Oral Answers to Questions

Karen Buck Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Companion animals are a really good thing—cats, dogs or whatever they are—and it is vital that we work with landlords to ensure that people have the right to have the animal that brings so much joy into their lives with them, whatever form of tenure they enjoy.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

T3. The Everyone In policy was very successful in taking rough sleepers off the streets at the beginning of the pandemic, but it was abandoned too quickly and last winter thousands of people were back on the streets. With winter storms, bitter weather and worry about a new covid variant, why are the Government not giving priority to restoring a version of Everyone In now?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Eddie Hughes)]

I am disappointed by the hon. Lady’s suggestion that it has been abandoned. It certainly has not. The Government are committed to giving all people somewhere safe to sleep. We have the £10 million winter pressure fund and we have the winter transformation fund to help charities and faith groups to deliver single-unit accommodation, so this Government are very much committed to the cause and I would welcome working with the hon. Lady on this in the future.

High Rise Social Housing: Reducing Fire Risk

Karen Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered reducing fire risk in high rise social housing.

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairship, Ms Rees, and to speak about the subject at last, because I have been trying to obtain this debate for some time. It is a shame it clashes with the Building Safety Bill evidence session, but that shows how important these issues are to the House, and they will remain so for a considerable time.

The human tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire was apparent from the morning of 14 June 2017 as the world woke up to the horrifying images of people killed in their own homes in a particularly savage manner. Four years later, the scale and depth of that tragedy are only now being explored. The Grenfell inquiry is still years from resolution, however, interim investigations, such as the Hackitt report, have provided some clue to the comprehensive failures in the building industry. The Government have been slow to legislate, but earlier this year the Fire Safety Act 2021 was passed and Parliament is currently considering the Building Safety Bill.

Much focus has rightly been on the priorities for action, such as the removal of flammable cladding from the exterior of tall buildings and who will pay for the huge remedial costs, in particular whether the costs should fall on leaseholders given they had no knowledge of the risks they were taking on and do not have the means to meet bills that, in some cases, are higher than the price they paid for their homes. Members may wish to raise these issues and others today, but my purpose in requesting the debate was to highlight two aspects of the crisis exposed by Grenfell that have not received sufficient attention. It is not by coincidence that they both relate to social housing.

Anyone who watched Daniel Hewitt’s distressing documentary, “Surviving Squalor: Britain’s Housing Shame”, on ITV on Sunday night and saw some of the conditions social housing tenants are living in in 2021 would have been sickened by how far the sector has fallen from its post-war pride and ambition. I am sure every Member present has horror stories of neglect, under-investment and poor service to relate, but Grenfell has exposed how the failure of some Governments to invest and of some landlords to show a duty of care has become a threat not only to the quality of life of millions of tenants and leaseholders, but to life itself.

In the second part of my speech, I want to deal with the causes of fire in social housing, especially electrical fires, and why more is not being done to prevent them. First, I want to comment on the consequences for social housing landlords and tenants of the costs of undertaking fire safety works. This morning, Inside Housing—all of us, particularly the Government, should be grateful for its investigative work throughout this crisis—published a story that One Housing, one of the G15’s supersized housing associations, recorded a deficit of £25 million for the last financial year. In the same year, it spent £27.3 million on fire safety work to its stock.

Over the next five years, One Housing expects to spend £200 million on such works. Clarion, another of the G15, estimates it will spend £150 million in the next four years, and in total the 12 biggest housing associations will spend an estimated £3 billion over the next decade. Yes, that is right: 12 housing associations will spend £3 billion when the Government’s total building safety fund stands at £5 billion, and the National Housing Federation says the total bill for the sector will be £10 billion. Clarion told me that it expects to receive £5.4 million from the BSF of the £150 million it will spend. That shortfall is significant, not only for the association as a housebuilder and landlord, as we shall see, but for its leaseholders. Like most associations, it will try every other source of revenue, including builders, developers and the BSF. If all else fails, it will bill the leaseholders. Tenants lack even that mitigation; there is no BSF for them. The majority of the costs social landlords must bear will come from their existing income streams—mainly rents—or from diverting funds from other services, from repairs to new developments. Expect more Daniel Hewitt documentaries in the years ahead.

I contacted the main social landlords operating in my constituency that are tackling significant remedial works with a series of questions, including how much they were spending on remediation. The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham said it will apply to the BSF but

“the remainder is from the Housing Revenue Account.”

To its credit, it added that

“leaseholders are not being charged”.

Catalyst says that

“overall, we expect to invest over £109m remediating our high-rise portfolio”.

It has secured £22 million from the BSF, but will charge leaseholders where grants are not available. Shepherds Bush Housing says that

“the total cost of our building safety programme is estimated to be over £40m”.

For buildings under 18 metres, or where grant is not forthcoming, it is concerned that it may have to pass on costs to leaseholders. Notting Hill Genesis estimates a bill of £41 million for the last financial year, and will pass on costs where third-party funding is not forthcoming.

