Housing: Conditions in Rented Sector

Lord Best Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right: local councils are responsible for enforcing standards in the private rented sector and have a duty to take action where they find hazards at the most dangerous category 1 level. The Secretary of State has asked all local housing authorities to do everything in their power to improve the conditions for tenants and to have particular regard to high-score category 2 damp and mould hazards when enforcing current standards. The Secretary of State has also asked councils to provide an assessment of damp and mould issues particularly affecting private rented housing in their area. The department is currently analysing their responses to determine what needs to be done to address the issues raised by my noble friend.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, has the Minister’s department had a chance to look at the recommendation from the Affordable Housing Commission for a national housing conversion fund that would finance local housing associations to acquire from private landlords properties that need a lot of attention? This would increase the amount of safe, affordable, secure social housing at the same time as improving the property, ending or reducing fuel poverty and having an impact on climate change as well. Is this a real bargain for government?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I have not got an answer on that specific report, but I can say that this Government are investing £11.5 billion in new, good, affordable housing, £8.6 billion of which had already been allocated. So we are looking at more good housing and, at the same time, we are challenging to ensure that those responsible for social housing in particular are making sure that those houses are in good condition.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

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Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

Finally, I offer our support for the remaining amendments in this group—on housing, from the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and on education, from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. All these things are important and should be in the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 15 in the names of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Watkins of Tavistock, and me. For this stage of the Bill, I draw attention to my housing and planning interests as in the register, including as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association and president of the Sustainable Energy Association.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London is not able to be with us on this Ash Wednesday, but I know she feels deeply about this issue, not least from her distinguished career within the health service. I hope that I can cover some of the points that she wanted to make, and I know the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds will join in the debate.

Amendment 15 would ensure that health disparities are included in the Government’s levelling-up missions by getting this issue into the Bill. Improving public health and reducing health inequalities was a centrepiece of the original levelling-up White Paper. Two of the original missions, seven and eight, were aimed respectively at covering the gap in healthy life expectancy between localities and addressing determinants of mental and physical ill health, but these ambitions do not feature in the Bill. Ominously, it now seems that the promised health disparities White Paper may not see the light of day. There seem to be delays, too, in producing strategies for tackling the so-called obesity epidemic and for smoking reduction.

However, health inequalities in the UK have grown worse over the past decade after centuries of increased healthy life expectancy. Gaps have widened: the Inequalities in Health Alliance of 155 member bodies, convened by the Royal College of Physicians, notes that there is now a 19-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the least and the most deprived communities, and health inequalities cost the country £31 billion to £33 billion a year.

I declare an interest as the chair of the Oxford University Commission on Creating Healthy Cities, which reported last year. We concluded that, if central and local government gave priority to achieving better outcomes for physical and mental health, they would simultaneously address wider inequalities in society, improve productivity, support efforts to tackle climate change, and reduce the escalating costs of the NHS and social care. The Oxford study, driven by Kellogg College’s Global Centre on Healthcare and Urbanisation and the Prince’s Foundation, recommends that health creation should be the key focus of efforts to level up. Our commission supported the Government’s White Paper and its health objectives, and these deserve to be incorporated into the legislation before us. The whole levelling-up agenda can be a massive contributor to improvements in health and well-being.

This amendment is a necessary precursor to later amendments that link specific policy measures for the built environment—for planning, housing, transport and the environment—to the core issue of health. These important amendments would be greatly assisted by a backdrop of the Bill having a clear focus on health inequalities as one of its key missions. This would match advances in Scotland and Wales, where the emphasis on the health dimension in public policy and guidance has been strengthened over recent years.

Finally, in support of the right reverend Prelate’s amendment, I add that using health as the touchstone for levelling-up policies increases wider understanding and public support for the varied local projects that will follow enactment of the Bill. What assurances can the Minister give that we will see a focus on health, and specifically on health inequalities, in the levelling-up missions? What can the Minister tell us about the missing health disparities White Paper? I support the amendment.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, at Second Reading, I remember applauding, broadly speaking, the ambitions of the White Paper. However, I share the concerns of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who of course brings to this much more experience than I do.

I am pleased that, already, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has alluded to the interconnectivity of all these different missions; they cannot be seen in silos or in isolation. For example, if you have children who are turning up at school unfed or living in poor housing, you can try teaching them what you will but it may not be very successful, and that has an impact not only on individuals but on communities and their flourishing.

