Renters' Rights Bill (Second sitting)
David Simmonds ExcerptsTuesday 22nd October 2024
(1 month ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Q
Justin Bates KC: Obviously, the best people to ask about the FTT’s resources and whether it is ready will be the FTT staff, the president and so on. I simply note that Parliament has given the first-tier tribunal a lot of new powers over the last few years, and I am sure it would welcome additional funding to enforce all these things. My impression, as a practising barrister, is that the FTT works better than the county court system; my experience is that it is generally faster and more responsive. But you are giving it a lot of new work to do, and I am sure it would be grateful for any money you can send its way.
Giles Peaker: The ombudsman would have to answer the question on the ombudsman. My impression is that the ombudsman—the social housing ombudsman as it is—is currently receiving a lot of complaints and there is some impact on the timescale in which they deal with matters. Clearly, if there were an extension or a new ombudsman, the resourcing of that would have to be looked at. I do not think any of us could say that the county courts are not under strain at present—they are, across the board. How much of an increased workload there would actually be as a result of the Bill, though, is more of an open question.
Liz Davies KC: I just add, in respect of the county court, that part of the problem with litigation at the moment is litigants in person. There are new rights in the Bill that tenants will want to rely on. Housing legal aid is in crisis, there are what are called housing deserts across the country, and frankly, it is more efficient for tenants to be able to receive early legal advice so that they know whether there is or is not a point to take to the county court. I suppose one message to you, although it is beyond your remit, would be to try to increase legal aid as well. It would make litigation more efficient.
David Simmonds
Q
Liz Davies KC: I am concerned about mandatory grounds 1 and 1A. Clearly, they bring an end to no-reason evictions, with the end of section 21, but they are still no-fault evictions as far as the tenant is concerned. It is helpful that the period will be one year and that there is four months’ notice, rather than the two months’ notice in the previous version of this Bill, the Renters (Reform) Bill. But I am concerned that the balance is not right.
Mainly, I am concerned about the idea of a court being faced with mandatory grounds when the tenant has done nothing wrong, and there may be incredibly compelling circumstances about the tenant but the court cannot look at them; it has absolutely no remit and no jurisdiction. So the tenant might say—I am sorry to have to say this—“Myself or a member of the household has a very serious terminal illness. To ask me to move within four weeks or two weeks, or what have you, is going to have an appalling effect on that.” They might say, “We have a very severe disability and so it will take us longer than other people to find somewhere to live.”
My preference would be to make all grounds discretionary, because I think that does provide the balance. But even if Parliament were to reject that view, it seems to me that courts ought to have the opportunity, in exceptional circumstances, to look at the tenant circumstances and to either reject a possession order, or have the flexibility to make a possession order that is suspended for a certain period of time—postponed for a certain period of time. It seems to me wrong in principle that a court cannot consider any circumstances of the tenant, whatever they are. That is my concern on 1 and 1A, and I think Justin will speak about 6A.
Justin Bates KC: Can I ask you to also look very carefully at ground 6A when it comes to scrutiny? Ground 6A is the new ground for possession, where the landlord needs possession, because they are on the banned landlord database or because they are operating an overcrowded house in multiple occupation—the landlord is effectively a criminal landlord and needs possession to deal with the consequences of their criminality. Presently, that is a mandatory ground for possession. I understand why, because I can see that there is a difficulty with one arm of the state saying, “You are breaking the law and you will keep breaking the law if we don’t act, and we won’t allow you to get people out.”
Can I flag two concerns? First, there is a concern among those in frontline tenant services that it will act as a disincentive to people reporting their rogue landlords, because if you report your rogue landlord to the local authority and it then puts them on the banning order list, you face a mandatory ground for possession.
Secondly, it strikes me as odd that a tenant who has done nothing wrong—save had the misfortune to have a criminal landlord—is required to move with no compensation and no provision of suitable alternative accommodation and so on. I can understand why we need 6A. I understand that we do not want to leave people committing crimes because a judge will not give a possession order, but it strikes me that you could look at some sort of compensation scheme. If you were minded to do so, the model is section 34 of the Housing Act 2004, which already gives the tribunal the power to order compensation when people have to leave because of prohibition orders. You could steal lots of the language from section 34, put it into ground 6A, and you would have much less scope for the unfairness that seems to me to be evident.
Giles Peaker: On the broader question of whether a balance is struck, I think it is a political decision as to where the balance falls, but broadly there is one. I do have specific concerns about 1 and 1A, as well as those raised by Liz, which are in terms of the evidencing of a mandatory ground. If the ground is the landlord wants to sell, or the landlord wants to move in or move in a family member, what standard of evidence is required for them to demonstrate that? In terms of the current wording, it would probably be enough to simply express an intention to do so. My sense is that there needs to be at least a level of formality—a signed declaration of truth on a statement or a particulars claim signed by the landlord—in terms of bringing possession proceedings on the back of that.
But there is also what follows on from that, and I think this issue has come up in Scotland, where there is a similar sort of provision. If a landlord re-lets a property within the 12 months proposed, the potential enforcement is great: it is a criminal breach, with a prospective civil penalty, and a prospective rent repayment order application by the former tenants. That is all great. The question is how you get from the possession order being made to action on the breach. As it stands, it appears that the only way in which that could possibly happen is if the ex-tenants realise that the property has been re-let—heaven knows how, and heaven knows where they will be in the country by that point—and then notify the local authority, which can take enforcement action. It strikes me that there should be some kind of recording that that ground has been used—a landlord database might be a place for that. The local authority can be aware that that ground has been used, and if it becomes aware of a re-letting, the full enforcement apparatus can kick in.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
Q
Could I ask you to draw out a bit further how you expect this to work? In a sense, when we talk about discretionary grounds, we are always told, “Let’s trust judges”—that was certainly the case with the previous Bill. In a sense, what we intend to do here is trust judges’ judgment on whether those grounds have been used appropriately, and we would expect the type of evidence that they look at to include things like a letter instructing solicitors or an affidavit. But do you not expect the courts to operate in that way on the basis of the Bill? Do you expect them to act in a more light-touch way, as you have suggested? It is not usual practice for Governments to force the courts to consider certain types of evidence, and if that is the case—if you accept that—where do we go to try to influence the courts to look at certain categories of evidence, to ensure that these grounds are being used appropriately?
Giles Peaker: In terms of how you can specify things, to some degree, it is a question of wording. Grounds 1 and 1A are expressed as an intention, and if the intention is there, the ground is made out. If a landlord has written to the court to say, “I intend to sell”, it seems quite difficult for the court to go behind that, unless the tenant has evidence to the contrary. So partly it is around language. Intention—settled intention—needs looking at. But with different wording, a different evidential requirement may well follow—so potentially, as you say, the landlord would have to evidence engagement with an estate agent or a solicitor on a sale, or would need evidence from the relative who was intending to move in, to the same effect.
The Chair
Order. I am going to stop you there, because this is an opportunity for Committee members to ask questions of the people who have come along as witnesses. We have limited time and once we start opening up a debate with other Committee members, it will be at the expense of being able to hear what we hope is, and is likely to be, very valuable evidence. If you have a question for any of the members of the panel, I shall be happy to take it, but if not, I suggest that you have your arguments with other Members when we get into full line-by-line consideration, when there will be plenty of opportunity for you to intervene on another Member with whom you disagree.
David Simmonds
Q
I know there is some pressure around issues such as tenants with pets and making sure that they have a right to occupy. A landlord may discover that the cost of insurance is significantly higher because of the pet or because of some other circumstance relating to the tenant —for example, they might have a poor credit history and are therefore not insurable for failing to pay the rent via the landlord’s normal insurance company. I am interested in how you see the Bill dealing with that issue and ensuring that tenants are not effectively barred from applying to rent particular properties because of those insurance issues and also that landlords do not find that the insurance they must have is so expensive as to effectively make their business as a landlord impossible.
Giles Peaker: My understanding was that the tenant could be required to have pet insurance. It is a permitted payment.
Liz Davies KC: Or the landlord has the insurance and the tenant refunds them. You have made a broader point, but just looking at clause 11 on pet insurance, the tenant will refund the landlord, so it becomes an exempted permitted payment under the Tenant Fees Act 2019. On the cost of insurance, I am sorry, but that is certainly beyond my legal expertise.
Giles Peaker: In terms of that situation, it is hard to see an impact on building or contents insurance. For insurance for unpaid rent, you would have to ask the insurers, but my immediate sense would be to ask why it would be different from now, when the tenant will face possession proceedings for rent arrears if the rent is not paid. But that would have to be one for the insurers.
David Simmonds
Q
Giles Peaker: Deposits are already capped.
Justin Bates KC: You cannot do it through deposits, because paragraph 2 of schedule 1 to the Tenant Fees Act 2019 will stop you doing that. You can presently do it through rent in advance, because the Bill does not prevent that, although I query whether it should. You could not do it by increasing the rent above market value, but you cannot do that anyway because section 13 as it stands would kick in.
Liz Davies KC: Is Giles’s point not right that this is a current problem in any event? Sorry to be asking you questions, but he is suggesting that it is alleviated because of the mechanism of section 21.
David Simmonds
Q
Liz Davies KC: So it is the rent-in-advance point. We would have to look at what the Bill says about guarantors. I am sure the Minister knows, but that would be the answer—something around advance rent or guarantors. It negates the point earlier, I accept that. This needs some thought.
Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)
Q
Liz Davies KC: The fact that landlords are required to be registered will raise the bar for good landlords. We do not yet know what information should be on the database. I cannot remember whether it is in the Bill or the explanatory notes, but it is assumed that any enforcement action or rent repayment orders they have had to make—anything that affects their quality as a landlord—will be there. That must raise the bar and set a minimum standard for landlords, which we currently do not have. Tenants, frequently those at the bottom of the market, are then subject to the consequences and disadvantages of that, so having that bar is really important.
The other thing is that making the information, when we know what it is, publicly available is extremely important because it holds landlords to account. Finally, it also affects the local authority’s ability to bring the various enforcement measures they have under both the Housing Act 2004 and the Bill.
Justin Bates KC: I did not hear Ben Beadle’s evidence this morning, but if you get the right details on the database—so that it is a publicly searchable database that shows you whether your landlord has done anything in a list of prohibited things and so that it has details about the safety of the building, for example whether the gas safety certificate has been uploaded or not—I would have thought that he and the NRLA would have been crying out for something like the landlord database. It gives them what they have always wanted: a way of differentiating the good landlord from the bad landlord and a simple way for a tenant to identify the good landlord and the bad landlord. If I put your name in and it comes up on the database that you are subject to a banning order, I probably should not rent from you. If I put the property address in and discover a prohibition order—those are registered on the database—I probably should not live there. That is what you should be able to do if you can get the database to work properly.
The way you have done it, for obvious reasons, it is all at the level of principle. The critical information is what you will do in secondary legislation about what is accessible. But if you get the database right, you go a really long way towards helping tenants to make informed decisions and helping good landlords to drive bad landlords out.
The Chair
Welcome; please introduce yourself.
Judicaelle Hammond: I am Judicaelle Hammond, director of policy and advice at the Country Land and Business Association. We represent 26,000 members in England and Wales who own and run land-based properties. We estimate that our members account for about a third of properties in the rural private rented sector.
David Simmonds
Q
Judicaelle Hammond: Unfortunately I do not think the Bill is going to make it much better in the sense that the main issue is the availability of housing full stop, and particularly the availability of affordable housing. Our members are doing a great deal already to provide that. We reckon that 23% of our members’ properties are let out at less than 80% of market rates, but at the end of the day there probably is not enough to go round and therefore we see the changes to the planning sector as the key. What the Bill might do, particularly with the demise of section 21, is to make it more difficult for people to enter or want to stay in the private rented sector, which is an issue. Again, as I said, it is by no means the only issue. I think the real key is supply.
David Simmonds
Q
Judicaelle Hammond: Yes. The main issue is the ability of the courts to deal with the extra cases that might be coming their way. One of the solutions, perhaps, is to look at some of the mandatory grounds and make them paper-based. That might improve things.
In terms of section 21, I should make it clear that among our membership the average time that the tenancy lasts is 7.5 years, which is nearly twice as long as the national average. Our members are responsible landlords; many of them will have had tenants who have been there for decades. We are not in the business of evictions or fast turnaround. We are not using section 21 very much, but when it has been used—it has included, for example, issues about antisocial behaviours—we have had some horror stories of members waiting for 12 to 18 months to get their properties back.
Without section 21, in the courts I think it takes at the moment 24 weeks from application for possession to actual possession, and some members are taking far longer than that with county courts that have closed. Digitisation might be a good thing, but how long will that take? There is an issue for us about reducing, unwittingly perhaps, the supply of private rented sector properties in rural areas as a result of the Bill.
David Simmonds
Q
Judicaelle Hammond: We are grateful to the Government for the new ground 5A, which deals with incoming agricultural workers. That will help—no question about that. And we are grateful for the new ground 5C, which is a ground to get property back because a job has ended, where the property was limited to the employment.
There are a couple of other grounds that are not covered at the moment and would be needed for rural businesses. The vast majority of rural businesses are not linked to farming or agriculture, but there might still be times when—we hear this from our members all the time—the provision of accommodation is necessary to attract or retain people, particularly when there is nothing else around. They could be in a really remote rural area or it could be because, for example, the person in that job needs to be on call, which would apply to security, caretakers or vets. Or it could be for people working antisocial hours in hospitality, for example, or at a wedding venue, where there is no longer public transport available at the time they are meant to finish or they need to start really early to set up before the wave of tourists come—and so on.
Increasing and expanding ground 5A to include service occupancies in very defined circumstances would be really helpful. To avoid abuse, there are definitions of what that could cover in other legislation that could be referred to. That is the main ground.
The second ground that is needed for agricultural workers is a new ground for what is known as suitable alternative accommodation. Some categories of agricultural workers have protected tenancies under existing legislation—the Rent (Agriculture) Act 1976—and assured agricultural occupants are also protected under the Housing Act 1988. For example, you might have a retired dairyman or indeed their widow who is still in the main dairy. You need to recruit somebody to replace that dairyman. If you have more than one property, it would be useful to have a ground to get it back, in order to then move the retired dairyman or the widow in that property. Obviously, if you have only one property, it is game over, but in the case that you have a small portfolio, it would be really useful to have that, because you have a legal obligation to rehome that person but you need the property in which they currently are.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Judicaelle Hammond: Yes, sure. I think it needs updating because it was designed for problems in the social sector. It might or might not be applicable to the private rented sector. It also does not deal very well with older properties, which is the vast bulk of what our members have. To judge the private rented sector against the decent homes standard as it currently is would be, I think, misleading, and it would have all sorts of unintended consequences. For example, in small cottages in rural areas, there are typically very small kitchens and so on. They would not necessarily fit, and it would destroy the character if you were to change that—
The Chair
Straighten your ties, because we are now going to be on Zoom. We have until 3.20 pm. Please can you introduce yourself?
Anna Evans: I am Anna Evans, director of Indigo House. We are a housing consultancy based in Scotland, but we cover the UK in terms of affordable housing research and consultancy.
David Simmonds
Q
Anna Evans: I am here as an expert on the Scottish private rented tenancy and the reforms that have happened in Scotland, so I do not think I could necessarily answer the question about what the Bill could do. So far, the legislation in Scotland, through the private residential tenancy, has failed to address anything on affordability. It brought in rent adjudication and what were called rent pressure zones, which local authorities had the power to determine. Those failed due to a lack of data, and the rent adjudication system has been effective for only about 230 tenants out of the 300,000-odd households in the private rented sector. The Scottish Government are looking to address that through the current Housing (Scotland) Bill, rent regulation and rent control, but to date, the legislation has done nothing for affordability.
David Simmonds
Q
Anna Evans: We have not examined that particular question, but in terms of supply, new build in the private rented sector in Scotland has probably stabilised rather than grown. Most of the growth in the private rented sector has been through the existing stock, and of course, there is growth in purpose-built student accommodation. There has not been a huge amount of new build and regeneration in the private rented sector, certainly over the last five years, but I do not think you could necessarily attribute that lack of growth solely to new tenancy. A huge number of other things have been happening in regulation in Scotland, and there is obviously the wider tax regime, too.
