Social Housing (Regulation) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 22 in this group. It links to and complements Amendment 2, just spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. The two together underscore the role of social housing regulation in securing accommodation for those who are homeless or are likely soon to be so.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I apologise on behalf of LNER for arriving too late to speak at Second Reading. I hope your Lordships will forgive me adding an introductory preface to my advocacy for the amendment.

I have spent well over 50 years supporting the social housing sector and have been both on the receiving end of social housing regulation and a participant in regulatory policy-making. From these perspectives, I recognise that poorly designed regulation can interfere with the independence, freedom, flexibility and diversity of approaches of social housing providers, but a bigger part of me recognises that a well-designed regulatory system is a positive. By ensuring adherence to good standards, regulation enhances the sector’s support from its residents, central and local government, investors, partners and the wider public. That is why I welcome the Bill. Indeed, an effective system of regulation is essential if the sector is to grow, as it must, to meet the desperate need for more decent and affordable homes.

This brings me to the first of the two amendments I am putting forward today. Amendment 22 takes us to the heart of why we have a social housing sector in the first place and to the role of regulation in ensuring these providers fulfil the most pressing of the roles which society expects of them. Amendment 2, put forward by the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Thornhill, makes addressing homelessness issues part of the objectives of the regulator. Amendment 22 enables the regulator to require social housing landlords to comply with standards it sets regarding homeless and potentially homeless households.

The amendment is being sought by a group of over 100 housing associations and other housing charities called Homes for Cathy, which is led by David Bogle of Hightown Housing Association. Many of your Lordships will hear the echoes of the famous documentary drama “Cathy Come Home”, which revealed the horrors of becoming homeless back in 1966. The programme inspired many of us to get involved in social housing. Several of the organisations in Homes for Cathy today were established at that time to rescue people from homelessness and prevent households suffering the horrors of homelessness. Sadly, as we all know so well, this problem is still with us.

The Government are committed to ending street homelessness by 2024 and great progress was made by local authorities and social housing bodies during the height of the pandemic. Today we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist, via email about renewed efforts to end rough sleeping, which I greatly welcome. Meanwhile, the number of homeless and would-be homeless who have had to be placed in temporary accommodation has grown alarmingly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, has mentioned.

It may seem obvious that social housing landlords should be expected to ease the problems of homeless families. Doing so is surely a key reason for the taxpayer supporting the sector. No one believes that the private rented sector can supply the secure homes we need at rents within the means of those on the lowest incomes. Unlike housing associations, councils have legal duties and statutory responsibilities for supporting homeless people. But local authorities—which are strapped for cash and have a hugely diminished stock after right-to-buy sales and after transferring their council housing to registered providers—now rely on the housing associations to help shoulder this task.

It is regrettable that not all the housing associations are doing as much as they could. Critics accuse some of the registered providers of avoiding housing those in the greatest need. In the year before Covid, registered providers evicted 10,000 tenants—effectively creating homelessness problems. Even allowing for the severe financial pressures they face at this difficult time, surely it must remain a key responsibility of housing associations to be meeting the needs of homeless and potentially homeless people.

Amendment 22 gives the regulator the power—not the obligation—to set standards of behaviour for registered providers in relation to safeguarding and promoting the interests of those who are homeless or may become homeless. This does not compel the regulator to do so or prescribe the form its action might take. In Scotland, for example, the Scottish Housing Regulator has placed a duty on social housing providers to report to the regulator on their homelessness activities.

This light-touch addition to the standards, for which the regulator in England can require compliance, seems entirely compatible with the Government’s aims to reduce homelessness. It enables the regulator to hold all the housing associations to account in their fundamental role of addressing the housing problems which the market cannot solve. It responds to the criticism that some parts of the social housing sector have forgotten their social motivations. It recognises the wonderful work many in the sector are doing and it enables the regulator to press all housing associations to do so too.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an important Bill and it has our support. This is also an important debate, highlighting issues around energy costs and homelessness. Our position is that this is a good and important Bill, but there are areas in which it could be improved. I hope that the Minister is listening carefully to our debates, and I am sure that everyone here hopes to support the Government in making the Bill as good as it can be.

I will speak in support of the amendments on energy efficiency, which, in the light of rising and predicted costs, is clearly critical at the moment. I will first address Amendment 21, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and of course Amendment 1, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, which covers the same ground. The noble Baronesses spoke of the importance of tackling issues around energy efficiency. As we heard, the proposed new clause of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, requires the Secretary of State to publish a “Social Housing Energy Demand Reduction Strategy”. She went into some detail about how that could be achieved and what it needed to contain in order to help reduce energy consumption, fuel poverty and the emission of greenhouse gases.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, mentioned the Government’s clean growth strategy and their announcement five years ago, in 2017, about setting a target to get all housing up to energy performance certificate band C by 2030. Although many social housing providers have made strides to improve efficiency, we have heard in this debate that more needs to be done quicker. If we are to reach our net-zero targets by 2050, we must decarbonise our buildings, including the 2.7 million housing association homes in England. Housing association homes are, on average, more efficient than any other home but, as we heard, there is still much to do. The noble Lord, Lord Bourne, said that we have some catching up to do in this area, and he is absolutely right.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, talked about insulation. We believe that social housing providers should be required to properly insulate properties to a high standard. Social housing tenants were not eligible for assistance under the new Green Deal, and some housing associations have in fact refused to insulate properties that are extremely cold and energy consuming in winter, simply because they do not have to do so. Insulating existing social housing properties would significantly reduce greenhouse emissions in the United Kingdom, help us to meet our legally binding CO2 reduction targets and potentially save the lives of many vulnerable people in the process. With people saying that they may have to choose between heating and eating this winter, this is even more critical.

