Holocaust Memorial Bill
Nickie Aiken ExcerptsWednesday 22nd May 2024
(6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Holocaust Memorial Bill 2022-23 View all Holocaust Memorial Bill 2022-23 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee Amendments as at 22 May 2024 - (22 May 2024)
Sir Peter Bottomley
I think that is the right figure, but the Minister will know. I am just a Back Bencher, and have been for quite some time, but I think that is the figure. I believe that it was between £35 million and £40 million. That could have paid for a prominent memorial and we could then have enhanced the learning and educational facilities.
The arguments against using Victoria Tower Gardens are clear. It is an area of quiet recreation for people who live locally. I live nearby. It is a place where people who work round here can quietly enjoy the open space.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I thank the Father of the House for giving way. He is making an important point about how Victoria Tower Gardens is a local park. Does he agree that there are thousands of social housing tenants, living 10 or 15 minutes’ walk away, who benefit from having the green space that Victoria Tower Gardens offers and would be concerned if it were overtaken by a memorial and an education centre?
Sir Peter Bottomley
My hon. Friend is right. She has the advantage of having led Westminster City Council and will not need reminding that the Government originally said that they wanted their proposal to have the support of the local authority. When they gained the impression that, on merit, the local authority was not likely to give its approval, they took the proposal away from the local authority.
On a number of occasions, the King’s counsel leading for the Government in front of the Select Committee, said that what has been considered by the Committee was not planning permission. He constantly said that planning would be dealt with in the normal way. The normal way is for an application—because the present one has been squashed—to go to the local authority. The Government can, if they choose to do so, call it in if they think that the local authority has got it wrong or it is of national importance. They should not, in this case, have regarded it as of national importance to stop the local authority having the option of considering the interests of local residents, as my hon. Friend has remarked.
Between Vauxhall Bridge and Victoria Street or Birdcage Walk, there is no other large green space open to the public. The Minister will know that. He will have walked around Victoria Tower Gardens as many times as I have. He may also have walked the extra 1,200 yards to the Imperial War Museum, where there is a big park dedicated to peace. Why was the Imperial War Museum not allowed to put forward a detailed proposal? And why did the Government then turn round and say, because it had not put forward such a proposal, it could not be considered?
We all know that massive pressure was put on the Imperial War Museum trustees, and that their chair was made a member of the foundation. I do not think that the Government have approached this in the right way. Let me put the Government’s words on the record. The United Kingdom Holocaust Memorial is seeking
“a prominent location in Central London with significant existing footfall so as to draw in and inspire the largest possible number of visitors.”
Under the present proposals, we will not be able just to walk in. We will have to be cleared by security and that, at times of heightened security, the memorial will either be closed or there will be airport-style security, which is not the point of a memorial to the victims and to the dedication that it should not happen again.
To return to the Government’s words:
“The site will support several features and activities, the number and extent of which will depend on the size of the space available. Sites capable of accommodating 5,000-10,000 sqm of built space for the UKHMF over no more than three contiguous floors will be considered.”
That is not what is being proposed, but the proposal would, in effect, take over about a third of the park regardless. The Government claim that it would be a much smaller proportion, but if we take all the associated parts of the proposal, it would be much more than the Government say.
The final sentence of that section says:
“In order to achieve the maximum benefits for the public, the UKHMF needs to allocate as much of its funds as possible to educational purposes rather than to land and construction and so the site must be highly cost effective.”
The only cost-effectiveness in this site is that the Government believe that they can get it for free. They had not factored in the additional costs of building a box by a river and by a main road, where people are trying to enjoy the park. Some estimates suggest that the park will be basically out of action for up to five years. If the Government say, “You shouldn’t believe that kind of estimate,” I will tell them that for the past 12 months it has not been possible to walk along the river walk in Victoria Tower Gardens because Ministers who are responsible for the state of repair of the Buxton memorial fountain have allowed contractors to barrier it off way beyond what was needed to stop people going over the fountain itself.
Nickie Aiken
Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a serious issue regarding the security of Victoria Tower Gardens if the memorial and education centre are built? We have already seen the current Holocaust memorial that is based in Hyde Park covered up by the authorities to protect it during a recent pro-Palestine march that went through Hyde Park.
John Stevenson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Security issues should be one of our key considerations as a Committee, which is why I think somewhere like the Imperial War Museum would be a far better location.
John Stevenson
My hon. Friend is exactly right—he certainly did so at that time.
I have tabled two amendments to this Bill: one is about cost, and the other is about security. Overall, the security issue must have priority, and I will certainly be looking to push that amendment to a vote, but I will just make some final comments on those amendments and, indeed, the whole project.
I believe the amendments to the Bill are sensible and appropriate, and sadly, I feel that unless the Government take a step back and give serious thought to the proposed project, there can be only two ultimate outcomes. Either at some point in the future, someone will have a lightbulb moment, reassess the whole matter, review where we are going with it and maybe draw back from the ideas that are being put forward, or we will press on and potentially create a very expensive white elephant, which will defeat the worthwhile aim of creating the memorial and learning centre that I believe we all want to see. I hope it is the former, rather than the latter, that prevails.
Nickie Aiken
First, I thank the Holocaust Memorial Bill Select Committee for its very hard work. That Committee was excellently chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson), and its report makes for interesting reading. It was clear that that cross-party and impartial Committee shares many of the concerns that I and many of my constituents hold.
I would go as far as to say that the Committee’s findings mirror our own criticisms of the Government’s handling of the whole question of the merits of building a Holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens. Those are that no proper consultation or assessment took place of the merits of Victoria Tower Gardens as a proposed location; there is no grip on the costs to build it or to maintain it once completed, specifically the cost to the public purse of the ongoing security that will be required; and no thought has been given to security plans for protecting the park, its visitors, or the children’s playground at a time of heightened national security risk.
I wish to speak to amendments 2, 3 and 5, as well as new clause 2, which stand in my name. I also wish to speak in favour of new clause 1 and amendment 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle and to which I have added my name. As we reach the Committee stage of this hybrid Bill on the proposal to build a Holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, a small but much-loved park in my constituency of the Cities of London and Westminster, I wish to reiterate my long-held view that this is the right memorial but the wrong location. I say that as a huge supporter of the Jewish community not only in my constituency but across the nation. I have friends who would not be here if their families had not escaped eastern Europe during the 1930s and ’40s. One of my closest friends, Daniel Astaire, certainly would not be here because his grandmother was one of the final children on the Kindertransport and she lost her entire family in what is now the Czech Republic.
Having read last summer the outstanding book by Lord Finkelstein, “Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad”—I recommend everybody read that brilliant book—I concluded that we really do need a Holocaust memorial in this country to remind ourselves of past events but also to pay homage to the many British Jews still affected by the Holocaust and who lost so many of their families. This is not about being anti the brilliant idea of a Holocaust memorial, but about its location only.
The Select Committee report concluded that no public consultation was undertaken regarding possible locations for the memorial. In fact, Victoria Tower Gardens came about as the idea of an unnamed individual. We cannot permit such a precedent to stand: that an individual and then a Committee can decide on a location for such an important memorial without proper consultation. New clause 2 would require the Secretary of State to carry out a consultation on the potential merits of alternative sites for the Holocaust memorial. I absolutely believe—and find it astonishing—that no such consultation was carried out before Victoria Tower Gardens was chosen as the Government’s preferred location.
When the Holocaust memorial was first mooted, it was suggested, as my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle and the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) have said, that the Imperial War Museum, less than a mile from Parliament, would be an appropriate location. I have visited the Imperial War Museum, including its outstanding Holocaust galleries and exhibitions, numerous times and I believe tourists, school groups and others would sincerely benefit from being able, having visited the galleries, to then spend time in a garden of the Imperial War Museum, which I believe would make an appropriate location for the Holocaust memorial.
I remember the first time I visited the Holocaust galleries: I came out after what was a very harrowing experience—a real human harrowing experience—and felt I wanted to sit down and reflect on what I had seen. I absolutely think that having the Holocaust memorial in the Imperial War Museum gardens would be appropriate, because after visitors see the exhibits in the museum they need time to reflect and remember those who have been lost.
With such a major proposal as the Holocaust memorial and learning centre, it is imperative that those who would be directly impacted by the construction and then the continuing existence of such an installation—local residents, local businesses, organisations and relevant public bodies—should have been, and should still be, properly consulted.
We should also hear the voices of those who have been directly impacted by the atrocities of the Holocaust that took place across eastern Europe during the 1930s and ’40s, and the subsequent genocides across the world that we have witnessed since then. Indeed, the Select Committee heard from Holocaust survivors who expressed objections to Victoria Tower Gardens as the chosen location.
Lia Nici
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for all her hard work campaigning on this issue. I was on the Select Committee, and what came to light, as she knows, was that residents and a significant number of petitioners from the Jewish community, including some Holocaust survivors, were against this location. One of my biggest concerns is that if this legislation is allowed to go through, it will set a precedent by lifting a covenant on the gardens that will mean they are no longer there for people to enjoy for recreation. It could have planning permission on it, which could open up all sorts of cans of worms across the country. Does she agree?
Nickie Aiken
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Having read the Select Committee’s report, it is clear to me that there is a genuine concern about the Bill setting a precedent, which I will talk about slightly later. The London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900 is clear about protecting public spaces. In a constituency such as mine in central London, we do not benefit from huge amounts of neighbourhood green spaces, where a family can just pop out on a Sunday morning after breakfast to give the children a run around. As I have said, thousands of social housing tenants live on Page Street, Regency Street and in the Peabody blocks just behind Great Peter Street, and they do not benefit from having their own gardens and are desperate not to lose their local park.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
Has my hon. Friend had the opportunity to be in Victoria Tower Gardens on a Saturday or Sunday morning and seen at the south end, where there is a developed play space, large numbers of local mums with their toddlers—not always mums, of course, but often they are—playing in exactly the way we would hope in a green space?
Nickie Aiken
I have seen that. It goes back to the point that for many of us in this Chamber this is a workplace. I am obviously an exception, because this is my constituency, but for most Members of Parliament this is our workspace and then they go home. But this is my home, and I know from local residents—my neighbours —that Victoria Tower Gardens is a much-loved and much-used park. It is not just a workplace for people to do radio or TV interviews; it is also where people take their children and their dogs for walks. It is much-used and much-loved, and it would be an absolute tragedy if we were to lose an inch of it, in my personal opinion, but I may be in the minority.
Madam Deputy Chairman—sorry, I mean Dame Eleanor. This could be my last speech in this place, so I have to get that right. Let us not forget the array of statues situated in Victoria Tower Gardens. They carry special meaning and make it a unique place, and they include the Buxton memorial fountain, which celebrates and commemorates the emancipation of all slaves in the British empire in 1834. It is in the centre of the gardens and has the most amazing location, for absolutely the right reasons. I note that in the special report from the Select Committee, Mr Richard Buxton, representing the Buxton family and the Thomas Fowell Buxton Society, highlighted concerns that the Holocaust memorial and learning centre should
“not cause any degree of harm either actual or to the setting of any other memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens”.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
I thank the hon. Lady her for her amendment, which I am happy to support. Members of the Buxton family live in my constituency, so if the Government were to agree to it, that would go some way towards alleviating their concerns.
Nickie Aiken
I did not realise the family connection with the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. The Buxton memorial is unique and should be protected. We would not want any other memorial encroaching upon it.
It is also important to remember that half the entire park itself was a gift to the nation from the newspaper retailer William Henry Smith—the founder of WHSmith —who donated £1,000 to preserve it as an open space, on the condition that it would be a place for recreation, particularly for the children of Westminster. The Government of the day agreed. To this day, local schoolchildren and even younger children continue to take advantage of this rare green space in central London. The notion of charity may have been undermined by this proposal. One may ask what it might mean for the future of other such bequests, if other gifts to be used as public space for the benefit of the environment and local people are similarly overridden.
Amendment 2, which stands in my name, seeks to limit the damage to the park to just the memorial, should the proposal go ahead. The Bill in its current form does not provide for the location of the memorial and the learning centre to be on the same site, and it was not stipulated as a prerequisite in the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission report in 2015. I remember that there was a proposal for the learning and education centre to be in Millbank Tower, as part of the redevelopment. That did not see the light of day, but it would have been a good compromise.