Almost every landlord said the unrecovered costs of fire safety works will impact significantly on core functions and other duties. That means fewer, slower repairs and fewer staff to manage properties and to liaise with residents. Members who already have a full inbox of housing casework will groan, as will tenants and leaseholders, at the prospect of a continued rapid decline in the resources and services available.

The most shocking effect will be on development programmes and new home building. Shelter estimates the need for 90,000 new social homes a year. Last year, 6,000 were built. Earlier this year, the Financial Times carried a report based on evidence from Clarion, Peabody, Network Homes and the L&Q group—four of the biggest landlords—that the number of affordable homes built over the next five years would fall by 40% as a direct consequence of fire safety works. Small and medium-sized associations have even less room for manoeuvre. Shepherds Bush Housing estimates a 50% cut in the development budget and less planned maintenance spend.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is quite right to focus on the implications of these costs and how they will affect the repairs and development programmes. Does he also recognise an additional issue that the Government have not addressed over a number of years? Local authority housing contains a high proportion of leaseholders within that stock. Even where a local authority wishes to carry out fire safety works, as was the case in mine, the fact that there is no clarity about the right to go into leasehold properties and to require leaseholders to have the works done means that it does not even get the fire safety works carried out, and many tenants are left at risk as a consequence.

[Andy Slaughter]

As always, my hon. Friend is on top of her brief. That is a very important point that the Minister and shadow Minister may wish to address. Many people who looked at the Building Safety Bill think that the provisions for access are inadequate or overly bureaucratic, and simply will not work. We have already seen that happen with the problems that Wandsworth Council has had with retrofitting of sprinklers, where there is resistance from leaseholders. There has to be a way, as with gas safety and so on, of ensuring that where the safety of the occupants of a block as a whole is at risk, it is possible to carry out works in a comprehensive way.

Building Safety Bill

Karen Buck Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I think the right hon Gentleman makes an important point, and that is one element of the market failure we are seeing today. Waking watches are being used excessively. They can be rip-offs and, in many cases, they can be replaced by modern fire alarms. That is why I created the waking watch relief fund last year, which is assisting with the issue, but has not closed it down entirely. The National Fire Chiefs Council has now produced further guidance, which essentially says that waking watches should be used only in the most exceptional of circumstances, and where they are used, they should be used only for short periods. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is taking forward that work with fire and rescue services, and I would like to see most waking watches, barring the most exceptional of circumstances, brought to a close as quickly as possible.

The Bill will deliver improvements across the entire built environment. It will strengthen oversight and protections for residents in high-rise buildings. It will give those residents a greater say and will toughen sanctions against those who threaten safety. Its focus on risk will help owners to manage their buildings better, while giving the home building industry the clear, proportionate framework it needs to deliver more high-quality homes.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will make some progress, if I may, but I will return to the hon. Lady.

While strengthening fire safety requirements in all premises regulated by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and improving competence and oversight generally, the Bill rightly focuses the new more stringent requirements on those buildings and those issues that pose the greatest risk. It provides a framework to ensure that, during design and construction, defined duty holders have clear responsibilities and that compliance with building regulations occurs. They will have to clear a series of hard stops through the new gateway system for in-scope buildings. In occupation, every building in scope will have an identified accountable person with clear responsibility for safety matters. Importantly, it will be a criminal offence not to carry out these duties effectively, punishable by an unlimited fine and up to two years in prison.

If we are truly to build a world-class regime, then residents must be at its heart. That is why, as well as championing social housing residents through the social housing charter that I created last year, we are giving residents a stronger voice in the system through the Bill, making it easier for them to seek redress and to have their voices heard. The Bill will require an accountable person for a high-rise residential building to engage with their residents and establish a formal complaints process for residents to raise concerns.

These measures are strong, but fair, and they will be overseen by the new building safety regulator within the Health and Safety Executive. The regulator will be equipped with robust powers to crack down on substandard practices, and as I said earlier, it will ensure that proportionality is embedded within its operations.

Dame Judith’s review pointed to an industry that needed significant culture and regulatory change to be fit for purpose, and I am sure I am not the only Member who has been shocked by the recent testimony at the Grenfell inquiry. This has exposed a corrosive culture of corner cutting and at times a cavalier attitude to building safety. We await the findings of the inquiry, and indeed whether criminal proceedings will follow.

The Bill creates powers to strengthen regulatory oversight for firms that manufacture and sell construction products, overseen by the new national regulator for construction products. Crucially, the Bill will have powers to remove unsafe construction products from the market swiftly and to take action against those who break the rules.

Our new regime will help those living in high-rise residential buildings to raise these issues, but we need to expand legal safeguards for everybody, regardless of the type of property they live in. We are strengthening redress for people buying a new build home, through provisions for the new homes ombudsman, which will provide dispute resolution and resolve complaints involving buyers and developers. As Members of Parliament, we all know of examples of shoddy workmanship by developers and of cases where complaints about things ranging from snagging to much more serious issues have not been properly addressed. There will now be a forum where these issues can be settled and consumers provided with the outcome they deserve when making the biggest investment in their lives.