David Simmonds
Q
Anna Evans: For tenants, the positives are a new foundation of rights and there should be more legal security. Tenants in Scotland enjoy open-ended tenancy and specific grounds for eviction, and there are longer notice periods. It is gradually moving to more of a contractual, rather than a subjective, relationship.
I should say, though, that there are very considerable differences in satisfaction between the general population of private rented tenants and the lower end, where lower income tenants or those who are more vulnerable are still disadvantaged. That is because of the overriding demand-supply imbalance. There is a fear among tenants about challenging, if they know that there are very few affordable alternatives on the market.
For landlords, I would say that they are generally settled with the private residential tenancy now—it has been in place for over five years, and they can see the consistency in practice and greater clarity in rights and responsibilities. Clearly, it is less flexible, but the difficulties that landlords have in Scotland are to do with subsequent legislation, and in particular, rent control.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Anna Evans: Yes.
The Chair
The acoustics in this room are notoriously bad, so it would help us all if you were able to keep your voice up, please.
Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: I will do.
David Simmonds
Q
Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: I agree with that exemption. Purpose-built student accommodation exists for a very specific purpose. Therefore, operators of that kind of accommodation need to ensure that they are renting only to tenants—they need to have the means to regain possession. Often, they have planning obligations linked to the fact that they should only house students in that type of housing, so if they had a situation where students were able to stay for an indefinite period, they might start to have non-students living in the accommodation, which would be problematic for the ongoing management of the property.
David Simmonds
Q
Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: Yes, that is problematic. Every year, about 700,000 students live in the kind of housing that you describe, which I will call off-street housing. I hope everybody knows what I mean by that: a shared student house or flat that is not in purpose-built accommodation. About 700,000 students rely on that type of housing every year. It is more affordable, and it is available when students need it, which is at the start of their academic cycle. We are concerned about the potential loss of that housing, and we are concerned that because of elements of the Bill, it could become more expensive over time. It is an affordable part of the student housing sector at the moment. Rents are generally much lower than for other types of student housing—about £130 a week, on average—so it supports students with lower budgets to live at university in a more affordable way. We are concerned about the loss of that type of housing.
David Simmonds
Q
Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: In principle, I support the idea that landlords who are part of some sort of accreditation or recognised scheme should have an exemption for their accommodation in the same way as PBSA does. There are other ways of doing that. We at Unipol submitted some evidence with a suggestion that there should be a student tenancy for use in the off-street housing sector, which offers a fixed term with some other elements to it that would be very advantageous to students. Student housing is niche—it is very specific and has a very specific function—and certain practices and elements in there we think need special attention.
A fixed-term tenancy for students would allow landlords to regain possession but provide the security of a fixed term to students, as well as benefits to them that speak to their specific needs. For example, people should not be able to use guarantors for students—that is restrictive and difficult for students from low-income backgrounds —and students should be able to give notice in certain circumstances, such as if they have left their course. If they are no longer at university, it would be very handy if they could give two months’ notice and that is that. We think that would be right.
We also think that there is a real problem of early renting in the world of student housing—students who might need a tenancy from July end up renting places in September and October, because of pressure in the market. There is a shortage of student housing, and that is a real issue, so students rent earlier and earlier to get ahead of the market. We think that a cooling-off period should be attached to a student tenancy.
Those are real pressures and difficulties that students experience, so we think that they need special treatment in the Bill. As I said, there are 700,000 students, which is not an inconsiderable number. They should have special treatment.
The Chair
And Suzannah Young, who is joining us on Zoom.
Suzannah Young: Thank you, Chair. I am Suzannah Young, a policy officer at the National Housing Federation. We represent housing associations in England—social landlords providing 2.7 million homes to 6 million people. I will say a word about housing associations, if I may, because the Bill will have implications for them, as they offer assured tenancies. As they are not for profit, housing associations invest any income back into the development and maintenance of homes and into supporting residents and communities. They seek to provide tenants with long-term stability and security of tenure in good-quality, safe and affordable homes. We are a sector that has always offered assured tenancies and lower rents, and that delivers housing types unlikely to be found in the private rented sector, including three quarters of supported housing for people on low incomes with care and support needs. We therefore support the Bill’s aims to give greater rights and protections to renters.
David Simmonds
Q
Melanie Leech: Shall I kick off? Thank you for the question. The first thing to say is that we support the aims of the Bill and the drive to raise standards in the private rented sector. In particular, I would highlight measures such as the compulsory ombudsman—of course, many institutional landlords are already voluntarily members of the housing ombudsman service—along with the landlord database, which we have been calling for since 2008, the application of the decent homes standards and Awaab’s law to the sector, and recognition of the particular nature of the purpose-built student accommodation sector, which of course you have just been talking about.
Our major concern with the Bill is that the courts will not be ready for the abolition of section 21. A cross-party consensus that a better functioning court system is an essential part of the reforms has been a significant factor in maintaining landlord support for rental reform. Its importance has consistently been recognised in the political debate—by the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government in the last Parliament, which looked at the previous Government’s reforms, and by the Mayor of London in his work on a London model. However, despite serious discussions starting on rental reform in 2017, we have made almost no progress on court reform, which leaves landlords with little confidence that sufficient improvements will be made to make these reforms work well. That, of course, should be the objective: not just to pass these reforms, but to ensure they work well for both landlords and tenants.
One way of improving the court process is to digitalise both the process and the interface with claimants and defendants. We are really pleased that the Housing Minister is committed to continuing with the digitalisation project, but that is not going to deliver improvements any time soon. We are therefore heartened to hear the Housing Minister also talking about additional resource. This is essential because with section 21 gone, the courts will need to consider and process possession cases under section 8. Government data suggests that it currently takes just over seven months to process section 8 possession cases, including cases related to antisocial behaviour and rent arrears. It is worth stressing that that is an average. It is not uncommon to hear of cases taking more than a year.
There is also a huge shortage of court bailiffs in parts of the country. For example, in some London boroughs it can take five months to secure the services of a court bailiff, even when your claim has been vindicated. That also, of course, has consequences for people who cannot access those homes that would be freed up, for example in cases of poor behaviour and rent arrears.
While we recognise that improving the courts will not be a precondition of section 21 ending, at the very least we can call on the Government to outline what the justice system being ready means, both for tenants and responsible landlords; to commit to bringing waiting times down when it comes to the courts considering and processing legitimate possession cases; to ensure that the courts have clear and commonly agreed key performance indicators, which the Select Committee in the last Parliament recommended; and to improve staffing of the courts and tribunals, including recruiting more bailiffs.
We would also urge this Committee to scrutinise that aspect of the Bill in detail, and to consider calling for evidence from the Ministry of Justice—so far as we are aware, we have never actually heard directly from the Ministry of Justice, which is best placed to explain what procedures will be in place to make sure the courts are strengthened to deal with these cases—and to ask what progress is being made on digitalisation. We urge the Committee to scrutinise the justice impact test shared between the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Ministry of Justice—which will contain the projections on which the impact for this part of the Bill is based—so that we can all see that those have been properly scrutinised and that the court reforms that we need can be delivered.
Timothy Douglas: At Propertymark, we recognise that there is an ongoing cost of living crisis and there is huge demand for private rented property. We also recognise the manifesto commitments from this Government and the other parties to the changes contained in the legislation. We certainly acknowledge a drive towards improved standards, but we all have to recognise the unintended consequences and the impact of the changes on landlords, agents and the supply of property.
Certainly, our members are left wondering how this Bill will help to meet the huge demand for private rented property. Our data shows that on average there are almost 10 new applicants registered for each available property. One member in the west midlands, who has 13 offices across the region, has seen their lets—the number of properties—reduced from 5,348 to 5,006 since the start of the year, so we cannot underestimate the incentives for landlords or the investor appetite. These are significant changes. As has been said, we must get a commitment to reform the courts, the grounds have to be robust, and we must see enforcement of the existing rules by local authorities, never mind the raft of additional heavy-handed measures included in this legislation. We must retain fixed-term tenancies as an option where mutually beneficial for all parties, to retain flexibility and choice in the market.
The Chair
Suzannah Young, do you wish to add to your initial remarks?
Suzannah Young: In response to the specific question on the private rented sector, it is not an area where I have the most evidence to give, as my main area is the impact on housing associations. However, one thing I can say specifically is that we think that the proposed private rented sector housing ombudsman is absolutely right. Residents in the private rented sector should have access to an ombudsman. It is important that access is clear and easy to navigate for tenants, and that they have routes to redress where things have gone wrong.
From that perspective, and from the perspective of housing associations, we would like to ensure clarity about the remit of the new ombudsman. There is already an ombudsman service for social housing. However, some housing associations also provide market rent homes. It will therefore need to be clear what the expectations on housing associations are, in terms of reporting on their market rent homes, and it should also be clear to tenants which ombudsman they should go to. For example, sometimes there will be social and market rent tenants in the same building with the same landlord. We need clarity on remits so that there is no confusion.
I would like to comment on the points that Melanie Leech made about the readiness of the courts. Housing associations have experience of the impact of delays in the courts and the fast-tracking of possession cases during lockdown. Our members have experience that could be of use in the future. Our members report to us that there are already delays in the court system, which we heard earlier. It can take many months to get a possession hearing. That is a particular problem where possession is being sought, for example, for serious antisocial behaviour or domestic abuse, where delays to possession can increase the risk to tenants from perpetrators.
If the Government wish to implement, for example, a system of fast-tracking of serious cases, there will need to be a robust mechanism. If all cases are fast-tracked, we will be in the same position as if no cases are fast-tracked. We had some feedback from our members about how the courts could have helped with improving their capacity, such as increasing bailiff availability, increasing clerk availability to help to deal with the paperwork and logging of cases on the new online portal, ensuring training for district judges, and addressing the health and safety concerns of bailiffs. If the Committee wishes, I can also give some evidence, either now or later, on the impact on housing associations.
David Simmonds
Q
Timothy Douglas: I think more clarity is needed in the letting agent space. Letting agents are already required to sign up to one of the two Government-approved redress schemes, but those two schemes do not adjudicate in the same way. The property ombudsman will work to a code of practice, and the property redress scheme would work to that code of practice or common law in order to make the adjudication. We are adding an additional layer to that through a landlord ombudsman. Our recommendation would be that those landlords who are fully managing property should sign up to a redress scheme, but we realise that that argument is not necessarily in the legislation and has not been won.
We must look at the myriad management practices—let and rent collection, or fully managed. As a tenant, working with both a landlord and an agent, we have to get adjudication of this new scheme and the existing schemes, and get a code of practice in place for the sector, so that we are all working to the same standards and the same adjudication. Are we also expecting landlords, like agents, to have a complaints procedure that tenants have to work through? We need that parity before we even talk about tribunals and the other things.
We must use the existing schemes and that expertise in the sector. There are 19,000 letting agents in England, and roughly 50% of landlords use an agent, so 50% of landlords are already plugged into those schemes. They have knowledge and experience. Let us get a code of practice built in, so that we are all adjudicating on the same level. Let us get some sort of housing complaints portal across tenures, so that the tenant can make a complaint that is filtered to the relevant ombudsman. We must help the consumer. We are adding a layer of complexity and we need to iron out some of those issues first.
Melanie Leech: I will build on that, but by standing back slightly from the question, because I think this is a subset of a much broader set of issues around transition. This will be hugely complex. We have 4.6 million tenants who will need new leases. Some of them are sub-letting and so on. We have all those new agreements to draft. We are going to need lots of training for the professionals who are managing this. We will need new processes and guidance for agents and local authorities. We will need adjustments to insurance and mortgage policies. The lesson from Wales and Scotland is that a big bang approach does not necessarily work because you cannot get all of that right in one go. We are keen to work with the Government to start thinking now about the implementation strategy. Clarity for tenants and landlords about how the new system will work, where to go and so on is critical to that, but we need to start thinking about that now and to create an implementation framework, because if we do not, these new reforms will not work well.
Timothy Douglas: Scotland has been talked about as an example, but of course, it has phased in private residential tenancies—there still are assured tenancies working in Scotland. But Scotland has a long-standing landlord register, and it has letting agent registration and regulation. There is a tribunal that is free to use for both landlords and tenants. Scotland definitely had a 12 to 15-month phase-in approach for the PRT to kick in. From what we are hearing, we will have Royal Assent, three months and a commencement, and then all these tenancies will switch over. That is an issue for all agents, but certainly for our larger agents, who are managing thousands of tenancies up and down the country. A consideration of the impacts of the transition and extending that would be welcome before the implementation of this legislation.
David Simmonds
Q
Timothy Douglas: From Propertymark’s point of view, we want to see warm, decent homes. The agent can actually be a layer of enforcement, whether they instruct the landlord to take on that property or not, as well as mortgage providers. Unlike social housing, which is designed to specific specifications, the property redress scheme comprises a range of property without specification. The decent homes standard was argued about in the previous Session. It was consulted on by the last Government. There were numerous working groups with the last Government and, yes, it is going to be consulted on again.
From Propertymark’s point of view for the private rented sector, we have to link up with local authority assessments. We have to focus on fit-for-purpose. I know that local authorities—certainly a local authority in the midlands—will, without fail, change all the boilers every five years in their housing stock. I am sorry, but private rented landlords do not have the money to do that, and the social rented sector has received billions of pounds in eco funding as well. If we are to get that parity between the private and social rented sector, the private rented sector needs to see that funding come forward, certainly in the thermal comfort space—cool in the summer, warm in the winter. Why, for the 18 different archetypes of property across the country, are we going for a one-size-fits-all energy efficiency target? That is going to nullify older properties in England and Wales where the regulations extend and rural properties. Let us simplify the HHSRS as well. There are existing levers that we need.
Finally, on this point about extending decent homes and Awaab’s law, we welcome these steps as long as we get them right for the uniqueness of the private rented sector. In the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, which was passed in the last Parliament, there is a requirement for all property managers in the social rented sector to be qualified. We think that should be extended to the private rented sector to all letting agents as well. If we can get that code of practice in place through adjudication and redress, we can qualify our letting agents. We get parity, drive up standards and help enforcement. That would certainly go a long way towards the decent homes standard and Awaab’s law being implemented in this sector.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Melanie Leech: The first thing to say, as you know, is that institutional investment into the build-to-rent sector specifically is a growing part of the housing supply mix. It is bringing in genuinely additional investment, because it is the type of investment that does not typically invest in build to sell—you have people wanting to use large amounts of capital to generate secure income streams so that they can match against pension liabilities, insurance liabilities and so on. Probably the key word in that is “secure”. Anything that damages investors’ confidence that the income they will get from their investment is at risk will undermine our potential to unlock investment into homes and the rental sector. Currently, the peak year for build-to-rent delivery was 15,000 homes. We think that you can double that to 30,000 homes, with the right conditions, and some of my members would go further and say that you can double that again. We are looking at an investment stream that could be a very significant part of helping to deliver the Government’s aspirations to build more homes.
What I have already talked about, in terms of the ability of the courts to cope with the reforms, is an important indicator of confidence. Investors will look at that and think, “This changes the basis on which I have invested. It makes it more difficult for me to manage the property efficiently.” I think the issues around rent determination also have that potential, so there is nervousness around needing to use section 13 and rent increases. There is a suspicion that tenants have nothing to lose by challenging any rent increase, so it is about getting the framework right around how we define what an unreasonable rent increase might be and how we manage those cases that might come before tribunals. There are some issues around that that we would like to see more clarity around and redressed.
In general, we are really supportive, because in the part of the market that I represent the decent homes standard already would not cause us an issue in terms of implementation and so on. We are trying to raise standards in the private rented sector, and we are raising standards in the private rented sector, but the key thing is to implement the reforms in a way that does not undermine investor confidence, so that we do not inhibit the supply of homes.
The Chair
We have Dr Dawson here physically and Councillor Hug on Zoom. Could you please introduce yourselves briefly?