We risk Victoria Tower Gardens being completely overwhelmed as a green space by this development spoiling the setting of Parliament, the gardens and the other memorials and, in particular, overshadowing the Buxton memorial. It is my understanding that the learning centre will take up more space than the actual Holocaust memorial, and the Bill does not state that the memorial and the learning centre are in the same place. Amendment 2 would only lift the 1900 Act restrictions for a memorial to be built, not a learning centre. With the passing of the Bill, could it be that no park is protected from similar applications in future? That is a real concern of the Select Committee.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Simon Hoare)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful point, characteristically both passionate and knowledgeable, on behalf of her constituents. I want to put on the record now one point about precedent, given its importance—she is right to highlight it—so that it does not get lost in my remarks when I reply to this wide-ranging Committee debate. This does not set a precedent for the release of other designated open or leisure green space in London—if it did, I would not be advocating for it. Any proposal needs to be adjudged on its merits. It does not create a Trojan horse. It does not open a Pandora’s box. I say that from the Dispatch Box, should anyone ever challenge it during a planning inquiry, a planning committee or a judicial review on an application for another parcel of green open space, as designated either by the 1900 Act or by other Acts. The view of the Minister, and of the Government, is that it does not create a precedent on which anyone could rely in law. That is an important point to clarify, and I wanted to do so with your leave, Dame Eleanor, as a clear and freestanding point.
Nickie Aiken
I thank the Minister for that clarification. I absolutely welcome that. That is a very powerful message to send to any future Government or future Minister who may be sitting in his place. He makes a very good point about any future planning applications, too.
Simon Hoare
I am not entirely sure what has amused my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), but there we are. Some people are easily amused.
Let me just make this point. That is not just a binding statement on behalf of the actions of subsequent Governments, but for local authorities, the royal parks and any speculative developer in the private sector. I do not carve it out as a niche, bespoke protection, but as a general blanket cover.
Nickie Aiken
I thank the Minister once again for that very clear steer and clarification.
Sir Peter Bottomley
It may be too late for a manuscript amendment to the Bill to be accepted by Dame Eleanor—or Madam Deputy Speaker, if we get to the next stages—but would it be possible for the Minister to offer the House an assurance that when the Bill gets to another place, assuming it does, the Government will move an amendment to make plain what he said here?
Nickie Aiken
I thank my hon. Friend, the Father of the House, for his intervention. He makes a very clear point. Perhaps that could be taken through in the Lords.
Andrew Percy
On this whole question of precedent, as anybody who has served any period of time as a local government councillor knows, it is the whole basis of our planning law and has been the case since the Town and Country Planning Act 1947.
Nickie Aiken
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He may recall that the planning authority chose to not grant this application when it was first introduced, but was then steamrollered by the Government via the Planning Inspectorate, so I do not think my constituents would be very happy with his comments.
Amendment 3 is designed to ensure that any development of the holocaust memorial and learning centre does not exceed the current proposal of 1,429 square metres. In its current form, the Bill removes obstructions to any Holocaust memorial and learning centre being built in Victoria Tower Gardens, rather than a specific proposed memorial and learning centre. Indeed, one of the Select Committee’s concerns was that without being attached to a specific plan, lifting the obstructions would risk providing a blank cheque for the memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens to take a radically different shape than has been anticipated.
There is a genuine concern among local people that without the proper checks and balances the memorial and learning centre may take up much more of the gardens than is currently proposed, and it is unlikely that the current planning system is able to provide a safeguard against that. Therefore, I consider the amendment is completely necessary to safeguard the gardens from over-development. I would welcome the Minister’s views on the matter and assurances that if the Bill is passed, the proposed 1,429 square metres will not be increased.
Finally, amendment 5, the final amendment tabled in my name, is once again tabled to protect the future of Victoria Tower Gardens from over-development. As I mentioned earlier, there are already treasured memorials in Victoria Tower Gardens and we must do all we can to protect them. The park is a much-loved and much-used public space, and, as I have said, thousands of social housing tenants live within a 10 to 15-minute walk from it and greatly enjoy it. It is a local neighbourhood green space, one of very few in my constituency. I am deeply concerned, as are residents including the Save Victoria Tower Gardens group, about the impact that the large-scale construction of the memorial and learning centre will have. Amendment 5 would ensure that works cannot commence if other monuments already in the gardens are likely to face any harm whatsoever, including harm to their setting or to that of the world heritage site that is the Palace of Westminster.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, I also support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle. Amendment 1 highlights a real concern, raised by the Select Committee in its report and shared by me and by many of my constituents, about the lack of any proper scrutiny regarding the overall cost of building the memorial and learning centre and—equally important—the ongoing costs of maintenance and security. It seems that the true cost of this project, and the ongoing maintenance and security costs, have yet to be established. The Government’s initial promise in 2016 to provide £50 million of funding has proved to be completely inadequate.
I was shocked to learn from a ministerial statement that in the last 12 months the costs had increased from £102 million—double the original figure—to £137 million, and that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities had recently recommended a provision for a further £58 million in contingency costs, which brings us to a cost of £191 million today. What will it be tomorrow, what will be next week, what will it be next year? I understand that in the case of all projects keeping to budget is increasingly difficult, but I must ask whether we are really getting value for money when we are spending hundreds of millions on a memorial and learning centre rather than spending it on educating young people properly about the horrors of the Holocaust.
Lia Nici
Does my hon. Friend agree that that that cost is just one example of a system that does not work effectively for the desired outcome? Virtually everyone in the country would want to see a national Holocaust memorial and a national learning centre, but this is being railroaded through, and that is not the way in which it should happen. People need to feel that they are being taken along rather than being imposed on.
Nickie Aiken
I completely agree. Many of my constituents feel that this is being steamrollered and imposed on them without any consultation. They have campaigned so hard over the last eight years, and I pay tribute to them.
I note with interest that the construction of the Buxton Memorial Fountain cost a little over £70,000 in today’s money, and I have no idea why the cost of the current proposal runs into hundreds of millions of pounds. Given the increasing pressures on public finances, I urge the Government to take a proper deep dive into the costs of this project, and to consider whether it is still an appropriate use of public money.
New clause 1 was also tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle. I note the Select Committee’s recommendation in its special report for the review proposed in the new clause to be undertaken “expeditiously” before any planning application is progressed. I believe it is imperative that a review of the security arrangements of this proposal be undertaken immediately. That is not only financially prudent, but necessary from a national security perspective. Sadly we live in uncertain times, and the dreadful events currently taking place in the middle east are being felt on our own streets, perhaps nowhere more than on the streets of Westminster surrounding Parliament. Let us remember that even if this memorial goes ahead, the playground and part of the park will continue to exist. I note that Lord Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, has expressed his own concern that the site proposed for the memorial and learning centre presents a very real terrorism risk.
It would be unfortunate if, due to increased security concerns, the authorities insisted that the area around the memorial and learning centre should be surrounded by railings and gates, cutting off a wide part of the park from the public, which would be contrary to the idea of Victoria Tower Gardens as a public green space that is accessible for all. I therefore support amendment 1’s call for a full-scale security review to be undertaken before the proposals are permitted to proceed to the next stage. Let us recall that the Holocaust memorial located in Hyde park, which I mentioned earlier, was covered up for its own safety during a pro-Palestinian march only a few weeks ago. If the authorities were so concerned about the safety of that Holocaust memorial, surely they would be equally, if not more, concerned about having a major memorial adjacent to the Houses of Parliament.
I absolutely agree that we need a memorial to the Holocaust, but as the Holocaust Memorial Bill Select Committee clearly concluded in its report, and as reflected in the amendments tabled by its Chair and by me, having read the report, it is clear that there is more work to be undertaken by the Government on consultation, the consideration of alternative locations, costs and security before the House can have confidence that this Bill can be supported.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow right hon. and hon. Members, who have made very important and serious speeches that the House would do well to consider. I support this Bill and the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson), who made some excellent points about the cost of the memorial. Any project that the Government support must make sensible use of taxpayers’ money, so he is totally right to focus on the cost cap. He is also right to call for a review of security arrangements, for all the reasons that he said.
As a former Planning Minister, I am extremely familiar with the labyrinthine processes of consultation, appeals and delays at various stages, the difficulties of addressing the natural demands to protect an area that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) spoke about so eloquently, and the importance of siting a national memorial of this significance in the heart of London, next to our Parliament. Now that I have been freed from the duties of making such planning decisions and someone else wears that mantle—at least for now—I can simply say that the impetus for a memorial at this time, and in this place, has never been greater following the 7 October attack, which was the largest pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust.
I am sure that no one is watching this debate, because they will all be glued to Twitter and looking at what is happening at No. 10, but these issues will outlive us and our time in this place. People may wonder why I speak about the Holocaust, and they may say, “You are not Jewish, and you do not have a large Jewish community in Redditch,” but even if there is only one Jewish person in my constituency, I should speak up in support of the things that matter most to them at this time.
Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities gave an excellent, first-rate speech at a Jewish community centre in north London. He spoke about some things that should shame us all. He spoke about the fact that it is now, in 2024, an arrestable offence for people to be “openly Jewish” near pro-Palestinian marches on the streets of London. He reminded us that there is only one group of people—the Jews—who are told that they are not tolerated in this country, and he said that growing antisemitism
“is a mark of a society turning to darkness and in on itself… It is a parallel law that those countries in which the Jewish community has felt most safe”
are countries where freedom and freedom of speech prosper, and the memorial is a vital part of bolstering Jewish people’s freedom of speech and their freedom to live in our country. Let us not forget that British Jews who have lived all their lives in our country are the only group who are routinely held up to blame for the actions of foreign Governments.
We are all desperately concerned, of course, about the position of innocent Palestinians caught up in the conflict, and we all wish to see the humanitarian relief and a lasting and safe peace in the middle east. I support and applaud the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, who are working tirelessly to achieve those goals, but it should not be necessary to make those points and those caveats over and over again when speaking about the position of British Jews.
Nickie Aiken
The Minister makes an important point about how important it is to be able to have a moment of reflection. As I said, when I visited the Holocaust galleries at the Imperial War Museum, I personally came out of the museum feeling that I needed somewhere to sit and reflect. Surely that is one reason why, as I and others have advocated, the Imperial War Museum is the right place for this memorial.
Simon Hoare
Let me say this to my hon. Friend: before coming to this place, I heard in my professional life—I have also heard this in my political life, as I am sure many of us have—“Do you know what, I think this is a fantastic idea. Gosh, I think it’s good, and I know an absolutely marvellous site, two and a half miles away from where you want to develop it. It would be so much better there. My goodness me, it would stand out absolutely beautifully, but don’t do it here. Don’t do it in my backyard.” It is my hon. Friend’s backyard, given that this is her constituency.
As I said earlier, there was a comparison of sites, and Victoria Tower Gardens was alighted upon. It is as close as one can get it to the heart of our democratic function. My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West said something that I thought was uncharacteristically Tory. I wish my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg) had been in his place. I think he would have leapt to his feet, as much as anybody of his age can leap to their feet.
High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill
Nickie Aiken ExcerptsFriday 26th April 2024
(7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill 2023-24 View all High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill 2023-24 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 26 April 2024 - (26 Apr 2024)
Jack Brereton
I thank my right hon. Friend for that excellent point and I entirely agree: that heritage, that historical character of our high streets in particular, in many of our towns and cities right across the country, is so important and we need to make more of that heritage, particularly when thinking about attracting new uses to our high streets. Many of those heritage properties can be converted into excellent spaces for a whole range of new uses, attracting footfall and new businesses to the high street.
As I was saying, the Bill is also about ensuring that local authorities conform to a national requirement and that they undertake the process of designation, review and improvement in accordance with their local circumstances, with assistance from national datasets and best practice analyses that already exist and can be signposted through the Secretary of State’s guidance. Getting the balance right between local differences and national requirements is a concern. It was clear from colleagues that the original Bill, which specified that the local authorities should designate no more than three high streets, was not getting the balance right, and that the maximum number of high streets designated in each area should be a decision for each local authority. That change was secured in Committee; if local authorities wish to fund designations and reviews in addition to the three that will be funded by Government, they now can do so.
