Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

It is always pleasure to follow my friend the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). I agreed with a lot of what he said. I also very much agreed with everything said by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). As a fellow London MP, in my case east London, housing makes up the largest single section of my case load. That did not use to be the case. It has grown enormously over the past decade. Immigration used to be the single largest section of my case load. Now it is housing, and it is growing and growing.

My constituency covers two east London boroughs: Redbridge and Waltham Forest. Today, I will talk largely about the problems in Waltham Forest, which is one of the biggest London boroughs. Demand is very clearly outstripping supply in every section of housing, and has been for a great number of years. The number of households on the general waiting list in Waltham Forest is now 9,025—nearly 10,000 families. When I say the general waiting list, I mean the housing association registered social landlord waiting list and the council waiting list. That figure has been rising since I was elected 10 years ago, when it was a great deal lower than it is now.

Only 600 to 700 vacancies arise each year. That suggests that the average wait is 14 years for accommodation. The reality is that, because of the way that allocations and demand work, many of those applicants will never be housed. It will not be 14 years, or even 20 years; they will never be properly housed. Purely in Waltham Forest, 1,275 households are homeless and living in temporary accommodation. Of those families, 626 are housed in temporary accommodation within the borough, 584 are outside it but in London, and 65, sadly, are outside London, largely in Essex and other home counties, the furthest place being Colchester. That is an improvement on the situation a couple of years ago, when I was regularly dealing with cases of people who would contact me to say that they had been offered accommodation in the west midlands or even further afield. That has been addressed not because of Government investment and an increase in supply, but because of the work of the registered social landlords, the housing associations and council staff and councillors, and their dedication in trying to find, by whatever means, places that people can call a home.

Moving to the supply, the number of new builds has dropped like a stone. In the year just gone, 2020-21, there were only 64 new builds in the whole of Waltham Forest, one of the biggest London boroughs. Ten years ago, that figure was nearer 500. The Secretary of State talks about building and it will be miraculous if he gets anywhere near his aims, because in my case load I am seeing the exact opposite of what he talked about. The severe lack of social rented housing also means that I spend an awful lot of time dealing with people who live in very substandard and overpriced private rented housing, where cowboy landlords are taking advantage of people, largely those who are poor and vulnerable, and very often those with little command of English, who therefore do not know the system. The supply of social housing across London is inadequate, and my constituents are the people who are paying the price.