Dr Henry Dawson: Good afternoon. My name is Dr Henry Dawson. I work as a lecturer at Cardiff Metropolitan University and I am a member of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health’s housing advisory panel. I am here today to represent the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.
Cllr Adam Hug: I am Councillor Adam Hug. I am the Local Government Association’s chair for local infrastructure and net zero, which basically means its housing spokesman, among other things, and I am the leader of Westminster City Council. I am here at the LGA conference in Harrogate; apologies for that.
David Simmonds
Q
Dr Henry Dawson: Councillor Hug, shall I start and then pass on to you?
Cllr Adam Hug: Okay.
Dr Henry Dawson: At the moment, we have quite considerable extra burdens being placed on local authorities. The two major areas for that would be in the enforcement around the database and in managing the landlords who have either been rejected from or refused to join the ombudsman’s scheme.
In both cases, the fees that are available to be charged for the schemes will generate some revenue. However, national schemes, by their very nature, will have to be relatively low cost. Rent Smart Wales is a good example. It has an application fee that is little more than £100, so that allows for some intervention. However, the majority of the burden for the enforcement side of things under this new Bill will be placed on local authorities. If just 5% of a sector was to refuse to engage with one scheme or the other, a typical local authority would have around 700 properties that it had to carry out formal enforcement work on, and an awful lot of those would require civil penalty notices or prosecutions.
The CIEH is very keen to see that the funding for local authorities is linked directly to the fees for these schemes and represents the cost proportionately, with the additional burden being placed on the enforcement bodies for the private rented sector—environmental health and private housing enforcement teams.
The notable exception in the Bill is that the ombudsman fees are permitted to cover the cost for the ombudsman to enforce its statutory functions, but there is nothing specific in there, as there is for the database, for those funds to be passed on directly to a local authority.
The other thing we have found with previous legislation is that there is usually short-term additional funding from the Secretary of State’s general budget to support local authorities in introducing these new burdens, but then that sort of tails off. It is replaced with a whole miscellany of short periods of funding, which makes it impossible for local authorities to manage staffing and attract and train up new staff. We are therefore ending up with a situation where approximately half the posts we have for local authority enforcement teams in environmental health are going unfilled for more than six months. It has been a real hand-to-mouth existence for local government enforcement teams. If we could have funding proportionate to the size of the sector in a particular area coming directly from the fees for these national schemes, it would be very gratefully received by local authorities.
David Simmonds
Q
Cllr Adam Hug: To echo that, I think it is important to understand where we are starting from. We have seen environmental health teams in councils cut over the last 14 years, because of the financial situations councils find themselves in. Environmental health officer posts are one of the top three most challenging roles for councils to fill at the moment. It is really important that the new burdens doctrine is applied properly, with up-front funding to make sure that councils can build teams to deliver this as quickly as possible.
We welcome the proposed fine retention, but we think there may be a case for raising the upper limit for the most egregious cases from the current £7,000 up to about £30,000 to fully capture the impacts of some of the worst properties, but also to ensure that revenue can fund council services that are enforcing this. We welcome this, but we must make sure that local councils are properly resourced to deliver it.
Dr Henry Dawson: May I make one additional comment, please? At the moment, the Bill makes substantial use of civil penalty notices. We welcome the use of them. It is very welcome to see funding coming directly into local authority enforcement coffers, as it is something we do not get through prosecutions that are carried out through the courts. It is, however, worth pointing out that they represent the very thinnest end of the wedge for the enforcement activity of local authorities. We only use them where all the informal approaches—service of legal notices and so on—have been unsuccessful, and we are forced to resort to taking more punitive action.
In the majority of cases, we can resolve things informally with landlords, and the majority of landlords are good providers. It is just worth noting that while the penalties are a source of income, they are not predictable or particularly sustainable. Only around 50% of what we charge in penalties at the moment is collected, because of the difficulties in trying to capture the money at the other end of the process. I would just caution against assuming that they are a very reliable source that will keep us going. There are an awful lot of other things we have to pay for.
David Simmonds
Q
Under the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, local authorities are significant users of the private rented sector for people who would otherwise be at risk of homelessness. It is common for local authorities to pay rent-in-advance deposits and use various other guarantee schemes to secure private rented sector homes for people who would otherwise not be able to access a home. Councillor Hug, I am interested in how you think the Bill would impact on the performance of that duty.
Cllr Adam Hug: In terms of the ability for councils to procure accommodation, having stability in the rental market will help us in managing demand pressures. We are conscious that there is an interaction with the Housing Act 2004 requirements around the prevention duty. That is one of the major challenges created by this Bill, so we want to ensure that local authorities are properly resourced to cover the potential additional time beyond the current 56 days, where we are having to provide prevention support to people while enforcement happens—[Interruption.]
David Simmonds
Q
Cllr Adam Hug: Apologies; I was just saying that the biggest area of concern about our homelessness duties is ensuring that the increased costs to councils of providing the additional prevention duty over the length of time for which the section 8 notices are going through the court are properly captured. That, on the interaction with housing, is the area we are most concerned about, but it is all perfectly solvable.
David Simmonds
Q
Cllr Adam Hug: We are not aware that this Bill creates a particular problem in that regard. We can come back to you in writing if there is anything further, but it is not an area of particular concern to us at the moment.
David Simmonds
Q
Cllr Adam Hug: No, we do not think it does. The key thing for us is that you have the current selective licensing mechanisms, but councils face bureaucratic hurdles in terms of getting the Secretary of State’s sign-off for large schemes that wish to go down that route. In terms of ensuring decisions are made at the right level, in line with the Government’s commitment to devolution, we think that for selective licensing to really fulfil its potential we must ensure there is no longer a need for the Secretary of State’s sign-off.
Obviously, that sort of licensing can improve standards in the sector, help councils to recruit environmental health officers, beef up the function and make sure we are playing a proactive role in helping manage the private rented sector in a local area. Different councils have used it, but at the moment it is hamstrung by the bureaucratic hurdle of getting it up to the Secretary of State. Obviously, we have a Secretary of State who is probably more minded to support the use of such schemes than was the case in the past, but it still creates an unnecessary hurdle and a delay when councils could just get on and use these licensing schemes that are desperately needed.
Dr Henry Dawson: May I add some responses? At the moment, we have a maximum five-year duration for discretionary licensing schemes. Once the schemes have been brought into force, it takes a certain amount of time to create the partnerships with other organisations, such as waste and street scene departments, police and antisocial behaviour teams, and antisocial behaviour schemes within the council, other charities and NHS-related bodies. They usually take between one and three years to mature.
Local authorities are also required to entice enough staff to be able to immediately provide a strong inspectorate to run these schemes. That can be anything from five to 50 staff, depending on the size of the scheme. We find that the five-year duration of schemes is a significant impediment, so it would be much more welcome to see something like a 10-year timeframe. That would permit us to train up new staff through the existing one or three-year qualifications. It would also allow these partnerships to mature so we see some of the true benefits of the schemes.
The other thing is that a large private rented sector is required; that is a point that a local authority has to prove when it is setting up one of these selective licensing schemes. We see that as an unnecessary hurdle to their introduction. They are part of a package of measures to address a range of problems associated with housing conditions, crime and antisocial behaviour across an area, and we see that as being an unnecessary impediment to their execution. It is one more thing that the local authority has to prove.
Finally, discretionary schemes, and particularly selective licensing, are one of the few things that provide access to properties. Even though the legislation has been changed, with some regulations to expand the use of selective licensing to include dealing with poor housing conditions, under the Housing Act 2004 we are unable to enforce conditions relating to the condition and contents of a property. We can only change those in HMO licensing conditions; we cannot change them in selective licensing conditions. Therefore, this is the first opportunity that we have really had, with a piece of primary legislation, to amend the Housing Act 2004 to provide parity in what local authority environmental health officers can require in the conditions and contents of properties through selective licensing, in addition to HMO licensing.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
You mentioned the fines—£7,000 for first or minor compliance issues, and £40,000 for more serious ones— and they can be levied repeatedly. I just want to get a sense of how much of the cost of enforcement you think those fines can account for. We recognise that it will not be enough, and that the new burdens principle will have to operate, but have you got a sense of it in terms of, as you say, how many cases are resolved before it reaches that point? What will be the willingness under the new system to levy these kinds of fines, and what proportion of the enforcement costs do you think, on average, local authorities might see those fines account for?
Dr Henry Dawson: Thank you for your question, Minister. At the moment, we have the use of civil penalty notices, and I would defer to a report by the National Residential Landlords Association to provide a summary of their use over the period between 2001 and 2003. We see that approximately £12 million was given in penalties over that period, and around £6 million of that was recorded as collected through penalties over that period.
It is also worth noting that these civil penalty notices are intended to be an alternative to a prosecution through the courts; they are not intended to be a revenue generator. The licensing fees, the ombudsman fee and the database fees are where we can generate the revenue at the front end. These civil penalty notices are being used as a final, ultimate punishment for some of the worst offenders. Yes, we can administer £7,000 for the initial offence and £40,000 for ongoing offenders, but they really are intended to be a deterrent, as opposed to a source of revenue.
The majority—maybe 90%—of a local authority’s work is carried out through informal advice giving, with people ringing up and asking for guidance in what is a very complex legislative environment. That is certainly something that landlords and letting agents would like to have more of. We serve formal legal notices, but it is only when we have gone through a whole series of informal approaches that we move to a formal approach through a legal notice and, ultimately, a prosecution or penalty notice. Therefore, really, we are looking at maybe 5%—to pluck a figure out of the air—which is a tiny proportion of what we have got across the country, and probably the only national figures we have on this are those that have been pulled together by the NRLA.
The Chair
Anny Cullum, would you like to introduce yourself?
Anny Cullum: I am Anny Cullum, and I am the policy officer at and a founding member of Acorn, an organisation that has been running for the last 10 years. It has been operating like a trade union but on community issues, so we have lots of members who campaign on housing issues and operate effectively as a tenants’ union in around 27 places across England and Wales.
David Simmonds
Q
Anny Cullum: We are pleased to see stricter measures and penalties for landlords laid out in the Bill, and we are particularly happy that new burdens funding will be available to councils to enact them. However, our experience as a tenants’ union is that often councils are so overstretched trying to do the things that they already have to do that tenants are waiting months before getting the support they need. Often their landlords have been given very informal notices and long timescales to get things done, which is no good for a tenant living in a dangerous home.
A great thing about this Bill is that section 21s will be banned. Something that we have seen a lot—we had a member in Sheffield go through this recently—is a local authority coming in and investigating poor conditions in a home, giving an informal notice to the landlord, and the landlord then issuing a section 21; the tenant basically has to pay for the fact that they dared to complain. We are really pleased that that will end, but we think there should be more funding for local authorities, not just extra burden funding for the new things, but for the stuff that they already have to do.
Our union really supports landlord licensing. We have done campaigns in this area in 11 different places around the country. It is incredibly popular with our members; it came out as one of our top motions at our recent conference. If done well, landlord licensing can be self-funding, and—this is a great thing to think about—it gives councils the ability to inspect homes without the tenant having to raise the issue themselves, so you can find out about bad practice and malpractice without the tenant feeling at risk of complaining. Obviously, they will have fewer risks once this legislation comes through, but it will take a long time for tenants to feel comfortable raising their voices, which our organisation tries to help them to do.
We really support the points made by colleagues in the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. We have campaigned in a lot of places for city-wide landlord licensing, as it is something that our members really care about, but a lot of councils have told us that they are not willing to take the risk of trying to implement wider licensing schemes, because they can be turned down by the Secretary of State. They have said that the work you need to do to put that application in is quite labour-intensive, and they do not want to risk doing all that work for it not to come to fruition. In the spirit of devolution and supporting local authorities to do the job they should be doing, give them back powers to license as much of the city as they want, increase the term to up to 10 years, and do away with the bureaucratic hurdles and the evidence gathering they need to do to get the wider licensing schemes.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Anny Cullum: One area our Members feel particularly strongly about that could be strengthened in the Bill to ensure that it delivers the change we all want to see is measures against illegal evictions. It will be wonderful when section 21 is banned, but we know that there are lots of landlords who issue section 21 eviction notices in response to tenants complaining, because they do not want to maintain their properties. For that unscrupulous group, we are worried that illegal evictions might take the place of section 21 evictions once section 21s are banned. We feel that the Bill could go further to make sure that this is not an easy option for them to take.
Hardly any cases of illegal eviction ever make it to court. Safer Renting data showed that there were 26 prosecutions in 2022—the year we have the most recent data for—but it knew about 9,000 cases of illegal eviction. Even when illegal evictions get to court, the fines are £1,000. That is less than my monthly rent. It is not a deterrent for the average landlord. We would like to suggest some changes to make sure that this is not used as a back door to get around the legislation.
We would like to see local councils given a statutory duty and the funding to investigate all cases of illegal eviction. Recently we had a member in Leeds whose landlord kept issuing false eviction notices—ones that he could not go to his local council to ask for support with, so he stayed there. The landlord used many different underhand ways to try to force him out, including sending men with knives to cut the wires in his house so that he did not have any electricity. He has been on the phone for hours to his council and the police, and they have not been very helpful. We want to see those bodies empowered with both the duties and the money to act for tenants.
Police forces need more training. I have supported tenants who landlords have tried to intimidate out of their house. The police do not seem to know that this is a criminal offence or that they have the ability to act on it, so it would be good if there was training on that. We would also like it to be made easier for people and councils to take these criminal cases forward. It can be quite hard to meet the evidence threshold needed to get a rent repayment order, so we would like to see changes there, which I have laid out in our written evidence. We would also like the civil penalty notices that councils can use to be raised to up to £60,000. I know that sounds high, but being forced out of your home with your family is a horrendous thing to happen to anyone. We want to ensure that this is treated with the seriousness that it deserves.
Illegals eviction is one area that my members asked me to speak about. I have also spoken about landlord licensing. A further issue is rent in advance. We are overjoyed that this Bill will end bidding wars, which is something we have campaigned for in different places across the country. We have tried to get agents themselves to pledge not to do it and then mystery shopped them to make sure that they are not. But if you allow agents and landlords at the start of a tenancy to ask, “How many months up front can you give me? Someone else said they could give me a year”, that is another form of bidding war, just at a different point of the process.
We conducted some research at the start of this month and found that benefit claimants were three times more likely to be asked for a year’s rent up front than people not claiming benefits. We are pleased that the Government are keen to crack down on discrimination in the private rented sector against people on low incomes, but this is one way that it is happening and we feel that the Bill could do more on that issue. I have two more areas that my members want me to speak to, if that is okay.
The Chair
Minister, would you introduce yourself very briefly, please?
Matthew Pennycook: Yes. I am Matthew Pennycook and I am the Minister of State for Housing and Planning.
David Simmonds
Q
The first question is simply this: what advice have you received so far and what are the plans in respect of the interaction with the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017? That is the point I was asking Councillor Hug about—the Homelessness Reduction Act creating that opportunity for local authorities to act as a guarantor to pay deposits, including rent in advance, to secure a property that would not otherwise be available to that tenant. I ask that question in the light of some of the evidence that we have heard about the impact of guarantors and deposits within the Bill, which I appreciate is not yet a settled matter.
Secondly, I invite you to share your thoughts on enforcement authorities, which my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon highlighted, which are referred to in chapter two. I have an idea why this might be the case, but the Bill creates a specific measure, in clause 104(4), that says:
“A county council in England which is not a local housing authority may—
(a) enforce the landlord legislation;”—
The joy of local government: the Minister will know that county councils are not housing authorities, so it would perhaps be helpful if you could set out the Government’s thinking around that, and say how any advice or engagement may have taken place already with local Government to determine the way forward on that.
Matthew Pennycook: Did you say three or two questions?
David Simmonds
There are three questions, but I have forgotten the third one, so I will ask you those two questions and then find the third question and come back with it, if I may.
Matthew Pennycook: Let me take those two questions forward.
The point that I took from Councillor Hug was a very specific one about the trigger for homelessness prevention duties under the Bill. Currently the trigger is a section 21 notice; once the new system is in place, it will be a section 8 notice. In theory, that broadens the scope of the duty, if you like, and therefore we will consider new burdens funding for local authorities as a result, because it could increase the costs to them.