Of course, there will be numerous disagreements around which areas to designate as high streets and when. My own area is a city made up of six towns, and there are many other high streets right across north Staffordshire. There may well be spirited debate locally about how to improve them. There will even be disagreement, I am sure, about what the Secretary of State’s guidance should include and what central funding, if any, should be available. This Bill sets out a supportive and predictable framework in which such debates can and must take place, bringing the focus and direction that our high streets desperately need.
The Bill directly addresses a problem highlighted in December 2021 by the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee in its excellent report, “Supporting our high streets after Covid-19”, namely the absence of a plan for ensuring that local authorities have a capacity to develop effective place partnerships and place leadership. The Bill introduces the mechanism of designation and review, under guidance, and this is supported with national funding for up to three improvement plans that will be developed in partnership locally, led by local authorities.
I completely understand the reaction that local government often has when it feels as though it is being told it needs to do more. My background is at the coalface of local government policymaking. That is why I stress that the Bill seeks to get local government not so much to do more as to co-ordinate what it does better, with wider input and agreement, and a wider contribution of effort, in implementation and delivery from a range of interested partners in our high streets, ranging from community groups to our high street businesses. I am enthused by those authorities that can already see the benefits of having an improvement plan, and I am pleased that the money resolution means that the authorities that have been held back by the cost of formulating a plan will have that barrier removed.
The Bill provides the policymaking structure for motivating action in the use of the many powers that already exist and are at the disposal of local authorities, and in giving better accountability as to their use. The Bill ensures that our communities and high street businesses are empowered to call for the improvements that should be outlined in each plan.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on a brilliant Bill that will make such a huge difference. Does he agree that the Bill will also give more power to local people, who will be able to hold their local council, its cabinet and their local leaders to account? If they are not doing exactly what the Bill’s objectives set out, people can vote them out and bring in a new council that will ensure that its local high streets are managed properly and people are given the powers they need to grow the local economy.
Jack Brereton
I thank my hon. Friend for those kind words of support. She rightly says that this is about accountability and ensuring that the people in our local communities are in charge of their high streets and can ensure that those authorities, which have the power to bring about change, are held to account for that and for their decisions.
Section 215 enforcement notices and other enforcement mechanisms will certainly be part of that mix. Unfortunately, section 215 powers, which are about enforcement where properties are in a bad condition and owners are not taking responsibility for their buildings, have not been used in our area. I made a freedom of information request recently about that and we found out that Stoke-on-Trent City Council had not used those powers once in the past 12 months. That is shocking, given the blatant need for a carrot and stick approach to address some of the concerns about our high street.
Change of use will also be another aspect of this, and having further reviews every five years ensures that improvement plans are living, nimble and able to respond to changing views and circumstances. Nor should we presume that a plan could consider every eventuality, so although it will be important to give consideration to improvement plans as part of local planning policy, they should not restrict and prevent positive development that may not have been envisaged when a plan was formulated.
Additionally, reviews can happen more frequently than every five years, if necessary. Again, that was further clarified through amendment in Committee. Importantly, the Bill does not prescribe that improvement plans must be fully implemented, complete and whole within five years. I want to clear up any confusion that there may still be about that. Rather, the Bill provides for plans to be more of a moveable feast, subject to periodic review to check on the progress towards delivery of what might be called an “ideal model envisaged”. That means that improvement plans can include longer-term ambitions, guiding principles and characteristics for high streets well into the decades ahead, with the ability to finesse those at least every five years.
Of course, there is the duty not to leave the plans covering dust on a shelf. Having a long-term vision that is delivered incrementally with maintained local support is the right thing to do. We can all think of examples of funding pots becoming available for so-called shovel-ready schemes, and many of us will have been frustrated when it turns out that nothing remotely shovel ready is on the books.
One of the great lessons of the high streets taskforce, which has been usefully embraced by a number of local authorities, including Longton, is the importance of getting a number of quick wins and a number of deliverable schemes within the shorter term, and having a longer-term vision and series of projects. The high streets taskforce has been an important and productive initiative for local councils of all colours, and I hope that its legacy, findings and best practice will live on through the Bill. It is work that deserves to be celebrated and continued, and we should all be grateful for the wealth of knowledge that the taskforce has contributed. The Bill is necessary to institutionalise that legacy further, developing it across local government and local communities. Having an improvement plan will help provide the basis for helping secure future funding, providing a more cohesive plan to help justify investment decisions, and will mean that certain schemes can be on the books whenever the funding is available. It also means that other projects that crop up can be knitted into the fabric to align better with the longer-term strategic vision and priorities for an area.
Without a clear vision of what a preserved and enhanced high street area would look like, I suggest that the spending would not be as optimal as it could, or should, be and the funding may not even be won at all. Much of the focus for Government investment would be better informed and would deliver better value for money through high street improvement plans. Indeed, local authorities and place partnerships will be able to engage with national bodies to push for certain optimal schemes or the refinement of them to help deliver greater benefits for our high streets within the spending envelope. That could mean infrastructure projects, such as with organisations like Network Rail and National Highways, environmental enhancements from organisations like the Environment Agency, or major housing delivery on some of our brownfields through organisations like Homes England. It is important that we improve the linkage of national organisations to better understand the needs of our local communities and high streets. Improvement plans can help do that through better co-ordination and clarity of direction.
High street improvement plans may also be important for Historic England in identifying areas in need of a partnership scheme in conservation areas, known as PSICA. The reviews of high streets will, in some cases, draw on conservation area appraisals as well. In some of those cases, that will expose the absence of appraisals and will help fill the gap, particularly where condition of those areas is poor. It has been exciting to work with Historic England in Longton to help save buildings on Market Street, and the heritage action zone funding we have secured has helped deliver on some of those buildings. However, it has not delivered on all those buildings, and we actually have a number of buildings that are still in a poor state. We have amassed knowledge and data about the ownership and condition of some of those buildings, and we need to move on to the next stage. I hope we will secure some additional funding for Longton through the heritage lottery fund to help improve and continue some of the good work already started through the PSICA scheme.
There is much more work to do, especially in ensuring that the traffic flow and public realm are optimised for footfall and dwell time in Longton town centre. I hope the use of some of the levelling-up partnership funding for the town centre will help. Also, some of the other plans that we have been developing, particularly around things like crime and antisocial behaviour, are important for many of our high streets and town centres. Longton has recently seen a spate of absolutely mindless crime and antisocial behaviour targeting a number of retailers. In the next few weeks, I will be meeting a number of them alongside Staffordshire police to discuss some of the issues.
I have been absolutely delighted to help secure more funding to address some of those issues. Working with our fantastic police, fire and crime commissioner, Ben Adams, we managed to secure extra Safer Streets funding for Longton, and for other parts of Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, to help deliver the improvements and create the secure high streets we need to see. In our case, they include additional CCTV throughout the town centre and gating off some of the alleyways that have attracted crime and antisocial behaviour. Those measures will help to ensure that people feel safe to visit, and encourage more people to dwell and shop on our high streets.
Only a comprehensive improvement plan can pull together the many factors and aspects that need proper co-ordination for a compelling high street experience. All that can be addressed in the guidance from the Secretary of State. I hope there will be a role for the Office for Place, now based in Stoke-on-Trent, in optimising the guidance. And it will be guidance, not prescription. I stress here that the Bill does not remove the power of article 4 direction that local authorities already enjoy to remove permitted development rights, if they see fit. That is a decision for them, and it will no doubt be part of the designation process to consider any PDR issues around a high street. In many areas, permitted development rights will actually be key to the enterprising spirit needed to revive high streets. Forward-thinking councils know full well that they cannot succeed in their regeneration ambitions if they allow themselves to have a reputation among developers of “council says no.”
The improvement plan process will ensure that authorities are comfortable as enablers of preservation and enhancements. We are blessed in Staffordshire, like in many parts of the country and particularly in north Staffordshire, to have many iconic high streets, whether in the more rural market towns of Stone and Cheadle, or in the pottery towns of Fenton and Longton that make up parts of the city of Stoke-on-Trent. But nearly all of them across the country have faced multiple challenges from online, out of town, and, of course, covid-19.
To conclude, we must act to address that decline, building on the work already being done by the Government through measures such as those set out in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, and ensuring the powers in place have a higher likelihood of being utilised. It has been a pleasure to bring the Bill forward and to work with colleagues across all parties to discuss it, review it and improve it on its passage through the House. We all want to see our high streets reviewed and improved. We want them to be preserved and enhanced to celebrate their local character. We want greater footfall, driven by high streets that are safe and pleasant places to be. The Bill ensures that local authorities work with property owners, local communities and many others to realise that aim, according to their own local circumstances. It is muscular localism, and I commend it to the House.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) for this important private Member’s Bill. High streets are a fundamental part of any community, whether village, town or city—or two cities, in my case. They attract commercial activity to the centre, support the local economy and provide much-needed jobs for local people.
I welcome this Bill. By requiring local authorities to designate high streets in their area, publish reviews of their condition and develop action plans, it recognises the importance of enhancing our high streets. According to the Office for National Statistics, there are over 1,200 high streets in London alone, constituting almost 20% of the high streets we have in Great Britain. As Member of Parliament for the Cities of London and Westminster, I know the importance of the high street, as we are home to what is often referred to as the nation’s high street: Oxford Street. It may be only one and a half miles long, but before the pandemic the Oxford Street district alone generated £13 billion of GVA. To put that into context, that is 25% of the entirety of Wales’s GVA.
In central London, 25% of visitors are international, but they account for 50% of all spending. As Europe’s busiest shopping street, Oxford Street plays a key role in enticing these tourists to our country. Many visitors emphasise that tax rates play a role in their choice of destination. Many businesses in my constituency rely heavily on the revenue generated by international shoppers, yet since the abolition of tax-free shopping, we have seen a trend of these consumers choosing to take their business to other European capitals, such as Paris and Milan. We know that such visitors are spending less in the UK than in other European countries. We know that such visitors are spending less in the UK than in other European countries. In 2022, spending in the UK by American visitors reached 101% of 2019 levels, but in France it surged to 226% of 2019 levels. That data makes a clear point: we need a return of tax-free shopping. I have repeatedly made the case for introducing tax-free shopping to provide a needed boost to a wide range of businesses on high streets across the country.
We must also ensure that renowned British high streets such as Oxford Street retain their global status. As we have heard, shops on many local high streets are empty or closing—businesses have perhaps not survived the pandemic—and the same can be said of parts of Oxford Street. Up and down Oxford Street, there are now too many candy shops and vape shops. I understand that the landlords want rent to ensure that their property is a going business, but I am deeply disappointed that Westminster City Council has still not been able to deal with the plethora of candy shops on Oxford Street. Many of the tenants use shell companies, which is another reason we need an urgent review of Companies House—but I digress, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Of course, Oxford Street is not the only high street in the west end. We have what I like to call the trinity of Oxford Steet, Bond Street and Regent Street. All are situated in the west end and play an important part in the cultural and entertainment powerhouse that is central London. The trinity boasts some of the world’s most famous department stores, including Selfridges on Oxford Street, Liberty just off Regent Street and, of course, Hamleys, the world’s oldest toy shop, on Regent Street. Bond Street is home to some of the most famous luxury brands: Burberry, Chanel, Cartier, Dolce & Gabbana, Hermès, Jimmy Choo, Louis Vuitton, Mulberry, Ralph Lauren and Tiffany—I could go on.
The Bill goes to the heart of why we need to ensure the health of the local high street. An aspect that we tend to forget when it comes to the regeneration and protection of the high street is the role that business improvement districts play. In Cities of London and Westminster, BIDs play a massive part in ensuring that our high streets are used in the best possible capacity by making improvements to the public realm and enabling businesses to work together to ensure that the local high street is a going concern. In Westminster, we have a plethora of BIDs, including the New West End Company, the Heart of London Business Alliance, Northbank, Victoria, Baker Street Quarter, PaddingtonNow and Marble Arch London. In the City, we have Aldgate Connect, Fleet Street Quarter and many others. I pay respect to and thank the amazing Ruth Duston, the chief executive of an umbrella organisation that brings together a number of those BIDs. The difference that the BIDs have made to a swathe of high streets and commercial areas across my constituency is absolutely outstanding, and I thank Ruth for her service.
