Renters (Reform) Bill

Angela Richardson Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

We have a mandate from the British people to deliver this Bill, and I know that passing it into law will be warmly welcomed by renters in the 4.6 million households who are renting nationwide. Support and fairness is what this Bill delivers, to both renters and landlords alike.

Last year, the English housing survey identified that 23% of privately rented properties do not meet the decent homes standard. The consequences of unsafe rental properties cost the NHS £340 million each year. I am sure that we can agree that this is an unnecessary cost, but it is made up of thousands upon thousands of individual stories of miserable living conditions.

From day one in this job—and sadly, week in and week out—much of my casework has involved poor housing conditions. Resolving these issues gives my caseworking team, Diana, Mollie and me, enormous satisfaction, but it is distressing to hear of the health impacts on vulnerable constituents. That was brought to the fore for all of us with the news at the beginning of the year of the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in Rochdale from respiratory issues caused by exposure to mould. I hope that we can all agree across the House that no family should suffer the loss of a child in that way. Fear of eviction should not be a reason for not asking for repairs to be done.

Since assured shorthold tenancies were introduced, renters have been offered no long-term security of tenure, and private landlords have been able to repossess their properties without any establishment of wrongdoing by the tenants. However, that is not to say that many landlords do not do an excellent job in delivering good-quality housing and support to their tenants, while exercising their rights properly and with good intention. The goal is to increase their number and for more landlords to follow their example.

A large number of my constituents in Guildford have written to me in support of the Bill, for many reasons, including the provisions that will give tenants the right to request a pet in their property and enable landlords to require pet insurance to cover any damages. My constituents think that is a great idea. As a pet owner, I wholly agree with them.

I have also been considering the issue of tenancy length, with students in Guildford in mind. There are some fundamentals that we need to get right. Landlords need full access to their properties after term finishes in the summer, to prepare them for their next tenants in the autumn. I am pleased that the Secretary of State gave reassurances on student lets in his opening speech.

Between 2010 and 2020, the Conservative Government reduced the number of non-decent private rental homes by 16%. The Secretary of State thinks we can go further, and so do I.

Caravan Site Licensing (Exemptions of Motor Homes) Bill

Angela Richardson Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has talked about councils’ ability to license, particularly on land that they own. In constituencies such as mine, that has been very effective in enabling them to move on certain people who are taking advantage of council-owned land with their caravans. If motor homes are exempted, how does my hon. Friend see that loophole not being exploited by certain sectors of society?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I think my hon. Friend—whom I congratulate on securing a Second Reading for her Bill—is trying to talk around the issue of what I would describe as Gypsy encampments. Let us call a spade a spade, rather than beating about the bush. Obviously there is specific legislation dealing with Gypsies and Travellers, and nothing in the Bill would impinge on that.

One of the big complaints made by many people about Gypsies and Travellers is that there are spaces where they could go, but they do not want to go to those spaces because it often involves their actually having to part with a few pound notes—or pound coins. The Bill would enable local authorities to charge motor home residents for overnight stays, while the category of people to whom my hon. Friend was referring have not really shown in the past—I speak in generalities—a propensity to part with their money to pay for parking, wherever that might be.

This is now a big issue for our country. What can we do to help promote the motor home industry and domestic tourism, and show a bit more flexibility? As one who has been committed to deregulation—to the removal of unnecessary regulation—for a long time, I think that this is a relatively unusual Friday Bill, in that it is a deregulatory Bill. I hope that it will have the support of the Government, and, in particular, my hon. Friend the Minister, who I know is a kindred spirit in wanting to reduce the burden of regulation from the citizens of our country.

Social Housing Standards

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Of course, when the hon. Gentleman and his Committee published their report, I think I had just beforehand left office, and only relatively recently have I returned to office. But it is a powerful report, and the points he makes are fair and necessary. The concerns he raised about the state of repair and complaints handling have been articulated for many years, and the report brings very much to the front of mind the need to tackle those concerns urgently. His broader point about the need for investment in our housing stock, and our social housing stock overall, is very much a mission of my Department, not least in ensuring that Homes England, and others, can work with registered social landlords to ensure the regeneration of estates—including in Sheffield—that have been neglected for too long.

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and strong response, and I join colleagues across the House in our heartbreak for Awaab and his family. Sadly, the conditions that have been brought to light are replicated across the country. Indeed, a good deal of my casework, from when I was elected in December 2019 right through to today, is about poor housing conditions. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that he will take action to improve housing quality for private as well as social tenants?