[Robert Jenrick]

Those are two important points. I would like to see the new homes ombudsman be able to take the kind of action that the hon. Gentleman describes. I will have to revert to him on whether the powers exactly allow that. If they do not, that is the kind of issue we should progress during the passage of the Bill. I give way to the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and apologise for keeping her waiting.

[Ms Buck]

Returning to the issue of waking watch and risk, London now has 900 waking watches, with the number having risen significantly. The London Fire Brigade says that there remain a number of buildings under 18 metres, or seven storeys, that in its view present equal or greater risks than those currently in scope. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether he believes that the LFB is wrong?

[Robert Jenrick]

As I understand it—I stand to be corrected if I have the wrong information—the 900 figure that the hon. Lady cites was a misinterpretation of the figures that were released earlier. None the less, the actual number is significant, albeit fewer than 900. We want to see waking watches used only in cases where they are absolutely necessary. The recent statement from the National Fire Chiefs Council has suggested that they are being used too often and that they can be reduced significantly. If she has constituents in that situation, as I am sure she does, in the first instance I would recommend that they make use of the waking watch relief fund to install a fire alarm, which can cut the costs very considerably.

This Bill takes an unusual step of retrospectively extending the period during which compensation for defective premises can be claimed—it more than doubles the current period, from six to 15 years. This significant step forward was requested and campaigned for by groups impacted by the cladding issue. We are going further, expanding the scope of the work for which compensation can be claimed also to include future major renovation work to buildings. These measures will not help everyone, but they do provide a step change in redress for raising issues. I hope that, in time, builders will extend their warranties to cover this period and provide the maximum amount of confidence to house purchasers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

As others have said, the Bill represents progress in implementing the recommendations of the Hackitt review, but it will not come into effect until a full five years after the Grenfell tragedy. In those five years, hundreds of thousands of leaseholders have lived their lives under the fear of fire, under a threat to their own personal safety and under the fear of being trapped in unsellable, non-mortgageable properties and bearing costs that they are completely unable to fund. In a number of cases, those costs exceed the value of the property when they purchased it.

What we know—we will obviously be digesting the contents of the written statement as well—is that the Bill will not do enough to overcome the damage that has been done to leaseholders or to compensate them for the costs they have already borne and will continue to bear, and that further amendments will be essential before the Bill passes into law. I was particularly struck, during the Secretary of State’s opening speech, that the waking watch has now been dismissed, in many cases, as a scam and as being unnecessary. It is a bit rich of the Government to say that, when the waking watch has been the principal means of protection that has been relied on to ensure the safety of those living in high-rise properties. People who have been paying for such waking watches over these last years will listen with amazement to what the Government are now saying and to their glib dismissal of a scheme that they themselves have been relying on.

Even five years after Grenfell, there is still clear evidence that the necessary culture changes in the building industry have not taken place. As the London Fire Brigade says, there are still developers who are gaming the system and cutting corners, and there is clearly still not a level playing field to protect the interests of the only people—the tenants and the leaseholders—who are entirely blameless in this.

I want to make a particular point that does not get covered enough. Although the fire safety and building safety problems have been a catastrophe in terms of their personal impact on leaseholders, there are also significant implications for the social housing sector. Housing associations have faced remediation costs of £10 billion, and the consequence of that is a dramatic fall in the house building programme and in the investment that is necessary to deal with other safety, repair and maintenance issues in that sector. Those tenants and those people in housing need should not also be the victims of a crisis that they had no part in, and the social housing sector must be fully compensated for its actual costs in the months and years to come.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call Paul Maynard, by video link.

Oral Answers to Questions

Karen Buck Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes]

I believe that the memorial wall is owned by St Thomas’ Hospital. I am not sure what decision it has come to with regard to its permanency. However, as I said, having seen friends and family visiting, I would keenly encourage MPs from across the House to do that. We need to consider the most impactful and enduring way to remember those we have lost and to commemorate the service of everyone involved in this unprecedented response to the pandemic. As I say, the commission has been set up and we will report on its terms of reference and membership in due course.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

What assessment he has made of the potential effect of ending the moratorium on evictions on levels of (a) evictions and (b) homelessness.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

What assessment he has made of the potential effect of ending the moratorium on evictions on levels of (a) evictions and (b) homelessness.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Eddie Hughes)]

Although the ban on bailiff enforcement has ended, the measures that the Government have introduced mean that fewer cases are progressing to eviction. Landlord possession claims were down by 74% in quarter 1 of this year compared with the same period in 2020, and the number of families in temporary accommodation is at its lowest since 2016. For those who need more support, we are providing councils with £310 million through the homelessness prevention grant—that is an uplift of £47 million on last year—which can be used for financial support for people to find a new home, to work with landlords to prevent evictions, or to provide temporary accommodation and ensure that families have a roof over their head.

[Ms Buck]

Even before the effect of the end of the evictions ban, a quarter of all homeless households in London were being accommodated away from their home areas—away from their schools, their caring responsibilities, their jobs and their support networks. Previous Ministers have condemned that but done nothing to stop it. Will the Minister condemn it and state that homeless households should be accommodated near their support networks? What will he do to ensure that that happens?