It is not just in the west end that the high street is important; the two cities are home to what I call villages or neighbourhoods: Elizabeth Street in Belgravia, Warwick Way in Pimlico, Berwick Street in Soho, Mount Street in Mayfair and, of course, Marylebone High Street—the high street for the village of Marylebone. All those neighbourhood high streets cater to residents and visitors alike, with their much-loved cafés and small businesses such as florists’, clothes shops, barbers, nail bars, grocers, bakers—you name it. Every one of our neighbourhood high streets has a small business, and behind those small businesses can be families. This Bill will do so much to support family-run businesses.
We have already heard today the huge part that our high streets play, whether in the capital city, an area like Stoke-on-Trent or anywhere. They can often make a village, a town or a neighbourhood in a city a special place to live for residents, including me. I am delighted to live in the village of Pimlico, where we have a whole number of brilliant local shops, restaurants and family-run businesses.
Mary Glindon
It is important that people can live near the high street, and building houses on land that becomes available is so important for footfall. Does the hon. Lady agree?
Nickie Aiken
The hon. Lady is right, and what she says relates to an important point about the regeneration of our high streets. We have to have people around high streets to use them and to benefit from the facilities and the services that they offer. That is one aspect I looked at in the regeneration of Oxford Street when I was the leader of Westminster City Council. We were looking at changes to our planning policy, because we know that with the changes in people’s behaviour with online shopping, not as many people are now coming to buy. They may come in to browse, but they do not necessarily buy. That is why I consider that for somewhere like Oxford Street, we should protect the ground floor in particular, and perhaps the first floor and the basement, for retail. Above that, often there are five or six floors. Shops such as John Lewis and House of Fraser as was do not need all that huge floor space any more, because of the changes in behaviour. I was more than happy to look at introducing residential aspects or hotels.
I thought that if we could have residential in Oxford Street, the type of people who would live there, on a high street, would not necessarily be families or older couples. It would be somewhere that young professionals, students or whoever would live, and they want access to retail at all hours of the day, restaurants, cafes and whatever. The hon. Lady makes a good point that we need to look at residential aspects, but we do not want to turn our high streets just into residential areas. We need that commercial zone, but local authorities need to box clever when they are considering not only how they can help the existing small businesses in their high streets, but also how to attract new ones in.
The Government are committed to supporting retail businesses of all sizes. Investment has been made in the high street through the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund, as well as the future high streets fund, which is worth £830 million. These initiatives help boost our local economies by creating more jobs and homes, while improving skills and infrastructure. We also had Government support worth £373 billion to the economy during the pandemic. We must never forget how much support this Government gave to secure hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country during the pandemic.
As I said earlier, online shopping continues to grow. The retail sector in high streets suffers from that. We saw that through the pandemic, and it continues to grow. Indeed, it is now easier than ever to shop online, with next-day delivery and free returns. There is less of a need for people to visit the high street to buy an outfit for that special occasion or the important interview they have coming up. This evolution of shopping is having an impact on the high street. Footfall is in decline, and the sector is grappling with a seismic shift in consumer habits. I therefore welcome the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, which gets to the crux of the issue. It is important that we support our high streets in the evolution that is happening as we speak. As I said in my intervention, I fully support how the Bill puts an onus on local authorities to step up and protect their local streets in the face of changing customer behaviour.
Although it is true that my constituency is home to many thriving high streets, we cannot ignore the significant change in how we use our high streets today. As I mentioned, the candy stores on Oxford Street are a problem, and I really hope that Westminster Council will sort that out. It is becoming an increasingly common problem around the country when landlords want to secure as much rent as they can—that is understandable—but that demonstrates how we need to adopt a long-term approach to ensure that our high streets can thrive in a sustainable way. The Bill promises to do exactly that by presenting an opportunity to push local authorities to better use the tools they have to address these problems. As I said, the Bill will allow the residents of the town, the city or the area to hold their local authority to account and have a say, and if they are not happy with what their local council is doing, perhaps they could even vote out their council.
One way in which I have seen the issue successfully tackled is by changing the use of properties from shops to activity-based venues. As I said, I had the idea of perhaps attracting more residential use into parts of Oxford Street, but, just down from here on Victoria Street, two units that I think were previously a clothes shop and a restaurant have reopened as a bowling alley and a karaoke bar. Now, that might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but I have to say that I have partaken in the bowling alley activity; I took my team there last week. I will not give hon. Members the results of the competition, but I did not do very well.
There are also wider concerns about rising crime levels on our high streets. Shoplifting is at eye-watering levels. Late last year, I joined local people on a walkabout on Marylebone High Street and was shocked and appalled to hear that an increase in shoplifting has led several retail stores to lock their doors and allow people in only if they know who they are. I spoke to shop managers, particularly of clothes shops—those shops’ staff and managers tend to be women—who were very concerned about their own safety. People were coming in, grabbing clothes off the rails and running out.
We have heard a report today on the BBC about shoplifting in Manchester and the real threats that local shop staff face on a daily basis. Local people have reported that Waitrose on Marylebone High Street has removed products such as alcohol from its shelves to protect itself from being targeted by organised crime. It is often organised gangs who are involved in the dreadful crime of shoplifting. We call it shoplifting, but we should call it retail theft, because shoplifting does not really get to the crux of how it is theft, often with the threat of violence. We need to take it more seriously.
According to the Metropolitan police service, Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street were hit by nearly 18,500 crimes in the year to July 2023, and more than 80% of the area’s crimes that year were theft. Police and crime prevention are key to preserving and enhancing the character of our high streets. I welcome the fact that the Government have prioritised the safety of our high streets and policing with their retail crime action plan and the safer streets fund. However, it is clear that our local authorities need to do more to support those efforts and I hope this Bill will help in that process.
Through this Bill, local authorities will be encouraged to work more with local businesses and stakeholders on our high streets to develop new ideas, to encourage growth and to tackle the obstacles facing our high streets today. I therefore welcome the Bill and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South for introducing it. It presents an ambitious and necessary plan to reawaken our local high streets and bring them roaring back to life so that they can better serve our local communities and boost our economy by attracting more visitors.
Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill
Nickie Aiken ExcerptsTuesday 27th February 2024
(9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 View all Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 27 February 2024 - large print - (27 Feb 2024)
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I rise to speak to new clause 24, which is in my name. It was also considered in Committee. I am most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) for moving it there and to the Minister for his response. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) and the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) who have added their names to the new clause on the Order Paper.
I thank the Minister for his reply in Committee, but I think he missed the crucial central point of the amendment. At the moment, the risks of exposure to asbestos in a workplace are managed by the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, which is monitored by the Health and Safety Executive. For every workplace under those regulations, there is a duty holder responsible for monitoring the condition of the asbestos. They are required to keep up-to-date records of the location and condition of all asbestos-containing materials, to provide that information to anybody liable to disturb the materials, and to develop a plan for managing any risks that arise.
Residential blocks with a commercial freeholder will generally also have a duty holder, because the block will have been for them a workplace, so it is covered by the Control of Asbestos Regulations. It is usually the freeholder or their agent who is the duty holder. That duty holder is responsible for all the common areas in the block, such as foyers and staircases.
The effectiveness of this whole regime is debatable. The sixth report in the 2021-22 Session of the Work and Pensions Committee expressed considerable reservations. It is doubtful, I think, that the Health and Safety Executive is doing enough to monitor compliance, and the assumption that leaving asbestos in place is better than removing it is increasingly questionable as the asbestos ages. None the less, there is at least a clear regime for managing the risks.
The concern that motivates this new clause is that, following a transfer of the kind made possible and facilitated by the Bill, there will no longer be a duty holder for the communal areas in such a block. At the moment there is, but the responsibility will be entirely extinguished, as far as I understand it, on transfer. The asbestos is still going to be there, the risks will remain, but nobody will any longer be responsible for managing them. Understandably, no individual resident will take on the responsibility, but there will be no corporate entity to do it either. In fact, it may be worse than that. The residents may well not be aware before the transfer is completed that they are taking on both a financial liability for managing the asbestos in the communal areas, and possibly a risk to life as well. It is important to bear it in mind that we are seeing 5,000 deaths per year at the moment as a result of past exposure to asbestos.
In his response in Committee, the Minister said that the amendment would
“duplicate the existing duty in regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 for landlords to survey the common areas of their property”.—[Official Report, Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill Public Bill Committee, 30 January 2024; c. 461.]
However, the newly enfranchised property would not fall any longer under regulation 4. There would be no landlord to survey the common areas once the transfer has taken place.
New clause 24 aims to prevent this problem from occurring. It requires landlords to perform a detailed survey of the asbestos present in the building within three months of a transfer taking place and then requires the landlord to remove any asbestos that is there.There is a 150% tax relief for businesses removing asbestos from their premises, so removal will not be costly for landlords. It will save newly enfranchised leaseholders from a large and probably unexpected liability and a potentially lethal long-term risk. I hope that makes the case for this change clear.
I am grateful to the Minister for his assistance with the residents of Barrier Point in my constituency. I think we have a meeting in his office next month. Last night, I had my regular Zoom call with leaseholders from Waterside Park in my constituency. Before Christmas, we thought we had a clear way forward. Barratt, the builders, had signed up and Aviva, the current freeholder, was happy, but last night we learned of the requirement that the Building Safety Regulator to look at any proposal for a minimum of eight weeks, which will substantially delay the work that has been committed to. Will the Minister look at whether it is really necessary for residents who have been waiting so long for these problems to be resolved to wait another eight weeks?
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I fully support the Government’s wish to overhaul the antiquated and feudal leasehold system in this country and address the imbalance of power between freeholders and leaseholders. I thank the Minister for his ongoing discussions with me about a number of issues I have with the Bill, and for attending the leasehold roundtable that I held recently with my constituents.
I would like the Government to abolish the system completely, but I understand that that will not happen with this Bill. I have therefore tabled an amendment and three new clauses that would improve the Bill further. New clause 12 would reduce the participation threshold required to claim the right to manage from 50% to 35%. That is a massive issue in Cities of London and Westminster. More than 1,300 properties in the City of London and an eye-watering 12,100 in Westminster have owners living abroad or are owned by companies using central London’s golden postcodes as a place to park their cash. That reduces the ability of leaseholders in those blocks to secure the 50% of signatures required to achieve the right to manage, as it is incredibly difficult to contact those overseas leaseholders for a meaningful discussion.
Let me give an example of that type of dilemma in my constituency. Residents in The Quadrangle in the Hyde Park Estate say that leaseholders in their block will struggle to meet the 50% participation threshold. They estimate that at least 40% of leaseholders in their block do not live in the building and are uncontactable. Accepting new clause 12 and lowering the threshold to 35% would give many more leaseholders living in similar blocks the chance to manage their buildings.
I commend the work that has been done on the Bill to support blocks that have shared commercial and residential usage. The Bill proposes to increase the proportion of commercial or non-residential space permitted in an individual block for a right to manage application from 25% to 50%, but I believe we can go even further. I have heard from many residents whose blocks will fail to qualify even after the threshold rises to 50%. For example, residents of 8 Artillery Row in Victoria believe that increasing the threshold to 50% does not go far enough, as the residential element of their block is lower than 50%. That is why amendment 17 is needed, as it would allow residents in a block with up to 75% commercial premises to apply for the right to manage.
New clause 14 is similarly designed to allow more leaseholders to strive for the right to manage, especially those in mixed-use buildings. Simply sharing a broom cupboard with a commercial property can disqualify them from claiming the right to manage. At Cambridge Court in Marylebone, for example, leaseholders striving to manage their block would benefit from the Government’s proposals to increase the non-residential threshold allowed in a building, but they are concerned that their ability to qualify for the right to manage would be undermined by the existence of a single shared car parking space in their building. My new clause 14 would amend the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 by adopting recommendation 5 from the Law Commission’s “Right to Manage” report, which is to allow leaseholders in mixed-use buildings with shared services or underground car parks to exercise the right to manage.