[Michael Gove]

Absolutely, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for raising that issue. Although Guildford is an absolutely beautiful city, there are some parts that she represents where the state of housing, in both the social and private rented sectors, is simply not good enough. We have discussed that in private in the past, and she is right. We will be bringing forward measures to ensure that her constituents get the support they deserve.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Angela Richardson Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will be delighted to know that I will stick to my time.

I welcome this much-awaited Bill. Levelling up opportunity everywhere is recognised by everyone I speak to in my Guildford constituency as a worthwhile and honourable mission of this Government. Although Surrey County Council was not included in the pilot county deals that have been announced, we need to see Surrey in phase 2 to tackle deprivation in Surrey and accelerate our own levelling-up programme.

Of the four areas in Surrey that fall within the bottom 20% of the national index of multiple deprivation, two—the wards of Westborough and Stoke—are in my constituency. Some of the adjacent wards have a life expectancy differential of up to 10 years, and there is a 14-year gap between wards in highest and lowest life expectancy for women. In the areas worst affected, more than 40% of children are impacted by income deprivation; the associated features include malnourishment, housing instability, low educational attainment and mental health disorders. We are levelling up healthcare with the new GP provision that my local clinical commissioning group plans in deprived wards, but I am concerned that we are losing local access nearby. Levelling up should not take away.

While we wait for more powers to be devolved to Surrey, my local enterprise partnership—the M3 LEP, which will see its long-term future integrated into local democracy under the Bill—needs an interim plan. It continues to provide vital support to business and our local economy to stimulate growth through innovation and enterprise. Guildford and Surrey more widely continue to be a net contributor to the Exchequer, but growth is slowing. We want to do our bit to help to level up the rest of the country, but we need continued investment, both private and public, to do so.

I welcome some of the Bill’s planning measures, including digitisation of the process, powers to deal with vacant properties on our high street, and a real focus on delivering infrastructure. Infrastructure is a genuine frustration for my residents, who have seen local plans that will deliver a high number of homes through massive strategic sites on green belt and an additional town centre masterplan with densification. Local residents worry about the Wokingisation of Guildford, which does not suit its topography, let alone its historical beauty.

I have concerns about the Bill, but they have already been addressed by many right hon. and hon. Members; I encourage my constituents to go back through Hansard and read those concerns. I am particularly concerned that there are no additional measures to protect greenfield in the Waverley part of my constituency. That greenfield is often more pristine, beautiful and remote from existing infrastructure than green-belt provision that we are trying to protect.

Finally on infrastructure, in order to level up in Guildford, we need to tunnel down. The A3 through Guildford is the most polluted road on the strategic road network in England. Air pollution is lowering the life chances of my constituents. I thank the many constituents who responded to the road traffic infrastructure survey that I put out, including by signing up to my petition to get the A3 tunnelled under Guildford.

Levelling up and investment are needed everywhere across this country. I welcome the Bill.

Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

I welcome the Government’s ambition to build homes, including affordable homes, to help first-time buyers and to enable extended families to live close to each other, strengthening our social fabric and allowing key workers to live near to their place of work. I welcome the commitment on locally decided design codes that builders will have to abide by, on tree-lined streets and on building net zero homes. Building back beautiful; building back greener.

However, it is important that I take this opportunity to put on record the concerns of my constituents over planning and infrastructure. We need to put in place either penalties or incentive schemes to ensure that developers build out their planning permissions. The penalty currently falls on the local authority if it cannot meet its five-year housing supply. In the Waverley part of my constituency, my villages of Alfold, Cranleigh and Ewhurst continue to be inundated with homes on pristine green fields miles away from decent transport links, with crumbling water infrastructure and on flood plains. This is not alleviating the concern but creating additional worry for my constituents, who want to know what protection Ministers can give them when neighbouring villages have greenbelt protection. They also want to know why they have to take the unmet need from neighbouring councils.