I will speak to Amendment 15, tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, and briefly to Amendments 7, 30 and 31. Health disparities require discrete attention in the Bill. It is not an optional extra. The Bill as it stands states the missions but does not provide mechanisms for action or accountability. How will we be able to measure whether they are effective or not? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London has said that, although assurances by the Minister are very welcome, they are not enough; they have to be backed up in the Bill with measurable implementation gauges.

Good health is key both to human—that is, individual—and social flourishing. As I said, we cannot separate out such things as housing, education, health, transport and so on as if we can solve one without having an impact on the other. However, there are inequalities between the regions in many of these areas. I speak from a context in the north: the whole of west Yorkshire, most of north Yorkshire—but do not tell the right reverend Primate the Archbishop of York that—a chunk of Lancashire, one slice of County Durham and a bit of south Yorkshire. The inequalities are serious. The economic squeeze, in the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, is an incubator for inequalities, and we know the impact that inequality has across the board.

The White Paper rightly recognises the centrality of health to levelling up, but the actions by which this will be achieved could be argued to be lacking—and we certainly need long-term solutions and not quick fixes or slogans that sound good but do not lead to content. Can the Minister therefore offer assurances of the Government’s commitment to health within the levelling-up agenda in ways that can be measured and accountability upheld?

Leasehold Charges

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Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The Government recognise the strength of feeling in this House in particular, and the other place, on the leasehold issue, but it is complex and needs careful consideration. The Government have said that we will bring a Bill forward in this Parliament and that is what we intend to do.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that proper consumer protection is particularly important for older people, who may be downsizing or rightsizing to retirement apartments and feel totally confused by the plethora of service charges, exit fees, commission fees and commission on insurance? Is this vulnerable group not particularly important in leasehold reform? Otherwise, who is going to downsize or rightsize ever, knowing the difficulties they may well face?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. This is an important issue, particularly for older people who may be considering downsizing. It is just too complex at the moment. That is what we will be dealing with as we move forward, and I thank the noble Lord for all his help in doing so.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

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2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests, as on the register, and I have three points to make on the Bill. I preface these comments with the overarching observation that it is admirable for the Government to be bringing forward a range of measures with the ambitious goal of levelling up geographic inequalities, health inequalities and other disparities in society. I commend the honourable intentions of the Bill.

My three Second Reading points all relate to the housing agenda, since the levelling up of housing opportunities and outcomes is so fundamental to addressing all the other inequalities in health and well-being, as well as in productivity and economic success. First, although “regeneration” features so prominently in the Bill’s title, the proposed legislation’s housing content is concerned almost exclusively with the building of new homes. For social housing, Homes England has pursued a policy over recent years of funding only projects that add extra homes, not those that upgrade the existing stock. But many areas need a big injection of funding—a second decent homes programme—to modernise down-at-heel social housing. The recent Rochdale tragedy demonstrated the urgent requirement to improve outdated ex-council housing.

In the private rented sector, with more landlords now looking to exit the market after the interest rate rises, this is surely the time to support social housing providers to step in and acquire and modernise low-grade rented housing stock. For substandard owner-occupied housing, mostly owned by older people with few resources, we have not yet made progress in achieving greater energy efficiency and decarbonisation while addressing fuel poverty and tackling miserable conditions.

Secondly, in terms of new development, the Bill has provoked huge anxiety in the world of housing, as we have heard already in this debate, about the way that obligations on housebuilders to provide affordable homes will be affected by the switch from Section 106 agreements to the new infrastructure levy. The Government clearly wish to see at least as much affordable housing after this Bill is enacted, particularly for social housing at rents affordable to those on lower incomes. We need to strengthen the legislation to underpin that intention. It would be a tragedy if “levelling up” led to a diminution of the already hopelessly low level of supply of truly affordable housing. There will be some important amendments here.

Thirdly, and finally, is this to be the Bill that goes a step further and achieves some fundamental change to our housing system, which for decades has failed to meet the nation’s needs? It will not make sufficient difference just to improve the ways in which we coerce reluctant housebuilders to develop the housing that our communities require. Could this be the Bill that enables local councils themselves to take back control and achieve what their locality needs in terms of quality, affordability, speed of build-out and more?

