforcement costs and reducing administrative burdens. The Government strongly support the amendment, recognising its potential significantly to improve the rental market. I hope the whole House will support it.
Lord Best (CB)
I am delighted to receive support from all around the House and am deeply grateful. The commonhold and leasehold reform Bill is on its way shortly. That will provide further opportunities to strengthen the regulatory framework around managing agents and the work they do.
“(a) for sub-paragraph (1) substitute—“(1) A tenancy which is granted to a person who is pursuing, or intends to pursue, a course of study provided by a specified educational institution if—(a) the tenancy is granted— (i) by that institution,(ii) by another specified educational institution, or(iii) by a specified body of persons, or(b) either of the following is a member of a specified housing management code of practice—(i) a person appointed to act on the landlord’s behalf in respect of the tenancy;(ii) a person appointed to discharge management functions in respect of the building which comprises the dwelling-house or in which the dwelling-house is situated.(1A) Subsection (1)”.”Member’s explanatory statement
The new paragraph (b) of subsection (1) provides that a tenancy of student accommodation is not an assured tenancy if the person appointed to act on behalf of the landlord or to discharge management functions in respect of the building concerned is a member of a “housing management code of practice” (which is a code approved under section 233 of the Housing Act 2004).
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 76 to 85 and Amendments 123 to 125, to Clause 33 and Schedule 6 respectively. These relate to the mechanism by which private purpose-built student accommodation, or PBSA, will be exempted from the assured tenancy system. They are highly technical in nature and can be broadly divided into two main groups. First, there are technical amendments to the power in the Housing Act 1988. We will use this power to make secondary legislation exempting providers from the assured tenancy framework by reference to their membership of the Unipol code of management practice. This amendment to the power will allow building managers, not just traditional landlords who own the building, to be exempted in the event those managers are members of the housing management code. The amendments are designed to reflect the diversity of commercial arrangements in the PBSA sector.
Secondly, there are amendments that aim to smooth over the transition for the sector by providing access to a modified ground 4A for landlords of existing PBSA tenancies after the transition date. I am grateful to stakeholders from the sector for working with the Government to ensure that these clauses work in the way intended.
I will now go briefly through the amendments one by one. Amendment 123 is a consequential amendment that updates the numbering in paragraph 13 of Schedule 6. Amendment 124 is not related to PBSA but rather corrects a pre-existing cross-reference error contained in paragraph 13 of Schedule 6.
Turning to the first of the substantive amendments, the Government’s intention is to exempt private PBSA from the new assured tenancy system, in recognition of its unique operating model and the need for alignment with the academic calendar. We will do this using a delegated power in paragraph 8 of Schedule 1 to the Housing Act 1988, which we are also amending. However, the power in the Housing Act will allow for new tenancies to be exempt only if they fall within scope. As a result, tenancies entered into prior to the commencement of the Bill will fall outside the scope of the exemption and, therefore, will be subject to the full provisions of the new assured tenancy system.
To apply the exemption retrospectively would carry significant risk, as it would turn one of these existing PBSA tenancies into what is known as a “common law” tenancy: that is, a tenancy almost entirely regulated by what is in the tenancy agreement. This could cause unintended consequences, such as those PBSA tenancies containing significantly fewer rights for tenants than the assured shorthold tenancies they will have signed. It could also cause problems for the landlords of those tenancies in the event that the tenancy agreement does not give them adequate forfeiture rights. We do not consider it to be the right approach, therefore, to simply exempt pre-existing PBSA tenancies from assured tenancy status.
That said, it is important that PBSA landlords under these existing PBSA tenancies can still access the possession grounds, in particular ground 4A. To ensure that the exemption operates as intended, Amendment 125 modifies ground 4A when applied to pre-existing “qualifying student tenancies”. These are PBSA tenancies, in other words.
The amendment ensures that the ground can be used despite those tenancies not usually being HMOs, nor does it require the landlord to serve the Section 8 notice between 1 June and 30 September, reflecting the fact that this restriction does not apply to PBSA tenancies in the old system; nor will it apply to fully exempted tenancies. This will ensure that existing PBSA landlords retain the ability to regain possession at the end of the academic year and therefore end the tenancy. This is consistent with the treatment of new PBSA tenancies established after commencement, where they will not be subject to the assured tenancy framework.
I turn now to Amendments 75, 76, 77 and 78. We are seeking to make the existing exemption from assured tenancy status for student tenancies more comprehensive. This exemption is currently set out in paragraph 8 of Schedule 1 to the Housing Act 1988. Amendment 75 therefore amends the exemption to ensure that it applies where a landlord has appointed a person to manage the tenancy on their behalf or to manage the building, and that person is a member of a recognised student housing management code of practice.
Amendment 77 therefore inserts a new sub-paragraph, (2CA), into paragraph 8. This will allow for regulations to make more tailored provision for particular circumstances by reference to a specified building when combined with the specified person acting on behalf of the landlord. Amendments 76 and 78 are consequential on Amendment 77. They ensure that new sub-paragraph (2CA) is cross-referred to where appropriate in the rest of paragraph 8.
I turn to Amendments 80, 81, 82, 83 and 85. There is often a delay between a student tenancy being entered into and the student tenant actually taking possession. In light of this, the exemption in paragraph 8 contains provision to say that a tenancy that meets the exemption at the point at which the tenancy is granted will be exempted permanently, save for particular situations.
These situations will include where at the time of grant the tenancy was exempt because the landlord or person acting on their behalf was a member of a housing management code of practice but at the point where the tenant takes possession neither the landlord nor the person managing is a member of a code. It will also include where at the time of grant there were regulations in place under paragraph 8 that did not prevent the tenancy from falling within the exemption, but at the point at which the tenant is entitled to possession, these regulations do prevent the tenancy from being caught by the exemption. This is achieved by Amendments 80, 81, 82, 83 and 85. These amendments are designed not only to ensure that the exemption is granted solely to those PBSA providers who adhere to robust standards but also to guard against any potential for the exemption to be misapplied or exploited.
Amendment 79 is consequential on Amendment 75. It ensures that regulations made elsewhere in paragraph 8 can specify classes of buildings that are subject to a housing management code of practice specified for this purpose under new paragraph 8(1)(b).
Amendment 84 is consequential on Amendment 125, which provides that a tenancy will be exempt if the person discharging “management functions” in relation to the building is a member of a specified housing management code. Amendment 84 defines “management functions”. It defines these functions to include services, repairs, maintenance, improvements, and insurance of the building. I beg to move.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I begin by thanking the Minister for so clearly setting out the Government’s amendments relating to purpose-built student accommodation—PBSAs. I am also grateful to her for taking the time to meet with me and my noble friend Lord Jamieson ahead of Report to discuss this matter in detail.
As the Minister is aware, student accommodation is a matter of considerable importance to many of us; indeed, it is an area of particular concern in this Bill. Ensuring that we have sufficient student accommodation, of the right type, available in the right places, and operating in line with the academic calendar, is vital. This is a matter not simply of logistics but of availability and affordability. An adequate supply of accommodation helps to keep rents manageable, which is especially important for students from less advantaged backgrounds.
This is why we raised concerns around ground 4A, particularly with regard to the importance of preserving the cyclical nature of student tenancies. The cyclical model is central to the viability of purpose-built student accommodation and, indeed, to maintaining affordability for students. We therefore welcome the Government’s amendments in this area, which rightly acknowledge the unique nature and operation of the PBSAs. In particular, I am very grateful for the clarification offered in sub-paragraph (2C), which states that the tenancy of student accommodation will not be considered an assured tenancy if the person acting on behalf of the landlord is a member of a housing management code of practice.
However, I would be grateful for further clarification. Can the Minister confirm whether this provision refers specifically to recognised codes such as the ANUK or the Unipol code, or whether it includes other housing management codes of practice as well? It would be helpful if the Government could set out explicitly which codes are deemed applicable under this provision. Furthermore, in the case of newly established accommodation, how will providers be expected to demonstrate adherence to an accepted code specifically for the purpose of continuing to provide fixed-term tenancies?
I am sure the Minister agrees that providers must have, and maintain, an up-to-date understanding of their obligations. With that in mind, when does the Minister intend to update the relevant guidance, particularly regarding the practical steps that PBSAs will need to take to ensure they can continue offering fixed-term tenancies?
The relevant codes of practice are, of course, designed around the specific characteristics of student accommodation, covering matters such as health and safety, maintenance and the management of relationships between providers and their tenants. In light of the changes introduced by the Bill, does the Minister have any plans to review or amend the codes? If so, how will such changes be communicated to those operating in the sector?
Finally, does the Minister agree that one of the key benefits of code membership is the ability to provide student accommodation outside the assured tenancy framework—a flexibility that underpins the viability of the sector?
I hope the Minister will continue to keep under review the impact of this Bill on students and to consider carefully any future changes that could make it harder for students to secure suitable accommodation. Students must be at the forefront of our considerations, not only in policies but also in practice.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for those comments. I will attempt to answer her questions; I may have to come back in writing on the point about amending the codes.
Pre-existing PBSA tenancies will continue to benefit from the protections provided by the Bill. For newly signed PBSA tenancies after commencement, protections will be provided through the housing management codes of practice, approved under Section 233 of the Housing Act 2004. These codes set out clear and robust standards, and compliance with the codes is a condition for exemption.
In respect of the approved codes, the ANUK and Unipol codes have clear oversight mechanisms in place, including regular audits, complaint processes and suspension or exclusion for non-compliance. That is why they are the important codes that we have focused on. Landlords must maintain membership and demonstrate adherence to the code standards. If they fail to do so, they will lose their exemption, so that is very important. If they lose their code membership mid-tenancy, they will no longer be entitled to rely on the exemption for any new tenancies. However, existing tenancies will continue under the terms; otherwise, that would not be fair to the students concerned. I hope that answers the noble Baroness’s questions.
I thank everyone for their contributions to this debate. We debated other student accommodation issues extensively on the previous day of Report. I hope the whole House will agree that these amendments will ensure that this PBSA exemption works effectively and as intended, and I hope the whole House will support them.
Member's explanatory statement
This is consequential on the amendment in my name inserting the new sub-paragraph (2CA).
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts(6 days, 3 hours ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage
That it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House to which the Planning and Infrastructure Bill has been committed that they consider the bill in the following order: Clauses 1 to 12, Clauses 29 to 41, Schedule 2, Clauses 42 to 47, Clauses 13 to 23, Schedule 1, Clauses 24 to 28, Clauses 48 to 52, Schedule 3, Clauses 93 to 106, Clauses 53 to 66, Schedule 4, Clauses 67 to 83, Schedule 5, Clauses 84 to 89, Schedule 6, Clauses 90 to 92, Clauses 107 to 111, Title.
Housing Associations: Financial Assistance
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Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and I declare my interest as chairman of Faraday Ventures, which is set up to provide social housing and key worker housing.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, who I know is passionate about housing, particularly for young people. His question is very timely: just yesterday, we announced our long-term plan to deliver a decade of renewal for social and affordable housing. As part of this, we will provide the biggest boost to social and affordable housing investment in a generation with our new £39 billion programme, and we will ensure that at least 60% of that programme is spent on social housing. We will also give social landlords equal access to government building safety funding and provide a decade of certainty through the new rent settlement, supporting social landlords to invest in new and existing homes.
Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)
I thank the Minister for her Answer. I have an additional question: at what pace will this money arrive, particularly in London? In London and the south-east, we have the greatest housing crisis compared with anywhere else nationally. How many homes will this money deliver, and at what pace will the Mayor of London have to provide these homes? The Government’s own Deputy Prime Minister was upset with his low level of delivery, and we want to be sure that there is a KPI for how many homes he is to deliver year on year with the money the Government are providing.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
We intend to get this programme running as quickly as possible. That is why we have provided £2 billion of funding in advance of that settlement—so that we could kick-start the programme and get it going straight away. The rest of the programme will be open for bidding very shortly, so that local authorities can apply to bid for that fund. To answer the noble Lord’s question about London, 30% of the housing in that programme will be in London.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, a recent report by the social housing ombudsman highlighted repairs as a major problem. So my question to the Government and the Minister is: what will they do to fill the skills gap that we badly need to fill to maintain and improve our existing social housing, as well as the new builds?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The noble Lord is quite right that we need to address the skills gap, both for the purposes of building new homes and for repair and maintenance. Some of the new skills are needed to retrofit homes for net zero. We have put aside £600 million over the next four years to train 60,000 skilled tradespeople—engineers, brickies, sparkies and chippies—working with our colleagues in the Department for Education and Skills England to make sure that we get our young people into those well-paid, high-skilled jobs. We are funding additional placements and setting up technical excellence colleges, foundation apprenticeships and skills boot camps. What we are trying to do—I have seen the effectiveness of this as I have visited further education colleges around the country—is get some of the skilled people who are now reaching the end of their careers to come back to train our young people and enthuse them about those careers.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I greatly welcome this national housing strategy and the £39 billion that goes with it. Does this mean an end to the sharp decline in the output of social housing for older people, not least because our ageing population leads to the vacating of family homes, creating at least two for one as a result? Is it now time for a major improvement in the number of homes that we build as social housing for older people?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I agree with the noble Lord, who has done so much work in this area. Much of the advice he has provided has helped the Government to develop our programmes. In the next few weeks, we will deliver our housing strategy, which will contain details of how the Government intend to move forward with a wide range of different housing, including supported housing and supported housing for older people.