In the Guildford part of my constituency, the local plan is controversial. It has a brilliant regeneration site in the Weyside urban village, but the additional 14,000 homes cannot be provided as there will now be no increase in road capacity for the A3 through Guildford that was promised. I am pleased that, after a concerted effort by my hon. Friend and neighbour, the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), Conservative councillors and me, the current administration have finally agreed to review the local plan. This is why I am calling for the A3 to be tunnelled under Guildford, taking traffic out of Guildford and improving air quality. Guildford will likely be zoned for growth, which should bring funding for big infrastructure projects such as my tunnel, but we are the party of localism who brought forward neighbourhood plans, and my constituents need to understand how the zoning system will strengthen local democracy and accountability and not erode it, as they fear. I thank my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Housing Minister for their proactive engagement since I was elected, and I know that they will continue to engage in the months to come.

Rough Sleeping

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The numbers that we publish today are a snapshot of a single night in November. Those are the most robust data sources that we have. They are the ones that we are able to measure ourselves on because they have been in place for more than 10 years now. I think that that is the right way forward.

The Everyone In programme did not help just those individuals who were actually sleeping rough on the streets. It also helped many people who were sofa surfing or in other forms of precarious accommodation who were at risk of ending up on the streets. So the success of the programme has been not just to get people off the streets but to help many thousands of other people who were otherwise in difficult circumstances to begin to move forward with their lives.

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con [V])]

I was pleased once again to support my local charity Guildford Action and raise funds to help train volunteers on how to use the life-saving drug naloxone by sleeping out at the end of November last year. The Government, working with local authorities and charities, have supported a huge number of rough sleepers during the last year and kept the vulnerable safe during the pandemic. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that those individuals are still able to access services such as drug and alcohol rehabilitation so that they can recover and get back on their feet?

[Robert Jenrick]

Yes, they certainly are. In each of the interventions that we have made over the course of the pandemic and will take in the future, we have taken this housing and health approach, in which we try to ensure that individuals are not merely brought off the streets and helped to live in better quality accommodation but given wraparound care so that we can begin to address substance misuse, mental health and other issues and reintegrate them into society. That is very much the strategy that I and my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary will be taking forward.

Unsafe Cladding: Protecting Tenants and Leaseholders

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con) [V]]

We have all heard the adage “An Englishman’s home is his castle”. I am sure that there must be a more gender-inclusive update of that saying, but nevertheless, it is as true today as it has always been, which is why so many aspire to be homeowners. But it goes deeper than aspiration: it is about meeting our fundamental needs as human beings. Abraham Maslow identified with his hierarchy of needs that housing is vital for shelter, security and stability, and is a place to love and nurture our families and a way of being rooted that gives us a feeling of belonging to our communities. I was pleased to hear the Minister for Housing recognise that in his opening remarks. So when an event as devastating as Grenfell happens, for all those who sadly perished, those left behind and the scars etched on the community, it is right that we move as swiftly as possible with inquiries and implement lessons learned. I am pleased that from conversations I have had with the Housing Minister, he is very mindful of the need to bring forward legislation, but that the complexities of cladding on buildings and all the sectors involved in remediation requires it to be done in a comprehensive and thoughtful way.

While the subject of the debate today is not a widespread issue in Guildford, I speak on behalf of my constituent, Jasmin. Jasmin is a single mum who, through a change in her personal circumstances, bought a flat through a shared ownership scheme and works hard with a dream of fully owning it and having something to pass on to her daughter one day. The four-year-old building that she lives in has failed to receive a EWS1 form because of insulation under the cladding. She is very concerned that all the time, energy and effort she has put in could leave her bankrupted if she is presented with a bill for remediation and stuck if she is unable to be sell. This has been made more difficult by the fact that the housing association has been silent and the developers have refused responsibility for remediation.

I thank the Minister for the understanding that he has shown of how much this wide issue impacts on lives and urge him to continue to speak to all the sectors involved, so that a solution can be found for my constituent and many like her in the country. However, it is not just for Jasmin that I speak; I am mindful of new developments proposed in the heart of Guildford that will be built upwards. I hope that it will be reassuring for my current and future constituents to hear of the announcement of a building safety regulator and a construction products regulator. It is right that we desire to build beautiful, but it is a must that we build safe.

Arcadia and Debenhams: Business Support and Job Retention

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

Wet-led pubs have a particular issue where they are not offering food, and £1,000 does not go far enough in itself, but it does go alongside the other payments such as the forbearance on rent, the moratorium that is still in place until the end of the year, business rates relief, and VAT relief on certain areas of food—although not necessarily in that pub. I will continue to work with the hospitality sector. It is important to say, as the hon. Lady said, that those in hospitality should not be scapegoated, because they have done so much work to make sure that they can offer a covid 19-secure and warm welcome to their customers.