The bold step to achieve that would be to adopt the recommendations of the 2018 Letwin review, with development corporations established at arm’s length by councils with CPO powers and the capacity to borrow. Will the Bill enable these corporations to acquire sites, prepare masterplans and parcel out the land to fulfil locally determined objectives with a variety of development uses, from homes for first-time buyers to retirement developments, from social housing to green spaces and so on?

So, there must be more emphasis on regeneration, amendments to the Bill to bolster the vital affordable housing element in new schemes and, more fundamentally, government backing for development corporations that capture land value and return us to building what the nation actually needs.

Housebuilding: Government Targets

Lord Best Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Yes. Many local authorities in the country certainly work closely with community land trusts. I do not have an update on what is happening nationally, but I will certainly get an answer to the noble Baroness.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will have seen the press reports from Barratt and some of the other big-volume housebuilders, saying that they are going to produce fewer homes in the current economic circumstances of the year ahead. This is not a great tragedy in everybody’s view, since some of these schemes will be horrible, soulless estates outside town with very few amenities and poor public transport. However, we need the extra homes in this country to meet the nation’s needs. Is this not the moment to boost social housing investment? Is this not just the right time, when we know that the housebuilders are not going to do it, to really get going with some of the social housing that we so desperately need?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Yes, the noble Lord is absolutely right. That is why we put £500 billion this year into local authorities, so that they can buy houses for social housing rent, particularly in areas of most need.

Residential Leaseholders

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Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I would love to put the Bill out in draft, because I would love to stop these Questions coming every three months from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. We have committed as a Government to making enfranchisement easier and cheaper for leaseholders, and that is important. We have also committed to abolish marriage value cap ground rents in enfranchisement calculations and prescribe rates to be used. We have already made clear that this is what we will do. We just have to be patient until the Bill comes forward.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, back in 2018 the Government set up the regulation of property agents working group, which I had the honour of chairing. This came forward with proposals that managing agents for blocks of flats who look after leasehold properties should be properly regulated, to deal with a number of the issues that have been raised. Can I have the Minister’s assurance that this ingredient will form part of the new Bill?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I have not seen the new Bill, so I cannot give that assurance. However, I am aware of the noble Lord’s review and I know that we are still considering it.

Housing: Cost of Living

Lord Best Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The Government have a number of schemes that we are using to support small and medium-sized house builders to help them to provide not only social housing but also private housing. I am happy to write to my noble friend with all that information.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, the Affordable Housing Commission, which I had the honour of chairing, has recommended a national fund to enable social housing landlords to acquire and modernise the properties of those private landlords who now want to exit from the market. Does the Minister agree that that would produce an enormously good bang for the buck? Not only would we swiftly get more social housing that was secure for those who lived in it, but we would see the modernisation of properties that need to be decarbonised, thereby reducing fuel poverty at the same time.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Yes, I agree with that. We are seeing some difficulties within the private rented sector because of the issues of the maintenance of these private properties, but also because of the expectations, as the noble Lord said, about the decarbonisation of those properties. That is why we are offering a number of funding streams to SMEs at the moment in order to do that.

Renters Reform Bill

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Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, if it is in the White Paper, we will see whether it comes through into the Bill and will discuss that. I am sure that if the noble Baroness tables any amendments, we will discuss those in full.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I recognise that the Government are not going to introduce a freeze for the private rented sector or the social housing sector, but there is a cap on rents for social housing landlords, housing associations and councils. That cap means that they will not be getting the revenue they expected if they have the full increase in their rents. The main beneficiaries of this are the Government and Treasury, because housing benefit will be reduced—so the autumn Statement tells us—by £650 million. Will this windfall gain of £650 million for the Treasury over the next five years be recycled or reinvested back into social housing, where it is very badly needed, to upgrade the stock and build new homes?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The Government are already investing in social housing; we are putting £11.5 billion into building social housing. Some of the money from the windfall, as the noble Lord called it—I would not call it that—will go into that. There is also support going to local authorities to support those in the private rented sector who might have problems this winter and whom we might need to help out.

Housing Market

Lord Best Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, the “of Stevenage” being particularly significant. I congratulate her on a splendid maiden speech. No-one could bring a more relevant lifetime of experience and understanding of housing issues, for which we are deeply grateful. I know she brings considerable experience as a county councillor for Hertfordshire and as leader of Stevenage Borough Council. I must declare my own interest, in passing, as a past president and now a vice-president of the Local Government Association. She was deputy chair of the LGA from 2008 right through to 2017 and I know she was a huge success in that role.