Lord Pitkeathley of Camden Town (Lab)
My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister outline how, alongside the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, the £39 billion commitment to affordable housing that has been referred to will help councils overcome delivery barriers and support our mission to build 1.5 million new homes?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for that question. As well as the financial support that we announced yesterday, there is a significant package of delivery to help support our colleagues in local government and in the registered provider sector, supporting the planning process with additional funding for planners, setting clear targets for housing delivery, investing in the skills and capacities I outlined, working to help accelerate stalled sites through the major sites accelerator, helping with the delivery of infrastructure through the Planning and Infrastructure Bill—which we will debate shortly—looking forward very much to the New Towns Taskforce and its work, and ensuring that we stabilise the economy to attract the investment we need in housing after 14 years of failure that led to the housing crisis.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
The noble Baroness will be aware that there is a crying need for one-bedroom and two-bedroom houses in rural areas. That need is not fulfilled because the houses that are being built have three, four or five bedrooms. The affordable homes that form part of a planning application are often resiled from on intervention from the Secretary of State. Will the noble Baroness use her good offices to review the position to ensure that there is a stable supply of one-bedroom and two-bedroom homes in rural areas?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The Government genuinely understand the need for homes in rural areas, and we have focused on the rural exception site type of policies that allow local areas to ring-fence that housing for local need. We will continue to do that. It is for local authorities to determine the types of housing, both through the planning process and in their local plans. In the National Planning Policy Framework, which was published in December, we have for the first time allowed local authorities to make provision specifically for their social housing needs, which I hope will help in rural areas.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned skills. Is it not true that one of the quickest ways of getting more social housing is through novel, alternative methods of construction? The sorts of skills required for that are somewhat different from many of the ones that she mentioned. In Scotland now, the majority of new houses have wooden frames. What is going on in England to make sure that happens as well?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for that question. We went into a bit of a decline in the modern methods of construction industry. I am a great supporter of it; it holds great potential for the future. We will support and encourage developers who are taking that approach. There is no difference in the safety of those properties because all types of property come under the same building regulations framework. In fact, I went to see an amazing office block, just across the river here, that is made with a timber-frame approach. I hope we can continue to encourage the development industry to make progress with those methods.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My noble friend Lord Bailey raised the delivery of affordable housing in London. In May, G15, the group representing the largest housing associations in London, said that there had been a 66% drop in affordable housing built in London over the last two years, down to fewer than 5,000. Given the lamentable failure of the Mayor of London to deliver, will the Government allocate the near £12 billion in funding for affordable housing directly to the London boroughs so that they can get on with the job?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The exact details of the programme will be published shortly. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, 30% of the funding in that £39 billion funding pot will be allocated to London. But the noble Lord should look at what has happened in the last 14 years and not blame the Mayor of London for what has happened with housing in London.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, it is very good news about investment in social housing. The role of the housing associations will be critical, obviously. The noble Baroness mentioned the role of the New Towns Taskforce. Can she update us on when we can expect the report? I think we can all agree that it is summer already.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
As I have discussed before at the Dispatch Box, summer is quite a flexible concept in the Civil Service, but we expect the report of the New Towns Taskforce imminently. I would like to say how successful it has been with the task force running an extensive round of consultation around the current new towns, with people with lived experience of what it is like to live in a new town, both to learn the lessons where things did not work and to see what did work to inform its work. So I am pleased to have been working with Sir Michael Lyons and the task force on that, and I very much look forward to its report.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
Does the Minister recall the exchange last December, when I raised the problem of private developers completing affordable homes on a site but being unable to find a housing association to take them over, leaving those homes empty and in some cases leaving the site uncompleted? Can the Minister give me an assurance that that problem has now been resolved and that there are housing associations ready to take over these Section 106 homes?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, and I do remember his question. The department, along with our colleagues in Homes England, has set up a matching service—a bit like speed dating—between the Section 106 developers and the registered providers, to make sure that we can match them up with the funding available. I do not have a progress report to hand today, but I will write to the noble Lord with an update.
Renters’ Rights Bill
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts(1 week, 5 days ago)
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Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, I do not know which amendment to start with really, but I will start with the least contentious. We agree with Amendment 42 that a review is imperative and should definitely happen.
On Amendment 30 from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, it seems absolutely right to us that, when the taxpayer funds lovely, significant improvements that will raise the value of the landlord’s asset, the tenant in the house should be protected from a rent rise at least during that tenancy. That seems only right and fair.
Amendment 29 from the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, which I supported in Committee and co-signed, is a sensible amendment that several noble Lords have said they would support. I think she has explained it at length and with clarity, so I need say no more. But anything that acts as a triage system in this process should be looked at seriously.
On the controversial bits, the rent tribunal is clearly causing concern. I say to the Minister that I think there was an invitation in the last speech to look at this again—there will be Third Reading. It seems to me that a lot of work has gone into these amendments that would justify perhaps a little more time and effort than we have now. The Minister has a lot to justify in order to gain support from the House. We are minded to support the Government, but clearly we need answers on the very detailed and sensible proposals put forward today.
What worries us about Amendment 31 is that it risks allowing a tribunal to determine the level of rent increase, which could actually be unaffordable. The idea that a rent tribunal could decide that the rent should be such-and-such would fuel a market in which rents are rising exponentially, more than they have at any other time—the amendment would seem to fuel that further. We certainly do not agree with rent controls, but we believe that some brakes could be put on this; that would seem eminently sensible.
Perhaps I am looking at this through the wrong lens, but I would have thought that a tenant might expect an annual rent rise: “I am in my rented apartment and I am expecting the landlord to put up the rent in a year because I know what’s going on in the area, so I can kind of suss out how much it might be”. But, looking at it from the other way, if we assume all the things that noble Lords have said about everyone applying to the tribunal—Martin Lewis will be saying they should apply and the student unions will be on it—why would a landlord, knowing all that, impose a stupid rent rise if he knows that his tenant can then appeal against it? That should put an instinctive brake on unjustified, unrealistic rises. The system should work with those natural tensions.
We are not happy with it, but we have had conversations and thoughts about the proposal. We would ask the Government to look again at some of the detail. Perhaps with some assurances from the Dispatch Box, we could avoid a load of votes now and at Third Reading because I think that we would want the Minister to look in more detail than I personally, I admit, have done, if that is fair to say.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott, Lady Wolf and Lady Jones, and the noble Lords, Lord Carrington and Lord Howard, for their amendments on rent increases and the tribunals, as well as the noble Lords, Lord Hacking and Lord Carter, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Eaton and Lady Thornhill, for their contributions to the debate.
Government Amendment 37 will enable the Secretary of State to make regulations to change the date from which tenants are required to pay a new rent in instances where the First-tier Tribunal has set one following a challenge to a proposed rent increase. Government Amendments 38 and 39 are consequential to that.
Our Government were elected on the clear manifesto promise to empower tenants to challenge unreasonable rent increases. It is essential that we deliver on this commitment, not only to protect tenants from undue financial pressure but to prevent rent hikes being used as a form of backdoor eviction once Section 21 notices have been abolished.
During the Bill’s passage, the House has debated at length the capacity of the justice system to enable the smooth implementation of reforms in the Bill. This is particularly the case on the subject of rent increase challenges, in relation to which noble Lords have expressed very serious concerns that strengthening tenants’ rights might lead to the First-tier Tribunal being overwhelmed by a sharp increase in challenges.
Set against that concern, we have heard powerful testimony from many tenant groups that private renters, many of whom are struggling to juggle family life, multiple jobs and financial challenges, are unlikely to spend what little time they have navigating the justice system unless they have a compelling reason to do so. Given the cost and effort that challenging a rent increase at tribunal would require, as well as the risk it poses to a tenant/landlord relationship, there is good reason to doubt that a significant number of tenants will bring rent increase challenges that have little prospect of success—who knows what will happen if Martin Lewis gets involved, but we will wait and see.
We also know that the majority of landlords act responsibly, and we do not expect that many will seek to serve unreasonable rent increases given that this will increase the likelihood of a tenant challenging them at tribunal, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said. If landlords do not impose egregious rent increases, they will not get taken to tribunal. We recognise, however, that there is inherent uncertainty as to the volume of rent increase challenges that will be brought when the new tenancy system comes into force.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, mentioned the system in Scotland; as she will know, the changes made there are very different from the ones that we are proposing.
As the House will know, we are already working very closely with the Ministry of Justice to make sure that the justice system is well prepared for our reforms. In the Property Chamber, work is progressing to increase capacity, as well as reviewing resource and working practices in readiness for any increase in demand.
Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)
Since I cannot withdraw my amendment, I thank the Minister very much for this constructive engagement, and I will not move it.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness.
Regarding Amendment 24, at present private registered providers of social housing can grant secure or assured tenancies. The majority of these are let at social rents. Social rents are regulated by the social housing regulator. The definition of “relevant low-cost tenancy” in the Bill reflects these arrangements. If the Government or the social housing sector were to change how rent is determined or regulated, this power would enable the Secretary of State to make technical amendments to reflect this or other changing circumstances. As the power relates only to the definition of relevant low-cost tenancies, I assure your Lordships that the Secretary of State will not be able to use this power to change the legislation to affect market-rate tenancies. Based on this, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, to withdraw this amendment.
Turning to Amendment 30, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for her engagement on this issue. The Government fully support efforts to improve the energy efficiency of homes in the private rented sector, particularly where tenants are proactive in accessing support through government-backed schemes. The amendment as drafted would mean that any increase in value arising from these improvements would be disregarded, even if it was funded partly by public money. Therefore, if landlords have made sizeable investments themselves in improving the energy efficiency of their properties without government grants, under this amendment they would not be able to increase rent to reflect those improvements.
The tribunal has experts, such as surveyors, who will assess what the landlord could expect to receive if re-letting the property on the open market. Both landlords and tenants will have the opportunity to submit evidence on whether or not they think that the rent increase is justified. The tribunal already ignores any improvements to the property made by the tenant, to avoid inflating the rent. However, it is likely to be more challenging in practice for the tribunal to differentiate rent levels based on whether energy-efficiency upgrades were funded through specific grant schemes—particularly where the tenant was not directly responsible for the work. This may complicate the tribunal process.
We recognise that it is very important that means-tested energy-efficiency grant schemes are used to benefit tenants. That is why, for the warm homes local grant, which was launched in April, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has set a clear expectation that landlords should declare that they do not intend to raise rents as a direct result of the upgrades being made. In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, rightly highlighted the importance of ensuring that landlords do not profit unduly from government-funded improvements and that the value of these schemes should flow primarily to tenants, given the impact on many people living in poverty, and the threat of eviction. We have carefully considered these points and believe that the measures already being introduced strike the right balance.
In conclusion, the landlord declaration, introduced and overseen by DESNZ through the warm homes local grant, will include a commitment from landlords not to increase rents as a result of improvements made using the grant funding. I hope that this offers the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, reassurance that the Government are taking this issue seriously. For those reasons, I respectfully ask her not to move her amendment.
The noble Lord, Lord Howard, has proposed two amendments to the process for challenging rents at the tribunal within the first six months of the tenancy. On Amendment 31, the ability to challenge rent in the first six months of the tenancy is a vital safety valve, ensuring that tenants cannot continue to be ripped off if they have been pressured into an unfair rent. Landlords who have agreed a fair market price have nothing to fear from this mechanism. This amendment would exacerbate the worry that tenants already face about going to a tribunal to enforce their rights. Tenants will not challenge rents if they risk being worse off following a tribunal ruling. The Bill encourages tenants to engage the tribunal when they have legitimate concerns. By reinforcing the rights of tenants to do so, we are disincentivising the minority of landlords from pressurising tenants into unfair rents at the beginning of a tenancy. The way for landlords to avoid this is to make sure that their rents are fair at the start of the tenancy.
On Amendment 32, the Government are clear that tenants should submit an application to the tribunal during the first six months of their tenancy only where they believe that their rent is above market rates or that they have been pressured into an unjustified initial rent. In the first instance, we strongly encourage landlords and tenants to communicate about what adjustments to rent might be reasonable. The noble Lord asked how a tribunal determines a fair rent. To determine the market rate, the First-tier Tribunal considers a wide range of evidence, such as the price of similar properties being advertised online and evidence submitted from both parties justifying or arguing against the rent increase.
