Local Government Reorganisation
Baroness Grender Excerpts(5 days, 8 hours ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the right reverend Prelate for his question and for his continued interest in rural communities. We believe that part of the process of devolution will mean that the people who are taking the decisions for rural communities will be people who have skin in the game in those rural areas; that is very important. Places with a significant rural population will, on average, receive an increase of around 5% in their core spending power next year, which is a real-terms increase. The rural service delivery grant does not properly account for need, and a large number of predominantly rural councils receive nothing from it. That is clearly not right, and a sign that we need to allocate funding more effectively. We are keen to hear about rural councils, as well as others, as we go through the spending review, so that we can work on what would work best for them in the new funding system.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, no doubt the Minister will be aware of the eye-watering debts of over £2 billion left to the people of Woking by their former Conservative council. What is the level of risk to other local authorities if they are merged with Woking? What analysis have the Government undertaken of chronic failures of financial management, such as Woking, and the likely impact on reorganisations if the Government fail to find a way to resolve a debt of this nature?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The noble Baroness is quite right to point out that there are councils that may be in scope for this programme which have significant debt. We are working through a programme with those councils—Woking is one of them and Thurrock is another. It should not be for people outside those areas to pick up that debt. This is not helped by the fact that our Government have inherited a broken local audit system. For the financial year 2022-23, just 1% of audited accounts were published by the original deadline. That is not good enough. We are working on fixing that, and we will be working through a process with the councils concerned.
National Policy Planning Framework: Housing
Baroness Grender Excerpts(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Baroness Grender
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they have taken to compare the need for affordable housing with the need for council and social housing as part of the National Planning Policy Framework.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I add my tribute to Baroness Randerson and offer my condolences to her family and friends. Her wisdom and experience were greats asset to this House, and she will be missed.
Our Government are committed to delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation; I hope we have shown that through our movement. Our revised National Planning Policy Framework reflects the commitment to building a greater share of genuinely affordable homes and prioritising the building of new social rent homes in particular. It is, though, for local authorities to judge the right mix of affordable homes for ownership and for rent that will meet the needs of their communities.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, while the NPPF is welcome, does the Minister share the widespread concern that the technical term “affordable” does not mean affordable to those in acute need? Research by the National Housing Federation and the charity Crisis shows that at least 90,000 social homes a year are required to end homelessness. Will the Minister consider expressly requiring local planning authorities to reflect that acute need within their plans? It includes those who are on housing registers in need of supported housing, rough sleepers and the homeless.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I agree with the noble Baroness that the terms “affordable housing” and “social housing” have sometimes been conflated, with unfortunate consequences. To make clear the priority that we attach to delivering homes for social rent, we are amending the definition of affordable housing. It will be carved out as a separate category, distinct from social housing for rent. I hope that that gives the noble Baroness a sign of our intention. We will expect local authorities to assess the need in their areas, including in all the categories that she mentioned, and to make provision to meet that need in their local plans.
Housebuilding Targets
Baroness Grender Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank my noble friend. I am happy to assure her that we are working across government and with industry to deliver sufficient high-quality training opportunities and build a diverse workforce that is fit for the future. She is quite right to identify that this is a real issue in getting the 1.5 million homes built. To support business and boost opportunity, we are transforming the apprenticeship levy into a growth and skills levy, which will allow employers to invest in a wider range of training and empower them to train and upskill workforces for current and future challenges.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the large housebuilding companies have too much power when it comes to deciding what homes to build, where to build and when to build? Can she tell us how her Government’s NPPF can possibly be delivered without strong and effective “use it or lose it” sanctions to get the 1 million homes built that are shovel-ready, with planning permission already given?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The noble Baroness is quite right to point to that as an issue. We have set up the housing acceleration unit in the department, which I mentioned earlier, to help with that. We want to be quite clear within the National Planning Policy Framework that, where sites are allocated, they should be built out as quickly as possible. There will be follow-up where that is not the case.
Housing Supply and Homelessness
Baroness Grender Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, on leading us in this debate. It is an absolute honour to speak along with so many noble Lords who have dedicated their lives to this issue. In a way, my disappointment is that we are still here making the same case. For me, it is reminiscent of when I first started working at the charity Shelter in the 1990s. Our aim, and that of all who had tirelessly campaigned in this area before us, was simple: to create the circumstances in which we were no longer needed.
So it is with a slightly heavy heart that I see this noble group of housing warriors getting the band back together again. In the past, we have been tantalisingly close to making some forms of homelessness a distant memory—once under the stewardship of the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, and once during Covid. Of course, both times the Government of the day had the not-so-secret weapon of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey of Blackstock. Both these experiences, though, tell us that solving this is possible, so we have to believe that the aim—to end homelessness—can be achieved.