Finally, my new clause 15 would correct the unintended consequences of the Building Safety Act 2022. That Act has interfered with the long-standing section 24 regime, which was a vital right for leaseholders. It introduced an accountable person mechanism that expressly banned section 24 managers from being the accountable person. Consequently, specially trained and vetted professional property managers willing to take on difficult sites have been barred from being the accountable person. That makes absolutely no sense, and it stripped leaseholders of an existing right. That could not have been the Government’s intention when they introduced the 2022 Act, which was intended to provide leaseholders with additional statutory protections. So many leaseholders in my constituency and across the country would benefit from applying for a section 24 manager, but they cannot risk it if they are in blocks of 18 metres or higher because of the accountable person regime issue arising from the Building Safety Act. It is imperative that our buildings are safe, that leaseholders are safe, and that the burden does not fall heavily on leaseholders.
I will not press my amendments to a vote, but I hope that the Government will consider what I have spoken about and work with me to introduce the measures in the other place. This is a watershed moment for the Government to prove that they understand the terrible treatment that leaseholders have faced and continue to face by incompetent freeholders, and to address the imbalance between freeholder and leaseholder. I hope that the Bill will deliver real change.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
I rise to speak to new clause 1, which was tabled in my name, and in support of a number of new clauses and amendments tabled by right hon. and hon. Members from both sides of the House.
I tabled new clause 1 because, as was said by the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), who is no longer in his place, fleecehold is a scam. It attempts to deal with the issue whereby a freeholder is trapped in a situation where they pay estate management charges for the areas around their development, be they roads, play areas or open spaces. Critically, the new clause also deals with the shared assets that might be in use to service their homes, such as ground source heat pumps, septic tanks or sewage pumps. I am sure that there are many instances in which the management company does a great job and charges reasonable fees for its work, but my inbox—like those of many hon. Members—contains horrifying examples of the management company, which is usually directly owned by or related to the developer in North Shropshire, failing to do a good job, or to do any sort of job at all.
There is a freeholder in my constituency, for example, who must obtain an information pack from their estate management company in order to sell their house. Despite repeated requests, my constituent has not received that information pack, so their sale has been significantly delayed and is at risk of falling through altogether. The management company is apparently just a shell—it does not respond to correspondence, hold annual general meetings or provide accounts—so the affected residents are powerless and cannot take control of the company and appoint a reliable professional to provide the services that they so desperately need. New clause 1 would allow them, where the management company has gone AWOL and will not respond to anything that they request of it, to take control of the company and do those things themselves.
The new clause also extends to assets, which may be more of a rural problem when it comes to shared estate charges. In one example in my constituency, a developer installed a ground source heat pump to provide all the heating and hot water for a barn conversion development that involved several houses in the same set of barns.
That developer has two separate companies: one is the management company through which he charges the owners of those houses for their electricity bill, and another, totally separate company that was nothing to do with the sale process, which is where he placed the heat pump. As such, he is able to cream off all the renewable heat incentive income for himself; he provides accounts to residents through the management company, but does not provide them with any information about the fundamental asset that is servicing their home. Those residents are unable to benefit from the renewable heat incentive that accrues from that asset, and do not know whether it is being properly maintained and serviced. They are unable to do so themselves—they have no rights in relation to that heat pump.
Proposed British Jewish History Month
Nickie Aiken Excerpts(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House calls for the creation of a British Jewish History Month.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee, which agreed to the debate, and the more than 40 Members of Parliament from across the House who signed my application. In particular, I thank the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) for attending the Backbench Business Committee to support me. I thought long and hard about the timing of the debate, particularly after the horrendous 7 October attacks and the rise in antisemitism in this country, with an increase in antisemitism of over 1,300% in London alone in the past year.
We cannot conflate British Jews with the state of Israel; being a British Jew means being a British citizen. That was really brought home to me when I met a group of British Jewish schoolchildren in November on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer). When I asked the teacher why 10-year-olds were wearing baseball caps, he told me that it was because they had to hide their kippah. I thought, how can we get to a state where British children are hiding their identities? It made me think that we have to celebrate the British Jewish community and thank them for the outstanding contribution that they have made to this country. I also thank Jonathan Abro, a constituent of mine, who also led me to think that it is time to change the narrative about the British Jewish community in this country. He was incensed by Westminster City Council’s newsletter on hate crime, which did not mention antisemitism.
I know that the Jewish community is interested in its own history—the Jewish Historical Society of England was established in Victorian times—but it is now time for the whole nation to celebrate the history of our Jewish friends and neighbours. The Jewish community is such a small one: 280,000 British citizens identified as Jewish in the 2021 census. That is 0.5% of our population. Compare that with the 6.5% of Muslims and 1.7% of Hindus.
For a small minority, the impact the British Jewish community has made in all walks of life in this country is outstanding, and that is why we need to establish a British Jewish history month. Jews throughout the centuries have arrived in the UK fleeing persecution and murder in other countries and have had to rebuild their lives here.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for securing the debate. Jews have contributed hugely to this country over many centuries. In fact, over 200 have served in this Chamber—218 by my count, but that could be contested—including 70 Labour Members of Parliament. I will briefly give an example of one: Manny Shinwell was a trade unionist who served here and in the other place until he was 101 and did great things in the Atlee Government, showing that we are right across the breadth and spread of the political establishment of the United Kingdom.
Nickie Aiken
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I will make reference to Jewish politicians in my speech.
Jews have often had to come to this country to rebuild their lives, and that was brought home to me particularly when reading Lord Danny Finkelstein’s book, “Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad”. Danny’s family history is sadly not unique but is a clear example of how two families rebuilt their lives after suffering such trauma and whose members went on to make significant contributions to both Jewish and British history, including the establishment of the Wiener Holocaust Library.
British Jews have played key roles and made major contributions over centuries in the fields of business, science, the arts and politics. In business, perhaps the most-loved retail brand we have in this country is Marks & Spencer, established by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer. The largest supermarket in this country is Tesco, founded by Jack Cohen in 1919. Other businesses of note are the cinema chain Odeon, Moss Bros. and GlaxoSmithKline, all of which were started by Jewish Brits and have provided so many jobs and so much prosperity for this country.
In science, Rosalind Franklin was responsible for the discovery of the structure of DNA. Sir Ernst Chain was the co-developer of penicillin. Lord Robert Winston, now in the other place, pioneered fertility treatment that is responsible for goodness knows how many children born in this country and across the world.
In the arts, Michael Balcon co-founded Ealing Studios, which is one of the most important British studios to this day. The Ealing comedies came from that studio and started the careers of Sir Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers. Samuel Wanamaker rebuilt the Globe theatre just down the river from us, which was perhaps one of the most important cultural contributions of the 20th century. Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” was probably played there, which is another example of witnessing historical incidents of antisemitism. Monty Norman wrote the James Bond theme, which was then rearranged by John Barry.
Actors of stage and screen are absolutely part of our establishment. One of my personal favourites is Dame Maureen Lipman, an outstanding actor but also a campaigner on ensuring that antisemitism is understood. One British Jewish male responsible for bringing us all together every couple of years to sing and hopefully to bring football home is David Baddiel. Obviously, the English Lionesses have brought football home; we are still waiting for the boys to do it, but I am sure they will eventually.
Turning to politics, the first Jewish MP was Lionel de Rothschild, representing part of my seat—the City of London. Lionel first took his seat in 1847, but it was not until the Jews Relief Act 1858 that he was recognised as a Jewish MP. The first Jewish peer was his son Nathaniel.
Westminster City Council, where I was proud to be a councillor for 16 years, has been well served by Jewish councillors, both Labour and Conservative, over the decades, including council leaders Dame Shirley Porter, Melvyn Caplan and latterly Sir Simon Milton, who was a major political influence on me as leader of Westminster City Council and later Boris Johnson’s right-hand man at City Hall when he was Mayor of London.
A British Jew who is probably responsible for the start of my political career is my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), whom I met in our first week at the University of Exeter. In the first conversation we ever had, he told me I was a Conservative and I had to join the Conservative party—and the rest is history.
In my constituency, we have evidence of a Jewish presence since Roman Britain. In Threadneedle Street, the Bank of England stands on the site of the London home of Aaron of Lincoln, a Jewish banker who died in 1186. Those familiar with the city of London will have come across the street called Old Jewry, and the name is hardly a coincidence, because the Great Synagogue of London was based there until it closed in 1272, a few short years before the Jews of England were formally expelled in 1290 by Edward I. It was only in 1656, during the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, that Jews were invited to return.
While Jewish communities would subsequently flourish all over England and further afield in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, I am proud that my constituency was once again the heart of the Jewish renaissance in this country. It is home to Bevis Marks Synagogue, which was built in 1781 and is the oldest synagogue in continuous use in Europe today. The first Jewish Lord Mayor was Sir David Salomons in 1855.
Tens of thousands of Jewish soldiers fought bravely in both the first and second world wars. Five Jewish soldiers have received the Victoria Cross and even now, every year the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women hold a Remembrance Day parade at the Cenotaph on the Sunday after the official Remembrance Day.
Having researched this topic, I could speak for hours on the contributions made by individual Jewish people but I want to pinpoint one person who I think has made the most significant contribution in this country over decades: Dame Esther Rantzen. She started so many incredible campaigns and has made a huge impact on my life, starting with her “That’s Life!” programme, where in the early ’80s she highlighted the Ben Hardwick campaign, encouraging more people to consider organ donation. I carry an organ donor card because of that campaign. Her seatbelt campaign saw the law changed to make sure that children would be wearing seatbelts in the back of cars; I note that the Father of the House is in his place, and I know he played a significant part in that campaign.
Perhaps the most significant campaign that Dame Esther has been involved in since is Childline, lifting the lid off the heinous crime of child abuse and giving child victims a voice. The work that she has done on Childline, which is now run by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, has changed the way we deal with child social services as well and made a significant difference to many children’s lives. She has since moved on to the Silver Line, outlining the loneliness that so many older people suffer, and is trying to help to change their lives. The new film “One Life” tells the story of the Kindertransport, set up by Nicholas Winton, and one scene in the film shows “That’s Life!”, where all the survivors stand up and thank him. One of those survivors was one Susie Lind, the grandmother of one of my closest friends, Daniel Astaire.
Dame Esther is now sadly at the end of her life, but she has not stopped campaigning, and with her assisted dying campaign she is trying to make sure we all have a good death. I pay tribute to her and thank her on behalf of the whole nation for her outstanding contribution over the past 50 years.
It is perhaps no coincidence that today is Rosh—I am going to get this wrong—[Hon. Members: “Chodesh.”] Rosh Chodesh, the new lunar month. It is an important day of renewal in the Jewish faith and the Jewish month of Shevat begins today. One of the great verses from the 15th day of Shevat, spoken by Moses, goes as follows:
“Remember the days of old, consider the years of ages past; ask your parent who will inform you, your elders who will tell you.”
It is therefore fitting to debate the merits of a British Jewish history month.
We rightly already celebrate the achievements of many minorities in this country, and continue to educate future generations, through Black History Month, LGBT History Month, Pride and Islamophobia Awareness Month. The United States established Jewish American Heritage Month nearly two decades ago, and I believe it is now time we reminded ourselves of the remarkable contribution that the Jewish community has made to our nation, often after suffering the greatest hardships, and to celebrate the value of difference. It is time we used the achievements of the British Jewish community to remind ourselves of the values we all share and remind ourselves that this small minority is British. I hope the Government will take that on board and consider introducing a British Jewish history month.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
We will start with a time limit of six minutes but that will rapidly decrease to five minutes. Anyone who wants to complain can ask their colleagues to leave, because that is the only way they will get any more time. I call Fabian Hamilton.
Nickie Aiken
I thank everybody across the Chamber for taking part in what I think is a timely and important debate. I thank the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who have been very helpful to me and my team on the research for my speech. I also thank the Jewish Chronicle for providing me with my first-ever front-page lead story this week, and the Jewish News, which has a triple-page spread on the merits of a British Jewish history month. I hope that they will continue to support our campaign to bring this important month to fruition.