The First-tier Tribunal has experts who are experienced in understanding the different factors that result in the market rate and determining whether the rent is reflective of this. The First-tier Tribunal is best placed to do this in the new tenancy system. It is also worth noting that tribunals have had the power to adjudicate rent levels in line with the market rent since the Housing Act 1988, and since then the market rate has continued to increase. However, if the rent is challenged and the tribunal determines that a rent exceeds the open market rate, it is right that the tribunal can backdate the lower rent to the date of the tenant’s challenge and that the landlord repay the difference to the tenant. I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Howard, not to press his amendments.
I turn now to Amendments 33 to 36 and 40. The Government recognise that some tenants may avoid challenging unreasonable rent increases out of fear that they will be saddled with significant amounts of backdating, which they will be unable to afford. By removing the ability of the tribunals to backdate a rent increase, tenants, particularly vulnerable tenants, will be empowered to challenge what they believe to be an above market rate rent increase. This reduces the risk of an unreasonable rent increase causing a tenant financial hardship, or even being used to force someone out of their home. This is a really important measure to encourage people to challenge unreasonable rent increases.
Amendments 34 to 36 and 40 in particular may only heighten the risk of vulnerable tenants feeling unable to challenge an above market rent increase. We know that tenants and landlords are usually eager to maintain a positive relationship and will not bring the other to court or tribunal without good reason. As such, I ask the noble Lords, Lord Carrington and Lord Howard, not to press these amendments.
I turn finally to Amendment 42. The tribunal has over 30 years’ experience in making determinations of unfair rent increases, having carried out this function since the Housing Act 1988. We have full confidence in the tribunal’s ability to carry out this function in a fair way. I appreciate the need for the justice system to be ready for our reforms and for landlords and tenants to access justice in a timely way. We are working in partnership with the Ministry of Justice to assess the impact of our reforms on the tribunal and to lessen these wherever possible. This close collaboration has been ongoing for a number of years and in a great amount of detail.
The amendment we have tabled to our rent increase measures shows that we are listening to the concerns of the sector and this House about tribunal workloads. It puts in place a safeguard in case it is needed. We will already be collecting extensive data to assess the impact of these reforms. As set out in the impact assessment for the Bill, and in debate, we have committed to monitor and evaluate our reform programme. We will use a range of sources to support this. Existing datasets will be used, and new data will be collected. We are committed to publishing the evaluation findings at the two and five-year points after the Bill’s implementation.
I will respond to the request from the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, about the justice impact test. The justice impact test we are undertaking with the Ministry of Justice will identify additional burdens on the justice system, but they are internal government documents and are not published. The test is ongoing and regularly reviewed to ensure that it reflects any changes to legislation as the Bill continues its journey through Parliament. We are fully focused on making sure the justice system is prepared for changes to court case load and procedures that will be required for our reforms. We are working with the Ministry of Justice and HM Courts & Tribunals Service to that effect, including investing additional court and tribunal capacity to handle any extra hearings generated.
In this context and in the context of the review that I have already outlined, both in the course of discussing these amendments and earlier today, I do not think it is necessary to commit to undertake any further review. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness will agree to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply and for setting out the Government’s amendments. However, we remain disappointed that the so-called “break glass” power is reactive in nature and fails to address the underlying incentives that drive unnecessary cases. Noble Lords across the House have raised the risk of the tribunal system being overwhelmed. Although I listened carefully to the Minister’s comments on mechanisms, there are no firm proposals. Therefore, on that basis, we will support my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising on Amendment 31 if he is minded to push it to the vote.
As the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has raised, and we requested in Committee, the Government have failed to publish the justice impact test. I heard the Minister’s comments, but I asked her to publish it before Report given its importance and the concern across the House about the impact of the Bill on the justice system.
Amendment 42 seeks a review of the impact on the tribunal system. As we have another amendment later, reviewing the impact on the justice system in its entirety, we will not press this amendment now.
Serious concerns remain about the Secretary of State’s discretion to expand the definition of low-cost tenancies. I urge the Government to reflect carefully on the breadth of the powers they are granting. That said, I will withdraw this amendment.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, we have concerns about a number of amendments in this group on the basis that they are unduly prescriptive and risk the introduction of what could be regarded as, in effect, a form of rent control.
The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, seek to protect the tribunal from being overloaded due to the Bill. While we agree that there is significant risk of overload, we have concerns about how the arrangements would function. In particular, we do not feel able to support a system that ties rental increases to CPI. CPI is a generalised index that reflects the prices of bread, fuel, clothing and so forth, but not rental market dynamics. What happens in areas where market rents are falling but inflation is high, or where incomes are stagnant while CPI rises? This approach uses a national economic measure to benchmark against a highly localised rental market, and the result would almost certainly be a distorted rental market. That said, we share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Best, about the impact of the Bill on tribunals’ backlogs, which we discussed at length in Committee.
Amendment 114 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, raises some important points. There is no doubt that rent affordability is a serious issue, and the amendment rightly draws attention to a range of important factors: the regional disparities in rental costs, the strain of high rents placed on household finances and the need to understand how effectively the First-tier Tribunal is working in practice. However, I must also sound a note of realism. We do not need another report for its own sake. We need actual change that improves the lives of renters and restores fairness to a housing system that too often feels stacked against ordinary people. If this review is to go ahead, it must not become just another document left to gather dust on the shelves of the department—it must lead to action. I urge the Minister to use this opportunity to outline how the Government will respond to the concerns raised by the noble Baroness in her amendment, which we agree are all points which matter in this debate.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for their amendments relating to rent affordability and rent controls, and the noble Lords, Lord Young, Lord Fuller and Lord Jamieson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for speaking in this discussion. I have the deepest respect for the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Young, and their experience, and for the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, who has vast experience in this area too. I am grateful for their contributions.
I do not intend to revisit the detailed discussions we had in Committee. They were detailed and informed deliberations, and I know how strongly some noble Lords and tenant groups feel about helping those who struggle to pay high rents. I absolutely understand the pressure that rents put on the budgets of individuals and families. To come back to the points that we made earlier in the debate, obviously the solution to this is to create a lot more social and affordable housing, but I realise that is not going to happen overnight.
However, I must reiterate the Government’s concern that rent controls, as proposed, would risk reducing housing supply, discouraging investment and ultimately lowering property standards. In the case of Amendment 25, the most relevant international comparator is Ontario, an example that I also cited in Committee. I am afraid that the Ontario model, whereby rent increases are capped according to a measure of inflation, has not led to desirable outcomes. In fact, analysis suggests that the result has been higher rents for new tenants.
In respect of the experience in Scotland, a recent Nationwide Foundation report by the Indigo House Group found that rent control measures had not protected the majority of private rented sector tenants against excessive rent increases or against high advertised market rents, considering average advertised rents in the system as a whole. The measures in Scotland do not appear to have impacted rental price growth, because Scotland has consistently been one of the regions in the UK with the highest growth in asking rents. For example, according to Zoopla, in the year to January 2024, when the rent freeze was in place, Scotland was the only UK region with a double-digit annual rent growth, at 11.6%.
“(5A) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision so as to substitute, in relation to relevant tenancies, a different date as the effective date.(5B) The effective date may not be earlier than the beginning of the new period specified in the notice served on the tenant under section 13(2) or 13A(2).(5C) Regulations under subsection (5A)—(a) may amend this section;(b) may make different provision for different purposes;(c) may make supplemental, consequential, incidental, transitional, transitory or saving provision;(d) are to be made by statutory instrument.(5D) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (5A) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment enables the Secretary of State to amend the Housing Act 1988 so as to substitute a different date from which new rent is payable. The substituted date must not be earlier than the date specified in the notice of the new rent given by the landlord. The new date will only apply to applications to challenge the rent made on or after the date on which the regulations come into force.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to this group of amendments and to offer my full support to my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. Amendment 59 addresses a significant gap in the Bill by providing a vital exemption for shared ownership leaseholders from certain provisions within Clause 14. Shared ownership is an important tenure model that enables many people to take their first step on to the housing ladder, yet it is not without its challenges, particularly when sales fall through, as my noble friend has highlighted. Amendment 59 is a sensible and necessary provision that recognises the realities faced by shared ownership landlords. Protecting this group helps to maintain confidence in shared ownership and prevents unintended consequences that could undermine the Bill’s original intent. If my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham is minded to test the opinion of the House, the Opposition will support him without hesitation.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hacking and the noble Lords, Lord Cromwell and Lord Young, for their amendments and their engagement on these issues. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson.
On Amendment 58, we want to strengthen tenant security and prevent abuse of ground 1A. A 12-month no re-let period will act as a deterrent to unscrupulous landlords who want to evict tenants so that they can let to a new tenant for more rent or because the tenants are asking for repairs that the landlord does not want to do. We understand this is a strict measure, and it is meant to be. It is intended to ensure that only landlords who genuinely wish to sell their property will wish to use that ground and to deter from using it landlords looking to evict a tenant in order to re-let at a higher rent or to a different tenant. Not only will landlords have to forgo rental income for 12 months after using ground 1A but should they be found to be misusing the ground, they could be fined up to £40,000. It is right that we have these strong tenant protections in place.
This amendment would also bring significant complexity to the system, and I struggle to see how it would work in practice. It would allow the courts to require evidence that the dwelling had been on the open market for six months and that no suitable offers had been received, but it is unclear how the courts would become involved. Additionally, it could place undue burdens on courts which may have to follow up on any ground 1A evictions to check whether the landlord had tried to sell for six months and whether they had received any suitable offers. The court would also have to determine what a suitable offer was, which would be another undue burden. The no re-let rule is a clear and simple rule that would not benefit from further complexity. I believe this amendment would open the no re-let period to abuse, reducing tenant security and contradicting the aims of this Bill.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, indicated, if a landlord is genuinely planning to sell a property, they can market it to gauge interest before upending the tenant’s life by evicting them. This would be more effective for all parties than evicting as soon as they decide to sell and only then putting it on the market and waiting for suitable offers. For all these reasons, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, not to press this amendment.
On Amendment 41, I understand from our helpful discussions that my noble friend Lord Hacking’s intent here is to remove the period during which a landlord cannot re-let the property after using grounds 1 and 1A and instead prevent the rent being increased in the new tenancy. While this amendment addresses one of the goals of the no re-let period by making it unprofitable for landlords to abuse the moving and selling grounds, it does not address the other key reason to prevent abuse. Even if an unscrupulous landlord could not profit from abusing the grounds, they could still, under my noble friend’s proposals, use these grounds with no intention of moving in or selling to pursue retaliatory evictions. This means abusing the grounds to get rid of a tenant who had done nothing wrong but whom, for example, the landlord simply did not like or who they considered raised too many issues with the property.
These abuses of the system are exactly what the 12-month no re-let period aims to prevent. In the current system, under Section 21, we hear all too often of tenants afraid to ask for repairs because the landlord has made it clear that they will evict them if they do. Under my noble friend’s proposal, this could still happen. The opening up of the grounds to abuse must be resisted. The 12-month no re-let period is a strong disincentive for landlords to abuse the grounds, and I believe that it strikes the right balance. As such, I ask my noble friend not to push his amendment to a Division.
I turn now to Amendment 59. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young, for his engagement on this issue and for introducing me to the Shared Owners’ Network. These clauses implement critical protections for tenants. If a landlord has used the selling or moving-in ground, they will not be able to re-let or market a property for 12 months. That period starts from the date of possession proceedings, as specified in their Section 8 notice to the tenant. These clauses also include other important prohibited landlord behaviours.
The Government are aware that some shared owners with building safety issues are facing very difficult circumstances through no fault of their own. The Shared Owners’ Network has provided invaluable insight into this issue. We are continuing to engage with it to determine how best to support these shared owners. We will have a dialogue with the registered providers as well. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his suggestion in that regard. To respond to another of his comments, I will clarify the licence points to him in writing.
However, I do not agree that, by helping in one area, other blameless tenants should have reduced security of tenure or be exposed to the risk of wrongful eviction just because of who their landlord is. We have to get the balance right somehow, to support those who find themselves in this awful position but not at the expense of other tenants. We will continue to work on that. All assured tenants must benefit from the new system.
I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Young, not to press this amendment.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, my Amendment 41 was the first in line in this group. I still think that it was a good amendment and would have produced all of the right results without creating sorrow for the market of the full 12-month waiting period.
It is now very late in the evening. I am not going to press for a Division. I nevertheless argue that my amendment was the best of the three.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, in view of the time, I will speak briefly to Amendment 43. I could simply say the first sentence: “We are strongly opposed to rent in advance because it is discriminatory”.