As many noble Lords have said, the current situation could not be more shocking for a G7 nation. Right now, today, each night, just under 160,000 children go to bed in often appalling circumstances in temporary accommodation. Again, this was brought down before, so we know it can be done, and at relative speed.
Select Committees at both ends of this building have been clear and have reported again and again that one of the primary causes of homelessness is the severe shortage of social homes for rent. Social homes for rent are the absolute, healthy bedrock of our mixed-tenure system. The rest of the system cannot exist without them, as was explained so eloquently by my noble friend Lord Shipley. That is why we put in our Liberal Democrat manifesto a target to build 150,000 social homes a year for rent, some delivered through garden cities but above all, through thousands of small-scale community-led developments.
Like others, we worry that setting a target and imposing it without engaging communities and bringing them with you will mean that these laudable aims to build will inevitably fall short. In councils that we run, such as Eastleigh, Cambridge and Portsmouth, we have shown that it is possible to work with communities to deliver, at scale, social housing for rent. In Kingston last year we celebrated the first council flats being built in over 30 years. That is the case across the country—council flats being just a badly remembered thing of the past. That was overseen by the council’s housing lead, Councillor Emily Davey, working with the community and delivering sustainable housing—and not a retrofit needed in sight.
Housing associations have expressed their concern about reaching the Government’s new target. Peabody, for instance, has welcomed the extra £500 million for the current affordable homes programme in the Budget but makes clear that this will not allow the sector to deliver large-scale new homes at the pace required. Last year, Peabody alone spent £500 million on new homes. That gives a little perspective on the current allocation.
When it comes to homelessness, the policy platform we fought on at the last general election was to set and agree long-term measures that cross-cut Whitehall, and we welcome that initiative now. We want to include exempting homeless people from the shared accommodation rate, which makes housing unaffordable for many. We also want to see local authorities given proper funding so that they are better able to deliver the Homelessness Reduction Act. We would introduce a new “somewhere safe to stay” legal duty, which would give people emergency accommodation with an assessment of their needs.
So many of the briefings we received for this debate have identified the lack of social housing stock as the critical problem. Right to buy has played its part in the diminution of stock. That is why the Liberal Democrats would give local authorities the power to end right to buy in their area based on their local need and their local knowledge.
Above all, we called for, welcome and look forward to the ban on forced evictions under Section 21, which all research suggests is a major underlying cause of homelessness today. The woeful snail’s pace of delivery of this change in the law, first promised in 2019, has left in its wake countless individual stories of eviction and homelessness. Crisis estimates that there have been as many as 110,000 evictions since that promise was made.
As well as long-term and lasting solutions, there are some quick fixes that organisations such as Crisis have suggested. I particularly ask the Minister to respond to some of the proposals that have come forward to bring empty homes back into use and to take a look at the Welsh Government’s experience of having delivered that using enforcement officers.
I again congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, on securing this debate. I am very hopeful that when we next meet, progress will have been made.
Landlords: Long-term Rentals
Baroness Grender Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
First of all, I would say that the number of people who were able to own their own properties actually fell under the last Government. I am surprised, with the record that we have heard many times in this House of the number of people who are currently on housing waiting lists and 150,000 people in temporary and emergency accommodation, that the previous Government want to stand up and question this issue in the House. The PRS has doubled in size since 2002. We will continue to do what we can to support both landlords and tenants in that sector. We are about to introduce the Renters’ Rights Bill to this House. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have already engaged on that. If there is anybody who has not yet, do get in touch with me, but I look forward to working with the House to deliver a very effective piece of renters’ rights legislation.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that two of the most profound underlying causes of children, the most reluctant tenants of all, being in temporary accommodation—150,000 of them in England alone—are forced evictions and affordability? Does she therefore, like many in this sector who care about this issue, have some cause for concern that the housing allowance has been frozen until 2026 and was not used as an opportunity in the Budget? I ask because there is very welcome legislation coming down the track—but right here, right now, tonight, for 150,000 children, what is the quick solution?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising that important issue. We have looked at local housing allowance, but increasing that even slightly puts a huge pressure on the overall fiscal picture in the country. So it has not been possible to do that this time, because we had to fill the £22 billion black hole that was left to us as a legacy from the other side. We have put £500 million into delivering more affordable housing, taking us to £3.1 billion in total for affordable housing. We have also increased discretionary housing payments and have put back in the household support grant, which would have run out at the end of September because there were no government plans to meet those costs until the end of the year. That will provide some relief for the most deprived families.