[Eddie Hughes]

It is important that these matters are handled by the councils themselves, because they are much closer to the problem than the Government; that is not something that we should or could legislate for centrally. With regard to the hon. Lady’s own council, we have allocated £5.2 million from the rough sleeping initiative and £6.8 million of homelessness prevention grant funding. The contribution that the Government are making to support local councils is very significant.

Antisemitic Attacks

Karen Buck Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank the hon. Lady for her work. I appreciate that yesterday’s events played out partly in her constituency, and partly in the constituencies of the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), who would, I am sure, be speaking on behalf of his constituents today if he were able to. We must now ensure that residents of all those parts of London, and indeed elsewhere in the country, have the reassuring presence of police on the streets, and the knowledge that should these events arise again the police will be there to support them and to take action against the perpetrators. We will continue to provide support to the Community Security Trust and other good organisations that help to protect community centres, synagogues, schools and nurseries as far as we possibly can, and money is no object in that regard. Members of the Jewish community have our complete support in the months and weeks to come.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I am glad that Westminster North is home to a large Jewish community. It is also home to the largest Arab community in Britain. Many people, across party, work very hard to ensure community cohesion. That work was undermined desperately by the events yesterday: the spewing of vile misogyny and antisemitism by the convoy that drove through Westminster North, among other areas. The police have acted swiftly with arrests and reassurance patrols, but can the Secretary of State reassure me that that support will continue over the long term, not just over the coming days and weeks? Also, will he urgently review the capacity we have in local government and our civic institutions to build on the work of community cohesion and education, so we can ensure that nothing as vile as the events we saw this weekend will ever happen again?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady is right to say that in London, as in many other parts of the country, relations between the Jewish community and the Muslim community are generally good, and inter-faith dialogue is generally strong. We have seen that very prominently in recent months, for example, in tackling covid-19, where both religious communities have come forward, been incredibly supportive and have worked together. I have seen that myself on many occasions. She is also right to say that councils have an important part to play. I have asked Sara Khan, as part of her work, to provide recommendations to us on how we can provide better advice to local councils on how to spot and tackle extremism; which groups they should not be interfacing with; and, where they do find extremists in their communities, what action they can take to root it out. Extremists should not be able to operate with impunity in plain sight in any part of this country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Karen Buck Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall]

The point that I made to the hon. Lady last week is that we have published all the details in the technical note that is set out on gov.uk. We thought that was the right thing to do. At the spending review last year, we set out the main strategic elements of the UKSPF in the heads of terms. The funding profile will be set out at the next spending review and we will publish further details in a UK-wide investment framework later this year. In the meantime, the community renewal fund will deliver real, lasting change into communities right across the country. It will tackle inequality and deprivation in some of the communities that need it the most and were neglected for so long by Labour, and of course one of its key aims will be to work to bind together our precious Union.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

What recent assessment he has made of trends in the number of first-time buyers entering the housing market.

[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

In 2018 and 2019 we saw the highest and the second-highest number of first-time buyers since 2007. With the effect of covid, 2020 saw a 14% decrease from the 2019 total. The Government are now redoubling their efforts to assist first-time buyers. That is why today we launched the mortgage guarantee scheme offering a 95% loan-to-value mortgage, developing first homes and enabling first-time buyers to purchase new-build homes locally with at least a 30% discount—a determined effort to support buyers.

[Ms Buck [V]]

For many first-time buyers, especially in cities, the options are mainly new-build and leasehold properties, but many of them are walking into a new nightmare of costs. Inside Housing is today reporting on purchasers buying properties as safe only to discover almost immediately that the ratings are changing, leaving them with huge bills for waking watch, and unsaleable properties. Does the Minister know how many first-time buyers are affected by this, and why is the only truly blameless party, the purchaser, the one who is still left carrying the can and the risk?

[Christopher Pincher]

There are a suite of options for first-time buyers. They can purchase a home using the Help to Buy scheme. They can take advantage of our shared ownership scheme, whereby, under the new proposals, failings and defects will be fixed by the developer for the first 10 years. As I said, the mortgage guarantee scheme that we announced today allows first-time buyers and others to purchase homes with as little as 5% deposit.

We are determined to ensure that first-time buyers are able to achieve their dream and get on to the property ladder. That is a world away from the campaign that the hon. Lady chairs—the campaign of Sadiq Khan, who promised to build 116,000 homes in London but has thus far managed to deliver only 28,000. I wonder whether that is why the housing pledge, which was at the top of his campaign in 2016, is now second from bottom in 2021. I think that that says a lot about Labour and its priority for housing.

Homelessness and Temporary Accommodation

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered homelessness and temporary accommodation.

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, and delighted, as well, that the debate has attracted support in the Chamber on an issue that is central to much of our work as Members of Parliament but not discussed as often as we would like. Although there is a great deal to cover under the topic of homelessness and temporary accommodation, I shall concentrate particularly on conditions, and I hope that colleagues will address some of the other important issues that come under its umbrella.

“I feel like I am being punished.”