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

Guildford High Street is not only picturesque but is home to one of the finest retail offerings in the south-east, including Debenhams and Arcadia brands. We acknowledge not only the difficult uncertainty for employees today but the significant square footage that these businesses occupy and the gaps that they will leave behind. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must actively work to help the high street to recover from coronavirus and also adapt to the long-term changes that will make our town centres sustainable for the future?

[Paul Scully]

I know Guildford very well. It is a destination for residents around Surrey and further afield. Yes, we must all work together to get the balance right so that we do not hollow out our town centres, including Guildford.

Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to support rough sleepers during the covid-19 outbreak.

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

Since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, nearly 15,000 vulnerable people have been housed in emergency accommodation thanks to the hard work of local councils and charities, saving hundreds of lives. We are now moving on to the next steps through our Next Steps Accommodation programme. We have recently announced over £90 million for local authorities in England to prevent those we have accommodated from returning to the streets.

[Angela Richardson]

May I warmly welcome my hon. Friend to her new role on the Front Bench? This Government’s commitment to end rough sleeping is clear to see in the extensive and regular funding given to councils over the past year. I commend David Newbery, senior homelessness prevention officer at Guildford Borough Council, who successfully found appropriate accommodation for a victim of domestic violence I had spoken to on a Saturday morning by that very evening—there was the additional complication of a positive covid status—so that she did not have to spend another night unwell and fearful. Will my hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to the commitment of those on the ground in Guildford, who are working tirelessly in partnership with central Government to end rough sleeping?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the tremendous work of those in her constituency. I join with her in paying tribute to those, not only in her constituency but across the country, who worked so hard with the Government to end rough sleeping and on the delivery of the significant programme of accommodating nearly 15,000 people during covid-19. We are committed to protecting victims of domestic abuse, investing over £80 million since 2014. Today, a new £6 million fund will help tier 1 councils to prepare for the implementation of the new legal duty in the Domestic Abuse Bill.

Westferry Printworks Development

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

It was a pleasure to hear the much anticipated maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood). He has made his mum proud, and I am sure he will make his constituents proud and serve them well in this place.

A safe habitable home is not a want; it is a need—one of the most basic needs that we have as human beings—and all of us in public life have a duty to work towards the goal of making that a reality for everyone in the communities we live in. The sensationalist allegations that have been made over the last few weeks in order to deflect from a political failure of delivery at a local level serve no one well, least of all those who need housing. Those of us in public life also have a duty to uphold our code of conduct at all levels of government and to abide by the Nolan principles of public life, including integrity, honesty and openness. In releasing the correspondence later today, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing has also displayed accountability, another of these fundamental principles.

Before I became a Member of Parliament, I was a local councillor in the thriving village of Cranleigh, and sat on the neighbourhood planning committee and the planning committee, where we heard applications large and small. Deciding the best way to use our space is an important role and one that impacts on everyone. Hand in hand with planning and building new homes, be they large or small developments, this needs careful and joined-up thinking as to how to mitigate impact, protect our environment and have the necessary infrastructure in place in utilities, schools, medical facilities, green spaces, allotments, green technology and so on.

Even though our principles instruct us to always be open and transparent, which is fundamentally right, as someone who ventured into public life with no knowledge of planning, I found and still find that the language of planning can be opaque and obscure. It is littered with acronyms such as SHLAA—strategic housing land availability assessment—or, if you like your BAPs, biodiversity action plans. Those who inhabit the world of local councils speak in this language, which, rather than being inclusive, can leave residents feeling excluded.

Our role as public servants should be to demystify the process all the way from the application for planning permission through to and including how, why and when an application makes its way from where it sits with the local authority to determine, in accordance with its local plan, all the way up to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, including understanding that the Secretary of State has no fear of stepping in when a local authority puts off determining an application, as in this case, and runs out of time.

This Conservative Government are determined to maintain public confidence in our planning process and, most crucially, deliver on the housing we need. I stood on a manifesto commitment to deliver on housing, and I stood locally on a pledge to make sure we could have the right homes in the right place at the right price for local people, and to tackle homelessness. I welcome the announcement today of an additional £105 million to help with rough sleeping, and I am determined to help build bounce-back Britain and see us thrive once again.