This amendment is being framed as a cosy option where tenants and landlords can reach a mutual agreement as to whether or not they will do this. No, I do not believe that. If allowed, it will become, as now, a requirement. In effect, it will become a bidding war by any other name, and landlords have their pick of tenants: Zoopla has just reported that there are between 20 and 25 punters for each property and at least 20 requests to view each property. Landlords can pick, it is a beauty parade, so they can choose the tenants who have the money to give them six months’ rent up front against those who just do not have those advantages. But those same people can still afford to pay the rent and would still make good tenants.
We are opposed to anything that prices out poor renters in hot rental market areas. We refute the argument being discussed by landlord groups that this is an option for niche circumstances that allows people to access housing; for example, as was said, where people might struggle with credit checks. If you are struggling with credit checks, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to pay six months’ rent in advance. In a very modest property in Watford, six months in advance is between £6,000 and £8,000. That is a lot of money.
We know that landlords and letting agents often use it as a barrier to reject tenants relying on universal credit or housing benefit, preventing them accepting a tenancy, which means that only those with savings or family support to draw on will comply, which those on low incomes are less likely to have. Shelter tells us that six in 10 renters have been asked for it and over 800,000 people in one of its surveys say they were not able to secure a property because of the demand for rent in advance. The Bill aims to prevent discrimination against renters on benefits. This amendment would allow it by the back door.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and my noble friend Lord Hacking for their amendments on rent in advance, and the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, for speaking.
The Government have been very clear in their view that the charging of rent in advance is unfair. I have not heard anything this evening that has changed my mind on that. Therefore, we cannot accept Amendment 43, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. Six months’ rent is a significant amount of money. For some renters, this will be their entire savings, which were perhaps carefully built up with the ambition of being put towards a deposit on a first home. For many others, it will be an amount of savings which is simply unreachable.
I recognise that it is the noble Baroness’s intention for it to be possible to request large amounts of rent in advance only where this has been previously agreed by the tenant and landlord. However, we must consider what this means in practice. It would allow a landlord, at the pre-letting stage, to insist on a tenancy agreement which would permit them to require up to six months’ rent in advance. In hot rental markets, we could expect such clauses to become simply a fact of renting. This could leave tenants with the “choice” of stretching their finances to the limit or facing homelessness.
“(za) to a tenancy entered into before the commencement date (which has the same meaning as in section 146(3) of the Renters’ Rights Act 2025),”Member’s explanatory statement
In line with the original policy intention, this amendment ensures that existing leases (those entered into before the commencement of Chapter 1 of Part 1) will fall outside the scope of the new section 4B.
Renters’ Rights Bill
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts(1 week, 5 days ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as vice-president of the Local Government Association. As we begin the first day on Report, I would like to start by thanking the Minister for the meetings she has held with me and my noble friend Lord Jamieson on the Bill—we really appreciate those meetings.
I suspect that, since Committee concluded, few days have passed without Members of your Lordships’ House receiving a steady stream of questions, concerns and comments about the Bill, because despite the Government’s amendments, it remains, in our view, a flawed Bill. It is a Bill that uses the powers of government to tell two consenting adults that it knows best; a Bill that fails to acknowledge the realities of the rental market and the consequences it may bring. We are united in the belief that tenants deserve safe, secure and decent homes at a fair price, but to deliver that, we must ensure a functioning rental market with enough good quality homes to meet growing demand. That means building more homes in the right places and encouraging investment in this sector.
Regrettably, this Bill puts that at risk. Rather than increasing supply, it threatens to drive landlords out of the market, reducing the number of available homes and pushing up rents even higher. If we get this wrong, it will be the renters who pay the price. Balance is essential, and we on these Benches do not believe the Bill strikes the right balance. The Government should have brought forward a Bill that targets rogue landlords—those who break the law, put tenants at risk and undermine the proper functioning of the rental market. Instead, we have this Bill, which risks driving out good landlords while allowing the rogue ones to continue operating completely unchecked.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, for leading on this group, and all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. Diversity, choice and a range of tenancy contracts all contribute to a housing sector capable of meeting a wide variety of needs, as we have heard. In that context, it is reasonable to ask the Government why they are pursuing a one-size-fits-all approach through the proposed abolition of all fixed-term tenancies. Having listened to the contributions in Committee, it is clear that there is widespread concern about this element of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Hacking, is right to challenge the blanket removal of fixed-term tenancies and to reintroduce much-needed flexibility into what is currently a very rigid clause.
Industry stakeholders share these concerns. Propertymark has warned that abolishing fixed terms could destabilise the position of tenants with lower incomes or poor credit histories. Many of these individuals rely on guarantors, who, in turn, require the legal certainty of a fixed term. Without that structure, these tenants may find themselves excluded from the market entirely, excluded from finding a home, and excluded from getting on with their lives. These tenants include students without parental support, young adults leaving care, and individuals with health conditions or irregular employment. They often rely on guarantors to access housing, but those guarantors understandably require the legal certainty of a fixed-term contract. Without that assurance, the door to the rental home quietly but firmly closes.
The Government’s rebuttal is by now well-rehearsed. They claim there is no cause for concern because tenants will have the ability to give two months’ notice, thereby shaping the tenancy to their preferred timeframe. But this argument is weak and raises serious questions. How can it be right to require landlords to fundamentally alter the contracts they offer? How is it reasonable to expect a landlord to accept a tenant who cannot demonstrate their ability to pay, particularly in the absence of the legal structure and certainty that fixed-term agreements provide. Equally, why should tenants be denied the option of a fixed-term tenancy if they believe it best serves their interests? Removing that choice is not empowering, it is restricting. Tenants, like landlords, have diverse needs and circumstances. Many actively seek fixed-term arrangements because they offer clarity, stability and peace of mind. For tenants in transitional phases of life, that assurance is vital. A fixed-term tenancy can provide security that their home cannot be taken away, even within the grounds of possession remaining. This is particularly important for those on temporary contracts, such as nurses relocating to hospital placements, families seeking to remain within a particular school catchment area or individuals from overseas who require time-limited accommodation.
To remove fixed-term tenancies is to ignore the lived realities of both tenants and landlords and to strip the sector of the very flexibility it needs to function effectively. For landlords, fixed terms provide the certainty required to plan and manage their properties effectively. Removing that certainty could prompt many to exit the sector, and already is, further reducing the already strained supply of rental housing. Ironically, this supposed flexibility could leave both tenants and landlords facing greater instability.
The proposed abolition of fixed-term tenancies may lead some homeowners who currently let their properties on a fixed-term basis to withdraw from the market altogether. Faced with the uncertainty of an open-ended tenancy, some may even choose to leave their properties empty rather than risk loss of control over future use. Why are the Government not listening to landlords, the very people who maintain the foundations of the private rented sector? They are not just participants in the market; they are the backbone of the market. We on these Benches support choice and the freedom to decide a contract that works for both the tenant and the landlord, and I hope the rest of the House agrees. We will support the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, if he tests the opinion of the House.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hacking for his very kind comments and—with slightly less enthusiasm—for this amendment, which would retain a form of fixed term, during which the landlord could not use a number of “landlord circumstance” grounds, including selling. My noble friend referred to his role as a landlord, and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill: I am sure he is a very good landlord. Good and honest landlords have nothing to fear from the Bill; it is not them we are dealing with here
The issue of fixed terms is one we have debated at some length and on which I know there is great strength of feeling on both sides of the House. For many noble Lords, this is an issue of free will. They believe that the Government should not interfere in a tenant and landlord’s ability to agree terms between them, and that both parties should have the choice between a periodic or fixed-term tenancy. In my view, however, that argument mischaracterises the balance of power between tenant and landlord in any negotiation. Here, I agree very strongly here with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. Landlords have the choice of many tenants, all competing to offer the most favourable terms, while tenants have far less opportunity to choose between properties. Tenants cannot simply walk away if they do not like a landlord’s terms—a choice between homelessness and a fixed term is no choice at all.
To speak to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, it has been symbolic of that imbalance that, until this Bill, landlords have been able to issue a Section 21 eviction notice and remove tenants through no fault of their own. Not only does that cause distress to families; it also places a huge burden on the state as our beleaguered local authorities pick up the cost of over 100,000 families in emergency and temporary accommodation. It is therefore incumbent on the Government to ensure that tenants do not lose out. We must step in to ensure that tenants are not forced into agreeing unfavourable terms that act against their interests and remove fundamental rights to move when needed.
I accept that fixed terms have some benefit for tenants under the current system because they offer some respite from the awful threat of Section 21, which hangs like the sword of Damocles over tenants’ heads. With Section 21 gone, that advantage will be extinguished, so there is even less reason why a tenant would agree voluntarily to a fixed term. Even if freely agreed, there is nothing equal about a fixed term. Under the current system, landlords can rightly seek possession during a fixed term if a tenant breaches the terms of their rental. Possession grounds are available if a tenant misses rent payments, damages the property, commits anti-social behaviour or indeed breaches any term of their tenancy.
Noble Lords would then imagine that, in a fair contract, a tenant could also terminate the tenancy if the landlord failed to fulfil their responsibilities during the term, but in almost all cases tenants do not have this choice. Landlords can allow properties to fall into disrepair, leave properties unsafe to live in, and still tenants must pay rent month after month. This is fundamentally unbalanced. It is critical that we act to reset the scales.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for her amendments on students, and all noble Lords who have participated in this debate. As noble Lords will be aware, the proposals on student accommodation have been subject to great consideration and debate both inside and outside this Chamber and in the other place. I thank all those who have written to me, and I am sure to other noble Lords, on this subject.
Amendment 2 seeks to retain fixed-term tenancies for students living in private rented accommodation. I can only repeat that fixed terms serve only to lock tenants in. They oblige them to pay rent even if the condition of the property is poor, or if their circumstances change and they need to move out as a result. In the current system of fixed-term tenancies, we often hear of students who have dropped out of university but are still obliged to pay rent for their accommodation— I could mention some examples, but it is probably not appropriate to do so. This is not the right approach. We want all tenants, including students, from whichever demographic group they come from, to benefit from the increased security and flexibility that the Renters’ Rights Bill provides.
Students pay the same rent—often higher rents—as other tenants and so should have the same rights as everyone else. We have introduced a new possession ground to allow the cyclical nature of the student market to continue and to provide landlords with confidence. I recognise that the noble Baroness is trying to create parity between students in the private rented sector and those in purpose-built student accommodation, as their tenancies will be exempted from the assured system and landlords will be able to offer fixed-term tenancies. However, we have exempted purpose-built student accommodation from the assured tenancy system due to its unique business model. Often, PBSA cannot be let to non-students due to its location or the services it provides alongside accommodation.
We have also exempted this sector from the protections of the assured tenancy system because we are satisfied that the Unipol codes of management practice provide an alternative route to ensuring that tenancies are at a high standard. There is no such code for private student landlords, and it would be wrong to mirror the exemption.
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, who asked about monitoring—
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I am sorry to interrupt, but does the Minister accept that purpose-built student accommodation is for the more wealthy? Young people who are struggling to go to university will go with the private rented sector and not the expensive specific accommodation. Has she done any work on that, and does she realise that that is what is happening out there?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
Students who take up accommodation should have the same rights as anybody else who is taking up accommodation. That is why we do not want to exempt from the benefits of the Renters’ Rights Bill students who want to rent in the private rented sector.
To come on to the point from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, about monitoring, we will monitor this element of the Bill, along with all aspects of it, and I will give noble Lords more detail about that—it comes up under a future set of amendments, but as he has asked the question, it is important to respond to it. We will evaluate the process, impact and value for money of the reforms in line with the department’s published Housing Monitoring and Evaluation Strategy. The evaluation will involve extensive data collection through interviews, surveys and focus groups with a range of stakeholders, as well as trusted data sources. We will talk to tenants, landlords, letting agents, third sector organisations, delivery partners, the court service and government officials. I will say more about the court service later on, because, to some extent, that needs a much more immediate and dynamic monitoring process.
The primary data will be supplemented by monitoring data from existing surveys and new data produced by the reforms. Reports will be produced for publication approximately two and five years after implementation, in line with commitments made in the Bill’s impact assessment to publish findings. Therefore, they will be available for parliamentary scrutiny. It is important to say at this point that we want to make sure there is a process by which we can review the provisions in the Bill.
Lord Willetts (Con)
I am grateful to the Minister for that very full explanation of the monitoring. In her long list of organisations that would be consulted, I do not think she had universities. Will she assure the House that they will be included as well?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My apologies to the noble Lord; that was probably my speedy reading rather than an omission on the part of the information I have—so, yes, I agree with him that this is part of the monitoring process.
Amendment 5 seeks to expand ground 4A, which allows students living in HMOs to be evicted in line with the academic year. It seeks to address the concerns of some noble Lords that the scope of the ground needs to be expanded to all student properties. It would remove the HMO restriction and allow students living in self-contained accommodation—one and two-bedroom properties for example—to be evicted each year. We have thought carefully about the design of ground 4A, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for also giving it great thought. We want to ensure the cyclical nature of the typical student market is maintained. We therefore believe limiting it to HMOs achieves this by capturing the bulk of typical students—that is, groups living in a house share. Meanwhile, students who need more security of tenure, such as single parents living with their children, or post-graduate couples living together who have put down roots in the area, will be protected.
