Housing and Planning Bill

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Lords Chamber

It is clearly time to act. The Bill gives us an opportunity to act and I hope the Minister will tell us that the Government are moving firmly forward with the intention of acting.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 20 and 22 and do so with a slightly sinking feeling because it should not be necessary.

We have in the recent past discussed issues around landlords not keeping their properties in a decent state of repair. I was pleased to speak to the retaliatory evictions amendments during the passage of the Deregulation Bill. These make it an offence for tenants to be served with a notice of eviction if they bring a fault with their home to the attention of the landlord. They quite rightly expect him or her to rectify the problem. It would appear that either tenants are unaware of their rights under this legislation or that the legislation is being flouted by landlords. At all events, many tenants are still paying rent and living in properties that are far from what you and I would call fit for human habitation.

We have heard a great deal of rhetoric today and, because I consider this such a serious issue, I am afraid that I will repeat some of it now. This morning I received a useful brief from a partner at Anthony Gold Solicitors who specialises in landlord and tenant law. Outside of the retaliatory evictions, the law on tenants’ complaints is currently enforced by local authorities, as other Members have said. Karen Buck MP from the other place commissioned a report, published last December, on the challenge of tackling unsafe and unhealthy housing. Local authorities were contacted across the country and asked a number of questions about complaints from private tenants.

The number of complaints received in 2011-12 was 52,820; in 2012-13 it had gone up to 62,818; and in 2013-14 it had gone down but only to 51,916. The numbers of inspections carried out by local authorities over the same three-year period were 25,867, 31,634 and 29,768 respectively. Only about half of the properties about which tenants had made complaints were inspected.

As my noble friend Lady Grender has said, the categories of hazards and faults identified were damp and mould, excess cold, crowding and space, falling hazards and fire. The number of improvement notices served in 2011-12 were 1,519; in 2012-13, 1,645; and in 2013-14, 1,958. If local authorities had the resources to inspect the properties of all the complaints then no doubt the number of improvement notices could have been doubled. However, the number of prosecutions undertaken was less than 100 in each of the three years.

Some people are living in really dreadful conditions, as my noble friend Lady Grender has said. Under the current out-of-date legislation, tenants can take action themselves only if their rent is less than £80 a year in London and £52 a year elsewhere. I would be very hard pressed to find a property with a rent of £52 a week in my area, never mind a year. Perhaps I might get a bedroom in an HMO with a kitchen and bathroom shared, but that would be about it.

We know from other sources that 11 million people live in private rented accommodation in England. Of these, one in four are in families. Local authority budgets are overstretched. They are doing the best they can with shrinking resources but it is time that more is done to raise awareness about tenants’ rights and the law strengthened to give them the power to do this for themselves. If we remove the rent limit, we free up people to take responsibility for themselves.

I turn to Amendment 22, which we have heard about so eloquently from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. The 11 million people in the private rented sector are spending 47% of their income on rent—they have the highest rents—compared with 23% of the income of people with a mortgage and 32% of the income for those in the social rented sector. However, 30% of private rented properties in England would fail the Government’s decent homes standard compared with 15% in the social rented sector.

Landlords are required to carry out annual checks on gas installations, as we have heard, and mercifully there are very few incidents involving gas, whereas 350,000 people are injured through electrical incidents. In 2013-14, 49 people were killed as a result of electrical fires in the home. The amendment is asking not for annual inspections, as is the case with gas, but for an electrical safety inspection every five years. This would not be overly onerous. Surely the Minister will agree that saving lives is important.

I live in a rented property in London that has both gas and electricity supplied by the same company. Before Christmas I received a postcard saying that an engineer had cause to inspect the gas and electricity meters, and asking me to make an appointment for that to be done. I contacted the supplying company and fixed a date for when the House returned in January. I waited in and an engineer duly called and inspected both meters, making a couple of comments. He was required to do this quite separately from those who came to read the meters. He was satisfied with the state of the meters and showed me how to switch the gas off should I need to do so, which I was quite pleased about because I did not know how to do it before. However, he did not inspect the electrical cabling, nor did I expect him to. I am satisfied that the meters are safe and working properly, and that I am not paying more than I should for the energy I consume. What I do not know is the state of the wiring once it leaves the meter and goes into the rest of the flat.

Many people have fears about certain aspects of everyday life. For some it will be the fear of water and drowning, for others it will be being trapped in a dark and confined space, and for some it will be being caught in a fire. Whatever their fears, they are valid, and wherever possible we must do all that we can to ensure that such fears do not become reality. This is a simple and straightforward amendment that could save people’s lives and bring reassurance to thousands. I fully support both amendments.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I warmly endorse the first two amendments in this group. I find it inconceivable that the Government should stick to their position of declining to accept these basic amendments about the obvious need for properties to be fit for human habitation and electrically safe. It is not asking too much of landlords to ensure this; as we have just heard from the noble Baroness, a five-yearly inspection would hardly be costly, and in any event would no doubt be reflected in the rents charged over that period. At £150 or something like that, that would be only £30 a year. It is ridiculous to suggest that that would be too much of a burden for landlords to accept. And how anyone could resist a requirement for properties to be fit for human habitation escapes me.

However, I want to address the third amendment in this group, which is about property guardianship, and particularly about the condition of the properties that are dealt with in that fashion. I have to confess that I was entirely unfamiliar with the concept of property guardianship, or indeed the existence of property guardians, until I read an article in a newspaper—appropriately, the Guardian—in December. It seems that empty buildings, often large ones, are let out at low rents, but the renters have no security, with some companies—it tends to be companies which operate these properties—offering just two-week notice periods. Normal standards of safety and the condition of the property do not appear to apply or to be achieved.