Private Rented Sector

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

This is a much-edited speech, I am afraid.

Not everyone is getting the sort of home that they need. They are routinely pushed into conditions that no one in the Chamber would accept for themselves or a member of their family. Demand for housing continues to outstrip supply, and even in a relatively small local authority area such as Stockton-on-Tees, more and more families are being pushed into the private sector. I am proud that Stockton-on-Tees borough council has taken the initiative in implementing a number of measures to deal with problems and make the private rented sector work more fairly.

We are unique in Stockton-on-Tees in benefiting from a landlord’s toolkit, which provides a range of measures to help raise standards in the sector. It is there to support landlords and tenants, and provide enforcement where it is needed, in order to improve and maintain property, management standards and behaviour. The council now licenses houses in multiple occupation and uses the housing health and safety rating system to assess properties when a complaint about living conditions is received from a tenant. There has also been the introduction of a landlord accreditation scheme, a landlord liaison scheme and tenant referencing. There are also landlord forums, training and newsletters. These measures are helping to improve life for private sector tenants on the ground.

Our council is also doing its bit to help increase housing supply. It works with registered providers and a social enterprise to bring outmoded properties back into use. That provides apprenticeships and training opportunities for young people, as well as quality, well-managed housing for tenants, many of whom are, or were until recently, homeless. Our area has also benefited from a willingness on the part of the council to identify and bring to account rogue landlords who wilfully neglect their responsibility. When a property fails to perform its most basic function—keeping its inhabitants warm, safe and dry—there are inevitable implications for public health.

I urge the Minister to take a close look at what Stockton-on-Tees borough council is doing, encourage other parts of the country to follow its lead in developing innovative policies to deal with private rented sector problems as they emerge, and think about ways to promote good practice and ideas that could aid councils in tackling the problems that we know are rife in the private rented sector.

There are thousands of good landlords all over the country, many of whom operate in my constituency. They provide a good service at a reasonable price, respond to tenant need, and do not, for the most part, act unreasonably. However, there is also the other type of landlord. One term for them is absent landlords; I can think of some other terms, but I do not think that I should use them in the House. They buy up properties such as those in Port Clarence in my constituency for a few thousand pounds—one went for £12,000 recently—and let them out to whoever will come along with the necessary cash, or benefits, more likely. Some do not care about maintenance, and some, I have been told, have not even visited the area, so they are hardly likely to engage to improve their properties and the lives of the people who live in them. Others fail to manage tenants properly, which results in tenants causing absolute havoc in their neighbourhood with antisocial behaviour.

The Government should encourage local authorities to use the powers given to them by the Labour Government to tackle some of the appalling abuse that we see all too often, I hope that they will step away from any notion that would reduce those powers. They can build on what the Labour Government did in the past by taking up the suggestions in the motion, and I hope that those suggestions will be supported.