Andrew Percy
As we have a little bit of time, and as my hon. Friend has started thanking everybody, may I also place on record my thanks to the Hull History Centre, which has incredible resources available on the history of the Jewish community in Hull and helped me prepare some of my words for the debate?
Nickie Aiken
It was a pleasure to allow that intervention.
It is absolutely right that we continue to educate ourselves and future generations on antisemitism and the holocaust, and we will be marking the holocaust later this month, but it is equally important—or perhaps more important—that we highlight and celebrate the achievements and contributions of the Jewish community. The Jewish story in Britain is a positive and a negative one. It is a history of human suffering, of human perseverance and of human strength. Now more than ever, it is important that British Jews know that their incredible contribution to this country is valued and that the history of antisemitism is understood.
I take this opportunity to thank the very special rabbi in my constituency, Rabbi Daniel Epstein of Western Marble Arch Synagogue; I am sure he is not impressed by my Hebrew in this debate, but he provided me with the text from the Torah that I repeated in my speech. The Jewish community in the Cities of London and Westminster and across the nation is very important to me and has been very supportive of me, and has led me to believe that it is now more important than ever that we have a British Jewish history month.
I look forward to working with this Government, who I believe are very positive towards the suggestion, and with Jewish community to make the proposal a reality. We must celebrate the British Jewish community and we must have a British Jewish history month.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I have been an MP for 31 years, and it was not until one of my researchers asked for time off because there was a Jewish holiday, and then the other one asked for time off for the Jewish holiday, and then the third one came to ask, that I appreciated that all my members of staff were Jewish. I am incredibly grateful for the contribution that they have made to my office personally. Yet again, this debate demonstrates how good the House is when it comes together.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House calls for the creation of a British Jewish History Month.
Antisemitic Offences
Nickie Aiken Excerpts(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards) for securing this important and very timely debate.
According to the Metropolitan police, in my constituency of the Cities of London and Westminster, we have sadly seen an unprecedented 1,350% increase in the number of antisemitic incidents since the awful scenes on 7 October in Israel. I received an email from a Jewish constituent who is in her late 70s, I believe, and was born and bred in the United Kingdom. She says:
“Some of my non-Jewish friends ask me if I feel safe now. The answer is generally yes, but I would not want to wear my necklace with its star of David when it can be seen. I would not feel safe walking past the pro-Palestinian protests if they knew I was Jewish. I love this country. I cannot think of living anywhere else. I have never been to Israel, but Palestine supporters, when I spoke to them in the street a couple of years ago, said I had no business being here, and a neighbour told me I should not be living in Belgravia; I should go to Golders Green or Stamford Hill.”
Over recent months, my constituency has been the location of protests in solidarity with Palestinians. I support peaceful protest, and always will. It is important to recognise that the vast majority of people taking part in these protests do so peacefully, but I fear that a minority are using them for antisemitic purposes. I am glad to see that these protests no longer tend to end at the Cenotaph, and that the protest organisers have been more sensitive about moving start times and locations to reduce clashes with Shabbat services in nearby synagogues in my constituency. I really hope that that will continue.
As I said, the majority of those on the protests are peaceful, and that has been the case across the country, but we have seen too many incidents of antisemitism on these marches. The police were slow to react initially, but they have got better, and hundreds of people have rightly now been arrested. We cannot live in a country where we shrug our shoulders when somebody is antisemitic. We would not do it if someone was being racist towards a black person or somebody of Muslim heritage; equally, we must not allow it to happen to the Jewish community.
The incidents are wide-ranging, and include the use of intimidating language, physical abuse and criminal damage to property. They have all been reported. One of the biggest issues raised with me as the local MP is abuse on university campuses—places where students should feel free to express themselves and their identity without threat of intimidation.
Christine Jardine
The hon. Lady is making a very salient point. I was frightened by a recent conversation with a University of Glasgow student who went to a meeting about the war in Gaza. He thought it would be a wide-ranging discussion, but he suddenly found himself at the centre of a meeting that was very antisemitic. He did not feel comfortable; he felt under threat. Does the hon. Lady agree that part of the problem is that the public are not aware of this? They do not see it, and the media is not expressing the danger of growing antisemitism in this country in the way that we would like.
Nickie Aiken
I absolutely agree. One of the most important books I have read over the past couple of years is David Baddiel’s “Jews Don’t Count”. I have always been a supporter of the Jewish community— I have spoken about going to a kibbutz when I was 18, and I have been to Israel several times—but I had never really thought about the cultural antisemitism in this country. None of us really thinks it is racism—well, many of us do, but it is seen as, “Oh, they are Jewish; it’s fine.” As I said earlier, if the target was a black person or anybody of colour, it would be considered completely differently. Those involved in that type of “humour” would be cancelled, and might even be prosecuted for hate crimes.
According to the Union of Jewish Students, there has been a staggering 500% increase in antisemitism on university campuses. I heard about that at first hand soon after the 7 October attacks, when a group of Jewish students from my constituency, from King’s College London, the London School of Economics, the University of Westminster and Imperial College London, came to visit me. One young man of Jewish heritage, British born and bred—from north London—experienced his first antisemitism on the tube coming to visit me. That was shocking for both of us. Those students, who are part of the UJS, have been doing absolutely fantastic work to support Jewish students over the past few months and before that. They informed me that they have received more than 400 calls to their hotline reporting antisemitic abuse over the past few months. The UJS not only supports students but provides training to thousands of people on campus to help them spot antisemitism and root it out before it can harm students. As has been said, one of the big points is understanding that antisemitism is racism, and that we need to call it out.
After I met the UJS, I wrote to all the vice-chancellors and their equivalents at King’s College London, the University of Westminster, Imperial College London and the London School of Economics and Political Science. I highlighted that, although of course it is critical to protect freedom of speech, there is a fine line between speaking freely and causing harm to groups of people and minorities. I reiterated in my letters that we must have a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus. I also asked the vice-chancellors to inform me whether they were providing additional support to Jewish staff and students after the 7 October attacks. I was encouraged by their responses, which were far more rigorous in their condemnation of antisemitism than some US college presidents have recently been.
Initiatives such as the LSE’s “Report It, Stop It” allow students to safely and anonymously report abusive or threatening behaviour. However, that sort of mechanism is effective only if the reported abuse is met with swift repercussions for the offenders, which I hope the vice chancellors of the universities will continue to provide. University campuses are rightly hotbeds of debate, sometimes on contentious topics and views, but as I say, there is a fine line between the protection of freedom of speech and the protection of people’s rights. People need to feel safe and welcome on their campus, at lectures and elsewhere.
It is not only Jewish students who feel intimidated. Unfortunately, Jewish primary school children are being targeted as well. Some feel so uncomfortable that they cannot show their true identity when on school trips. This struck me so clearly in November last year, when a group of Jewish primary school children visited me. They were from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer). He could not make their meeting, so he asked me to meet them. They were boys, about 10 years old. The first thing I noticed when I met them was that they were all wearing baseball caps. I asked their teacher why, and it was to hide their kippahs. British children in the House of Commons were hiding their identity for their own safety. How have we come to that? That has to stop.
I have heard from rabbis across my constituency. I am blessed to have so many synagogues in the Cities of London and Westminster, but I have been told how fearful and scared their communities are. We must do all that we can to protect them. I am pleased that the Metropolitan police in Westminster borough have taken that very seriously. They have increased the number of patrols around synagogues, and now liaise with rabbis. I thank the Westminster borough command and the neighbourhood teams for their work.
I hope that through today’s debate, and the continuing hard work of organisations such as the Union of Jewish Students, the Antisemitism Policy Trust, the Community Security Trust and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, we can continue to support those impacted, and slowly and surely rip out any form of antisemitism in this country. We should celebrate and thank the Jewish community for the amazing contribution that they have made, and continue to make, in our country.
Several hon. Members rose—
Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill
Nickie Aiken ExcerptsMonday 11th December 2023
(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 View all Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Leaseholders at 8 Artillery Row pay on average £2,000 in service charges each month. The managing agent, Avon Ground Rents Ltd, refuses to disclose what is included in those charges and to provide invoices. One of the charges was £30,000 for legal and professional fees, requested without explanation or detail, even though leaseholders asked—reasonably—for information for over two years.
Leaseholders in Neville House in Westminster are living in a cladding nightmare. Although Westminster City Council issued a hazard awareness notice on the building, no remedial works have been undertaken because the managing agent, Estates & Management Ltd, has failed to agree with the developers, Berkeley Homes, on the terms of a survey licence. As a result, the homes are unsellable.
The leaseholders of Blake Tower on the Barbican estate are living in a building with ongoing fire safety issues. The developer, Redrow, committed to dealing with those issues but has yet to undertake the necessary inspections. The tower also has building defects so serious that they have resulted in several flats being unliveable. The local authority, the City of London Corporation, shares my concerns and those of my constituents, and I understand that it is about to take action.
Those are just a few examples of the appalling behaviour of freeholders in my constituency. I have been contacted by countless leaseholders who routinely report appalling practices related to service charges, the cost of major works and the extortionate charges they face when renewing their leases. When they request information or explanation, they often face a wall of silence from freeholders and their agents. “Extortionate” is probably the correct word, as what some freeholders and their accomplices—including managing agents, lawyers and accountants—are involved in is often little better than extortion. Those freeholders should instead be described as freeloaders.
The Bill responds to the concerns raised by so many of my constituents. For example, clause 27 aims to make service charges more transparent, ending the practice of demanding unexplained service charges that too many freeholders engage in, often just to profit off leaseholders. The introduction of a standardised form for freeholders requesting service charges from their leaseholders is certainly welcome, but I would like more detail about what information will need to be disclosed and how much warning freeholders will have to give leaseholders regarding costs.
Too many of my leaseholder constituents have told me that they choose not to take their landlords to tribunal, as they could be liable for their huge legal fees even if they win. I therefore welcome clause 34, which responds to that concern by ensuring that leaseholders will no longer be liable for those costs. I also welcome the fact that the Bill overhauls previous legislation by increasing the standard lease extension term for houses and flats to 990 years, as well as reducing ground rent to a peppercorn upon payment of a premium. That will ensure that leaseholders can enjoy secure, ground-rent-free ownership of their own property without the hassle and expense of repeated lease extensions.
Another game changer in the Bill is the commitment to removing marriage value. For far too long, when leaseholders want to extend their leases, they have been at the mercy of their freeholder and that freeholder’s agents, and have faced some questionable practices. The Bill makes it cheaper and easier for leaseholders to extend their lease or buy their freehold. It removes the requirement to pay marriage value, capping the treatment of ground rents at 0.1% of the freehold value in the calculation and prescribing rates for that calculation.
Clause 22 will increase the non-residential limit of a block from 25% to 50% when it comes to securing the right to manage and enfranchisement, meaning that more blocks that are a mix of residential and commercial property will have the right to manage and buy their freehold. However, that still requires 50% of the leaseholders in a block to agree to go ahead with the right to manage, which could prove near impossible for many of my constituents, due to the unique nature of the Cities of London and Westminster. Over 1,300 properties in the City of London, and a staggering 12,100 in Westminster, have owners who live abroad or are owned by companies using central London’s golden postcodes as a place to park their cash. As such, while my constituents and I warmly welcome the Government’s intention to support leaseholders who want to manage their blocks, it will prove difficult in my constituency to achieve the 50% of signatories required.
If the proposed legislation is to achieve what the Government hope for constituencies such as mine, I ask them to consider making the thresholds more flexible—perhaps by stating that 50% of signatories should be leaseholders of apartments that are their main home, rather than an investment, or reducing the threshold for the right to manage to 35% of leaseholders. I would welcome further discussions with the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), on that point. I thank him for meeting me and my leasehold reform working group, made up of constituents who are dealing with some of the most egregious freeholders in my constituency. The 50% threshold was discussed in some detail with the Minister at that meeting.
Another area of huge concern for leaseholders is the cost of major works and estate management charges. I have lost count of the number of constituents who have contacted me for help regarding those issues: for example, leaseholders living on the Golden Lane estate in the City are being asked to pay tens of thousands of pounds extra because the freeholder, the City of London Corporation, is 20 years behind schedule. In Russell House and Churchill Gardens, which are both in Pimlico, residents are failing to secure details on timings and costs from Westminster City Council.