Those were the words of a desperate mother accepted as homeless after experiencing domestic violence, and placed in temporary accommodation by my local authority, Westminster City Council, like tens of thousands of others. There were 98,300 households in temporary accommodation in June, including 127,240 children, and that was up by 14% in the last year alone. The mother was found a private flat by the council, somewhat misleadingly described as temporary, because she has stayed in that limbo for seven years already. That is not my personal record for temporary accommodation. The current record is 21 years, and 10 years is not at all unusual.

The properties that the mother in question and everyone like her have been placed in are expensive. Their rents are similar to full market-level private rents. In a particularly cruel twist, those high rents mean that a high percentage of homeless households are immediately caught by the benefit cap, even though the occupants had no choice about where they were placed, or the rents they would pay. They are also insecure, as the mother in question is. Families such as hers are forced to move constantly, not just within the local area but across the city and beyond, regardless of the schools that the children attend or their personal needs.

A heavily pregnant constituent, who was registered blind, was placed first in north London, in a property with multiple stairs, that was not self-contained and where she was at risk of falling, and then in east London, where she was expected to navigate totally unfamiliar surroundings. She said to me:

“I’m very frightened from places I’m unfamiliar with, as I can’t get around”.

A family with two blind young adult children attending college were told they simply had to learn new mobility routes, as they were sent to the other side of London. These are all recent cases. Someone else told me:

“We were living locally for 19 years, and working in the hospital. We were evicted from our flat and had to approach Westminster council for help. We were placed in an emergency self contained flat that we were told was just for six weeks, so we couldn’t change our daughter’s school. But unfortunately its lapsed to 7 months. The transport is too expensive from West London just to take my daughter to the school. The cost is £60 weekly which we can’t afford any more—and the journey is too long—my wife has to leave home at 6AM to reach the school at 9AM. She find it very hard with little girl who is just 28 months old.”

The stories of dislocation and of the crisis of affordability could fill this debate alone, but I want to concentrate on the condition of the properties that my constituents are placed in. Those conditions are beyond belief, particularly given the amount of public money that is going into supporting the almost entirely private landlords providing the accommodation.

The family commuting five hours a day to school also reported:

“The condition of the flat is very bad & cold we are on the top of the building, & all is glass, with damp everywhere, the water leaking through the glass all around us”.

The same mother I referred to at the beginning of the speech, who was homeless owing to domestic violence, contacted me a few weeks ago to say:

“The property we are in is a shambles with mice, rats and rising damp and mould throughout. The Council has contacted the housing association managing the property, who has contacted the landlord. She sent her surveyor to the property in August. He was shocked to see how much damp we have. He said it would need major work done. I have postnatal depression and suffer from an illness which means I get migraines with stroke-type symptoms with them. I am on medication. My eldest son also has asthma and rising damp is in the kids room. The damp in my room is so bad myself and the baby are now sleeping on the floor in the front room and the new born is having problems breathing”.

Another mother wrote to me—all these examples are from this year, in the time of covid:

“I am in shock that the council can give properties to people in the state I was given mine especially with a six week old baby. I was told last minute after just giving birth that the temporary emergency accommodation I was in needed to be vacated. I was given a flat on the other side of London despite explaining all my support system was locally which is important to me as someone who suffers depression and anxiety with a history of attempted suicide which has gotten worse since I’ve been moved so far already.

Now I’m sitting in the living room on the first night nursing my new born when suddenly there is leaking from the ceiling and water is falling fast. The next day a contractor comes and tells me this is a previous issue that wasn’t fixed by Westminster and if he hadn’t come today the ceiling would have collapsed on me! He had to cut two big holes in the ceiling to dry out the ceiling as a water pipe had been leaking for some time before I moved in. Now the ceiling in the kitchen is leaking with water falling through the smoke alarm”.

There are more, oh so many more:

“Dear Ms Buck. I live in a Westminster temporary council flat, one of my 3 children is autistic. My neighbour down stairs shouts and kicks my door because of the leaking water in her flat which we reported to the agency A2Dominion”—

the housing association responsible for managing the property—

“and no one fixed. My kids are scared—especially the autistic child—they can’t sleep and so are doing no good in school”.

Another constituent came to me after being referred through the council’s children’s services. Even then—although Westminster council has now responded to this and one or two of the other cases—the council took 10 months to resolve the problem, despite being told:

“The mould is so severe because it was left for a very long time untreated…I can send you a copy of the EH”

environmental health—

“report and at least 40 pictures to outline the severity of mould and dampness and how it ate the plastering off the walls. This mould releases spores into the air which makes everybody inside this place always in hayfever condition. We have to keep all windows open for at least 5 hours every day. You could imagine the cost of heating…as we have a little boy who is autistic and had a very serious breathing condition and needs medical attention if he gets a simple cold. It is not only my son getting constantly ill but our food is mouldy and the clothes inside the cupboards are mouldy too.”

Another constituent wrote:

“Although we are on the waiting list for many years now, A2Dominion has not kept up its maintenance of this property. We have mould in all the rooms, carpets and furniture. The floor is a hazard as initially it did not even have underlay. Due to the wear and tear of 15 years we were advised to remove it and now we are without carpet. Winter is settling in and we will be cold. In the last few weeks, we have had to kill 6 mice. There are holes in floorboards and walls where they come in”.