On the specific point about county courts, I want to make sure that I have understood the hon. Gentleman properly. I think it might be better if I write to him with the specifics, but I would assume that his question is linked to the fact that in many cases we need to look to assign a lead enforcement authority in particular parts of the country, because of the specific arrangements of governance in particular areas. However, I am more than happy to write to him with further detail on the point about counties.
David Simmonds
Q
I have a final point. A number of the witnesses today have made a point that clarity about what is permissive versus what is required is a significant issue for their organisations. In particular, we heard about that in respect of the ombudsman, the tribunal and the courts.
I am interested in hearing your thoughts about how this process evolves, and your degree of openness about bringing a higher degree of clarity, either through a greater degree of transparency about what may well find its way into the guidance given to those different organisations, or through those areas that you feel are more appropriate to becoming part of the Bill and then the Act itself.
Matthew Pennycook: On the database and the ombudsman, through this Bill we broadly mirror the provisions in the previous Government’s Bill, in the sense that the powers in the Bill are broad framework powers. A lot of the detail will come forward in secondary legislation.
There was a debate when we considered the previous Bill, which I think we will return to because it is a worthwhile one, about what prescriptive requirements, if any, you put in the Bill for either the database or the ombudsman. In general, my sense is there is a lot of value in putting most, if not all, of that detail into secondary legislation in a way that allows us to ensure over time that the database and the ombudsman evolve properly with changes to the sector, so you would not want to get too prescriptive. But we can tease out in the debates—I hope we do; we have today—the type of thing we expect the ombudsman to do, and the full range. The Housing Ombudsman made clear that there is a “must” and a “could” on the ombudsman side. Similarly, there is a skimmed and a full-fat version of what you might include on the database.
As I have said, some of my contributions indicate that I think the database in particular could be an incredibly powerful tool. We should therefore be thinking through what we might include on it that would help tenants to assess who is a good landlord and who they should be comfortable signing a tenancy agreement with, and give local authorities the relevant information they need to bear down properly on disreputable and particularly criminal landlords. I am happy to be relatively open about that. We can be, and I hope are, fairly open in some of the debates about the type of things we and our constituents might like to see in secondary legislation.
Jacob Collier
Q
Matthew Pennycook: That is a good question. Like a lot of the debates we have had today, it is slightly out of the scope of the Bill, but you are right to ask it in the sense that the Bill is one part of the Government’s agenda for changing the housing system. There are lots of things we have to do on the home ownership side. You will know from our manifesto that we are committed to a permanent and more comprehensive mortgage guarantee scheme and a first dibs for first-time buyers scheme. In general, the Bill will hopefully empower renters by giving them greater protections, rights and security so that they can stay in their homes longer, build lives in their communities, avoid the risk of homelessness and, in many cases, by bearing down on unreasonable within-tenancy rent hikes, have the opportunity to save, which many do not have at the moment.
In answer to your question very specifically, the Bill is part of a wider agenda and touches on the supply issues we have debated. The Bill is not our answer to affordability in the private rented sector, and it cannot be. There are things that go beyond the scope of the Bill. However, in terms of the security, stability and certainty it provides for private renters, who are mainly at the top end of the market but would have, under better circumstances, the chance to save and buy a first home, the Bill will help in a number of ways.
Renters' Rights Bill (First sitting)
David Simmonds ExcerptsTuesday 22nd October 2024
(1 month ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Renters' Rights Bill 2024-26 View all Renters' Rights Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 22 October 2024 - (22 Oct 2024)
The Chair
For the very last question—a short question and short answer—I call David Simmonds.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Q
Ben Beadle: Yes. Straightforwardly, yes it is. Landlords will have to act differently under section 13. I would encourage landlords to speak with their tenants. No one wants to get a section 13 notice through their door as a surprise, so landlords do need to have some soft skills about them and have a sensible chat with their tenants, but yes is the straightforward answer.
The Chair
We have to bring things to a close now as the next witnesses are due in. I thank both our witnesses very much for coming and giving evidence this morning.
Examination of Witnesses
Tarun Bhakta and Tom MacInnes gave evidence.
The Chair
Good morning to both our new witnesses. Could you begin by introducing yourselves? Then I will go to Members to ask questions.
Tom MacInnes: Good morning. My name is Tom MacInnes. I am the director of policy at Citizens Advice.
Tarun Bhakta: My name is Tarun Bhakta. I am policy manager at Shelter.
David Simmonds
Q
Tarun Bhakta: First, I would like to thank the Committee for inviting us to give evidence today. To answer your question on how the Bill is different, there are significant changes from the previous version of the Bill. In our view, the previous version was of good intention, but full of aspects that would undermine its core purpose, particularly as the Bill moved forward and changes were introduced, for example to essentially remove periodic tenancies or reintroduce fixed-term tenancies—that minimum period for tenants.
Similarly, there were policies with a lot of shortcomings —ideas such as the no re-letting period after landlords evict a tenant. We have seen in Scotland that one in five landlord sale evictions have not ended up in sale, so there is evidence of abuse in the system. It is really important that there are measures to deter landlords from abusing the new section 8 system, and to catch landlords who are dishonestly evicting tenants. The previous Bill included only a three-month no re-letting period, which would have been much too small a deterrent for landlords seeking to abuse the eviction grounds and evict tenants dishonestly. We are really pleased to see changes in this Bill that go significantly further, such as the 12-month no re-letting period.
There were measures in the previous Bill that we would call half-baked, particularly when it came to notice periods. We know that the most common type of eviction in the new system will be for landlord sale or for landlords moving in. The previous version of the Bill included just two months’ notice, which would have retained and recreated many of the problems that we see in our current private rented sector, where tenants are faced with short notice and unreasoned evictions. We think many of those are avoidable, but we also know that that short notice is not long enough for renters to find a new place to live. There are really positive changes in this Bill in comparison with the previous version. We think it will go a very long way to addressing the needs, but given that we are so early in the Parliament —we welcome the speed at which the Bill is being implemented—it is still important to view this Bill as a work in progress.
In our evidence today, we will pick out two key areas. First, we think the Bill can go further in chapter 3—the discrimination clauses—on improving access to rented homes. Secondly, we think the Government need to take another look at rent increases. Looking at the evidence from tribunal cases, we do not think the current approach in the Bill—to tweak the work of the tribunal, as discussed in the previous panel—will achieve its aim of preventing evictions by the back door, or economic evictions, as they have been called. We think that the evidence that we have heard today on the tribunal today shows that we need to go further there.
Tom MacInnes: We would agree with quite a lot of that. The Bill does improve the position for renters. We agree with the changes around re-letting, but we would say that that is probably only as strong as the enforcement, so we would be interested in looking at that further. We also welcome the longer notice period and the stronger rules on discrimination against families and those receiving benefits. Those are definitely things that we think are improvements.
We may come on to this, but there are other areas in which we might be looking for a couple of improvements. In particular, there was some discussion earlier around the portal and the use of the portal. We think that it could be used for better establishing what the market rent was in an area. If you are talking about in-tenancy rent rises, is that possibly a place where you could agree what actual rents were, rather than past rents? There could be something useful there, but broadly speaking it is a step in the right direction.
David Simmonds
Q
Tarun Bhakta: Yes, I think so. I think you might be referring to talking about the evidence requirements on eviction grounds.
David Simmonds
indicated assent.
Tarun Bhakta: It has long been our call that the Bill should specify and set a higher threshold and make that clear, particularly for the landlord sale and the landlord moving in eviction grounds. We also think that the Bill should introduce a post-eviction proceeding.
There are two really important parts to establishing that clarity in the Bill. First, tenants and landlords need absolute clarity about what constitutes a legitimate eviction. We see through our legal services that the decision on whether to challenge an eviction notice in court is an incredibly complex and difficult one for tenants to make. The process of going through the courts to challenge an eviction is time-consuming, costly and very stressful for tenants, so it is about setting out that clarity, particularly in those landlord sale and landlord moving in eviction grounds. Making that threshold clear would provide clarity for tenants to help to make that decision. We believe that that would also have the effect of supporting tenants to understand where an eviction is legitimate and prevent some of those cases from making it to court.
Secondly, the current wording in the Bill is very open. It goes further in Scotland, in our view, and although it is all very well being confident in setting guidance for the courts and hoping that the judges make the right decision in court, tenants need that clarity before we reach the court stage. Also, judges do need some steer; we see some inconsistency in cases between judges, and it is not the case that they will all interpret the law in exactly the same way, so setting that clarity in the legislation is important. We cannot have a situation in which the landlord states that they intend to sell the property and that is case closed: we need more clarity than that.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Tarun Bhakta: It is difficult to set that to one side, so you will forgive me if I do not.
The Chair
Could the panel begin by introducing themselves?
Tom Darling: I am Tom Darling, director of the Renters’ Reform Coalition, which is a group of 21 leading housing organisations that have been campaigning for progressive reform of the private rented sector.
Ben Twomey: Good morning. I am Ben Twomey. I am a private renter myself. I am also chief executive of Generation Rent, the voice of private renters across the UK.
David Simmonds
Q
Tom Darling: I think you are asking about affordability assessments and the role they play in tenants being able to access rented housing. Is that right?
David Simmonds
Q
Tom Darling: As regards the Bill, we think that those sorts of affordability checks are acceptable, but we think that measures—as you have heard from previous witnesses—that go beyond that can be discriminatory, and often look to punish tenants and discriminate against tenants on the basis of their income. You heard about rent in advance and guarantors. We would like to see a limit to guarantors that says that, if you pass an affordability check, you should not be asked for a guarantor in addition.
Ben Twomey: We are in an interesting situation where someone could be working in a key worker or essential worker role but there are parts of the country in which it is unaffordable from them to live. They probably would not be able to pass some of these affordability checks to rent privately. That would be fine if there were other options available, but most private renters cannot afford to become a homeowner if we want to and cannot wait the 10-plus years to access social housing if we need to, so the only option is to find a way into private renting—otherwise we find ourselves in temporary accommodation. There are 150,000 children living in temporary accommodation right now. The Bill needs to go further to try to address that, because it speaks to some of the wider Government ambitions around making work pay. It does not really help us if our income increases but it is taken off us by our landlords before it reaches our pocket. Wider affordability questions, which I am sure we will come to, are relevant to the credit checks and the ability to rent privately.
David Simmonds
Q
Tom Darling: We think that local authorities should be funded on a per privately rented property basis. We have heard that the Government will set out new burdens funding, but we think that the funding should be allocated according to the size of the private rented sector in that area. I want to be really clear that we support selective licensing and would like to see it enhanced and deepened alongside the new database, and we think that a number of changes made by previous Administrations to the way selective licensing worked made it harder for local authorities to apply for selective licensing schemes. There are some straightforward changes that this Government could make: removing the Secretary of State’s veto over the schemes; allowing local authorities to refer to housing conditions when they are applying for selective licensing; and extending the schemes from five years to 10 years. We think that would work well alongside the database and not in lieu of the database.
Ben Twomey: If I could take the resourcing point and slightly widen it, there was a cost of £1.7 billion in the last year to local authorities for temporary accommodation —for housing people who are no longer in their homes. This Bill will end section 21, which is really welcome, because that is the leading cause of homelessness and ending it will hopefully make some savings for local authorities, as well as bring enormous benefits for tenants, who will be better protected.
There is also a Government cost of local housing allowance, which has been in the billions in the last few years. That is to give benefits to people so that they can afford to privately rent. This Bill could go further with affordability not only to protect people in their own homes but to make the Government change the way they resource the support they provide for people in their homes—moving some of that burden of cost away from the need to pay so much for private renting and towards a better-regulated market, which would put limits on the ability of landlords to raise rents.
David Simmonds
Q
Ben Twomey: I do not have any with me, but I can take a look at that and write to the Committee.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
It would not be a Bill Committee evidence session if every interest group was not telling us that it had a way to improve the Bill in some way and from different perspectives. We have heard a lot this morning about the various concerns and how they are being addressed. In general terms, however, particularly given your concerns about the previous Government’s Renters (Reform) Bill, do you think this Bill strikes the right balance and levels the playing field between landlord and tenant?
Tom Darling: I will start by introducing the situation in the private rented sector as it is today. The Resolution Foundation said this year that
“the UK’s expensive, cramped and ageing housing stock offers the worst value for money of any advanced economy.”
The private rented sector is the worst of our ageing housing stock; in fact, it is the worst of the worst. It is the least secure, the worst quality and the most expensive of the housing tenures in this country, and we have the worst of any major country in the world. That is embarrassing and that is what we are talking about here. We need root and branch reform. We are happy that the Government have acknowledged that more significant reforms are required than those that the previous Government put forward, but we still need to see some changes to the Bill to go even further and deal with the scale of the crisis we are dealing with.
Ben Twomey: We are delighted that the Government are pressing on with this work very quickly, and there is a promise in the manifesto to end section 21 immediately—as quickly as we can get this law passed. That is really welcome, as it will protect people from homelessness.
There are also lots of things in the Bill that I have no notes on. For example, the bidding wars legislation seems well-written; it seems like it will make a genuine difference to people like me, who have experienced being invited to bid on homes just because we reached the front of a queue and the landlord realised that they could up the rent. Some of the provisions—including the introduction of Awaab’s law into private renting—are beginning to create more of an even playing field, as you say, for renters compared with other tenures.
I want to take a moment to talk about someone I will call Ayesha from Hertfordshire. She is a schoolteacher and a single parent, and she has been struggling to keep up with the relentless rises in rent that she has faced in recent years. She says, “There are moments when I feel so overwhelmed and exhausted, like I’m carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. I try to stay strong for my children, but the stress and anxiety are always there, lingering in the background. I just want to provide them with the life they deserve, but with the way things are going I fear that I might not be able to. It’s a lonely, terrifying feeling, and it’s hard not to feel defeated by this constant struggle.”
It is important for people like Ayesha—given what is being said in this Committee, this Government and this Parliament as a whole; every MP in this room promised to end section 21 and, in more words or less, promised a fairer deal for renters—that this Bill takes the opportunity to resolve these issues. Maybe we will come to this, but we believe that that will involve limiting the ability for landlords to raise rents—not raising them to the market rate, but instead limiting them to the level of inflation or wage growth, so that rents begins to match the real, lived experience of people who are renting.
The Chair
This is our final witness; please introduce yourself for the benefit of Members.
Richard Blakeway: Thank you very much. I am Richard Blakeway, the housing ombudsman for England.
David Simmonds
Q
Richard Blakeway: That was not the first question I was expecting, but thank you very much. One of the requirements the Bill introduces is for landlords to be on the landlord database, with the checks required on that database, and then for them to join the ombudsman service. Whether or not there is a requirement around that as part of the criteria to be eligible to let properties is a consideration, and then that depends on whether or not they would join the ombudsman service.
In terms of the decisions that any ombudsman in the future might make, if there were issues around insurance—typically those are matters that tend to sit with the courts—or a landlord not facilitating claims around insurance, there might be an issue around whether or not insurance is in place, and that might be something that we then highlight in our decisions, which might be information we should share with the lead enforcement agency under the duty set out in clause 109. You may feel I have not fully answered your question.
David Simmonds
Q
Richard Blakeway: The Bill is obviously quite comprehensive and will make a significant difference as a piece of legislation, but a considerable amount of information will be set out in statutory instruments after the Bill. There are, then, some answers in the Bill and some that will come in future regulations.
Your point about the clarity of jurisdiction between an ombudsman and other actors is fundamental. One of the most important elements to clarify the role of the ombudsman service will be the ombudsman’s scheme. Clause 63 sets out requirements around what should be in the scheme—what must be in the scheme and what could be in the scheme. I would probably encourage there to be more in the choices for Ministers as to what could be in the scheme than in the list of what must be in the scheme, because there will need to be agility, as the ombudsman—whoever is appointed as the ombudsman service—and the other actors start to come together.
The importance of clarity is obviously for individuals to know what route to take if they are seeking redress, and it is also important to make sure that there is real coherence in terms of raising standards and promoting good practice in the rental sector.