Time and again, I receive complaints from constituents living in private and social blocks that, while they appreciate that they have to pay for major works and repairs, they want the freeholder—whether it is a private company or a local authority—to be open and transparent about costs. I therefore welcome clause 40 of the Bill, which will provide more transparency about major work costs. Similar to service charge expenses, landlords will have to fill out a standardised form to demonstrate exactly how the leaseholders’ money will be spent and ensure that the works are carried out to a certain standard.
I take this opportunity to thank Harry Scoffin, the founder of Free Leaseholders, for his incredible work. His support and technical knowledge has been invaluable to me and my constituents when considering the Bill. I welcome the Bill, and look forward to working with the Minister and my constituents to ensure that we end the many questionable practices of some freeholders and ensure that the leasehold and freehold system in this country is open, transparent and fair.
Renters (Reform) Bill (Eighth sitting)
Nickie Aiken ExcerptsThursday 23rd November 2023
(1 year ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Renters (Reform) Bill 2022-23 View all Renters (Reform) Bill 2022-23 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 23 November 2023 - (23 Nov 2023)
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
I rise to speak to amendment 159 and others tabled in my name and the names of my hon. Friends. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown for tabling the six amendments that he moved and spoke to this morning. They raise a number of important issues and it is right that the Committee and the Government carefully consider them.
As we have heard, clauses 5 and 6 set out the process for rent increases under the new tenancy system and how any such increase can be challenged by tenants. Under the existing assured tenancy regime, a landlord can only increase the rent during a fixed-term assured shorthold tenancy by including a rent review clause in the tenancy agreement. Rent review clauses of this kind are used by landlords to increase rent levels during fixed-term tenancies, but it is far more common for landlords to offer a new fixed-term tenancy at a higher rent when the old one is coming to an end, or to seek to increase the amount of rent payable once a tenant has fallen into a periodic tenancy with no specific end date.
The rents on periodic assured shorthold tenancies can be increased by the landlord serving notice under section 13 of the Housing Act 1988. However, although formal section 13 increases can take place only once a year, under the current system assured shorthold tenants can still be asked by their landlords either to agree informally or to formally sign a new agreement accepting a higher rent level, and there is no limit whatsoever on how high rents can rise by either method.
In theory, the tenant does not have to agree to a rent increase proposed informally or formally via a new agreement, and they can refer increases to a first-tier tribunal on grounds of reasonableness, yet all the available evidence suggests that only an incredibly small proportion of privately renting households do so. An analysis by Generation Rent of market rent assessments undertaken by the first-tier tribunal indicated that only 341 such cases were heard between January 2019 and August 2021. Bearing in mind that there are approximately 4.4 million privately renting households in England alone, it is a miniscule proportion.
The reason why so few tenants determine to make use of the tribunal process under the existing tenancy regime is obvious. If a tenant refuses a rent increase either informally or formally via a new agreement, or successfully challenges a rent increase at tribunal, a landlord can take immediate steps to end their tenancy, most obviously by issuing a no-fault section 21 notice.
With the introduction of the new tenancy system, the ability of landlords to compel tenants to accept rent rises by means of the latent threat of a section 21 notice will obviously be removed. Although there will remain the threat of spurious eviction by means of the remaining de facto no-fault grounds for possession that we discussed at length in previous debates, the new system will be an improvement on the current situation faced by private tenants when it comes to rent increases.
By amending section 13 of the 1988 Act, clause 5 will ensure that issuing a section 13 notice will henceforth be the only valid way that a private landlord—except those of a relevant low-cost tenancy, as specified in the Bill—can increase the rent, and landlords will therefore be able to increase the amount of rent charged only once per year. Supplemented by the provisions in subsection (4), which will increase the notice period for a rent rise from one month to two months, the changes will create more predictability and give tenants more certainty about future rent increases. On that basis, we welcome them.
However, we remain seriously concerned that the provisions in the clauses are not robust enough to prevent unaffordable rent increases from being used as default eviction notices for the purpose of retaliation against complaints, or simply because a landlord wants to try to secure a rent level that is far in excess of what they can reasonably expect from a sitting tenant.
We have consistently raised concerns about this issue since the White Paper was published in the summer of 2022. As I argued in response to a statement accompanying the release of the White Paper that was made by the then Under-Secretary of State at the Department, the hon. Member for Walsall North—he may remember—it is problematic that the Government did not include in the reform package any robust means of redress for tenants facing unreasonable rent rises. Our view remains as set out in that exchange last year—namely, that a one-year rent increase limit, the removal of rent review clauses, and vague assurances about giving tenants the confidence to challenge unjustified increases at tribunal are not enough.
With the scrapping of section 21, the risk of economic evictions by means of extortionate within-tenancy rent hikes will increase markedly. The Government acknowledge that tenants need protection against what they term “back-door eviction” by such means. However, we believe that the Bill as it stands does not protect tenants sufficiently from such economic evictions, and that it needs to be strengthened accordingly in several ways.
In the White Paper, the Government committed to preventing
“the Tribunal increasing rent beyond the amount landlords initially asked for when they proposed a rent increase.”
We believe that that was an entirely sensible proposal. An obvious need under the new tenancy system is to ensure that all tenants are fully aware that they can submit an application to the first-tier tribunal to challenge a rent amount in the first six months of a tenancy or following the issuing of a section 13 notice. Equally as important is that the tribunal process operates in a way that gives them the confidence to do so.
The Bill allows for a situation in which tenants who are handed section 13 notices with what they consider to be completely unreasonable rent increases might apply to the tribunal to challenge the increase, only to see the rent level rise higher. That will act as a powerful deterrent to tenants making such applications. As a consequence, the Bill risks emboldening landlords to press for unaffordable rent increases in the knowledge that tribunal challenges will remain vanishingly rare, as they are now.
The Government’s explicit intent might well be to deter a proportion of tenants from challenging section 13 rent increases. After all, with 4.4 million households now renting privately in England, even a minor uptick in applications to the tribunal will place it under enormous pressure. Without additional resourcing and support, that could lead to extensive delays. Ultimately, however, it is for the Government to ensure that the first-tier tribunal can cope with the implications of the new tenancy regime that they are introducing, not for tenants to have to stomach unreasonable rent rises because there is a chance that they will not do so.
On a point of principle, we believe that the tribunal should only ever be able to increase the rent increase requested in the section 13 notice issued, or to award a rent amount lower than it. Amendment 160 would ensure that that would be the case by specifying that where a rent assessment is carried out by a tribunal, the rent subsequently determined by the tribunal cannot be higher than that originally requested by a landlord in the section 13 notice. We believe that that change, which would ensure that the tribunal process was in line with the commitments made by the Government in their White Paper, and reasonable and proportionate. I urge the Minister to accept it.
We also take the view that the Bill needs to include greater protection for tenants who would suffer undue hardship as a result of a section 13 rent increase. Once the provisions in the Bill are finally enacted, a considerable number of tenants—in particular those in hot rental markets where rent levels increase rapidly—will without doubt be unable to afford an increase in rent as set out in a section 13 notice. Many will simply give notice and leave the property without taking the matter any further.
A significant proportion of those who attempt by means of the tribunal a challenge of a rent increase perceived to be unreasonable, in an effort to secure a rent lower than proposed in the section 13 notice, but fail, will ultimately leave the property. That would even be the case if the Government accept amendment 160 and the tribunal cannot increase the amount further. We believe that those who would experience undue hardship as a result, such as tenants at risk of becoming homeless, because they have to leave what has become an unaffordable, should be afforded a little more time—it is only a little more time—to try to secure a property that they can afford.
Taken together, amendments 161 and 162 would achieve that aim by changing the point at which the rent increase becomes payable from the date at which the tribunal makes a determination to two months after that date. The effect of that pair of amendments would simply be to give vulnerable tenants a reasonable period of time in which to make new arrangements as a result of a rent rise that was unaffordable for them. We hope that the Government can see the merit of accepting the amendments and will give them serious consideration.
We also believe that three other important changes to the Bill are required in relation to rent. The first concerns section 13 notices. As I remarked earlier, the clause amends this section of the 1988 Act so that from the date of commencement it will be the only valid way in which a private landlord, except those of a relevant low-cost tenancy, can increase the rent, once per year. In practice, however, we know that, particularly at the lower end of the private rented market and in the unregulated shadow rental market, a great many landlords will inevitably increase rent levels without issuing a formal section 13 or 13A notice. Amendment 159 would ensure that in instances where they might, a tenant would have the right to seek to recover costs through a debt claim in the court. It would also provide the Government with the power by regulation to have such claims recoverable by tribunal, if Ministers felt that was a more appropriate body to determine such claims.
The second issue concerns rent requested in advance of a tenancy’s commencement. In the White Paper, the Government committed to introducing a power to prohibit the amount of rent that landlords can ask for in advance, and we supported that proposal. We will come to discuss measures aimed at discriminatory practices in relation to the granting of tenancies when we debate the various Government amendments that are to form new chapter 2A of part 1 of the Bill. However, irrespective of how effective those groups of amendments might ultimately be—we have our doubts, which we will set out in due course—blanket prohibitions are not a silver bullet for discriminatory practices in the private rented sector.
A number of informal barriers to renting privately are regularly faced by large numbers of tenants. They include requests that renters appoint a high-earning guarantor—an issue to which I hope we can return in a future sitting—and asking renters for multiple months of rent in advance. According to research carried out by Shelter, a staggering 59% of tenants reported being asked to pay rent in advance when attempting to secure a property the last time they moved; some were even asked to pay in excess of six months’ rent up front. Tenants reported taking out unsecured loans, using their credit cards or going significantly into their overdrafts to make the advance payments. One in 10 of those surveyed reported being denied a property for which they could afford the monthly rent simply because they were unable to pool together the sizeable advance rent payment that the landlord requested.
It is true that clause 1 defines a rental period as one month—a change from the current situation in which periods of a periodic tenancy can be of any length. One reading of the Bill might suggest that a single rental period is all that a landlord will be able to request under the new tenancy regime. If that is the case, I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed as much and detailed precisely how clause 1 would prevent landlords from requesting multiple rent payments in advance. Nothing that we can see in the Bill would prevent a landlord from requesting several rent payments at one time before a tenancy was signed.
We believe that the solution is new clause 62, which would ensure that the maximum amount that could be lawfully requested by a residential landlord in advance of a tenancy would be five weeks’ rent for tenancies of less than £50,000 per annum and six weeks’ rent for tenancies of over £50,000 per annum.
The third and final change that we believe is required relates to rental bidding wars—the product of soaring demand and inefficient supply which is, I admit, to a large extent concentrated in our cities and larger towns. The phenomenon involves multiple tenants competing fiercely for individual private lets. Landlords and the agents acting on their behalf, overwhelmed by applicants, now regularly play prospective renters off against each other, with some offering to pay months of rent up front as a lump sum, to sign longer tenancy agreements or to agree to rent levels far in excess of the advertised monthly rate.
Under the new tenancy system, long-term fixed-term tenancy agreements will not exist. We hope the Government will accept our new clause 62 or introduce an amendment of their own, as they promised in the White Paper, to prohibit landlords from asking for rent in advance. That leaves competitive bidding wars in respect of monthly rental periods as the only means by which this inherently inflationary phenomenon could continue—a phenomenon that the unscrupulous can undoubtedly use to discriminate against certain types of tenants and, even where no such discrimination occurs, pushes many to the limit of what they can afford financially.
Taken together, new clauses 58 and 59 would effectively prohibit bidding wars for private rented properties by requiring landlords or persons acting on their behalf to state the proposed rent, based on an estimate of the property’s market rate, in the advertisement for the premises. That should prevent landlords from inviting or encouraging bids that exceed the amount stated.
The new clauses are based on legislation introduced in New Zealand and Australia, the former having banned the practice entirely in February 2021 and the latter having seen it prohibited in most states—including, most recently, New South Wales in December last year and South Australia in June this year. We hope the Minister will give the new clauses due consideration. I look forward to his thoughts about them and about other five amendments in this group.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I thank the shadow Minister, who had some very reasonable thoughts about this issue, for his speech.