Stevenage’s motto is “The heart of a town lies in its people” and I think the heart of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, lies in the town she has served continuously for over 25 years. Times may be tough for local government, but I am certain that the noble Baroness will ensure that its voice is heard loud and clear in this Chamber.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, for leading this most timely debate and I echo her view that the nation’s housing is in a critical state. But the acute shortage of the homes we need has accumulated over decades: for over 30 years, the number of extra homes built each year has been less than the number of new households that have formed. These years of undersupply are finally catching up with us.

Dramatically fewer people have been able to get on the housing ladder, with owner-occupation for those aged under 30 falling from 47% 20 years ago to under 25% today. Now those wanting to buy face even greater problems, made worse by the hike in interest rates following the fateful mini-Budget. Over 1.5 million households are queuing for social housing from councils or housing associations, but that sector has halved in size, from one-third of the nation’s homes to just 17%, while social landlords face a mountain of extra building and borrowing costs that will hold back their new-build affordable housing programme.

For more and more people, the only option is the private rented sector, which has doubled in size during the first two decades of this century. However, here we are seeing falling numbers of available lettings because landlords, deterred by higher interest rates on top of other disincentives, are exiting the market or, in some areas, switching to Airbnb and very short-term lettings.

Demand is up by 20% while supply is down 9%, as noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. With consequent fierce competition for privately rented properties, young people are spending half their income on securing a rented, not always decent, flat. More couples must postpone having children indefinitely. Down the income scale, overcrowding and slum conditions exacerbate health inequalities and put further strains on the NHS. Rent increases, coupled with frozen levels of housing allowances, push more households below the poverty line. Councils spend over £1 billion a year on temporary accommodation. Street homelessness has risen again and, of course, there is simply nowhere for refugees and asylum seekers to be housed.

There are a dozen urgent measures that could and should provide temporary relief, but we also need to address the underlying cause of this national failure. What would make the biggest difference to getting more homes built—as the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, suggests we need to do—and galvanising the process of reducing the disastrous housing shortages?

Top of my wish list for fundamental change is the adoption of the mechanisms for land value capture advocated by Sir Oliver Letwin in his 2018 review. Sir Oliver got to the heart of why we have been failing, year after year, to build what we need. Yes, we should resource our local planning departments to speed up the planning process, but that is not why we get such a slow build-out of new developments and build so few new homes affordable to the half of the population on average incomes or less, or why we have developments that continuously fail us on so many counts. We also see SME builders being excluded, despite those firms often being more in tune with local needs, the local vernacular and the local labour market.

Leaving to one side the handful of excellent new developments by enlightened landowners and non-profit developers, the UK is simply not getting the quantity or quality of homes we need. The reason, says the Letwin review, is that we have handed over the decision-making process for all major housing developments to the oligopoly of volume housebuilders. These companies initiate each new scheme: they secure the land, they produce their plans and they build their development, in their own time and at a speed that suits them. The role of the local planning authority is confined to raising objections and fighting back, without the staff or the budget to insist on an alternative development that would genuinely meet the requirements of the locality.

The housebuilders’ business model requires them to fight, with their lawyers and consultants, for the minimum number of affordable homes—the maximum number of properties they can squeeze on to a site, with the least green infrastructure and the fewest amenities, and to build at a speed that ensures the continuing scarcity that drives up prices. Our system rewards the very actions by housebuilders most at odds with the public interest.

Instead, the Letwin review tells us we should take back control. Letwin puts the scale at 1,500 homes but his formula is just as applicable for 150: for every major development, land should be acquired at a price that relates to its current use—for example, for agricultural land, Letwin suggests paying no more than 10 times the agricultural value—with a master plan that determines what is built and parcels out sites to different builders and providers, for a range of uses and tenures. Having bought the land at a reasonable price, using compulsory purchase powers if necessary, a development becomes viable that actually and promptly delivers the social benefits missing today.

To achieve this upending of the current, highly unsatisfactory process, Letwin proposes local authorities establish arm’s-length development corporations, as is quite possible under existing law. These would borrow the finance to buy the site and capture the land value uplift. The development corporation’s master plan can then incorporate all the features of healthy place-making.

This approach follows the pattern of the garden cities and the new towns in a scaled-down version—the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, pertinently referred to the technique of the new towns. The cost to the Exchequer is less for a much higher-quality outcome. This process accelerates delivery, removing the friction and delay from the housebuilders and the planners waging war, often for years.