I can give a specific example where I think there would be nuance between the ombudsman service and the tribunal, which is around changes to rent. If a section 13 notice were issued, the decision on the rent would be a matter for the courts, and the Bill seeks to change the role of the courts, or the tribunal, in relation to that. But we or whoever was appointed as the ombudsman service could potentially play a role to decide whether a fair process had been gone through rather than the actual level of the rent. That is very similar to what we have today on the social rented sector and service charges, and our role as an ombudsman in the social rented sector and the role of the tribunal.
David Simmonds
Q
Richard Blakeway: If you look at our current powers, role and approach around charges, we are very clear that we will consider transparency around why those charges are being made and their purpose, we will consider whether the service has been provided and the quality of that service, and we will consider whether an appropriate process was gone through. For example, at the moment we would consider section 20, where significant charges have to go through a process, and ask whether that process was followed. Those are decisions that we make and we can therefore very clearly consider what the requirements are, either set out in statute or under the provider’s own policy. That is the basis on which we would make a judgment.
I think that is a parallel that is relevant in your example in this space. Clearly, if we were seeing evidence that another mechanism was being used to increase the charges on a tenant and that was unclear and potentially unjustified, that could be a point of maladministration where we would uphold a complaint.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
I have a follow-up question; I will ask them in one go, Mr Betts, and leave more time for others. We have been very clear already that the new ombudsman will need to work collaboratively with others to resolve complaints and that will be set out in statutory guidance. What do you think needs to be included in that guidance to ensure, in particular, that the ombudsman is working effectively with local authorities?
Richard Blakeway: Those are really important questions. The Bill introduces a new framework of rights and responsibilities for both landlords and tenants and, as you set out, the ombudsman service—whoever is appointed as the ombudsman—plays a part in that. I would say as an aside very early on that I welcome the Government’s recognition of the strategic benefits of bringing together the social rented sector and the private rented sector, particularly given the common body of existing and new legislation that is tenure blind and speaks to both the private and rented sector, whether that is the existing Landlord and Tenant Act or the potential to extend Awaab’s law and the decent homes standard. I think there is a real benefit to system coherence and the right relationships, as you highlight, and also to making sure that benefits do not unintentionally fall in the wrong place, by appointing the housing ombudsman as the provider of redress.
I think there are three key relationships. There is the lead enforcement body, and working out the role of that body. In particular, looking at clause 109, information sharing between the ombudsman service and the lead enforcement body will be vital, so codifying that role will be important.
There is the tribunal, which we have alluded to. One of the really important pieces of work is to develop, very early on—I would have thought in advance of any statutory instruments—a draft scheme for the ombudsman service, and to collaborate with a number of bodies, including the courts, on what is in the scheme and therefore the decisions that the ombudsman might take, and what is outside it and clearly rests with the courts. I have given the example of section 13. The ombudsman could potentially play a role in looking at aspects of section 13, which might relieve pressure on the courts.
There is then the relationship with local authorities and enforcement. On the database itself, I think there has to be a decision about who owns the database and is going to provide it—whether it sits with the Department or the lead enforcement agency, for example—and the pace at which it could be developed to support the introduction of the redress service.
One of the other areas to consider, where there may be a pressure that emerges in the system—a pressure that I think the legislation recognises but could go further to address and relieve—is enforcement. The Government have rightly indicated that there is concern around compliance with ombudsman remedies. There was a survey in, I think, 2018 that showed 46% of private landlords not complying. At the moment, the Bill includes a kind of last resort to try to enforce compliance, which would be introduced later through statutory instruments. I wonder whether consideration should be given to bringing that forward, so that compliance issues are not having to be directed towards local authorities, and creating pressures there.
I also wonder whether the legislation could go further by, for example, amending clauses 66 and 96 to include rent repayment orders as part of non-compliance with ombudsman decisions. The Bill is rightly clear that if a landlord does not sign up to the ombudsman service then it could be subject to a rent repayment order, but it is silent on whether a landlord that is non-compliant with the ombudsman’s decisions should also be subject to a rent repayment order. I think that if you were to introduce that, that would strengthen compliance and reduce the need to direct things around the system to try to address them.
City and Town Centres: Regeneration
David Simmonds Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers.
[Sir Roger Gale in the Chair]
I am sure it will continue to be a pleasure to serve under the chairmanship of Sir Roger.
The debate has been wide ranging. It has gone from the commanding heights of the international economy to the truly micro. I commend the hon. Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) for having brought together a wide group of Members with a clear interest in the role of local authorities and in regeneration specifically, but more broadly in the future success of our high streets.
It is always worth remembering that when there are international investment summits, 70% of people in work in the UK are in an enterprise with less than five staff. It is easy for big businesses to turn up and meet the Government. I very much welcome the investments that were announced at the investment summit. I welcomed them when they were announced under the previous Government and I welcome them again. But we need to make sure that those investments continue to manifest as a benefit on our high street.
The pressure of time perhaps meant the hon. Member for Derby North did not have the opportunity to talk about the input of people such as Councillor Barry Lewis, the leader of Derbyshire county council, and Councillor Ben Bradley, the leader of Nottinghamshire, who are examples of local leaders who have championed inward investment. Of course there are many from across the political spectrum.
Here in Parliament is an opportunity for us to reflect that although it is easy to describe the problem, we need to focus on what we can do to make a difference. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) shared some examples of that from his experience as a council leader. I hope that when the Minister responds he will have something to say about the impact of business rate reliefs.
Currently any English business that is a shop, restaurant, café, bar, pub, cinema, music venue, gym, spa, hotel or any form of leisure venue, can obtain a 75% discount on business rates, capped at £110,000 per business per year. I am aware that that rate relief is not available to the same extent in Labour-run Wales and aware that the Government are about to embark on some Budget decisions. But it is clear that the ability of businesses, such as those that are anchors on our high streets, to secure that relief has been extremely important, especially in the post-covid era, in making sure that our high streets remain vibrant. That sits alongside measures such as—
Helen Grant (Maidstone and Malling) (Con)
As we have heard today, town and city centres like mine in Maidstone desperately need a range of vibrant and varied shops and businesses. Does my hon. Friend agree that a reduction in business rates, not just a reform, would incentivise businesses to set up, especially independents and new start-ups? At the same time it would ensure that a level playing field starts to be set with e-commerce and home delivery services.
David Simmonds
My hon. Friend represents the county town of Kent and presses the case that the leader of Kent county council, Councillor Roger Gough, makes: as the county town, it is particularly important that Maidstone demonstrates a vibrant and thriving high street. My hon. Friend is a vocal champion for that.
Measures such as business improvement districts and local enterprise partnerships have enabled combinations of local employers, business investors, local authorities, land holders and housing providers to come together to look at how regeneration schemes can best be designed. There is cross-party consensus that local leaders know their communities best and are best placed to design projects to bring the maximum possible benefit.
I acknowledge that it has been challenging to implement the process set out in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 and the schemes that followed from it. For many years, the EU cohesion fund was the key source of inward investment at a strategic level, and in the post-covid and the post-Brexit era, central Government have found it challenging to design a multi-year financial arrangement that replicates it, serves a similar purpose and is deliverable at scale. I wish the new Government well with that challenge.
The 2023 Act also included planning reforms that enable long-empty shop units to be converted to much-needed housing on our high streets. That reflects a longer-term change on our high streets from retail to night-time, leisure and hospitality economies. Those are the businesses that benefit from the highest level of business rate relief, and they are becoming mainstays on our high streets. A number of hon. Members have mentioned the benefit to microbusinesses of approaches such as safer by design, which uses planners’ expertise to build out antisocial behaviour and crime from buildings and developments from the start through their design, layout and physical security measures.
It is important to reflect on the successful regeneration projects of other nations. This debate is focused on towns and cities, but when German reunification took place, national politicians were clear from the start that the project to rebalance the country was going to take 30 years. They were also clear that it would start with significant investment in large cities to create employment and prosperity, and that that would then feed into the wider social and public infrastructure around those towns and cities to ensure that, in due course, everybody in the country could benefit from a higher standard of living. Although we set out an ambition on that scale with the levelling-up projects, we did not have anything like the time and resources to deliver it on the scale that we wanted to, especially with the relentless calls for higher spending on covid in the background, which were a key part of shaping the Government’s financial approach at that time.
I note with a degree of pride that an average of 400 new jobs were created for every single day that the last Government were in office over 14 years. We must remember that work is key to regenerating our high streets—if people have money in their pockets, they will spend it locally. When we left office, youth unemployment was half what it was when we entered.
I read the Crewe business improvement district proposal, which, like many such projects, started out with very specific words: this is a “private sector led proposal”. That is a recognition that private sector investment will be crucial, and I think we are seeing a similar recognition from the new Government.
I have two asks of the Minister. First, will he set out the timetable for the next round of devolution? If he is unable to do so now, would he give us an indication of when he will do so? There are local authorities looking to switch to the elected mayor model. The East Midlands combined authority will be significant for places such as Derbyshire, but there are many other parts of England that are looking to do that.
Secondly, will the Minister commit to, or give us a deadline for a statement on, the retention of the 75% business rate relief that was introduced by the previous Government and is still being followed by the Treasury? It has been critical for keeping investment and employment buoyant on our high streets. We need to make sure that vital lifeline is retained into the future.
Renters’ Rights Bill
David Simmonds Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It is a pleasure to wind up for the Opposition in what has been a comprehensive debate. I add my thanks to all Members who made so many interesting points about different aspects of policy, but I would like to start with the contribution by the hon. Member for Rugby (John Slinger), who said that most landlords are good landlords. The English housing survey’s most recent set of statistics, published on 18 July 2024, sets out that private renters in England are the most satisfied of tenants in all types of tenure, more so than in social rented or any other kind, where the highest levels scored between 51% and 65%. While all Members will see in our constituency casework dozens of examples of people in great difficulty as a result of problems in the private rented sector, on the whole this sector remains one that those who use it find to be valuable and a source of appropriate and affordable housing. Therefore, the spirit in which we approach the Bill is that we need to ensure we put right the more egregious examples of tenants or landlords being abused and their good will or vulnerability being exploited in different ways.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), in her opening speech for the Opposition, set out some robust criticisms of different aspects of the Bill and a strong defence of the previous Government’s position on the implementation of the Renters (Reform) Bill, as was. It is clear that our approach during the passage of this legislation will be to work constructively to address those shortfalls and deficits that we perceive in it, while recognising, as we did in the previous Government and as we have in manifestos—and as I think, from the speeches, has been the case across party—the importance of getting this right for renters.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
I have seen the reality of such measures in Scotland, because these matters are devolved. They have driven up costs for renters, reduced choice, and made it exceptionally difficult to get that first home and almost impossible to get student accommodation in our wonderful university cities. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that we get this right, and if we are to do so we are going to need changes?
David Simmonds
My hon. Friend represents Dumfries and Galloway and therefore knows a great deal about the impact that these measures have, because he has seen at first hand the impact on his constituents. I agree with him entirely, and it is important to draw out his point that they will have an impact not simply on those who are private renters in the traditional sense; this is part of a wider rental market, as many Members have noted, which includes everything from temporary accommodation to short-term lets, which is to a degree an unregulated market into which some landlords are moving. There will be a huge impact on students across our university towns. The private rented sector is used by local authorities to find accommodation for those in social housing need, and the social rented sector and our housing associations will be impacted too. Of course, there will be a degree of impact on owner-occupation as well.
Reflecting on the speeches of Members, it is clear, as the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) said in her contribution, that we are increasingly reaching many of the key milestones in our lives later on, including acquiring our first home as an owner, having our children and getting our settled career. That is one of the reasons why we in the Opposition party, as we did in government previously, recognise the importance of getting things right in the private rented sector, because it will represent an increasing proportion of tenure in our country in future.
I will try to draw together a number of the points made—I appreciate that the Minister will do the same for the points made by his colleagues; I will endeavour to do my best for those on the Opposition side. As well as the points made in the introduction by my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) shared the experience of being a local authority cabinet member in a part of our country with a combination of high-density modern housing in cities and surrounding rural areas, something more characteristic in the market of the United Kingdom than is the case in London, where my own constituency is located. Indeed, the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) spoke of similar experiences.
That illustrated a point that some scoff at: landlords exiting the private rented market means not that the bricks and mortar disappear, but that the home is no longer available to the private rented market. It may be available to owner occupiers, it may be available to short-term lets, and it may be converted into other types of accommodation, but it represents a net reduction in the supply of private rented homes in that location. It is absolutely correct to draw attention to the impact of that on our communities.
Rachel Blake
You make the point that you think the property might change into home ownership or another form of tenure. What evidence do you have that the property would not remain in the private sector under a different type of landlord? The argument that you and other Conservative Members continually make is that—
David Simmonds
In Scotland, where similar regulations have been implemented, there has been an exodus from the market of smaller private landlords in particular, and those properties have fallen into other kinds of tenure. If the supply of homes remained the same and it had a zero-sum impact on the market, there would of course be no requirement for a Renters’ Rights Bill at all, because everybody would find a home on one kind of tenure or another, but we know, because of the increasing proportion of people in the United Kingdom looking to the private rented sector to access the kind of home they need, that this will be incredibly important.
Antonia Bance
Does the hon. Member agree that it is precisely those small individual landlords who struggle to keep up with decent renting regulation, even as minimal as it is now? They make up the majority of the rogue landlords that many of us have heard about in our constituency surgeries. Frankly, it is often a good thing that small landlords who are unable to provide decent properties and keep up with legislation get out of the market in favour of those who can.
David Simmonds
The hon. Member raises a good point about rogue landlords. Let us reflect on some of the complaints that we have heard. Ant infestations, widespread evidence of mould causing health problems, the dilapidation of communal areas, a prohibition on tenants seeking to rent while on benefits and a failure to comply with licensing laws—just some of the complaints made by the tenants of the hon. Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal), but they are widely represented across the market. They are the reason we need to get enforcement action against rogue landlords such as that Member right.
On enforcement, the Secretary of State said in opening the debate that she is keen to ensure that there is an effective fining regime so that those who breach the rules can be held to account. We in the Opposition have a genuine concern about getting that right. There are a number of different areas of local authority activity in which enforcement is essentially a net cost to the council tax payer, because even when costs are won and fines levied, they are nothing like the cost of carrying out investigations, building the evidence base and taking the required enforcement action. If we are to ensure that rogue landlords acting in breach of existing laws are held to account by local authorities using those powers, we need to ensure, during the passage of the Bill, that the resources that are expected to arrive through the method of enforcement and fining are sufficient to make the process self-sustaining, or that the Government have alternative measures in mind to ensure that local authorities can access those resources by other means.
That is a long-standing issue and has been a factor for Governments of all parties. It was certainly a challenge in my 24 years in local government, under Labour and Conservative Governments. We need to ensure, in the interests of our tenants, that we get this right as far as we can.
Ms Creasy
As the hon. Gentleman will know from his experience in local government, the challenge is that the existing legislation relies on our constituents having the confidence to come forward, whether they are facing mould or unfair practices, and the evidence shows that the threat of a no-fault eviction means that many do not come forward. Does he therefore recognise that simply opposing no-fault evictions and relying on the existing enforcement regime means consigning people in an unfair market to silence and suffering?
David Simmonds
As a constituency Member of Parliament and former councillor, I entirely recognise the hon. Lady’s point, but what the hon. Member for Rugby said was significant because we need to recognise that 76% of tenants in the private rented sector report a high level of satisfaction, a much higher level of satisfaction than is found in other forms of housing tenure. If we are to strike the appropriate balance in this debate in the Parliament of the nation, we have to recognise that the vast majority of landlords provide a good, important and high-quality service, and make sure that the legislation we take through to address the difficulty and challenge that our constituents—citizens—experience is proportionate.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
David Simmonds
I will make some progress and move on to another area that has been debated. I know that the Minister will wish to have time to sum up on many of these points as well.