Currently, I am dealing with an example of what I believe to be the worst behaviour by a corporate landlord that I have ever come across in 18 years as a councillor or Member of Parliament. I am talking about rent increases. AXA Insurance, which now owns Dolphin Square in Pimlico in my constituency, is carrying out a major refurbishment of that estate; that is understandable. However, it is now asking tenants, some who have been there for many years, to move out of flats that it wants to refurbish and into others. But, if they do move out and into another flat, their tenancy breaks, and they have to take out a new tenancy, which includes a 40% increase in rent.
Renters (Reform) Bill (Fourth sitting)
Nickie Aiken ExcerptsThursday 16th November 2023
(1 year ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Renters (Reform) Bill 2022-23 View all Renters (Reform) Bill 2022-23 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 16 November 2023 - (16 Nov 2023)
Helen Morgan
To clarify, I do not mean that they are deliberately unprofessional. I just mean that they may not be on top of all the legislative changes.
Linda Cobb: Yes. I think we need to change the way we communicate with landlords. We need to get information out there, because what we found through trying to drive up numbers in our accreditation scheme was that a landlord could be anywhere. Marketing was very difficult. Where do you go to advertise this information? It has to be very mainstream. Look at gas safety certificates: the campaign when they came in was very effective because it was a mass campaign. Safe Suffolk Renters is doing something very similar and we can learn from its work. Going back to what Sam was saying, we should learn from what has been good in the market at getting messages out there.
Roz Spencer: From a renter’s perspective, there is the obvious problem of renters’ knowledge about their rights. I think there are three reasons why renters’ understanding of their rights is poor: landlord and tenant law is so complicated; tenant rights are so slim; and the expectation of enforcement is at a low ebb. Renters have challenging lives and other things to think about. Their bandwidth to pay attention to something complicated, thin and unlikely to deliver for them is quite limited. If you get things right around renters reform, raising renters’ awareness of their rights will be much easier.
Linda Cobb: I am a big fan of going back into schools and doing work at that very early level. The majority will go into rented accommodation at some point, and we need to get into schools to show young people what a good tenancy is like and what their rights are from a very young age.
Samantha Stewart: That is a really good point. Let’s face it: renters are going to be renting for a long time, so getting them to understand things early, right from the start, is a fabulous opportunity.
Linda Cobb: Yes. They should understand what their responsibilities and rights are.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Q
Samantha Stewart: I think we just have covered some of the ways that we can do that. We just have to repeat the message consistently: there are fabulous organisations out there that advocate for and help tenants, and there are fabulous local authorities that can do the same. I can speak more from a vulnerable tenant perspective, because that is our focus. Even if they know where to go, they do not go, because they do not feel they have the power and they fear eviction if they tell anyone.
Nickie Aiken
Q
Samantha Stewart: Not without a significant increase in safeguards around the new grounds for possession.
Linda Cobb: In the 2021 Chartered Institute of Environmental Health report, 56% of local authorities reported vacancies in their teams, so that phone call is going to go unanswered, and that email is going to go right to the bottom of the pile, even if they did complain. Then people will say, “My auntie complained to the council and nobody got back to her”—that sort of mentality—and they will not feel that they will be listened to. The report also said that 87% were relying on agency staff to fill that gap, and they are obviously expensive, so you can have only one of them as opposed to two full-time equivalents.
We are looking to stem that bleed with local authorities, and we are looking at ways to increase the training in the industry. We are losing very good local authority environmental health officers, because they are either retiring or leaving the sector because they are tired of it. We want more of the one-year private rented sector enforcement training courses, so we are working with our local university and training providers to get those up and running. We also want an apprenticeship-levied housing practitioner training course, which would help with these multidisciplinary teams. The team could then deal with all aspects—as well as physically going out, it could offer information about what the tenant can do themselves.
Samantha Stewart: I will just finish by saying that we also fund seven organisations across the UK that are working with tenants, particularly in the more vulnerable part of the sector, to help them strengthen and increase their voice. One of the reasons we are doing that—helping them to enact and effect these changes themselves, speak up for themselves and know their rights—across the UK with very different types of organisation is so that we can learn what works best and then use that evidence to inform policy.
Ms Buck
Q
Roz Spencer: Thank you for asking. You heard it here first: the safer renting count, which was first established in 19—sorry, 2021; I am showing my age—established a methodology that looked at five different sources of data that could be collected on an established, reliable basis, and did not involve any significant overlap between the data points, and we have just updated those figures from 2021 to 2022. The trend between those two years is an 18% increase in reported offending under the Protection from Eviction Act 1977—so, those are illegal evictions and cases of extreme harassment likely to give rise to the loss of a home. That 18% uptick is of significant concern. I have no evidence to suggest that the performance in courts has had any bearing on that, and I would be surprised if it had.
There is another figure that is interesting—I think it is buried in the Government’s H-CLIC data. All local authorities report on trends in Protection from Eviction Act offences leading to homelessness. That is a very big, stable and reliable time series for the data. Interestingly, during the pandemic, when there was a ban on section 21 and a subsequent inability to use bailiffs to enforce lawful evictions, there was a substantial drop in lawful evictions between 2020 and 2021. There was no such drop in the number of unlawful evictions. In fact, those numbers held up, sadly, at more or less the same level. As a proportion of evictions leading to homelessness, the figure came close to doubling.
The interesting suggestion buried in that statistic is that it is so important, when you are quite rightly considering replacing section 21 with new grounds for possession, that you avoid the unintended consequences of those changes in access to lawful eviction increasing the number of landlords who feel that they can get away with just doing it anyway.
I have another statistic to offer you. If you look at our count of what we think is a very conservative estimate of the number of unlawful evictions and the Ministry of Justice statistics for the number of convictions in a year, the figures show that in more than 99 out of 100 offences, the person who commits the offence, the landlord who undertakes the unlawful eviction, walks away scot-free, so it is little surprise that people do not regard the enforcement of the law as adequate.
Your clause 58 in the Bill is so important because it corrects one of the major defects in what is a 46-year-old piece of legislation, the Protection from Eviction Act, which does not do what it says on the tin. It has not been preventing evictions because nobody has a duty to enforce it. That is a very long answer to your question, but there is a lot of support for what I am saying in those data.
Renters (Reform) Bill (Third sitting)
Nickie Aiken ExcerptsThursday 16th November 2023
(1 year ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Renters (Reform) Bill 2022-23 View all Renters (Reform) Bill 2022-23 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 16 November 2023 - (16 Nov 2023)
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Q
Helen Gordon: Yes, you are right; it is across London—some people do not. Westminster is particularly good at it, because of tourism. People come to London for the summer and purport to take a six-month property, and the reality is that they could give notice on day one that they are leaving in two months—it is a cheap form of Airbnb. So this is really to try to put down roots for longer-term communities.
Nickie Aiken
Q
Helen Gordon: But under the Bill, the ability to serve notice on day one will inadvertently allow short-term letting through the back door.
Helen Morgan
Q
Helen Gordon: The business practice on build to rent was quite often to give a one-year, three-year or five-year lease to offer that, with the CPI uplifts within it. Most landlords are happy to give a minimum of 12 months or two or three years. In our case, because we are a longer-term landlord and we know that we will not require the property back for us to live in it, we have offered longer leases. I suppose the in-perpetuity tenancy does away with that need, but linked to that is giving tenants certainty on where their rent would go. Within that, if we had for example put CPI—and we had a very high level of CPI at the end of 2022—our customers could still give two months’ notice; they can leave within that minimum term as well.
Renters (Reform) Bill (Second sitting)
Nickie Aiken ExcerptsTuesday 14th November 2023
(1 year ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Renters (Reform) Bill 2022-23 View all Renters (Reform) Bill 2022-23 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 14 November 2023 - (14 Nov 2023)
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Q
Sue James: We think it is a great idea.
Nickie Aiken
Good.
Sue James: But it needs more.
Ben Twomey: I would add that it lacks detail at the moment, and we are very keen to see that detail. I mentioned that we are particularly interested in eviction notices and the outcomes of evictions being logged there; otherwise, there is not really much improvement in the way you monitor and enforce against abuse of some of the new no-fault grounds. So eviction notices are really important. Getting the rents charged on there will be really important, and we should think about energy performance certificates going on to the portal so that they can be enforced. When I talk about enforcement, I think it is really important that local authorities are empowered and have the necessary resources to enforce against bad practice—the kind of practice that can lead to people being unsafe in their homes.
It is also about having a place for tenants to access this information, as they have a vested interest in what happens afterwards. The only way to give them a vested interest is to have an incentive, and we think that is through rent repayment orders. We would encourage the portal to be made accessible to tenants. For example, where they can see that no-let periods have been abused, there should be a rent repayment order. If the landlord is not compliant with the portal, there should be a rent repayment order. Also, if the landlord is not compliant with minimum energy efficiency standards, we think that there should be a repayment—you would equalise it in that way. At the moment, where licensing schemes exist, for example, and the local authority pursues landlords for a fine, often that money does not actually get back to the person who has lost out—the tenant. It is important that rent repayment orders go directly to the tenant wherever possible.
Sue James: I totally agree, and I would like to pick up on the issue around the basic requirements of gas safety and stuff. At the moment, that is a huge protection in section 21; a landlord cannot get a possession order unless they have all those protections, and that does not appear in the Bill. We absolutely need to have them included, and the portal could be a place to put them. We would then have transparency; a tenant knows when they are looking in the portal that this is a good landlord and that they have complied with everything. I think that is so fundamental to changing the nature of the private-rented sector.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Ben Twomey: The question of guarantors is really important. Usually, there would be a guarantor if you are not earning a certain amount to cover the rent—usually, you should have an income that is two and a half times the rent and, if not, you require a guarantor. For younger people, for people on low incomes, that can be quite difficult, so they would need a guarantor.
We have been working with the National Youth Advocacy Service to look at the barriers facing care leavers when they access private rented homes. This has been a major barrier for care leavers. At the moment, 60% of local authorities do not offer people the ability to be a guarantor for care leavers. Local authorities are the corporate parent for care leavers, so they are basically taking on parenting duties. We think that is a big problem. The 40% that offer the guarantor scheme in principle vary in the way that they do so. We think that it is for the Government to step in and say, “If, as a state, you are going to take on parental responsibility, you should be a guarantor to make sure that young people who are care-experienced are not being locked out of rented accommodation, compared with their peers.” That would be a major step forward.
To touch on bidding wars, we have found in our research at Generation Rent that there are seven times more bidding wars than there were just five years ago. We have gone up from 3% of tenants experiencing this to 21%, from our research. I experienced it when I moved down to London relatively recently. I was asked how much more I would want to give and how much longer I would want to stay in the property as a fixed-term tenancy. It is very, very common now. We think that the issue needs to be addressed. There is nothing in the Bill at the moment, but there should be some consideration given to this. When a landlord offers a price for rent, they are almost, by definition, offering a rent that they are comfortable with. Just because of the changes in market forces—that is a change not to their costs, but to the number of people queuing round the block for them—it should not be that they can then increase the rent as they please and encourage others to enter into these kinds of bidding wars, which basically pit tenant against tenant. The only one who is benefiting from this is the landlord.
Sue James: To pick up on that point, this is not in the Bill, but the position of the Renters’ Reform Coalition is that, at the moment, unless you restrict the amount that landlords can put up rents, you potentially have an economic eviction, and we would suggest that you restrict that to the lowest of either inflation or wage growth.
To touch on what is in the Bill, section 14 of the 1988 Act allows the tenant to apply for the tribunal to have a look at the rent. Originally, it was restricted to whatever the landlord was requesting, but in the Bill it is now the market rent. That would potentially have a chilling effect on tenants who want to challenge the rent that has been set. As an adviser, I might say, “It is limited to what your landlord has suggested,” but at the moment, with the way Bill is, that could be the market rent if the landlord has asked for less than that. Does that person then challenge it? That could have a chilling effect. When thinking about rents and, as Ben said, bidding wars, that absolutely needs to change, because it is really difficult. There are queues of people for every tenancy and the protection needs to be there, so thoughts around that would be really welcome.