Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Bambos Charalambous and Ruth Cadbury(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Bambos Charalambous (Southgate and Wood Green) (Lab)
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
Free Travel for Under-18s: London
Debate between Bambos Charalambous and Ruth Cadbury(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Have the Government made any impact assessment of these ill-thought-out measures, particularly the impact on the poor and disadvantaged young people?
Ruth Cadbury
If the Government have done an impact assessment on this, I do not believe that they have yet shared it with TfL, the Deputy Mayor or the Mayor of London.
I would like to pose some questions to the Minister. Why did the Government wait until the 11th hour to confirm emergency support for TfL to keep London running through the pandemic, when other sectors equally affected were given support quicker and with fewer strings attached? Why was that condition to remove free travel from London’s children and young people crowbarred into the emergency funding agreement at the very last minute? What is the demand reduction in per cent. that the Government expect to see from the change to concessions? Do not TfL’s recently introduced maximum passenger limits on buses deal with the potential overcrowding problem? Who will pay for the additional administrative burden? When does the Minister expect the system to be operational? What discussion have the Government had with local authorities, schools and colleges about the proposal? Is the proposal being consulted on, so that students, parents and schools can make their views known? Has an equalities impact assessment been done? If so, will either of those be made public? Or is it a done deal—no discussion, take it or leave it?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Bambos Charalambous and Ruth Cadbury(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
Temporary Accommodation
Debate between Bambos Charalambous and Ruth Cadbury
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on securing the debate and on her description of the situation in Merton. Other colleagues, particularly those in outer London, have described the situation in their constituencies, and the examples that they gave do not differ too much from my constituency experience.
In the London Borough of Hounslow, which I represent jointly with my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), there are 768 households in temporary accommodation and 3,500 households in housing need. The debate has focused on temporary housing for those who have been accepted as homeless and whom the local authority may have a duty to house. But let us remember that there are other people in temporary accommodation: those who are being housed by social services. The local authority has no duty to house those people, but there is concern about, and a duty of care towards, children in that situation.
I meet families being housed by social services in temporary accommodation who do not even have as much information confirming how long they will be there as those being housed by the homelessness team have. As other Members have so rightly said, with adequate, affordable social rented housing, those 768 families would be able to move fairly swiftly into permanent homes locally.
Since the Labour Government’s programme of 40,000 new starts of social rented homes was stopped in 2010 by the Conservative-led coalition, the housing need situation has reached crisis point. The lack of social rented housing coupled with rising rents in London, declining real wages and punitive income cuts for those on benefits—particularly with the local housing allowance cuts—has fuelled this crisis. The Government have left local authorities with the job of picking up the pieces by trying to find adequate temporary accommodation in which to place people while they are waiting to be assessed and then waiting for suitable permanent accommodation.
I want to pay tribute to frontline housing staff. They have to deal with this trauma and stress, and their own jobs are incredibly stressful. They did not go into housing management to be in such a position, but they are having to deal with this situation. It is just not fair on them, and neither of course is it fair on the families affected.
Local authorities are chasing an ever-declining stock of accommodation in which to place homeless families who are within the local housing allowance limits. Such accommodation needs to be fit for human habitation and the right size for the household in need.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend aware that there are 3,311 households in temporary accommodation in my borough, Enfield, which is the second highest figure in the country? One solution we have tried in Enfield is to set up a housing gateway organisation to buy stock, but that is only a temporary solution. Does she agree that the best solution is to build more council housing?
Ruth Cadbury
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I congratulate local authorities, including my own, that are trying to find solutions to the temporary accommodation crisis, but they really need the powers and the security to invest in proper, good-quality permanent housing.
I want to move on to the lack of local temporary accommodation. Boroughs such as Hounslow in west London, where rents are very high, find that they cannot square the circle between quality and rent levels. Demand is increasing and supply is drying up, even for private sector accommodation. Families are in temporary accommodation not for weeks or months, but for years. A couple of weeks ago at my surgery, I met a mother who has been in temporary accommodation for nine years, which is longer than many of us stay in our permanent home.
Too often, therefore, temporary accommodation is not local. I have met a family who are being housed in Birmingham. Another family moved about 20 miles away, but the wage earner, the father, is a restaurant worker and finishes work after public transport has stopped, so he cannot get back to his family at night. There is an impact on children in relation to changing schools. Should they not change schools and carry on with the two-hour journeys each way, or should they decide that their new temporary home may be permanent for some time and therefore change schools? Making such a decision is stressful for the children—it is difficult for their educational outcomes—and for their parents.
What about people, many of whom I have met in my surgery, with medical needs, those whose children have special educational needs or those whose already severe mental health is getting worse with the stress? Should they shift their kids and their clinic or consultant when the local authority moves them to temporary accommodation a long way away, or should they fight their case with housing officers for some of the already too little local accommodation that is available locally?
There is an issue about what is local. If people seek help or advice from their MP, who is their MP: how long do they have to be in temporary accommodation before the MP of their last permanent home is no longer their MP and is no longer empowered to respond to their approach? I think we will have to take up this matter in the House, because it is confusing when we are trying to deal with casework or have casework referred to us involving someone from another authority.
Let me turn to the quality and suitability of temporary accommodation. I had a family expecting their fourth child living in one room in a bed and breakfast for months. I have had families living in homes that are damp, that are dangerous and where the repairs are inadequate. There are homes that are inaccessible for those with disabilities or that are unsuitable for children with special needs such as autism.
Temporary accommodation is becoming more unaffordable, as landlords in west London expect a higher return. The local housing allowance cap has fallen, so the local authority is left finding the difference between the rent and the amount that the Department for Work and Pensions is prepared to pay. It is not just non-working families who are suffering here, but working families as well. We should not be using taxpayers’ money to fund housing benefit to pay the high rents of temporary accommodation and to line the pockets of private landlords.
Local authorities are forced to take drastic action to reduce the demand for temporary accommodation, including tightening up the rules on the duty to house. In Hounslow, if a person is served with an eviction notice but leaves their home before the bailiffs arrive, they will be defined as intentionally homeless and therefore will not receive any help from the council in finding a place in a B&B or temporary accommodation as it will have discharged its duty to house. Too many families think that they are doing the right thing by planning ahead, but are then not helped by the local authority.
Hounslow has been reducing the use of temporary accommodation in the private sector by using council properties that are waiting to be repaired, but the funding should be available to make those homes adequate for permanent social-rent letting, rather than for temporary housing.
Temporary accommodation should be just that—temporary, a stopgap, and used for a short period. That was what temporary accommodation was when I was first a councillor and when need and supply of affordable accommodation balanced out. Temporary accommodation is not the solution to the housing crisis in this country. The solution lies in the delivery of adequate, truly affordable, social-rented housing. Instead of blaming the previous Labour Government for the problem, this Government should act now.