Another said:

“I am in a temporary accommodation…by Westminster council placed in Leyton. I have written to my landlord to tell them that repairs are needed for three years now. I have allowed a reasonable time for my landlord to do these repairs, but they have not done them. I reported these problems to my landlord: Mould everywhere, walls are wet and the flooring wet everywhere. My son now has respiratory problems and hard breathing due to the property state, and is now under the hospital for his respiratory infection…it’s getting worse day by day. The house is all mould and suffocating for me and child—it’s life threatening to me and my son. I have contacted the housing at Westminster, the receptionist keeps telling me she will send an urgent email and someone will call me back but not a single person is. Ceiling has fallen down on me and my 3 years old in the bathroom…The agency came to try to cover it up and the man working for the agency when he opened the ceiling roof said this is life-threatening and it needs to get repaired but the landlord refusing to pay a lot of money as it costs too much.”

Another wrote to me:

“I am writing to inform you of my revolting state of living in this temporary accommodation of mine and the neglect of A2Dominion. I am a mother of two autistic children under the age of 10. Both suffer from severe disabilities…My temporary accommodation has horrid dampness…which has affected our cardiovascular medical condition and has made my children and I suffer tremendously during the past one year and a half ever since we moved into here. The carpets are damp to the point where you cannot keep your feet on the ground for too long while sitting. In addition to rats and mice that were roaming through the flat freely my electric meter caused a huge fire in the building which was luckily put out...Due to this, I have been without electricity for almost a week now.

I have spent the last 6 days in the most difficult state. I have not had any help or support from A2Dominion nor the council. Both are throwing the responsibility on another, while I am staying in a home everyday in order to keep my kids warm and fed in this cold winter. We are literally homeless right now and nothing has been done to fix the electricity and replace the meter, regardless of the hundreds of calls and pleas for help that I have made. I have no option but to turn to you for help. I am desperate and exhausted. My children are struggling and suffering with me. Their medical conditions are a huge obstacle, as they unable to accept change.”

And another:

“I’m writing this email in the hopes you could help me…I’m currently in long term temporary accommodation in Newham with my 4 month old baby…I’m from Westminster and have been accepted by the council. I’m currently in an unsuitable accommodation which…is infested with mice and vermin. I moved in in March this year and by the third day I reported the infestation of mice and large holes in the bathroom, kitchen and living room. Due to covid-19 the landlord refused to fill out any holes forcing me to do it myself very unprofessionally and desperately whilst heavily pregnant. When Lockdown came to an end the landlord did send out two different men…to fill the holes, and they did nothing…I pressured the housing to help force the landlord to fill the holes and it was a back and forth for a couple of weeks resulting in the maintenance team saying ‘the house is 200 years old…there’s nothing more I can do’ and ‘The kitchen flooring has water damage causing wood decay along the whole flooring for the kitchen which brings in rodents from the basement’…now as there’s holes everywhere and I even hear them eat through some holes and they come in…some eat the poison and die in my house…I’m stranded alone dealing with this, and it’s worsening my postpartum depression and anxiety. I can’t stay in this house another week. Due to lockdown new restriction of staying in other households I am really fighting my depression as I can’t even sofa surf due to safety issues. Please, please help us.”

And the last:

“In 2018 my family had been placed by Westminster in our current flat which has been deemed unfit to live in and determined to be detrimental to our health on a number of occasions during our stay (there is black mould/fungus/bacteria covering our walls). In addition to this, due to the building being quite literally bent out of shape, and slowly collapsing in on us, the windows in the living room are unable to close…making the entire house very cold, especially as we approach winter times. We have lived in these deteriorating conditions for…2 and a half years now despite it being considered urgent by every inspector that came to inspect the building saying that we should be rehoused immediately”.

I have managed to get two or three of these cases resolved in the last week. These are a selection, and I could have doubled, tripled or quadrupled the examples of the conditions that people are being kept in. The harshness of the conditions that people are experiencing as they go through the homeless system has to be seen to be believed. I do not understand how local authorities let this happen. I do not understand how the housing associations that are intermediaries—A2Dominion, Genesis, and Stadium housing associations among the worst, in my own experience; others will have other examples—allow this to happen. I do not understand how the Government allow it to happen, given the amount of public money that is being put into this.

The pressure of numbers is taking its toll. The figures are creeping up every year, year on year since 2011. Local councils are unequipped to cope with and pay for the homes that are required. Two thirds of all households that are homeless in Britain—62,670 households—were placed in temporary accommodation by London local authorities. Even prior to covid-19, London boroughs’ expenditure on homelessness was expected to rise to a total of £1 billion by 2021-22. Nearly a quarter of this is unfunded by central Government, thereby increasing the pressure on other services. There is no doubt that the pressure of those figures means that the ability to manage the quality of the accommodation is undermined, and the Government are failing to make good on the requirement to support these services. Unless the Government act on this, the brutal experiences being endured by my constituents will only continue to worsen.