The core principle of the Bill is that tenants should have more security in their homes, and it is right that these groups should not be exposed to potential eviction using ground 4A. Self-contained one-bedroom and two-bedroom homes are also easier to let to non-students than student HMOs. I do not agree with the conspiracy theory that the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, spoke about, but if a landlord cannot gain possession in line with the academic year, they are more likely to be able to let the property out to non-student tenants. That gives another way through for landlords.
On Amendment 6, noble Lords may remember that, in the Committee evidence session in the other place, it was highlighted that students are often pressured into signing contracts for the next academic year very early in the term, before they have had a chance to form stable friendships or assess a property’s proper condition and location. To discourage this practice, we amended the Bill to prevent landlords using ground 4A if they had agreed a tenancy more than six months in advance of tenants gaining the right to possession. This amendment seeks to extend this six-month limitation to allow landlords to sign tenancies up to nine months in advance. I am not convinced that this would be the right approach.
As I have highlighted, in many cases students are expected to commit to properties within just months of arriving at university, before having the opportunity to form lasting friendship groups or evaluate whether a property meets their needs in terms of condition or location. The purpose of this measure is to act as a strong disincentive to this practice, while striking the right balance. It avoids pushing students into signing tenancies before Christmas—when students are still settling in—but continues to allow flexibility for students who prefer to secure accommodation in advance of the summer period and does not interfere with typical exam periods. Extending this limit to nine months would undermine that balance and risk reinforcing the practice that this measure is intended to discourage; for example, tenants in a competitive market may be forced to search for tenancies starting in September during their January exam period.
Amendment 7 seeks to expand the student ground for possession, so that it can be used to evict a tenant undertaking an apprenticeship. While I understand the support for apprenticeships and share the noble Baroness’s wish to support people undertaking them, I do not believe that this would be the right approach. Ground 4A was created in recognition of the unique, cyclical nature of accommodation for those in traditional higher education. Those in other types of education, such as apprenticeships, are less likely to live in cyclical accommodation and need the security of tenure that the Bill gives tenants. Those on apprenticeship schemes, for example, earn a wage and tend to hope to stay at their company once the apprenticeship is completed; they live lifestyles much more akin to the working population than to university students. They will therefore benefit from all the increased security of tenure that the Bill will give them. For the reasons I have set out, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response and all noble Lords who have spoken; they have considerable interest in and knowledge of the sector. Having listened carefully to the debate, and given that the House has rejected the principle of fixed-term tenancies for all, I intend to withdraw Amendment 2.
On Amendment 6, concerning the timing of student tenancies, and Amendment 7, on expanding the definition of students, I recognise that there is sympathy for the concerns I have raised. However, I do not believe that there is enough support in the House to carry them; I will therefore not move those amendments.
Over the past number of months, we have listened to student organisations and universities across this country about the supply of student housing and the types of housing that students—of many different types—want to be made available in the sector. I have listened on the issue of monitoring, but I am worried that, when we eventually find out that it will have a detrimental effect on the sector, a cohort of young people will have suffered during that period of time. We do not think that is correct.
The other issue is around taking out certain types of accommodation from the sector. What will happen then? The rest of the accommodation will become more expensive for the students who need it. That concerns us as well.
There is an issue of capacity and supply in the market, and that remains very pressing. We believe that the Government’s response could have been better; it is pretty unconvincing. Therefore, we will test the opinion of the House on Amendment 5.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, we say ditto to every single thing that the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, said about anti-social behaviour. We all know it blights people’s lives and how difficult it is to stem it. We have arrangements where councils work with their local strategic partnerships to deal with it. Nobody is disputing that.
The reason we have come to the conclusion that demoted tenancies are not needed is really very simple. I contacted the National Housing Federation, whose members are social housing providers. It genuinely does not see a need. It is comfortable enough with the Bill and how it deals with anti-social behaviour. It wants to know that it has effective tools to deal with anti-social behaviour and is concerned about the capacity of the courts to deal with evictions based on anti-social behaviour.
My instinct straightaway was to support the amendment on demoted tenancies, but the National Housing Federation said it did not see the point of it but did want to know that it was going to get the tools to deal with things. Many providers, ones I know personally, feel that they deal effectively with anti-social behaviour, including my own council and I suspect the Minister’s. They were concerned about having those tools and the capacity of the courts to deal with that ground when they choose to use it.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, for this amendment. It seeks to reintroduce social landlords’ ability to apply for a demotion order in response to the anti-social behaviour of a tenant. I can honestly say that one of the most frustrating things I dealt with in 27 years as a councillor was anti-social behaviour. While we all agree with the need for tackling the blight of anti-social behaviour on individuals and communities as a priority, I cannot accept the amendment as a way of dealing with that. It would fundamentally go against one of the core principles of the Renters’ Rights Bill—to improve security of tenure for renters. There is also a technical reason, which I shall come to shortly.
The amendment would seemingly enable landlords to demote social tenants to a less secure form of tenancy. As I said in Committee, as drafted, the amendment would not work: the Renters’ Rights Bill will move tenants to a simpler tenancy structure whereby assured shorthold tenancies and the ability to evict a shorthold tenant via Section 21 are abolished. There will, therefore, no longer be a tenancy with lower security to which one can demote tenants. For the amendment to work, a reversal of measures in the Bill to remove demoted tenancies and assured shorthold tenancies would be required.
Tackling anti-social behaviour is a top priority for our Government and a key part of our safer streets mission. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said, many councils and housing associations already do a great job in tackling this in partnership with each other, but I accept that it can still be an issue.
The Bill will shorten the notice period for the existing mandatory eviction ground, with landlords being able to make a claim to the court immediately in cases of anti-social behaviour. The Bill also amends the matters that judges must consider when deciding whether to award possession under that discretionary ground. This will ensure that judges give particular regard to whether tenants have engaged with efforts to resolve their behaviour and the impact on other tenants within HMOs.
For all those reasons, we feel that the amendment is unworkable and unnecessary, and ask the noble Lord to withdraw it.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, for her comments, and I am grateful for the wide recognition of anti-social behaviour and the problems it causes. While we will not press the amendment today, I hope the Government have truly heard the problems that this causes. Evicting someone and going to court is very draconian, and this proposal would provide the opportunity of an interim step without the need for eviction. That is a useful tool, but I recognise the Minister’s comments. I hope that the Government will reflect and consider how the Bill can more robustly support those affected by persistent anti-social behaviour. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
I will mainly speak to Amendments 4 and 21. It is fairly obvious that we will support Amendment 21 from the noble Lord, Lord de Clifford.
We have a problem with Amendment 4—or we did to start with, but then I took legal advice. The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, asserted that we needed clarity and consistency across the Bill. I suspect we have more lawyers than any other profession in this House, and guess what: I got slightly different answers. However, the message was quite consistent: we absolutely do not need to have the same definition of family, in this case, across a whole Bill because we are dealing with very specific, different things.
My understanding is—and I am certain that the Minister will correct me if I have this slightly wrong—that the amendment to ground 1 deals with the diversity of the modern family and the kind of things that can happen, but it is about the repossession ground, so it has been drawn fairly tightly for obvious reasons. However, the definition in Clause 20 is clearly broader because it relates to the removal of the guarantor liability for rent after a family member in a joint tenancy dies. It is a sympathetic amendment and a sympathetic broadening, casting the net a little bit more widely, as it seeks to protect bereaved families, whereas we necessarily want to keep the definition in ground 1 fairly tight to avoid abuse. We have resolved our position on that, so we will not support Amendment 4.
I want to hear what the Minister has to say on Amendments 22 and 23, because I believe there are grounds to do what they would do already in the Bill. I am genuinely interested to hear the Minister’s response to those amendments.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, the noble Lords, Lord de Clifford and Lord Jamieson, and the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, for their amendments, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bowles, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Thornhill, and the noble Lords, Lord Cromwell and Lord Carrington, for their contributions to the debate.
Amendment 4 seeks to expand the definition of “family member” for the purpose of the moving-in ground, ground 1, to a much wider range of relations. This mandatory possession ground is available if the landlord or their close family member wishes to move into a property. This amendment would allow landlords to evict their tenants in order to house nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles or cousins. It would enable the ground to be used to house the equivalent relatives of their spouse, civil partner or cohabitee. The family members we have chosen who can move in under ground 1 aim to reflect the diversity of modern families, but this is balanced with security of tenure for the existing tenant, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, indicated.
I appreciate that this draws the line short of where some might hope, but to go too far would open up tenants to evictions for a wide range of people, potentially very significant numbers of cousins, nieces and nephews, where families are large. I know that this depends on families—it would certainly be a large number in my family. This would provide more opportunities for ill-intentioned landlords to abuse the system. It is right that the definition used here is narrower than the definition in Clause 20, which removes guarantor liability for rent after a family member in a joint tenancy dies. That is because this is a possession ground, so it results in people losing their homes; whereas Clause 20 protects bereaved families, where the net should be cast more widely.
Amendment 21 aims to introduce a new ground for possession that would permit the landlord to seek possession of their property for the purpose of housing a carer for them or a member of their family who lives with them. This is qualified by the requirement that the property is within sufficient proximity to the landlord’s residence to facilitate emergency callouts. I thank all noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord de Clifford, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, for their considered and passionate engagement on this proposed ground in Committee and when I met Peers to discuss the proposal in the run-up to Report. I recognise the difficulties they highlighted that may be faced by landlords who wish to evict their tenant in order to house a carer. We are all aware of the importance of carers and the remarkable work they do in supporting individuals and families in difficult circumstances. These amendments clearly come from a good place, and I am sympathetic to noble Lords’ concerns.
However, there are some practical considerations that weaken the rationale for this intervention. Adding more possession grounds increases opportunities for abuse by those unscrupulous landlords who, sadly, exist in the market. We are committed to giving renters much greater security and stability so that they can stay in their homes for longer. That is why we have developed very specific grounds. We also think that there are very few landlords who would be in the position of both needing a carer and owning a second property close to their home to accommodate that carer. I appreciate the examples that both noble Baronesses gave. Given the potential risk of abuse and the very narrow group of people who might benefit from this ground, we do not think the additional ground is warranted. Our view is that it is not fair that a tenant should lose their home, with all the disruption that entails, in order for another person to be housed in those circumstances.
The noble Lord, Lord de Clifford, talked about supporting people into work, but this amendment might involve another local worker being evicted to house that carer. Indeed, if the evicted tenant were also a carer, it would be likely to deprive one of the very organisations that have been contacting noble Lords of a key member of their staff, so we have to be careful that we do not cause those kinds of circumstances.
Amendment 22 seeks to create a new ground for possession to enable landlords to convert a residential property to non-residential use. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, that I too visited the King’s Cross development when I was looking at the development of the central part of Stevenage. The work that has been done there is fantastic.
As I stated in Committee, in response to a similar amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, I do not believe that the proposal in Amendment 22 is the right approach. The Government have thought carefully about where landlords should be able to take possession of their properties, particularly where it would lead to a tenant losing their home through no fault of their own.
Encouraging residential lets to be converted to other uses, at a time of such chronic pressure on housing supply, would not be right. It is for the same reason that the Bill abolishes ground 3, which enables landlords to evict long-term tenants in order to turn the dwelling into a holiday let. Where landlords wish to convert their property to non-residential use, it is right that they should do this as tenants move out, rather than by evicting a tenant who has done nothing wrong.
It is also worth noting—as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, referred to—that the existing redevelopment ground, ground 6, could potentially be used in some circumstances. This is the right approach, not the approach put forward in the amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Leicester.
I turn to Amendment 23. This well-intentioned amendment would create a new mandatory possession ground to allow landlords to evict tenants in order to redevelop their property, if they have received planning permission for the works and these works cannot be carried out with the tenant in situ. I am pleased to be able to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, that landlords will already be able to evict in these circumstances. They can do this by using the existing, broader mandatory redevelopment ground, ground 6. This also does not require the landlord to prove that they have planning permission, which may not be necessary in all circumstances. In effect, this proposed new ground would merely duplicate ground 6, but with additional constraints. For the reasons I have set out, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
Before the Minister sits down, can she be categorical that anybody seeking to redevelop their property would be able to terminate a tenancy to do so?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
You can use the existing, broader mandatory redevelopment ground, ground 6, when you are redeveloping property.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
In respect of Amendment 21, does the Minister accept that denying someone the ability to move in a carer to look after their family in the way that was outlined will be an enormous temptation for abuse? The best outcome in that context is likely to be that people will simply hold the property empty for very many years in case they might need it. That will not create much help for the rental sector.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I will reiterate my comments. When evicting one tenant to put another tenant in, you may well be evicting somebody else’s carer to put your carer in. Of course, we do not want to see properties sitting empty but, if people have a property, that is their choice. The idea that you might evict one carer to put another carer in, for example, is just not acceptable.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
I hear what the Minister is saying about pushing a tenant out to put a carer in, but she is touching on a very specific case, where you are putting out a tenant who happens to be a carer so as to put another carer in. I would submit to her that that is a very tiny example.