A number of Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), highlighted the need for appropriate measures to support students in the rented sector. A good many landlords’ organisations have made the point that the Government’s intention to change the tenant and landlord’s full freedom of contract will have an impact, especially on students who wish to rent a property for the entire duration of their course. We need to ensure that there is appropriate flexibility in respect of student properties, so that students at university can find the housing that they need and landlords are not discouraged from entering that market, and so that the points raised by my right hon. Friend are addressed. We do not want a situation in which a landlord, wary of a two-month notice period, decides to take the property off the student market and put it somewhere else, in a way that perhaps addresses housing need less, and fails to support the local economy in the way that student housing would have.
That leads me to a point that I know we will explore in Committee: how freedom of contract particularly impacts constituents who struggle to pass the kind of credit checks and landlord insurance checks that are common in the private rented sector. We all have examples of people who have faced bankruptcy proceedings and entered into individual voluntary arrangements to address significant financial difficulty, and who then got themselves back on their feet; but who, when facing eviction, have found it impossible to find a landlord willing to rent to them. Those people are not eligible to access social rented housing, because they have a job and an income, but cannot access the kind of housing that locks them into a regular payment contract. However, they may be able to offer a significant up-front payment of rent—potentially many months’ rent, or even a year’s rent—to secure a property. That gives the landlord the certainty they need, and it also gives the person the guarantee of the home they need. We need to address that issue, because the implementation of a number of financial arrangements by previous Governments has created both an opportunity for people to get back on their feet after financial difficulty, and a challenge in accessing a long-term home in the rented sector.
As we proceed with this Bill, it is clearly important that policy is based on evidence. Having spoken to the Minister and many of his colleagues about the Bill, I know that there will be a high degree of cross-party agreement on some of the points that are discussed. However, I would like to bring this debate back to the key concern that we in the Conservative party have, which has been expressed by a number of Members: we need to ensure an appropriate supply of housing in the private rented sector, so that citizens who need to access those homes can do so.
We remain a party that respects and supports the aspiration of home ownership. Just like all other important life stages, our constituents are reaching that life stage later in life than has been the case historically. We are in a world where people do not typically leave school or university and spend 40 years working in the same business and living in the same town. People moving around and moving home to adapt to changing needs is a key issue that we need to address. Even those wishing to downsize and looking for a smaller property later in life—the last-time buyer market, as the industry likes to describe it—have their equivalent in the rental sector: people looking for accommodation that comes with a package that provides sufficient care and support. The choice to move into high-quality accommodation of that nature in the private rented sector can free up family homes that are in short supply. All these things need to be seen in the round.
Of course, most Members of Parliament are tenants—not all of us; those of us who commute are not—and will have experience of the London rental market. Luckily, Members of Parliament in that situation have the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to back them up, but that experience highlights the significant differences we see across the regions and geographies of the United Kingdom. My outer London constituency is dominated by owner-occupiers, but has a vibrant rental sector and a significant number of retirement homes. The population and the need are significantly different from the population and need in a university town full of young people looking to secure student accommodation, or looking for a good-quality private rented home for a short period while they get their first job and get their foot on the property ladder. We need to support that market effectively, and to get it right. We need a balance that avoids over-regulation and the unintended consequences about which my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex spoke so eloquently.
Regional variation was highlighted by a good many Members. Places being converted into holiday homes does not tend to be a significant issue in the London suburbs. However, we have heard from colleagues in this House, as we did during the last Parliament, about the massive impact that that has in many of our coastal towns and cities. The impact is not just on those in need of social housing, and those struggling to access, through social rent, accommodation in the private rental sector, but on those in other parts of the country where the local economy has been significantly changed as a result of those issues.
No debate about housing can be allowed to pass without mention of the impact of our Home Office contracts to secure accommodation for those in our asylum system. We know from feedback that many Members of Parliament have provided from around the country that in some areas, that has a significant impact. The initial very good intention behind those Home Office contracts was to disperse asylum seekers awaiting a decision to privately rented accommodation in parts of the United Kingdom where there was accommodation surplus to the needs of the community. That was why those contracts—run now by three private organisations, but run previously by the Home Office, and originated by the now Mayor, Andy Burnham, when he was a Home Office Minister—use that supply of accommodation.
However, we are beginning to hear, as we learned in debates about the use of migrant hotels and so on in the past, that the policy has, in some areas, taken a significant share of accommodation that would otherwise be available to the private rented sector. While it is absolutely right that we seek to reduce the cost to the taxpayer of people staying in hotels, we need to ensure that decision making does not simply tick the “out of hotels” box, and respects the needs and expectations of the community. In particular, given that it is always the lowest-cost accommodation that the Home Office will seek to rent, we need to ensure that the policy does not have an inappropriate impact on those awaiting housing through the local authority, or seeking the least expensive accommodation in the private rented sector.
All these different issues—temporary accommodation, short-term lets for students, accommodation for asylum seekers and owner-occupation—are impacted by this debate. I hope that the Minister will accept that we approach this topic in a constructive spirit, and that our challenge, as we go through the next stages of the Bill, aims at addressing the issues to get the Bill right.
My hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) and the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) all brought their direct personal experience to this debate, and set out why the points raised at the very start of this debate are so significant.
Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a very important speech. Does he agree that it would be very helpful for the whole House if the Government published an impact assessment on the effects of the Bill, and does he understand why that has not happened?
David Simmonds
I am sure the Minister will have heard that question and will address it, but there is a consistent pattern. A number of Members referenced yesterday’s debate on VAT on school fees, in which that point emerged, too. While we can see, for example, that there is a significantly higher proportion of pupils from ethnic minorities in private schools than in the state sector, the Government cannot supply an equalities impact assessment for their policy on VAT on schools. There seems to be a similar trend emerging with the winter fuel payments, and with the Renters’ Rights Bill; the Government say that it is very important that we get the policy right, but cannot supply evidence that they have properly considered the equalities impacts and the wider impacts, although much of that was enshrined as a legal requirement under the previous Labour Government.
In winding up—[Interruption.] I hear a cheer. That is the first, but I hope not the last, cheer I enjoy in this Chamber in my parliamentary career. This Bill is an opportunity to get things right for renters. We know that is a high priority for all political parties in this Chamber. We can all see the impact that the private rental sector has on housing supply in this country. We want to make sure that the sector continues to be an important, supportive and appropriate source of homes for people, and that it interacts effectively with other sources of accommodation. If we are to do that, we need to get this legislation right. Dare I say that the acid test will be future housing surveys? If the high satisfaction rates remain buoyant, perhaps the legislation has been right. If we fail to get it right, private tenants will be considerably less satisfied, and that will require the House’s attention again.
New Housing: Environmental Standards
David Simmonds Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and to respond on behalf of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) on securing this debate, and I congratulate other Members on their contributions. The issues raised in the debate have helped to illustrate the complexities inherent in housing environmental standards. We know that the UK has probably—or certainly among—the oldest housing stock of any developed country, and we know about the complexity of housing tenure in the United Kingdom. Freeholder-owned buildings that are often occupied by a combination of leaseholders and tenants continue to be a challenge to Governments of all parties, when it comes to introducing the required updates and retrofits. In the context of housing development—1.4 million units of new housing already have planning consent in the United Kingdom—developers’ feedback on, for example, the cost of solar panels as a barrier to bringing forward new housing remains an active part of the debate.
Governments of all parties have made strenuous efforts over the years to improve the quality of housing, including several aspects of its environmental impact. The 2018 update to energy performance certificates, with a view to setting a deadline of 2025 for all rental properties placed on the market to meet a certain minimum standard, was an example of a Government intervention that aimed to raise standards. Some of the challenges for which the housing retrofit and building sectors have advocated have led Governments to feel that it was necessary to think again. No issue illustrates the complexities more clearly than the point that has been made about nutrient neutrality, something for which decision-making is essentially delegated to a third party under legislation that goes back to the mid-2000s. Central Government’s desire to minimise the environmental impact of development on surface water and waterways has led to significant delays in the delivery of new housing projects. I was going to quote the former leader of South Norfolk council—previously in the Public Gallery—who, in his capacity as a councillor, challenged the impact that that was having on the ability of local authorities to deliver new housing through the planning process, because of the delays in getting decisions made and permissions agreed. As the local authority bringing forward housing, if a site is not viable because of its environmental impact, it is clearly necessary then to be able to make a decision to move forward with other sites. It is clear that the planning process does not always support that decision making.
It is also noteworthy that the Innovate UK study, which looked at the real-world emissions of properties versus the intended emissions and those expected from the design estimates, identified that emissions were on average between two and three times higher than those that would have been expected from the design. I appreciate that Ministers in the new Government, like Ministers in previous Governments, face the challenge that we can do things that sound brilliant in theory, only to discover that how they operate in the real world does not meet the aspirations we all strive for.
I know the hon. Member for North Herefordshire previously served as a Member of the European Parliament. It is worth referring to the recent decision, outlined in a written ministerial statement, that from this period the intended deadline by which all building materials had to meet UK standards updated in 2018 would be set aside, and that products that met the CE standard would instead remain able to be sold into the UK market for an indefinite period. That may be an issue for fire standards; because the European Union standards on fire performance were last updated in 2015, they form part of that regulation, whereas the UK standards were updated in 2018.
Those standards also draw on a wide range of different studies and regulations in respect of performance, from damp resistance to energy efficiency. Again, it would be helpful for the Minister to set out for the benefit of Members present his expectation that those standards will meet the aspirations set out in the 2018 update of UK standards—I have confidence that that will be the case. Then we can be confident that the products sold into the UK market will meet the energy efficiency aspirations that Members have set out, and ensure that those products and materials contribute towards creating high-quality homes that fulfil the important expectations of warmth, absence of damp and the accessibility of fresh air that have been set out.
The national planning policy framework updates in prospect afford a further opportunity to consider how those requirements can be better enshrined in planning law. I appreciate that Ministers have a difficult challenge: the national planning policy framework has something like 19 chapters of detailed guidance. Each local authority is then required to put together its local plan, following public examination, in detailed conformity with each of those 19 chapters. The impact of that, its interaction with local environmental impacts such as surface water runoff, and any requirements for the design and nature of the materials used, in conformity with established local practices, all combine to create a significant challenge.
If the aspirations set out by Members are to be seen in practice, we must make it as straightforward as possible for local authorities to exercise their community leadership role. Rather than having to go through lengthy and expensive processes to demonstrate in planning law that that conformity is present, we must ensure that the standards can be implemented as quickly as possible.
I know the Minister, and other Members who have been in office for some time, will be aware that past Government initiatives, such as those around green homes, although sensible in principle in seeking to make Government funding for retrofit available to households as quickly as possible, have led to significant challenges in their administration. That is especially true where, for example, a business that has been licensed and approved to carry out the retrofit of those initiatives then loses that licence between the time when it has done work on a constituent’s home and the point when the invoice is paid.
The rules and regulations around that area need to ensure that it is as straightforward as possible for all constituents to make the right choice in buying a home, knowing that it meets the highest possible environmental standards, or in deciding to invest in their home in a way that will genuinely reduce running costs and improve the quality of the insulation. In practice, that must fulfil the aspirations the Government set out in allocating the funding.
Finally, it is a source of pride that under Governments of all parties, the UK has seen the biggest per capita carbon reduction from its residents—our constituents —since the carbon reduction target was first brought forward in the 1990s. It is very good that we have managed to achieve that. We have done it through a variety of measures, not just in the housing sector, but, given the significant part that emissions from the housing sector play in our carbon emissions, there is a clear opportunity for the environmental standards that have been thoroughly aired in this debate to play a significant role in how we address this challenge in future.
I can undertake that the Opposition will work constructively over this Parliament, where we can see the opportunity, with Government and other parties to support the implementation of standards and measures that will help to deliver that agenda.
Short-term Lets: Regulation
David Simmonds Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Harris. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake). It is good to see her following in the footsteps of her predecessor, who secured a number of debates and made many contributions on the impact this issue has on that constituency and others. May I also commend the work that London councils have done on behalf of local authorities in the capital to highlight the impact of this issue and bring forward constructive policy suggestions?
There is a high degree of commitment to cross-party working on this issue. As we have heard, it has an impact on constituencies across the country, not just here in the capital, and it was much debated in the last Parliament, particularly during the era of the covid pandemic. We saw many of our constituents who wished to go on holiday or needed to travel for work unable to use hotels, and they therefore made the best possible use of providers such as Airbnb to secure accommodation that met the covid regulations in place at the time.
Many of us worked on the assumption that post-covid there would be a return to the market as we had seen it before, which clearly has not been the case. At the same time, longer-term changes, driven partly by Government but also by wider issues in the market, have seen reducing profit margins for those in the buy-to-let market and people facing higher costs for the standards of the buildings that they maintain. They have also seen the introduction of significantly increased checks on tenants as a result of the need to crack down on unlawful lettings and market changes more generally, as the big players such as Airbnb and Booking.com have sought to create a greater supply of this type of accommodation for commercial reasons.
Clearly, the regulations introduced in 2015—particularly in the capital, with the 90-day limit and the requirement that somebody had to be paying residential council tax on accommodation for it to be let, as well as ensuring that the hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) would not be able to let out his parliamentary office should he wish to do so—are examples of measures taken by Government with a view to ensuring that this market played a positive role in local communities. However, as has been highlighted by many Members, significant issues clearly remain despite those measures and that high degree of cross-party consensus.
As with many things, I put it to the Minister that there will be an opportunity in the Government’s review of the planning system to consider points about the use classes that would apply to property, in particular to introduce requirements around planning consent being sought for those properties that could create a nuisance because of their proximity to other types of residential development, and to ensure that powers that may be enforced are available to local authorities through the planning system.
Markus Campbell-Savours
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that planning authorities can barely wash their own faces, let alone take over the enforcement of thousands of holiday lets? Does he not think that that could be a huge challenge, which could perhaps be better funded through taking money directly from the holiday let operators?
David Simmonds
I started my political career as the chairman of a planning committee in London, and I am very aware of the challenges faced by planning authorities—not just in the capital, but elsewhere.
The design of the system around enforcement is clearly intended to ensure that it is financially self-sustaining; we have seen some examples of that with local authorities, including those that have entered into contracts with the private sector specifically to ensure higher levels of enforcement funded by fines and charges levied against those abusing the system. Not all local authorities have reached the stage where they are prepared to undertake that work, but clearly both the available market in providers and the powers and freedoms that local authorities have enable them to do that if they feel that it is an appropriate and proportionate solution to the level of challenges and concerns that they face in their local community.
We know that the current situation reflects a long-standing determination on the part of Governments of all parties to ensure that there is an increase in the accommodation available. Measures such as Rent a Room tax relief, which was introduced many years ago, were intended to ensure that there was a greater supply of flexible accommodation, so we need to ensure that we strike the right balance in this market.
I finish with some observations about the context of the housing market in which this debate is taking place. The UK has the most intensively used housing stock of any major developed country in the world. We have very few derelict or empty properties, so given the level of demand in comparison with other major economies, it is clearly important that we ensure as far as possible that accommodation is available to those who need it.
An element of that will be short-term lets, which play an important role in the economy, but with many people looking to secure longer-term and permanent housing that clearly needs to be a high priority. In taking forward their planning reforms, I urge the Government to consider the fact that there are already an additional 1.4 million new homes in England with planning consent already granted by our local authorities. Priority should be given to ensuring that those consents are fulfilled and those homes are built, rather than prioritising, for example, the deregulation of the green belt.
I also want to bring something else to the attention of those present. In some respects the previous Government’s record deserves criticism, but on measures for net additional dwellings and new homes per calendar year—both major measures on housebuilding—development under the previous Government hit record levels; in fact, in recent years it hit the long-term record for as long as the statistics have been gathered. Indeed, during the last Parliament, a net additional 1 million new homes were built in England alone, in fulfilment of the manifesto commitment.
Many hon. Members have highlighted lots of issues that need to be dealt with effectively. I would encourage the Government to consider how, through their review of the planning system, those issues can effectively be brought forward. They should also consider how existing measures that have been highlighted, such as enforcement powers and the means of recouping costs, which are already available and used widely by some local authorities, could be put into action more swiftly.