Research from Shelter earlier this year revealed the explosion of the temporary accommodation industry. Between April 2018 and March 2019, councils spent over £1 billion on temporary accommodation—a rise of 9% in a year, and 78% in five years. Shelter’s research shows that 86% of this money is flowing directly to private providers, most of whom are unregulated. This explosion in expenditure has been fuelled by a chronic lack of investment in decent, genuinely affordable social housing.

The Minister will, I fear, just tell us how much the Government are spending. That is utterly meaningless unless there is a recognition of how far short funding falls, compared with what is needed, and of the wider context of cuts to social security, local housing allowance, local councils and social house building. I hope that I will be disappointed and that that is not what the Minister will say.

We need fundamental changes to housing supply and housing support in the social security system. We need proper management of and accountability for the homes that vulnerable and homeless people get stranded in. We need to strengthen the welfare safety net, remove the benefit cap, reverse the freeze to local housing allowance and ensure that rents align with the 50th percentile of market rents. We need urgent legislation to give private renters more security and end no-fault evictions, which remain one of the leading causes of homelessness. We need to invest in a new generation of social housing to provide families with stable, permanent and affordable homes.

Local councils need their homelessness costs to be fully funded. Homeless households need to be accommodated locally, except in exceptional circumstances, and the routine use of out-of-borough housing must be ended. Ministers have previously assured us that that will happen. They have promised us that it should be the exception rather than the rule, but that commitment is honoured only in the breach. Capacity and resources need to be made available to ensure that standards of accommodation are acceptable.

Homelessness is always a hellish experience, and the people who endure it are almost by definition already highly vulnerable. It should not be a punishment, but my constituents ask me this question again and again: “Why am I being punished for the sin of being homeless?”

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

I am afraid that there are a lot of people trying to take part, so if you want me to get you all in, we will have to limit you to three minutes. I am sorry.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Kelly Tolhurst)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing the debate on this important issue, which everybody has been pleased and willing to speak about with passion. She has spoken passionately about this topic before, including when we spoke last week about another element in this sphere. I am really grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken the time to attend and to speak on behalf of their constituents. I welcome the opportunity to address their points.

May I start by saying that I, too, am an MP who has worked hard for my constituents? I was very pleased to take on the role as Minister for homelessness, because of my involvement prior to being elected as a Member of Parliament. What I am hearing today is support for a lot of the work that the Government are doing, and a willingness and commitment in terms of the Government continuing to work to reach our objectives.

It is unacceptable that anyone should have to sleep rough. I recognise the incredible achievements in the last eight months by local councils and the homelessness sector—supported by this Government—meaning that in September we had successfully supported more than 29,000 vulnerable people during the pandemic, nearly 19,000 of whom have been provided with settled accommodation or move-on support.

I respect the hon. Member for Westminster North greatly, but I will have to disappoint her. I will outline further the funding that this Government have put into rough sleeping and homelessness. Although we say that this is not just about money, it is also about providing available funding and about what happens on the ground. We cannot ignore the unprecedented action that this Government have taken over recent months.

Our work on rough sleeping is not only world-leading, but has protected hundreds—

[Ms Buck]

Before the Minister moves off that point, will she explain exactly why, if the Government are spending more money, homelessness has risen by 14% in the last year alone?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. We have spent an unprecedented amount of money, and we are continuing to invest in those pilots and schemes in order to tackle all parts of rough sleeping and homelessness. There is a distinction between what we have done with Everybody In and what we are doing with Housing First, with regard to our social housing pilots. We are talking about a vast landscape. We are committed to solving rough sleeping and dealing with homelessness. The funding from the Government is an incredibly important part of that, and so are the right interventions on the ground, delivered in the correct way. That is something that I have particularly focused on since I have been in this role.

The spending review demonstrates the Government’s commitment to build on the fantastic progress of Everyone In and to support rough sleepers and those at risk of homelessness during covid-19. Next year, we are going even further and will provide more than £750 million to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. That includes the additional funding to support frontline services through the rough sleeping initiative and to enable local councils to fund their statutory duties to prevent homelessness. We are also providing capital funding to continue our landmark drive to bring forward thousands of homes for rough sleepers. That will support our commitment to end rough sleeping in this Parliament and fully enforce the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017.

On temporary accommodation, I am absolutely clear that we always want to see homeless individuals and families moved into settled accommodation as soon as possible and permanently. The action we are taking to increase the delivery of social housing will support that. I also recognise the important role that temporary accommodation can play in the meantime in ensuring that no family is ever without a roof over their head. Although the overall numbers of households in temporary accommodation have been rising, the number of households with children has remained relatively stable since the introduction of the Homelessness Reduction Act. However, I accept that we must go further. The increase in temporary accommodation numbers since the Act took effect has been almost entirely driven by single households receiving help that was previously unavailable to them. More recently, the increase has also been driven by our action to accommodate rough sleepers during the pandemic.