The sheer emotional impact of not being able to care for somebody by putting a carer in will simply invite people to abuse the system: to find ways to get around it, or simply to hold the property empty. I wonder how Members of this House would react if they were in the situation of not being able to provide care to a loved one because, despite owning a property, they were unable to put a carer into it.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I simply add that it does not have to be another carer; it could be any of the key workers who we talk about so often who are in need of housing. There are other options for people. If landlords are receiving rent for that property, while I appreciate that there may be further shortages making it difficult to find somewhere near enough to the property, but there is the option of using the rent secured on one property to rent alternative accommodation for a carer.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
Those of us who deal with economic matters will have to point out that there would be tax paid on the rent, so there would not be a great deal left to be able to rent the next home. That is not an economically viable solution, even if there were another adjacent property to rent with what was left of the rent after deductions.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am sorry; I can only come back to my point. It does not seem equitable to evict one family to house another family. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I support Amendments 8 and 9, et cetera, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, about treating self-employed agricultural staff as full-time staff members on a farm for the purposes of the Bill. As this is the first time I have spoken on the Bill—probably the only time I am going to speak on the Bill—I declare my interest as a farmer and someone who has a dairy, because it is about dairies that I want to speak.
Cows have to be milked twice a day. It is not only from the point of view of the welfare of the farmer, and perhaps his or her bottom line, but from the point of view of the welfare of the cows. The cows have to be milked twice a day or they really suffer. Cows can actually die from not being milked, so it is really important that they are milked twice a day. Most dairy farmers now employ their dairymen or dairywomen— I am pleased to say there is a considerably greater number of women who are dairy farmers these days than in the past—through an agency, because it is the duty of the agency, if the dairyman suffers a heart attack or gets run over, or something terrible happens, to produce a dairyman literally the next day so the cows can continue to be milked. It really is very important for the welfare of the cows and the farm.
These staff, who are self-employed through an agency, are treated on the farm as part of the farm team. Although technically they are self-employed, they must be treated as being employed members of the farm for the purposes of the Bill. They usually occupy a vital house, probably close to the dairy. There is not only milking twice a day; a good dairy person has to spend two or three hours a day, in addition to the milking, watching their cows, seeing that their welfare is okay and they are in full health, and that their feet do not need treatment, and whether they are on heat. It is a really important role.
Although I am only speaking about dairy people, I am sure the same applies to herdsmen in a beef herd, or shepherds looking after a flock. The point is that these people are employed through an agency, therefore they are self-employed. It would really not be at all right—and I am talking about the welfare of the cows, apart from anything else—if these people were excluded from being treated as ordinary members of staff for the purposes of the Bill.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, for these considered amendments, which reflect the debate we had around his similar suggestions in Committee, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Grender and Lady Scott, and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for speaking in our discussion.
As noble Lords will be aware, we have responded to the needs of the agricultural community and incorporated ground 5A in the Bill. We appreciate that the agricultural sector has distinct requirements, and it is often vital for workers to live on-site to carry out their duties. However, this must be balanced with the needs of the wider rural community. We believe this ground balances both: it allows agricultural employees to be housed while protecting other tenants who may work in critical local jobs.
Widening the ground to include, for example, self-employed workers could open the ground to abuse and decrease rural security of tenure. For example, a landlord could engage someone on a self-employed basis to do a nominal amount of agricultural work and on that basis use the expanded ground to evict a tenant in respect of whom no other grounds are available. Amendment 8 would expand ground 5A, which, as drafted, will allow landlords to evict assured tenants to house an agricultural employee. The amendment would mean that landlords could evict their tenants to house self-employed workers and other types of workers engaged in agriculture.
As we have made clear, a key aim of the Bill is to increase tenants’ security, and the grounds for possession have been designed narrowly to reflect situations in which we think it is right that a tenant could lose their home, often through no fault of their own. Expanding the types of workers a tenant can be evicted in order to house goes against this principle and would reduce the security of tenure in rural areas.
Amendment 9 works with Amendment 8 to ensure that tenants could be evicted only to house workers who would be working for the landlord for at least 35 hours a week. I understand the intent behind this: it aims to address the concerns I expressed in Committee that the similar expansion of the ground that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, proposed then would open up the ground to abuse. However, I am still not convinced that any expansion of the ground is the right approach. Amendment 11 is purely consequential on Amendment 8, removing a reference to “seasonal or permanent employee” which Amendment 8 has moved so that it appears earlier in the text of the ground.
I ask the noble Lord not to push these amendments to a Division for the reasons I have set out. In short, we do not wish to degrade the security of rural tenants to house wider categories of workers. The narrow drafting of the ground proposed by the Government is proportionate, and by focusing on agricultural employees it achieves a fair balance for all.
Amendment 10 seeks to expand the agricultural worker possession ground, 5A. This would permit a landlord to seek eviction of a tenant to house key workers and service occupants as well as agricultural employees which the ground as drafted allows. Ground 5A is designed to allow landlords to house employees working for them in agriculture. This ensures workers who genuinely need to live on-site can be accommodated and recognises that employees may need to live on-site only for a limited period. We have balanced this with the needs of all tenants for security and stability in their homes.
Expanding this ground to other types of workers from different sectors would not be right. It would allow tenants to be evicted through no fault of their own to house a wide range of employees; for example, a teacher or a healthcare worker who is an employee of the landlord. For this wider group of employees, we do not believe that landlords directly provide accommodation on a large scale or that in most cases such individuals need to live on-site. In fact, this might see one key worker being evicted to house another, a point I made under a previous amendment.
Amendment 12 works with Amendment 10 to clarify the definitions for both key workers and service occupants. It also seeks to give power to the Secretary of State to amend the key worker definition by regulations. This would allow a future Government to potentially expand the definition to include many other types of worker without suitable scrutiny, which could significantly degrade tenant security. Employment ground 5C may be available to landlords who need to provide accommodation to tenants as a consequence of their employment. In our view, if a landlord needs to accommodate someone on-site, it is right that housing is kept for this purpose and that other tenants do not see their lives disrupted after a short period in a property.
Amendment 13 works together with the other amendments in this group to expand ground 5C to allow landlords to evict a wider range of workers rather than just tenants who are employees. The amendment would change the condition within the ground that the dwelling was let to a tenant as a result of their employment by expanding it to include “work” as well as “employment”.
I am clear in my view that expanding the ground for possession is not the correct approach. Ground 5C is narrowly drafted to allow employer landlords to evict tenants when the accommodation is no longer required for their employment. Expanding this ground further would reduce security of tenure for a much wider group. I am not persuaded that opening the ground more widely is justified for more informal working arrangements. If a tenant is an employee, it indicates a long-term relationship which could require accommodation, whereas this is much less likely to be the case for other types of worker.
Amendment 14 works together with the others in this group to expand ground 5C, as I have described. The amendment would expand the condition that the tenant has ceased to be employed by the landlord to include circumstances in which they have ceased to work for the landlord—a much broader definition. For the reasons I have explained, I am not convinced and have not been persuaded that any expansion of the ground is the right approach.
Amendment 15 also works with other amendments in the group to expand ground 5C. In parallel to Amendment 14, it would expand the condition that the tenancy was granted for an early period of the employment—for example, to help with relocation—to include circumstances where the tenancy was granted for an earlier period of the tenant’s work, a much broader definition.
Expanding the employment ground to allow landlords to house and evict non-employee workers is not the right approach, as I have explained. Workers who are not employees are also much less likely to require the long-term accommodation a tenancy entails. Other arrangements, such as licence to occupy or service occupation, may be more suitable for shorter-term contractors or self-employed workers.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
Before the Minister sits down, on self-employed workers in the agricultural industry, has MHCLG discussed this issue with Defra? Defra would know how the industry has changed over the past years and how critical it is to have self-employed workers on specific jobs in agriculture. It is going to be very difficult for farmers, particularly livestock farmers, to manage in certain circumstances on the farm, as we have heard from the noble Lord opposite.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I have not personally discussed the issue with Defra, but I am sure that officials in MHCLG will have done so, and—
Lord Rooker (Lab)
If my noble friend the Minister does discuss it with Defra, she will find that Defra has nothing like the numbers of people with experience of farming that it had 10 years ago. It has been completely denuded and she would not find the answer to the question asked by the noble Baroness opposite.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I was about to say, before the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, intervened, that I am always happy to discuss these important issues further with noble Lords and to refer back to colleagues in Defra and elsewhere. Nevertheless, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, to withdraw his amendment.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and the noble Lord, Lord Carter, for their amendments, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, for her comments.
Amendments 18 and 19 seek to decrease the threshold for mandatory eviction under rent arrears, ground 8, from three months to two, or 13 weeks to eight where rent is paid weekly. I do not believe that this is the right approach. We have taken the decision to restore the threshold for mandatory evictions to the levels originally set by the party opposite in the Housing Act 1988 before they were reduced in the 1990s.
Three months, we believe, is the right balance. It gives landlords facing significant arrears certainty of possession, but allows tenants facing one-off financial shocks enough time to get their financial affairs in order and not lose their home if their tenancy is otherwise sustainable. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, that ground 8 is a mandatory ground, but it is worth noting that mandatory eviction is not the landlord’s only route to possession. Landlords facing frequent arrears and late payment of rent that indicate an unsustainable tenancy can also pursue eviction via the discretionary grounds 10 and 11. For these reasons, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment 20 seeks to remove a key protection for vulnerable tenants from the Bill. It would allow tenants to face mandatory eviction when they have breached the three-month rent arrears threshold due to not receiving a universal credit payment to which they are entitled. This would not be right. We want to protect those vulnerable tenants who have suffered a change of circumstances, such as redundancy or an accident, by helping them remain in their home. It would not be right for them to face another destabilising event by allowing landlords to evict them, potentially making them homeless because they are waiting to receive universal credit that is due to them. Not being able to pay their rent on time because they have not received universal credit they are entitled to does not mean that they are a bad tenant. It is right that these tenants are given time to resolve their arrears; it is also important that tenancies that are otherwise financially sustainable should continue. That will benefit both the tenant and the landlord.
We have heard concerns that landlords might face uncertainty in pursuing possession claims if they do not realise that arrears are caused by an outstanding benefit payment. That is subsequently used as a defence in possession proceedings. Of course, we would strongly encourage tenants and landlords to communicate; it is clearly in the tenants’ interest to explain their situation before the case reaches court. I note too that there is an element of uncertainty in any possession case, and this requirement is not unusual in that regard.
I have heard the point that the noble Lord, Lord Carter, made about data access and I will take that back to the department. I hope he agrees that we are justified in our approach and that he will not move his amendment.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, the amendments before us, in particular Amendments 18 and 19, seek to preserve a workable and fair framework that supports both tenants and landlords. The current thresholds, allowing landlords to begin recovery proceedings after eight weeks or two months of arrears, have stood the test of time because they offer a sensible compromise.
Moreover, early intervention is often in the best interests of tenants themselves. Addressing arrears sooner rather than later can prevent problems escalating to the point where eviction becomes unavoidable—a consequence that benefits no one. Our goal must be to craft legislation that is fair and balanced, which ultimately safeguards the rights of renters while ensuring stability for landlords.
Although it is imperative to safeguard tenants from unfair evictions, we must ensure that the protections do not inadvertently place landlords in an untenable position, thereby threatening the very housing supply we all seek. We will not put these amendments to a vote, but we think that Amendment 20, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, represents a very sensible improvement to this part of the Bill, and we will support him if he chooses to divide the House.
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
I am very grateful for all the support that my Amendment 20 has received. This amendment was genuinely meant. I was concerned about fairness, but above all about workability. The tribunal system, which we will come on to in more detail in later amendments, needs to have before it only the cases that absolutely have to be resolved. The last thing I or anybody wants to happen is for the tribunal system to be clogged up with unnecessary cases, which was my principal concern.
However, I listened to what the Minister said, and I am grateful that she will look more carefully at the data protection point, which, frankly, is a better way of dealing with this than relying on tenants and landlords to speak to each other. On that basis, and if she would be so kind as to write to me once she has had those discussions with the department so that the position is on the record, I will not press my amendment.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I just confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Carter, that I will respond to him in writing.