Planning Policy: Traveller Sites
David Simmonds Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on securing the debate. The contributions of all hon. Members have helped to illustrate both the complexity of this issue and its importance at community level.
Every local authority has a quasi-judicial role as a planning authority, in that it has to follow planning law and the relevant statutes, and my hon. Friend and other hon. Members have called for everyone to be treated equally before the law for the purposes of the planning process. That is clearly a complex challenge for our local authorities, which also have various statutory duties as housing providers. When considering an application, the local authority has to ensure that planning law is fully upheld, but it also has a role in designating sites on which Traveller pitches and other development may take place. Most of us will have experience of that matter—the situation at Jackets Lane in my constituency is almost identical to that described by my hon. Friend. Like many Members, I am fortunate to have two local authorities with full housing revenue account, local authority-maintained Traveller pitches, as well as privately designated sites.
However, it is understandable that, for the reasons outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas)—I have experienced this in my own home—the sites can cause a great deal of community concern, given some aspects of the behaviour of individuals associated them. We cannot simply say that the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community is one community. In my constituency, there are settled Travellers, who have chosen to occupy a bricks and mortar home and may require family members who are travelling to be able to stay close to them at certain times of year. There are people with much more ancient lifestyles, particularly among some of the Roma and traditional Gypsy community, whose requirements are very different. All our local authorities need to be flexible, and communities need to be aware of those distinctions, so that the responses that we put in place are appropriate.
We all accept that provision will be inadequate for some individuals, and that there may not be a spot on a local authority-provided site when they arrive. Indeed, the behaviour of some, who may not even be UK residents but who can arrive in large numbers and undertake unlawful and illegal incursions, can significantly affect the reputation of other members of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton asked an important question in the context of parliamentary proceedings: how can something that is either unlawful or, in some cases, specifically illegal in planning law be rendered lawful by other considerations? If a property developer were to purchase the field and seek to build a mansion, there would be rigorous enforcement against them. If a developer sought to build family homes, or a care home, there would be rigorous enforcement against them. Why is it, therefore, that other elements of our law allow one individual to bypass the statutory planning process and rules, especially when the site may subsequently be sold to another occupier? How can we ensure that those elements do not create a back door to flouting the planning rules? I have personal experience of a developer who cited diplomatic immunity as a reason why the local authority could not carry out enforcement action against structures built on agricultural land.
Given the enormous remediation costs associated with abuses of the planning process, it is not surprising that many local authorities are extremely concerned, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove, with his experience as a local authority leader, described. We can all think of examples. A site may be used for housing development after illegal occupation, or it may, for example, be used for waste disposal. Buckinghamshire council, on the border of my constituency, was faced with having to clean up a site that a group of Travellers had purchased from a farmer and then used to dispose of asbestos and hazardous waste, which was removed at enormous cost—a multimillion-pound cost—to the taxpayer.
In all such cases, there is a common issue: the local authority’s inability to use swift and robust enforcement powers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton said, once a site is occupied and the use becomes established, it is very difficult to change that in the way the community would expect. During the recent general election campaign, I delivered leaflets to properties that formed part of an illegal encampment— because those individuals had been there for so long, they were on the electoral roll. Other residents in the community asked, “How is it that all these processes that are designed to make sure everyone follows the law can come together in a way that enables those rules to be flouted?”
On behalf of the official Opposition, I extend an offer to the Minister, who has taken an incredibly constructive approach to all the issues in his portfolio. Members on both sides of this debate have made constructive contributions and have set out ideas about how we can more effectively address the broad sweep of concerns that arise from this issue. My constituents are affected by an unauthorised encampment in the Hog’s Back, and have expressed great frustration that the local authority planning notice that applies to the site has effectively been bypassed as the individuals have moved to another part of the site. Those kinds of things understandably create a public backlash, as people feel that the law is not working effectively and is not on their side.
It is one thing for local authorities to have to resort to section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to deal with illegal and unauthorised encampments that are causing a nuisance, but activity that can become established through the passage of time needs to be dealt with differently. I suggest to the Minister that, as we work together on that, we should also consider the operation of things such as the planning conditions that apply in national parks. My hon. Friend has the North Yorkshire Moors and the Yorkshire Dales national parks near his constituency. It is common to apply to national parks specific planning conditions that do not operate in other areas, such as conditions around the occupation of new homes by agricultural workers. Again, that provides scope for abuse of the planning system. For example, a developer could build a property purportedly for agricultural worker use and then say they wish to convert it to a holiday let or an extended family home.
There is also the wider issue of ancillary uses, which my hon. Friend referred to. When a piece of land is in the green belt, perhaps with agricultural designation, there are always opportunities for a prospective applicant to say that they need a barn for their farming business or a sports pavilion because they hope to use the land for sporting activity. That potentially enables a property footprint to be established. In planning terms, conversion of that—legalisation of the occupation—follows later, to the dismay of local residents, who then question the effectiveness of the planning system. The scope for the use to become established and the property to be sold on for profit in a way that is not available to developers who seek to work within the system remains a significant cause for concern.
I thank all Members who have contributed to this balanced debate, which has highlighted many angles to the way in which this policy interacts with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller and settled communities. I urge the Minister to make the best use possible of the expertise of Members across the House and ensure that, as we move to update planning law, we have effective enforcement powers in place so that all our residents—all our constituents—have confidence that they will be treated equally before the law in the way that Parliament expects.
Building Safety and Resilience
David Simmonds Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I would like to open by sharing the commitment of His Majesty’s official Opposition to supporting the Government in ensuring that, in particular, the legislation brought forward in the previous Parliament, broadly with cross-party support, to address the issues that the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali) and colleagues have outlined following the Grenfell fire, takes full effect through regulation and implementation across the sector. It is absolutely clear, as was stated by the Leader of the Opposition during the Prime Minister’s statement last week, that we share the Government’s determination to ensure that everybody in our country is able to feel safe in their home, and that risks, whether they are known or might emerge from the continuing research into this field, are properly addressed. We will do our very best to work with her and colleagues in a constructive manner to ensure that that happens.
Today’s debate is also an opportunity to consider many of the broader issues around building safety that will come into play as we consider the Government’s plans to reform our planning system, increase our housing supply, bring in new forms of building into the United Kingdom and reform building regulations. A great deal of the report from Sir Martin into the Grenfell incident focuses on the role played by building regulations and their operation in the market for materials and design in the terrible disaster that took the lives of 72 people.
However, we should not waste an opportunity to consider more broadly how other parts of our housing system and our planning system can ensure that risks that might emerge in the future are dealt with effectively. For example, we are aware when a planning application comes forward that the safety and resilience of a building is not simply down to its construction and materials; it is also affected by its location, its proximity to other sources of risk and its design from its very inception. They all have a part to play. We know from points that have been made in the past by Members from across the House about the role that housing plays in the context of public health that, in the capital, for example, air quality is often worse indoors than it is outdoors as a result of buildings designed with poor ventilation and poor mechanical systems. That creates a long-term health and safety burden for residents which can be alleviated by giving due consideration to better design and resilience at the initial stages.
I encourage the Government to consider, as they embark on this process, how to manage some of the very complex interactions when seeking to improve the safety of buildings where there are freeholders, leaseholders and tenants all occupying some of the same space. I am aware, from experience in a local authority, that Hillingdon council had to go to court on 16 occasions to gain access to council properties to undertake basic maintenance and servicing work to installations against the will of the occupier, even though that work was being carried out at no cost to the tenant. That demonstrates some of the practical difficulties that that complex relationship can create in ensuring that local authorities and others are able to fulfil the duties that this House and the legislation place upon them.
It is also clear, from both the Grenfell report and other research, that the drive towards building efficiency, in particular energy efficiency, has created a risk of a loss of focus on safety. We know that this has been part of a global move to recognise the need to address climate change through better quality insulation and the more efficient construction of buildings. Increasingly, we see buildings being brought forward with modular construction of different types. Hotels arrive in a shipping crate: pre-constructed rooms are simply stacked up and then given a brick skin. Frame-constructed homes are a significant part of the delivery of the housing market. These provide an opportunity to make the available funds go further and create more homes more quickly. That is extremely welcome, but we need to ensure that the risks that might be associated with some of those forms of construction, especially where they take place at scale, are properly considered. I would like to hear a little more from the Government in due course about how the broader context of building safety and resilience will take those matters into account.
Mr Betts
Would the shadow Minister like to reflect on the fact that around four years ago the previous Government set up a committee to look at modern methods of construction, but the last investigation showed that it had not actually met? It is important that we get this right. We can see the problems with timber-framed homes and all the difficulties they caused in the 1980s. It is important we get the techniques and construction right, but there was a bit of a gap in the previous Government’s approach, was there not?
David Simmonds
Of course, it is embarrassing to hear that. Again, from experience of local government, I know that a great deal of work has been put in to ensure that modern methods of construction are put forward for Government consideration. Often there are exemplars around the country of how new estates and new homes have been delivered. There is certainly no lack of evidence on the opportunities available.
We also have an opportunity to reflect on the many challenges in our current housing stock, and in other types of buildings such as schools and hospitals. Once upon a time, aerated concrete and asbestos were regarded as wonder materials, and house builders and Governments would have been considered inefficient if they had not ensured their use. We now know that they have created problems and risks that require significant levels of expenditure to remediate.
That brings me to another important point: building resilience is not just about homes. The BBC recently did an excellent piece of work commemorating the original Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which was implemented by Government following a number of quite appalling incidents, mainly in factories, where significant loss of life occurred because the design of buildings meant that, in the event of a fire, for example, it was difficult or impossible for people to get away.
We know that school buildings have been destroyed and that thus far not a single school has been fitted with sprinklers where fire has resulted in total loss of the building. The cost of installing that equipment at the design and construction stage is relatively modest compared with the impact of retrofitting it, so there is an opportunity for the Government to reflect on how, as we take forward their strategy on investment in new schools, we ensure that that resilience is, as far as possible, built in and that the full cost to the taxpayer that occurs when a hospital or a school is lost is considered. We must reflect also on how we ensure that office buildings and factories under construction meet the highest possible standards, especially as they often face many of the same challenges around new materials and new forms of design that are intended to make them more efficient but potentially bring in risks that it is our duty to foresee and prevent as far as we possibly can.
We will shortly consider the Renters’ Rights Bill. That will have a wider impact, especially on the build-to-rent sector. We have seen new forms of developer coming into the market with the specific intention of constructing, from the outset, long-term rental homes.
Emily Darlington
I welcome the shadow Minister’s comments about working cross-party. One thing we need to do is establish the facts, the reality of what is going on, and the confusion left by the previous Government. People are being told by mortgage providers that they need an EWS1 form, but by freeholders that they do not. They are stuck, going back and forth for years. Would he like to take this opportunity to recognise the confusing legacy left by his Government and apologise to all the thousands of people who are stuck in places feeling that they have no place to go?
David Simmonds
Given the broad cross-party consensus in the last Parliament about the importance of the new forms of legislation and the regulation that follows from it, I think we should seek to maintain that consensus as far as possible, but as somebody who in a previous life worked in banking and as a mortgage adviser, I know that the challenges around the mortgageability of properties, especially properties of novel construction, go back many decades. For instance, a very limited number of lenders will provide for properties located above shops, because of that particular sets of risks. EWS1 was a similar example; despite apparent clarity from Government, there clearly was a lot of debate within the sector and some lenders preferred to go belt and braces, demanding the provision of something that was not required by law or regulation before making a lending decision—and the then Government did significant work in the previous Parliament to bring clarity and address those problems.
That is a helpful introduction to a point that I want to touch on briefly: the role of the insurance industry, both in the challenges that will follow from Grenfell and in the wider experience of our constituents. Many people find themselves significantly challenged because, owing to a lack of clarity or to uncertainty about the construction of their building, they face significant insurance costs, sometimes to the point where only one insurance provider is available. Others face very significantly increased costs because of the behaviour of a landlord who seeks to apportion the insurance costs across all the properties in their portfolio, rather than according to the risks of a specific property that a particular tenant or leaseholder inhabits. It would be helpful for the Government to give some consideration to how they can work with the insurance industry to ensure that those who are paying for insurance are paying a fair price and that it provides the necessary cover that mortgage lenders, for example, will expect.
It is clear that, as well as the strong commitment we on the Opposition Benches can give to support the Government and the Minister in taking forward the regulations and ensuring that they address the concerns that have been expressed, we must also make the most of an opportunity to consider wider issues of building safety. In London, for example, there are significant numbers of Bison blocks, constructed with pre-stressed concrete—at the time, it was considered a wonder material and a means of delivering significant numbers of new homes efficiently and at a low cost—which have particular structural risks around them that local authorities across the capital and the wider country have had to address. We have also heard a little bit about the role of the fire service in carrying out inspections and prosecutions where properties are found not to meet the fire regulations.
All those points are indicators of risk across the system, and there is an opportunity for Government to ensure that Ministers have a clear line of sight so that such indicators can be effectively addressed. If there is a role for we politicians to play in local government and here in Westminster, it is to ensure that all these other people are doing their job. I promise that the Opposition will support the Government as they seek to achieve that, and I hope that together we will be able to take this work forward effectively, so that all our constituents can sleep safely in their beds.
David Simmonds
With the leave of the House, I will close this debate for His Majesty’s loyal Opposition.
It has been a very constructive debate, with a wide range of contributions from Members. I congratulate all Members who made their maiden speeches. It was striking that they covered a huge range of different issues which have been debated and will be debated in this Parliament. I was particularly struck by the expertise shown in areas as diverse as local government, housing, electronics and support for refugees, all of which, I am sure, will play a significant part in the future. I would also like to put on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) for his very entertaining maiden speech.
The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) made some observations about the Hackitt review and the liability of construction material manufacturers for the consequences of significant problems in the buildings in which their materials are used. As the Minister said, the £5.1 billion building safety fund, which was put in place in the previous Parliament, is a significant step towards addressing those concerns, but it is clear that that is just one example of the many issues that need to be addressed. I have a list of points to put to the Minister, and I hope we will be able to work constructively together as we take forward a variety of legislation.
A couple of Members touched on personal evacuation plans. A consultation took place in 2022, in which a wide variety of stakeholders were invited to express their views. A key concern raised by the Local Government Association—I declare an interest as a parliamentary vice-president of that organisation—was that current legislation implies that there is a duty on local authorities and social housing providers to anticipate, without having to be asked or informed by residents, the needs of those who may require special arrangements for evacuation in the event of an emergency. It is clear from feedback across the sector that, where there is no expectation that a tenant or an occupier will advise a particular individual or authority, that presents a significant challenge. I suggest to Ministers that as they bring forward the Government’s response, that issue is addressed with a high degree of clarity, so that everybody knows their responsibilities and where they stand.
I was struck by observations made by a number of Members about particular challenges, including issues with fire doors and latent defects in buildings, which may not be spotted at the time of a building regulations inspection. I have personal experience of working in a local authority that commissioned a school; we discovered afterwards that the fire doors, which looked robust and solid, only went up as far as the suspended ceilings that had been installed by the contractor. In such an example, the individual doing the building inspection may need to have a significant part of the building taken apart so that they can carry out their duties and see what needs to be done. We need to ask ourselves how we can ensure that that enforcement is seen as reasonable by contractors and can be resourced effectively by local authorities, so that latent defects in items such as fire doors and fire stopping do not arise and create risks that simply cannot be effectively managed for the future.
A number of Members made reference to the longer-term history of the current set of building safety challenges. I am well aware, having been in local government throughout that period, that the approach taken by the previous Labour Government was to create arm’s length management organisations for housing. Some Members, including the hon. Member for Burnley (Oliver Ryan), made particularly positive references to the last Labour Government’s retrofitting programme. I simply urge Members, as they begin to think how they would wish to resource some of this work in the public sector building stock, to ensure that we do not see a return of that approach: “Let’s create arm’s length management organisations, load them with the debt so it isn’t on the Government’s books, and then expect them to carry out the work.”