The Homelessness Reduction Act requires for the first time that local authorities, public services and the third sector work together actively to prevent and relieve homelessness for people at risk, irrespective of whether they are a family or a single person. That means that more single people are getting the help they need. They might otherwise have been on the streets. Since the introduction of the Act, 270,000 households have had their homelessness successfully prevented or relieved through securing accommodation for more than six months.

The hon. Member for Westminster North rightly raised the issue of the quality of temporary accommodation. In 2019, we gave £6.7 million to more than 180 local authorities to boost their enforcement in relation to quality on the ground.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Buck]

We could have had a whole day of debate on this important and wide-ranging subject. We heard a number of superb speeches. I hope that we will return to this because a number of questions remain to be answered by the Minister. The cold, brutal and inescapable fact is that we are going backwards. We are going backwards on homelessness. It has risen by 14% in a year and by half in a decade. Rough sleeping has doubled in a decade.

Everyone In showed that the rough sleeping problem can be tackled. It ended and we now have people back on the streets. Local councils should not place people out of borough, but they are. What is the Minister going to do about it? Two thirds of my homeless households are placed out of borough. Local authorities should not be placing them in temporary accommodation in the conditions that we heard about in my examples and others, but they are. We have a proposal to do something about it. Will the Minister take that up?

The Government can talk about how much they have spent. They have cut housing support, social housing, assistance for renters, and the local housing allowance. They cut the social security budget by £9 billion in 2015 alone. That is why we are in the state we are in and why 1.1 million people are on council housing waiting lists. We have not heard answers; we have just what is being done. It is clearly failing.

Can we meet the Minister? Can we return to this issue and take forward the Opposition’s positive proposals to find a way to help our desperate homeless constituents?

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered homelessness and temporary accommodation.

Leaseholders and Cladding

Karen Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to my right hon. Friend for his question. As I said earlier, I cannot say that there will not be some cost that may occur at some point to leaseholders for historical defects work that may be undertaken, but we do want to make sure that, as a result of the work that Michael Wade is doing with the financial services and others, any such costs are fair and reasonable and can be carried. That is why we have put aside that £1.6 billion to make sure that the cost of cladding remediation for cladding such as ACM and high-pressure laminate can be funded by the taxpayer when the developers are not able to fund it, so that the cost does not fall on the leaseholder.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

We have already heard about the difficulties that leaseholders have had with the EWS1 form backlog when they are seeking to sell. At the weekend, the Secretary of State claimed that his proposal to remove the requirement for this certification from properties without cladding had been cleared by and had the backing of mortgage lenders; in fact, UK Finance and the Building Societies Association both said that they did not back the scheme and had not been consulted, and that it did not solve anything and left 1.9 million homeowners in the lurch. Will the Minister tell us whether or not leaseholders who do not have cladding will be required to have the certification, and whether his proposal now has the backing of finance lenders?

[Christopher Pincher]

It is my understanding that buildings that do not have cladding will not need an EWS1 form. We clearly need to do more work with the financial services sector to advance the issues that have arisen with the EWS1 form but, as a result of the negotiations and the agreements made over the weekend, we anticipate that something like 450,000 holders will no longer need to use an EWS1 form.

End of Eviction Moratorium

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I can confirm to my hon. Friend that neighbours of antisocial tenants will find that their landlords are able to move much more quickly now to seek justice and to seek repossession of their properties and ensure that that sort of behaviour is stymied.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Housing advisers are reporting a surge in illegal evictions, and indeed, I have had experience of this myself. Do the Government recognise those figures? Do the Government collect data on illegal evictions? Are the Government expecting illegal evictions to continue to rise during the coming months? When was the last time that guidance was issued to police forces across the country on what their duties are to intervene in these cases?

[Christopher Pincher]

The law is quite clear, and I advise and encourage all landlords to adhere to it. Those who do not may find themselves in receipt of a very dim view from the courts. Of the 7% of tenants who are in arrears, I am told that about 1% have received notices to evict, so landlords, on the whole, are doing the right thing. Those who are not will, I hope, be pursued by the law, because we need to make sure that landlords do the right thing and that illegal evictions of the sort that the hon. Lady notes are not tolerated in any way.

Rented Homes: End of Evictions Ban

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Where landlords and tenants can reach an agreement between them, that is clearly to be welcomed, but the point is that many cannot. Can the Minister confirm whether there is a duty on landlords to inquire as to whether tenants have a problem with their rent because of covid? If there is no duty, does that not mean, as has been pointed out on a number of occasions, that the landlord can, under section 21 or ground 8, seek possession of a property and that the courts have to go along with that and have no discretion whatsoever?

[Christopher Pincher]

I can confirm that landlords do have, or will have, a duty to assess the effect of covid-19 on their constituents, including the financial impact and their vulnerability, should they wish to bring an application before the court to seek possession of their property. If they do not do that, or if the information they provide is not appropriate, the courts will be well within their rights to adjourn the case, which will cost the landlord time and money, and certainly focus the landlord’s mind. I am content with the thought that courts have always done what they can, and that they will continue to do so, to mediate in the execution of justice. They will also do what they can to help both parties in the case, including tenants. Landlords will have a duty as a result of the Lord Chancellor’s statutory instrument, which he laid last Friday.