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage ExcerptsWednesday 25th June 2025
(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Planning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 View all Planning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 10 June 2025 - (10 Jun 2025)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
I thank all noble Lords for this wide-ranging, very productive and comprehensive debate. With over 60 contributions made, I am obviously not going to be able to reply in detail to every one. I will do my best; I have tried to put first the things that were talked about the most. If I do not get to some of the questions I will of course reply in writing.
I have been very encouraged to hear the degree of consensus on the need for action and on much of the intent of the Bill, even if there has been some reference to what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, referred to in her characteristically direct way as the bad and the ugly in the Bill. It has been a very good discussion, and I do not think there is any difference of opinion about the need for things to change.
I especially thank the noble Lord, Lord Banner, for his contribution to the Bill, particularly in the critical area of judicial reviews, which we have looked at in great detail; I am grateful for his support in that work. The contributions of the noble Lords, Lord Fuller and Lord Liddle, from opposite sides of the House, definitely showed why the Bill is so important. The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, described it well when he said the Bill is “about the kinds of places we want to build and the kind of country we want to be”. That is a very good way of describing what we are doing here.
I will make a few general points and then turn to some of the specific issues that were raised. The noble Lord, Lord Best, referred very powerfully to the housing crisis and the broken model of relying on volume housebuilders to deliver against the housing need which we definitely have. We currently have 160,000 children in temporary and emergency accommodation. That is an absolute scandal—we have to deal with these issues.
I was at St Mary’s school in Walthamstow yesterday, where the children are doing a project on homelessness, and I asked them what they would say to the Prime Minister. They said, “Can you tell the Prime Minister to build some more homes that people can afford?” I think that was quite right. I said that I will tell the Prime Minister that, so we will get on with that as quickly as we can.
Since 1990, home ownership for 19 to 29 year-olds has more than halved. Homes cost eight times the annual earnings of an average worker. The number of homes granted planning permission has fallen from 310,000 in 2021 to 235,000 in 2025 Q1. The number of new homes is estimated to drop to around 200,000 this year, and this would be the lowest year for net additional dwellings in England since 2015-16.
Infrastructure costs have increased by 30%—more than GDP per capita—since 2007, and the time it takes to secure planning permission for major economic infrastructure projects has almost doubled in the last decade to more than four years. We are not putting the blame on planning officers or councillors. I pay tribute to all those planning officers across the country who work with this system day in, day out, and to all the councillors who play their part in it as well.
We know that 96% of planning decisions were made by planning officers in the year ending March 2025, and it was that small percentage outside of that which were made by planning committees. Only 20% of planning applications for major development are decided within the 13-week statutory deadline. It is important that we focus now on how we are going to improve this system.
I will comment on the points made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Grender. On the 700,000 empty homes in this country, once housebuilders have been granted permission for residential development, meeting local housing needs and preferences, we expect to see them built out as quickly as possible. Local planning authorities already have powers to issue completion notices to require a developer to complete its development if it is stalled, and if they fail to do so the planning permission for the development will lapse.
On homes being approved but not yet built, we know that too many developments secure planning permission and then are either stalled or not built out quickly, to the frustration of local planning committees and authorities and their communities. That is why we are proposing to introduce a new statutory build-out reporting framework to ensure that there is greater transparency and accountability about the build-out of new residential development. We are currently consulting on that, but we are determined to make sure that communities do not see empty homes, or homes that are permissioned and are not built, when there is such an enormous need for housing around the country.
Lord Fuller (Con)
Will the Minister accept that in many of the cases where permissions are granted, pre-commencement conditions are not yet met and that is the reason these permissions are not executed or completed? In so many cases it is because of the other statutory consultees: it is not the council; the baton passes from the council to the developers at that stage. They are the hold-up, and they are that break between the issuance of permission and commencement on site, and that is really where much of the government effort needs to be.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I understand exactly the point the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, is making and there are measures in the Bill which will ease that pressure. We are looking at stat cons and how that process works but, overall, we need to make sure that we get a very smooth process, where we speed up the whole application process, the pre-commencement phase and the build-out phase, because that is what will start delivering housing at pace in this country.
Some noble Lords have mentioned the New Towns Taskforce. It will be reporting this summer, and we will also be publishing a comprehensive housing strategy. I cannot say exactly when; I have that Civil Service phrase “in the not too distant future”, which is frustrating, but I hope it will be very soon.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester mentioned the very excellent report of the Church housing commission and the Nationwide Foundation. I was very grateful for that piece of work; it has been incredibly helpful in shaping thinking, particularly on social, affordable and specialist housing.
The noble Lord, Lord Patten, and other noble Lords mentioned that planning is not necessarily the block to growth. It is not the only key to growth, but it too often can be a substantial constraint on it. We want to move that forward as quickly as possible.
I was asked for the number of homes we are going to be building and exactly what the plan is over the years. We are working on that plan, particularly for the social and affordable housing. It was going down— I have mentioned the figures already—and it will ramp up to deliver those 1.5 million homes during the course of this Parliament. It is very important that, as we do that, we deliver the kind of homes we want to see, in relation to design and net zero, and that they do not have a detrimental impact on our environment. My noble friends Lord Hunt and Lady Liddell have emphasised skills and investor confidence as further parts of this picture. They are very important, and I will say a little bit more about those in a moment.
The ambition of the Bill is really transformative. We want to mark the next step in the most significant reforms to the planning system in a generation. We are building on urgent action to unlock development, including: our new pro-growth National Planning Policy Framework published in December; ending the de facto ban on onshore wind; a review of the role of stat cons, as I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Fuller; supporting SME builders; and boosting local authority capacity. I have spoken before about the Government’s action on skills. All of this and the Bill will help deliver our Plan for Change, get 1.5 million safe and decent homes built and fast-track planning decisions on 150 major economic infrastructure projects by the end of this Parliament. We recognise the scale of the challenge. I look forward to working with noble Lords in this House to make sure that the Bill facilitates that scale of ambition.
On the specific issue of the reform of planning committees, many noble Lords have mentioned this, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott, Lady Coffey, Lady Jones, Lady Miller and Lady Pinnock, the noble Earl, Lord Russell, the noble Lords, Lord Mawson, Lord Gascoigne, Lord Shipley and Lord Bailey, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, and probably some others that I did not get round to writing down. This is a very important part of the Bill. Planning committees play a critical role in the planning system, ensuring adequate scrutiny is in place for developments and providing local democratic oversight of planning decisions. However, they are not currently operating as effectively as they could be.
We are not taking local decision-making out of local hands. Those decisions will continue to be vested locally, but we want to engage the public and councillors more at the stage of the local plan, where they can really have an influence on place shaping and can influence what they want to see in their communities, as a number of noble Lords have said.
We will be introducing a national scheme of delegation, which will facilitate faster decision-making, bring greater certainty to stakeholders and applicants and effectively utilise the planning professionals, by doing what they are best at. We are also introducing mandatory training for committee members. We have always had compulsory training for planning members in my local authority— I did not realise that it was not compulsory. We need to make sure we do that to get well-informed decision-making and improve consistency across the country.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the role of AI in planning. I met with the digital team in our department this morning, and it is making great strides forward in planning. This is very exciting: it is not just for digitising the planning system and mapping out all the spatial issues we face in the country, including all the nature mitigation that is needed, but it is also to help with consultation. On the local government consultations we are doing at the moment, we are getting hundreds of responses. If you can digitise the assessment of that, it is really going to help with the planning process, though, of course, it always needs human oversight.
The noble Lord, Lord Banner, rightly referred to resources and capacity in the Planning Inspectorate. I reassure noble Lords that consideration is being given to this.
The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, referred to Planning for Real; I remember it very well—just before I became a councillor, I got involved in a Planning for Real exercise. We are hoping to engage and encourage people with those kind of exercises as they draw up their local plans.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, spoke about digital twins and AI, which is another thing I have been very interested in. I know that Singapore has a fabulous way of doing this, and it is very important to planning.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Murray, for his contribution on mediation. We are very supportive of that and are looking at it.
Some noble Lords suggested that reforms within our Bill remove democratic control from local people and restrict the input of community voices in the planning process. That is simply not the case. Engagement with communities is, and will remain, the cornerstone of our planning system and a vital step in the design of major infrastructure. We are currently consulting on the proposals for the scheme of delegation, so everybody will have a chance to contribute to that.
I will move on to wider housing and planning issues, including affordable housing. A number of noble Lords raised the issue of social and affordable housing, including the noble Lords, Lord Cameron, Lord Teverson, Lord Best and Lord Evans, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Levitt. This is a vitally important issue. The Government’s manifesto commits us to delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation. The spending review confirmed £39 billion for a successor to the affordable homes programme. For the first time in recent memory, we will be able to give providers a decade of certainty over the capital funding they will have to build new, more ambitious housing development proposals. In the National Planning Policy Framework, we have asked local councils that, when they draw up their local plans, they assess the need not just for affordable housing, because that is a very difficult definition, but for social housing. That is critical.
On housing quality and design, the noble Lords, Lord Thurlow, Lord Crisp, Lord Shipley, Lord Carlile and Lord Best, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, all raised this issue. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, for meeting me to discuss this. We need to ensure that new developments are built to a high standard and the importance of good design, promoting the health and well-being of all those who live there. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that architects have not been mentioned perhaps as much as he would have liked, but the NPPF makes clear the importance of well-designed, inclusive and safe places and how this can be achieved through local design policies, design codes and guidance. That includes transport, open spaces, and climate change mitigation and adaptation.
I will move on now, because time is pressing on, to the issues that I think were probably mentioned by most noble Lords: namely, the nature restoration fund and Part 3. If your Lordships do not mind, I will not read out all the names, because we would be here most of the evening.
When it comes to development and nature, the status quo is not working. We need to build on the success of policies such as diversity net gain and ensure that we do everything we can to deliver positive development. By moving to a more strategic approach to discharging obligations, the nature restoration fund will allow us to deliver environmental improvements at greater scale, with greater impact, while unlocking the development this country needs. We are confident that the new model will secure better outcomes for nature, driving meaningful nature recovery and moving us away from a system that is at the moment only treading water.
On the issue of regression, I reassure noble Lords that this new strategic approach will deliver more for nature, not less. That is why we have confirmed in the Bill that our reforms will not have the effect of reducing the level of environmental protection of existing environmental law. Through the NRF model we are moving away from piecemeal interventions and going further than simply offsetting harm, as is required under current legislation. We have been clear that environmental delivery plans will be put in place only where they are able to deliver better outcomes which will leave a lasting legacy of environmental improvement. I will not go into more detail on that now but will set it out in writing, because I know that lots of noble Lords are concerned about it.
On irreplaceable habitats, let me reassure everyone that we consider them to be just that: irreplaceable. The legislation is clear that an EDP can relate to a protected site or a protected species, with these being tightly defined in the legislation. As the Housing Minister made clear in the other place, the Bill does not affect existing protections for irreplaceable habitats under the National Planning Policy Framework. While there may be circumstances where an environmental feature is part of both a protected site and an irreplaceable habitat, an EDP will not allow action to be taken that damaged an irreplaceable habitat, as this would by definition be incapable of passing the overall improvement test. I hope that that has provided some reassurance.
I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, that green space in urban areas is already part of the planning system through the National Planning Policy Framework. A number of noble Lords commented on the capacity and capability of Natural England, and I will write to noble Lords on that, if that is okay.
The noble Lord, Lord Roborough, talked about the impact of the NRF on farmers. I know that that is a very important issue, and many in this House very ably represent the interests of farmers, so I welcome the opportunity to flag the opportunities the NRF presents for farming communities. We want to work in partnership with farmers and land managers to deliver conservation measures which will provide opportunities for them to support the delivery of such measures and diversify their business revenues.
I will write to all noble Lords about EDPs and all the other issues relating to Part 3. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, that he quoted my words back to me very accurately. I have now been to Poundbury, by the way, and seen the swift bricks in action. We recognise that these are a significant tool, and we have made it clear in the revised NPPF that developments should provide net gains such as that. I recognise why many would want to mandate this through legislation, but we think there is a better way of doing that, so we will be consulting on a new set of national policies, including a requirement for swift bricks to be incorporated into new buildings. I hope that that answers the question.
I shall talk briefly about the Gypsy and Traveller housing, mentioned by my noble friend Lady Whitaker, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. I share their frustrations at how this has been dealt with. As part of the revised National Planning Policy Framework, we have corrected long-standing inconsistencies in the way applications for sites are considered and provided greater clarity. We have revised the definition of Gypsies and Travellers to align with domestic and European law.
I see that I have run out of time. I will not try to cover all the other issues. I have got plenty to say on development corporations, infrastructure and so on, but I will write to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and answer the questions I have been asked, including on rural housing, protection of the green belt and so on.
I reiterate my thanks to your Lordships for your engagement with the Bill to this point and give particular thanks to the opposition spokespeople: I have been there, so I know what that is like, and I am grateful to you.