The number of arm’s length management organisations has diminished. There was a time, under a previous Labour Government, when local authorities could not access that funding unless they set up an arm’s length management organisation. A small number of those organisations remain, but the vast majority of local authority areas have determined that it is more efficient to do this work directly and in-house. Having a higher degree of control, visibility and accountability for that work is a step forward, so I urge those who might be tempted by the view that arm’s length bodies are the way to leverage additional funding into the sector without it appearing directly as a cost to Government to avoid that approach. We should be absolutely clear about the route for the provision of those resources, and about the accountability for them.
In her maiden speech, the hon. Member for Chippenham (Sarah Gibson) made reference to flooding as an example of an additional issue that gives rise to building safety and resilience challenges. Although it was not touched on in today’s debate, we also need to reflect that this House has in the past had to get to grips with issues such as the impact of legionella and the significant building regulation changes needed to ensure that very vulnerable residents are not placed at risk by a failure to carry out the proper inspection of building safety systems, and has had to ensure that building regulations and installed systems are functioning as they should to keep people safe from that particular risk.
This wide-ranging debate has touched on many different elements of the building safety and resilience world, and I hope that that will inform Ministers’ thinking. However, I have a particular question on which I want to press them for an answer. At the beginning of the debate, we heard from the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali), about the decision to return to, or enable, the use of the EU standards relating to construction materials. I know that mention of EU standards has a triggering effect on some Members; it does not have that impact on me, because I am a strong supporter of close co-operation with our neighbours.
I think that the Minister was probably referring to the written ministerial statement of 2 September, in which the Government announced the decision to remove the end date that had previously applied—the date by which CE-marked construction materials could be sold within the UK market—and to allow those products to continue to be supplied to that market with no end date. That strikes me as a reasonable decision, but I should like to have a specific assurance on one point. The EU regulations on the fire safety of construction products date from 2015, and those are the relevant regulations applying to products that meet the CE-marked standard. That was, of course, before the Grenfell Tower disaster occurred. UK regulations were updated in response to the disaster by the previous Government, in 2018, and took account of the specific risks relating to construction materials that were identified in the initial phases of the report.
May I ask the Minister to assure the House, from the Dispatch Box, that following the Government’s decision to set aside the end date by which only the CE mark was required and to allow UK standards to be effectively set aside, the standard of the products that are imported to the UK meet at least the 2018 UK post-Grenfell fire safety standards? Otherwise, there is a risk that products that we would not be satisfied to see installed in buildings and that have given rise to serious concerns in the past may continue to be supplied to the market because they meet those EU standards, even though they may not meet the new UK standards.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
Many of my constituents are extremely concerned for their safety. They are living in constant fear because of building safety and resilience issues. I am sure the shadow Minister agrees that the pace of remediation has been too slow in the seven years since the Grenfell tragedy. Does he also agree that firm action needs to be taken by developers, freeholders, manufacturers and other organisations, and that the Government must push to ensure that the pace of remediation is quickened?
David Simmonds
I entirely agree about the need to ensure that this work happens apace. During the debate, the contributions from the likes of the hon. Members for Sheffield South East and for Runcorn and Helsby (Mike Amesbury) demonstrated the complexity of some of the issues with which Governments of all parties have wrestled over the years. I have the insulation material that was identified in the Grenfell report in my own home, because in certain applications it is considered to be within building regulations. We know that this is not a straightforward process, and we need to ensure that building regulations have the absolute clarity that local authorities require. That is why I press the Minister on this point: can we, as a House, be confident that the consequence of that written ministerial statement will not be a risk of materials that do not meet the standards that we imposed in 2018 being imported and sold into the UK market?
It is clear that there will always be a debate, not just in the context of housing but in the context of any complex public service in this country, between those who think that the best approach for regulation is to specify the outcome that we want to see—we want the resident to be safe in their home, we want the child to be safe in the children’s home and we want the patient to be safe in hospital; that is very similar to the approach taken in the aviation sector, which was mentioned earlier—and those who argue that the best approach is for Parliament and other relevant authorities to specify the precise safety features that we wish to see installed.
Each of those approaches has strengths and weaknesses. The previous Government, particularly in the early years, were keen to focus on the safety outcome that was being pursued rather than to specify individual measures that had to be taken, partly out of concern that those individual measures might not be as effective in practice as they needed to be. It is clear from the contributions by Members of all parties that they understand the complexity of this debate. The Minister will have to make decisions as we consider the future of building regulations. Does Parliament specify that there has be a sprinkler system in one building, but a mister system in another? Are we going to specify that there has to be a dry riser in one type of building, and a wet riser in another type of building? Or are those simply matters that we prefer to leave to local building control services, while specifying the level of safety that we expect to achieve? All of these are important elements in this complex debate.
As I said in opening for His Majesty’s loyal Opposition, we are determined to carry forward the work that we did in the last Parliament, largely in partnership with Labour Members, on fire safety and building safety. Those pieces of legislation inevitably require the current Government to provide guidance to local authorities, building control services, builders, construction firms and other parts of the sector. By working together constructively to support the effective implementation of those measures and provide absolute clarity on the expectations, we will achieve our shared aim of ensuring that all our constituents know that the buildings in which they live and work, and in which they are educated and receive medical treatment, meet the relevant safety standards and are environments and places in which they can safely go about their daily business.
Alex Norris
I am grateful for that kind offer. Of course I will readily accept a visit to Burnley—perhaps through the lens of my role as the local growth and towns Minister. We could have a very interesting visit and I would be glad to do it.
I am conscious of the time; I am going to run out of it, unthinkably. We may have to pick up any further interventions in a different form, because I want to get to the points about buildings insurance, lending and service charges raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Runcorn and Helsby (Mike Amesbury), for Eltham and Chislehurst and for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee).
One thing we know is that there has not been enough change in this space over the past seven years, but there has been change in the insurance bills that many leaseholders have been facing. We understand the financial and emotional impact that extreme insurance premiums have been having on leaseholders. Affected leaseholders have been burdened with paying too high premiums for too long. I assure colleagues that we are working actively to reduce premiums for leaseholders, and we are reviewing how better to protect leaseholders from costs and push for fair premiums for leaseholders in buildings with fire safety issues.
Colleagues have talked about buying, selling or remortgaging homes. We have seen improvements in that space, but we remain vigilant. We will continue to hold particularly the 10 largest lenders to account following their commitment to lend on properties even where remediation is not yet complete. They must keep that promise.
On service charges, by law, variable service charges must be reasonable. As colleagues have raised, that has been stretched significantly by some of the practices we have seen. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 contains measures to ensure that leaseholders get key financial and non-financial information so that they can scrutinise and hold to account the organisations that they are working with on service charges. Not all of that legislation has been commenced; secondary legislation is required, but we are working on that actively. We just want to get it right.
My hon. Friend the Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda) talked about the pace of remediation. Again, we accept that the pace is too slow; we have said that throughout, and what we have seen in Dagenham and Slough are horrific reminders of the risk that unsafe cladding still poses to far too many people. The Deputy Prime Minister has been very clear on her intention to drive that forward—again, there is that political will—and to get more action out of manufacturers, freeholders, developers and organisations with responsibility for making sure that buildings are safe. Too many building owners are still not acting quickly enough, so we will investigate, pursue the most egregious actors who are creating unacceptable delays, and hold them to account. The message from this Dispatch Box and from this Government is clear: “Use the routes we have created to get your buildings fixed, and get on with it.”
I now turn to the points made by the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and the hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) about the inquiry. The right hon. Gentleman expressed concern that the report would be shelved, and the hon. Lady was concerned that it would just be words, so again, let me make the commitment—this speaks to the response I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner)—that the report’s recommendations must be considered with the seriousness that this tragedy deserves. We will look at all 58 recommendations in detail; there will be a debate on the Floor of this House; we will respond in full within six months; and we will be listening to the community throughout the process. We will update Parliament annually on our progress so that we can be held to account, but we will also get on quickly with the things we can do, whether that is speeding up remediation or reforming construction products. The change has not been at the pace that it ought to have been, but it will get better. I can commit that the report will not, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, just be shelved—far from it.
The hon. Members for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) and for Woking (Mr Forster) mentioned buildings under 11 metres. Our approach to cladding remediation has been to prioritise the risk of loss of life. It is generally accepted that the risk to life is proportional to the height of buildings, so the risk to life is usually lower in buildings under 11 metres, and they are very unlikely to need the same costly remediation. Building safety remediation works may be required in a very small number of those buildings, but so far, our casework as a Department over the past couple of years shows that of the more than 160 cases that have been raised, only three have fallen into that category. As such, we think that is an appropriate distinction to draw.
My hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) made a point about RAAC. This issue is different in Scotland than it is in England: Scotland has its own responsibilities, which the Scottish Government must work within, and as I said to my hon. Friend, we will work within the best practices too. It is the duty of building owners, including local authorities if they are the owner, to fulfil their duties to manage building safety and performance risks of all kinds—including RAAC—in a proportionate manner.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), talked about personal evacuation plans, or PEEPs. We must ensure that the most vulnerable in our society are protected. On 2 September, through a written ministerial statement, the Government announced that the Home Office will bring forward in the autumn proposals to improve fire safety and the evacuation of disabled or vulnerable residents in high-rise and higher-risk residential buildings in England. Those proposals will be called residential PEEPs. Through them, residents with disabilities and impairments will be entitled to a person-centred risk assessment to identify the appropriate equipment and adjustments to aid their fire safety and evacuation, as well as a residential PEEP statement that says what vulnerable residents should do in the event of a fire. The Government have committed funding next year to begin that important work by supporting social housing providers to deliver PEEPs for their renters.
The shadow Minister also mentioned product hallmarks. We stand by what was said in the written ministerial statement—I would have hoped that gave enough confidence —but for clarity, this is about stronger standards, not weaker standards. I hope the hon. Gentleman can take confidence from that.
David Simmonds
I would just like to press the Minister for the assurance I am seeking: that the Government have taken steps to ensure that all products that meet the 2015 European standards, and therefore are within the scope of what the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali) said in the written ministerial statement, will also—as a minimum—meet the 2018 post-Grenfell UK standards.
Alex Norris
My colleague and hon. Friend, the Minister for building safety, has heard that intervention. As I say, everything that we have said is about higher standards, not lesser standards, but my hon. Friend will write to the hon. Gentleman about the issue he has raised. Again, I hope that I can assure him that this is about greater standards, not lesser ones.
To conclude, as the Prime Minister made clear, the Grenfell Tower tragedy was the result of unacceptable, inherent and systematic issues and decades of failure from both industry and Government. It is going to take political will to change that, and we offer it.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered building safety and resilience.
Exempt Supported Accommodation
David Simmonds Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) on securing today’s debate. I must draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests because, like the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), I am also a member of the LGA’s parliamentary team of vice-presidents.
I recall from my work on the Kerslake review into the governance of Birmingham city council that it has the highest proportion of residents needing to access social care during their lifetime of any local authority in England. The level of need is patently particularly acute, which is why one of the five pilots introduced following the “Supported housing: national statement of expectations” in October 2020 was in Birmingham.
Anybody with local government experience will be familiar with these challenges, which go back many years. They often result from reforms, such as those in the 1980s with care in the community, those in the late 1990s with the fair access criteria, and the introduction of extra care housing supported living. They all had a high degree of cross-party support based on the idea of improving the level of independence and autonomy that could be provided to people who need extra support through a combination of housing and social care.
All Members’ inboxes will contain at least some examples of concern about abuses in the market; some examples where the quality of care provided is not reaching the appropriate standard; and, of course, some examples where the quality of care is exceptional and supports our constituents to enjoy the fullest, most autonomous life and the greatest degree of independence in pursuing their interests. As we have heard, in response to the abuses that were identified in the market, my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), brought forward a private Member’s Bill, which was adopted by the Government and enjoyed cross-party support in the last Parliament, with a view to bringing a clear legislative and regulatory focus to the sector.
As we know and have heard in the debate, the combination of challenges around resourcing the implementation of that measure—for example, the ability of local authorities to make good use of feedback from residents who may be extremely vulnerable, and ensuring that that new regulatory environment is enforceable when it sits outside of the planning system to a great degree, as the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston identified—remains significant.
When we consider recent work, it seems that the Minister has a great deal to build on. As has been highlighted, there has been a good degree of cross-party support for improved measures to address the issue, and, following the publication of the “Supported housing: national statement of expectations” and the implementation of the five pilots, an evaluation was published in the last Parliament, around April 2022. A written ministerial statement from the then Minister, Eddie Hughes, set out the future plans and funding aimed at implementing the regulation that those pilots had identified as being necessary. That work led to and fed into the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023 and interacted with the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023. The issue was also the subject of a Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee inquiry in 2021.
The debate and discussion in Parliament has significance only in so far as it can be implemented at a local level. Both the Select Committee inquiry and the learning from those pilots was very clear that local authorities need to have sufficient resource and flexibility to implement it at a local level. I welcome the fact that, in the previous Parliament, the Government provided a £20 million fund to begin ensuring that all local authorities could learn from that and had a degree of resource. However, it is clear from the level of wider need, and in particular, from the emerging evidence of market abuse not just in this sector but in areas such as children’s homes and care homes, where significant rip-off fees are being charged by some providers for a service that is simply inadequate to meet the needs of those residents, that further work is needed. Clearly, the Minister has taken office at a time when the Department has accumulated a high degree of evidence as a result of the pilots, the debates and the work done in the previous Parliament. I hope that that will be enormously useful in ensuring that the expectations set out in that Parliament can be fulfilled.
I would like to add my support on this matter. I do not think that this Minister is responsible for planning, but the point that was made about how we support the identification of exempt accommodation through the planning process is important. I think we all recognise that this is a marketplace in which we have a combination of local authority providers, private providers, charities and voluntary organisations, and we do not wish to place undue impediments in the way of those who wish to convert existing buildings—for example, houses in multiple occupation—to provide additional support to residents who may be able to make the most of it. At the same time, in all communities, in order to avoid the problems we have seen—with particular settings, for example, requiring a high degree of police and law enforcement input—there needs to be that earlier identification process.
As the Government bring forward their proposed review of the planning system, I hope the Minister and her colleagues will give some consideration to how changing the use classes that relate to exempt accommodation or making that part of a wider review—for example, of change of use of residential accommodation to become children’s homes, houses in multiple occupation, care homes and so on—would enable the earlier identification of sites and input to be gathered from the likes of police and NHS services. That would then influence the planning committee in deciding whether a location was appropriate in order, for example, to avoid the clustering of problem locations. As we have seen in the past with local authorities at the coast, we may find a combination of bail hostels next to children’s homes next to asylum accommodation, all of which can create a very challenging social mix for a local authority and other local authority services to deal with.
This has been a very helpful debate. I again congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston. I hope that the Minister will be able to build on the constructive work done in the last Parliament and that we will see that feed into a significant change in the experience of the most vulnerable people, who need to access exempt accommodation, but also in the communities in which it is located and their experience of it in the coming years.
Oral Answers to Questions
David Simmonds Excerpts(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
We share the ambition of seeing a big increase in the supply of housing, and of social housing in particular. Given that there are around 1.4 million new homes with planning consent already granted in this country, what process led the Government to prioritising the removal of green-belt protections rather than building the homes for which our councils have already given consent?
Matthew Pennycook
What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that we are doing both. We are making changes to the national planning policy framework to encourage the release of the right kind of lower-quality grey belt land within the green belt, and we are taking action to ensure that those sites across the country that have received consent but which are stalled or are not being built at the pace required, are moved along with additional support from the centre.
David Simmonds
The previous Government made new measures available to local authorities to encourage borrowing against the housing revenue account to enable the creation of new council housing. What measures do the Government have in mind to increase the take-up of this approach by our local authorities?
Matthew Pennycook
We are committed to working with councils, including with the signatories of the recent report on securing the future of council housing, to address the many challenges they are facing, including in connection with the housing revenue account headroom as many of them are feeling lots of pressure on that front. As a first step, we have given councils more flexibility to increase the delivery of council homes using right-to-buy receipts, and allocated an additional £450 million to councils to secure homes for families at risk of homelessness. We will set out plans at the next fiscal event to give councils and housing associations the rent stability they need to borrow and invest in new and existing homes.