I commend these Letwin recommendations and would greatly welcome the comments of the Minister. Let us address the root causes of our housing ills; let us take back control and start building what society wants and desperately needs.

Social Housing Standards

Lord Best Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, this is such a horrible tragedy. I join the Minister in sending sympathies to Awaab’s parents. To lose a two year-old child is just about as bad as it gets, and I feel very strongly about that. I know that the housing association itself is deeply troubled and upset by what has happened on its watch. The coroner said that this should be a “defining moment” for the housing sector. I spoke today to the chief executive of the housing association, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing, and there are some important lessons that the housing associations and we in Parliament and government can learn from this tragedy.

First, the Statement from the Secretary of State explains that the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, which we greatly welcome in this House—we have completed its stages here—will enhance regulation of social landlords and the role of the Housing Ombudsman. This new legislation is important, since I suspect that in this case there was no knowledge at all of the Housing Ombudsman. There was an opportunity to make a complaint and be listened to a lot earlier, but I think that opportunity was simply not known about in Rochdale at the time. We now have legislation that will strengthen the ombudsman, but we need to promote that ombudsman service really quite energetically, and I believe that this process has started.

In my ignorance, I did not understand that mould can actually kill a small child—it is as bad as that. Mould is a horrible thing to have in your house, but the fact that it can lead to death really brings home just how awful this plague is in so many houses where ventilation and heating in combination are not achieving a balance, and where condensation is causing this horrible mould. The urgency of doing something about this has now been magnified by this event and it means that all housing associations have to give priority to this. When they hear that a place has mould on the walls, they must take that very seriously. When a visit is happening for any other reason, staff need to be told, “Look out for mould as well; report that back to base. That is a serious issue”. Now that housing associations are very large enterprises, communications within them need to be good enough so that people share all the information and understanding they bring back from a visit or telephone call. That sharing of information needs to identify where mould is a problem so that something can be done about it.

My next point is that fuel poverty is also behind this. People are not putting the heating on and not making the place warm enough. They cannot be blamed for that; the cost of fuel is a major part of the house- hold budget. This will get worse with the current energy crisis and we will have more of these cases, not fewer. I am afraid that a lot of properties owned by housing associations—including pre-1919 street properties and 1960s and 1970s concrete buildings—need serious attention. They need insulating in a modern way that will cut those energy bills and mean that the lack of heating does not create the condensation that leads to the mould that leads to tragedies like this. We are going to have to invest in these older properties. We are ready for decent homes round 2; I hope the Government are up for this. These things are not just a matter of regulation; they are, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, said, also about investment. We all agree on that. The social housing decarbonisation fund coming through will be really helpful. The levelling-up funding should target the insulation of older properties. We can see where the priority really lies in terms of the resources we are going to put into properties: cutting down on fuel bills.

There are some important lessons here. There are lessons for government as well as for the housing associations. Let us hope that some real value can come from this miserable tragedy of poor little Awaab, and that this is indeed a defining moment for the housing sector.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

It is indeed a defining moment. The Secretary of State has made it very clear that he thinks that this is a defining moment and that he is not going to let this go.

I was also surprised by how dangerous mould can be. I have concerns about the sharing of information in these cases, because a health visitor and a visiting midwife both noticed this mould. They put forward a report to the council, which did not seem to go as far as it should have. Sadly, communication is often an issue in these cases and we need to make sure that those problems are dealt with as well as the issues of the housing.

Obviously, this case was two years ago, but I am concerned about fuel—of course I am. However, I am mostly concerned about whether some of these tenants know what they can get from the Government to help them. I am not sure that they do. Through wearing my other hat as a Faith Minister, I am working very closely with the faith communities to make sure that when they talk to their communities and have their warm hubs and so on, they ensure that everybody knows exactly what the Government are offering to help them, because that sometimes is not the case. This case was not so much about heating but about ventilation, but that is another issue we need to look at across the sector, because mould often grows when ventilation is not correct.

Lastly, the noble Lord is absolutely right that not enough people know about the ombudsman. We had the Make Things Right campaign, which reached millions of social housing residents. This family obviously did not know about that, but I would then ask: where was the housing association to say that the family could go to the ombudsman when they first complained? There is more that we need to do, both the Government, in telling social housing residents about what they can get, and others who have contact with these families, by suggesting to them that the ombudsman is there to help them.