I look forward to working with all of you during the passage of this important and truly ambitious piece of legislation. My noble friend Lord Hanworth referred to the ambition shown by the post-war Government when reconstructing our country. It was that Government who took the pre-war planning inspiration from garden cities and Ebenezer Howard a step further to create my town and other first-generation new towns, with the boost that gave to the economy. We now have the opportunity to take the next step to clean energy, to use artificial intelligence, to have a new clean energy transport infrastructure and to plan the new homes and communities that a new generation will need. I look forward to working with all of you on that over the next few weeks and months.
Renters’ Rights Bill
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage
That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order: Clauses 1 to 3, Schedule 1, Clauses 4 to 30, Schedule 2, Clauses 31 to 74, Schedule 3, Clauses 75 to 101, Schedule 4, Clause 102, Schedule 5, Clauses 103 to 146, Schedule 6, Clauses 147 to 149, Title.
Planning: Energy Efficiency and Fire Safety
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and draw your attention to my register of interests.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome my noble friend’s expertise to help with some of these issues as we debate our planning for the future. She raises valid and important points. All new homes must comply with energy-efficiency and fire safety measures as set out in the building regulations, once planning permission has been obtained. While government does not comment on or routinely intervene in local authority decision-making, we trust our local councillors and local authorities to deliver local plans that carefully consider both energy efficiency and fire safety. As we move into the new era of strategic plans, I am sure that our mayors will take carbon reduction in new homes, and fire safety, as seriously as our councillors currently do.
Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe (Lab)
I sincerely thank my noble friend the Minister. Today, millions in the UK still live in buildings with unresolved fire issues, many of which are being targeted for retrofit under decarbonisation plans. For energy efficiency, the cheapest fuel is the fuel you do not use at all. Local leaders and regional mayors need a clear mandate and resources to ensure that fire safety is integrated into renovation and new build. From 2020 to today, there have been over 230 fires related to cladding alone. How will the Government ensure that fire risk assessments are mandatory for retrofit and new build and that planning frameworks are updated accordingly?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for making that point so powerfully. We all know how urgent this work is. Retrofit work in support of decarbonisation must comply with building regulations, including those concerning fire safety. As the regulations state, the building’s compliance should be no worse than it was before the work started. No additional measures are needed to ensure that fire safety is integrated into retrofit. Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order, a fire risk assessment will be completed for all new builds, other than individual private homes. Building regulations require building control bodies to consult the local fire and rescue authority to ensure compliance with the order. There is a further requirement under the order for a responsible person to review the fire risk assessment for those premises where material changes, such as a significant retrofit, are made to the building in question.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, the National Audit Office estimated that the work to which the noble Baroness just referred will not be completed until 2035. Is that not far too late a date for people to live in unsafe buildings? What action are the Government going to take to bring that date forward?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am sure that the noble Lord paid full attention to the remediation action plan that the Government published, and we want to move this forward as quickly as possible as there is a lot of work to be done on remediation. My honourable colleague in the other place, Minister Alex Norris, is moving forward the remediation action plan as quickly as possible, as we have to make sure that we get on with this now. Eight years is far too long not to move this forward, but we are getting on with the job now and cracking on with it as quickly as we can.
Baroness Nichols of Selby (Lab)
My Lords, in light of the Chancellor’s recent announcement of £39 billion to help boost social and affordable housing, will the Government work with local authorities to ensure that all these new homes are built with consideration of energy efficiency and appropriate fire safety measures? Will the Government also consider adapting these homes, or at least some of them, for disabled people, as it is easier and much more cost effective to do this at the construction phase?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My noble friend is quite right. We will bring forward the future homes standard in the autumn—we are consulting on it at the moment—which will ensure that new homes are net-zero ready and that householders benefit from lower energy bills, with high levels of energy efficiency and solar PV. We made an announcement last week that the standard will include solar panels, which we expect to be installed on the majority of new homes. I have spoken to my noble friend on her point about disabled facilities, and we understand the frustrations of, for example, those applying for disabled facilities grants. The more we can make sure that homes are fit for everybody in our community, the better it will be. We are considering this further as we develop our housing strategy, which is due to be published later this year.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, the cost of cladding remediation is up to £40,000 per flat. Can the Minister tell the House how leaseholders, who are not eligible for grant funding from the Government and contractors, will be able to afford the remediation of homes which insurance companies believe are not safe to live in?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
We are working very closely with leaseholder bodies to understand their issues. I understand the difficulties, and we are making sure that those responsible for the buildings are held to account and that they support leaseholders to get the work done. I am still talking to leaseholders, and we will bring forward more action on their general conditions in the leasehold Bill later this year. I know that this is a very difficult issue for them, and we continue to work with them on it.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a councillor in Central Bedfordshire. The building safety regulator has a critical role to play to ensure fire safety, particularly for high-rise buildings. However, it does not currently have the capacity to deliver its role, creating huge delays to many housing projects. Can the Minister give the House a date when the substantial delays of the building safety regulator will be addressed?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I do not know if the noble Lord was in the Chamber when I spoke about this last week, but we are aware of the building safety regulator’s difficulties. We have put in additional funding and are working with the regulator to improve performance, particularly on the gateway issues. It is very important that we get this balance right. We want our buildings to be safe, and the building safety regulator must be able to do its job properly. We also want to move things on for the development industry so that developers can get through the gateways as quickly as they can; both things are important. I will not give the noble Lord an exact date—I do not suppose he would have expected me to—but we are working with the building safety regulator to move this on as quickly as possible.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I am absolutely delighted about the solar panels measures, because I have been asking questions of this Government about the fact that locally, in east Devon, there is about to be a new town of 20,000 people with not a single solar panel on any of the buildings. How tough will the Government be in seeing that the solar panels regulations are actually carried out by entrepreneurs who have no desire whatever to put them on roofs.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
As this is incorporated into the planning process, it will become part of how planning is done so that it will be put in from the outset. We will accelerate the specific types of infrastructure, including making sure that, as people put planning applications in, we look at them to make sure that buildings are fit for purpose, do not need retrofitting and will have solar panels and, where appropriate, ground source heat pumps. Our commitment is to get to net zero as quickly as we can while making sure the planning system is fit for purpose in delivering that across the country.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, the issue of sustainable energy concerns us all, particularly with the advent of a large number of applications for solar farms. Is the Minister aware that, on fire safety, there are deep concerns among the population because of the lithium battery plants that have to go with these solar farms? Where other solar farms have been created around the world, there have been considerable dangers, and fires have occurred that have put local populations in some jeopardy. Does the Minister have any comment on that?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I understand the question the noble Lord is asking. I remind the House that 0.1% of the country has solar farms. I understand that that is not the question he was asking, but it is raised very frequently in the House. I will take back the issue of lithium batteries and solar farms and send him a Written Answer.
Social Housing
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the number of new social homes built, and the number of new homes for social rent which have received planning permission, in the past six months.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I was delighted that in the spending review last week the Government were able to provide the biggest boost to social and affordable housing investment in a generation. We have confirmed £39 billion for a successor to the affordable homes programme over 10 years.
On the planning application statistics that my noble friend has requested, although the publication includes the number of homes granted planning permission, it does not yet include separate figures for new social homes built or the number of homes for social rent. The next quarterly publication is due on 19 June. However, there is an annual release published by the Government that includes affordable and social homes. The data for the last six months, up to March 2025, is not yet released but it will be available later this month.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that very positive reply. The entrenched and acute housing crisis inherited by the Government is in no small part due to the long-term failure to build anywhere near enough homes for social rent. My noble friend has made it clear that we are finally on the path to turn this around.
The National Housing Federation and other sector bodies described last week’s announcement as
“transformational … and will deliver the right conditions for a decade of renewal and growth … It is the most ambitious Affordable Homes Programme we’ve seen in decades”
and, most importantly,
“offers real hope to thousands of people who need safe, secure and affordable homes”.
Can my noble friend the Minister provide an update on the design and delivery of the new 10-year affordable homes programme, including what emphasis it will place on social rented homes, alongside other affordable tenures such as shared ownership?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for her warm reception for the announcement made at the spending review, and to the many social housing bodies that have echoed her words. We will work with the sector at pace to design the programme. We have provided certainty that it will be for a full 10 years; our providers wanted that certainty, and we were pleased to give it. We have combined that with a 10-year rent settlement that will give social housing providers the support and certainty they need to build the social and affordable homes that are so desperately needed. It is important to note the decline in social home building: in the 1950s, when my town was built, we were building around 200,000 social homes a year, but in recent years, we have built fewer than 10,000. We have a lot of work to do, and we will get on with the job.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, where are the plumbers, electricians and builders going to come from to build these houses? Do the Government have plans to increase the number of people in apprenticeships who are being trained for that purpose?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am pleased to be able to tell the noble Lord that we have a £600 million package for construction skills. We set up the Construction Skills Mission Board under the very able chairmanship of Mark Reynolds from Mace; I worked with Mark and Mace on the regeneration of Stevenage, so I am sure that he will do a fantastic job on that. That will create an extra 60,000 construction worker posts by 2029. There will be 10 new technical excellence colleges. Skills bootcamps have been extended with £100 million of funding, including short-term training for new entrants and upskilling for returners. The Construction Industry Training Board has really stepped up here with funding from industry to fund over 40,000 industry placements and to double the size of the new entrant support scheme to support SMEs to recruit, engage and retain apprentices.
Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Lab)
My Lords, homelessness and housing costs are driving factors in both child poverty and ever-escalating costs of homelessness. My council alone is spending £60 million a year—a figure that is rising—to tackle homelessness. Newham and other councils have done their absolute best to provide affordable homes and thereby cut costs to themselves and their residents, but they need government help. Can my noble friend say what assessment she has made of the role of local government in the delivery of affordable and social homes?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank my noble friend. Of course I would say this, but local government is absolutely critical to delivering the new, generational change in the number of social homes being delivered. Our changes to reverse the set of supply-negative changes made by the previous Government introduce a wider set of growth-focused interventions that will help with this. The Secretary of State and I want this to be a plan-led system. When the new National Planning Policy Framework was published in December last year, I was delighted to see that we have, for the first time, encouraged local authorities to assess their social housing need separately from affordable housing, which I am sure will help. Later this year, we will introduce reforms to accelerate local plan preparation. As my noble friend said, this is not just a great cost to the people who are homeless and in temporary emergency accommodation but an enormous cost to the public purse and for our councils, so we need to solve the problem quickly.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I hugely welcome the £39 billion announced in the spending review for affordable housing; it is really good news. Will the Minister comment on a new blockage to getting those homes built: the long delays with the building safety regulator? Are these the major reason why in London the number of new-build starts is way down this year compared with last year? Can we do anything about the delays in approvals by the building safety regulator?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am glad that the noble Lord asked me that question, because regulators fall into my part of the departmental responsibilities. I am very aware of the concerns about the impact of gateway delays on investment decisions in high-rise and other projects. We are taking significant measures to address the challenges currently faced by the building safety regulator. We are exploring all options with the regulator to ensure that it is equipped for the high demand of applications. We have already provided additional funding to improve capacity at the BSR for building control caseworkers and in-house technical specialists, and we are working with it on a daily basis to make the system a bit slicker than it is now.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
In light of the findings of the report on transforming lives and balancing budgets, can the Minister say what urgent steps the Government are taking to address the chronic shortage of appropriate community housing for adults, particularly those with autism and learning disabilities? Will the department explore partnerships with private capital providers to scale up specialist supported housing without relying on new public capital?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
That is an important question, and we will see answers on the various specialist housing provisions in the housing strategy, which will be published later this year. The noble Baroness is right to point to the particular need for supported housing, which will be included in the strategy. We made some announcements this week on the national housing bank, which includes a partnership with the private sector to deliver housing; I refer noble Lords to the Written Ministerial Statement on that subject rather than going into the detail now. The noble Baroness is right that we will work with both public and private sector funding to deliver as much of the housing as we can, and the details of specialist housing will be included in the housing strategy.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, it would be churlish not to recognise the amount of money being put into social housing, but the Opposition will always say it is never enough so: it is never enough. The Minister will be aware that the barriers to building and delivering social housing are neither just financial nor, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, just around building safety; both the Section 106 route and the affordable homes programme have their problems for developers and providers. Can the Minister say what steps are being taken to overcome these barriers? In particular, are the Government considering reforming Section 106? Can she tell us when we will know what percentage of the affordable homes programme will be used for social housing, rather than so-called affordable housing, which is very unaffordable for many?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
On the second part of the noble Baroness’s question, we are working on how we will deliver the split between affordable and social housing. Of course, both are important to the sector, and we will come forward with further information on that. On the Section 106 issues and the other barriers in the housing system, I was very pleased that the changes to the NPPF were made this year, because they will help. We have a new homes accelerator in the department, where developers or local authorities can come forward to help remove the barriers that are getting in the way. I will come back to the noble Baroness on her question about Section 106.