This is not just about bringing existing properties up to energy band C; we also need to consider new build and our legislation around expected standards. According to Inside Housing, housing associations have built only a tiny number of homes that have the highest energy performance certificate rating of band A. The biggest 157 associations in the UK completed just under 50,000 homes in the 2021-22 financial year, but only 607 of those—1.2%—achieved a band A rating. In fact, the number of energy-efficient homes being completed by associations has actually fallen since last year, when they built 651 band A-rated properties. This data also shows that social landlords are falling behind the wider building sector. Two per cent of all new builds in England and Wales were EPC band A, according to the latest data. Although that rate is low, it is still more than 40% higher than the proportion built by housing associations.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Very quickly, I will speak to Amendment 5, but I support others. I am a big fan of social housing. I grew up in a council house in the 1950s and 1960s and my parents thought they were the luckiest people alive to have a new council house. It was a very happy home. These days, social housing is in very short supply, partly as a result of all sorts of population changes but also because of the Government’s very badly thought through right-to-buy policies. Somehow, we have to mop this up.

The Green Party’s 2019 manifesto committed to fund councils to deliver more than 100,000 new social houses per year

“through sustainable construction, renovation and conversion”.

That is the scale of the solution needed to make local communities much more secure in their social housing. The Government have to remove the barriers that local authorities and social landlords face.

I will touch very briefly on freezing or limiting social rent increases. I very much feel that these rent increases need to be kept as low as possible—or frozen. The Government have to backfill the large gaps that this would leave in the funding for social housing. I also suggest a ban on evictions at the moment, because life is getting harder and harder. It seems downright unfair if the Government are going to pay energy companies £0.25 trillion to cap energy prices but, at the same time, pay nothing to social landlords to cap rents.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I will first make a few comments about the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. It is important that she has drawn attention to the issues we have around the huge demand that exists for social housing. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, talked about the short supply as well. That means we have incredibly lengthy waiting lists. People often cannot get a property because there are no suitable properties available for their needs.

I would also like to reflect on the bedroom tax, which caused all sorts of problems with the availability of inappropriate social housing for people who had been asked to move. It is something we have to address. I was pleased that the noble Baroness talked about the importance of ensuring that, when investment is made, it is made in the type of housing that is needed, which also needs to be built to appropriate standards. Again, this is something that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, mentioned around sustainability.

When I was a Member in the other place, local residents brought up the lack of appropriate social housing time and again. It was one of the major unsolvable problems, to be honest, that we had to deal with all the time. So I hope that the Minister takes this away and that we can look at having a proper programme of decent, sustainable, appropriate social housing development.

On the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Foster, we supported him on the safety concerns and protections that he raised during the passage of the Building Safety Bill and join him in welcoming Clause 10 on electrical standards, as clearly it is important. Once again, we support his comments on the consultation and his amendment in this area.

I have a number of amendments in this group concerning the impact, the timing and the transparency of decision-making in the Bill. My Amendment 24 to Clause 19 would mean:

“Any direction under subsection (2A) must be laid before both Houses of Parliament.”


This is to ensure that there is proper oversight and transparency of any standards and objectives set by the Secretary of State.

My Amendment 27 to Clause 21 would ensure that performance is monitored routinely rather than ad hoc by requiring the Secretary of State to publish regular timetables for the purposes of performance monitoring. It is important that the Bill brings in stronger enforcement powers for the regulator to tackle poor performance and we support these tougher enforcement powers. However, we also believe that they should be used in conjunction with a tough, regular inspection regime. Shelter has made it clear that it believes routine inspections are needed to make good practice and good behaviour the norm. However, I am aware that we shall be discussing this aspect of the Bill later today in group 6, so I shall move on.

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Moved by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

6: Clause 2, page 2, line 9, at end insert—
“(4A) In making appointments to the Panel, the regulator must give consideration to appointing persons from different regions of the United Kingdom.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure regional diversity on the Panel.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I will introduce my three amendments in this group. First, Amendment 6 is supported by the National Housing Federation and the Local Government Association. It would amend Clause 2 to ensure that there is diverse regional representation among the members of the proposed advisory panel and that those members can then provide the regulator with information and advice on issues that may arise or vary at a regional level.

The LGA has further suggested that the Bill could also ensure diversity of councils on the panel in terms not just of region but of authority size, the quantity and quality of housing stock and social housing management arrangements. We agree with the LGA that it is vital that the membership of the panel comprises a diverse range of councils so that consumer issues right across the sector can be effectively represented. However, although we support the panel, we are disappointed that the proposals stop short of making it a permanent national representative body for tenants. Why has the decision been taken not to make this permanent? Do the Government intend to review this at some stage?

Improving tenant engagement and listening to what tenants say is clearly one of the most important lessons from the Grenfell Tower tragedy, so tenants need to be right at the heart of the advisory panel. This is why I have put forward Amendment 7, which says that the panel must be chaired by a tenant with responsibility for agenda setting. I hope that the Minister understands why it would make a huge difference to tenants’ trust and belief if the panel were to really give them a voice.

I thank the noble Lords who supported my Amendment 30: the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, and my noble friend Lord Whitty. It seeks to create a power for the Secretary of State to require managers of social housing to have appropriate qualifications and expertise. The fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017 was a stark example of what underregulated and unprofessional management in social housing can lead to. Bringing some level of professionalisation into the housing sector has been argued for consistently and cogently by members of Grenfell United. I thank them for their continued work and persistence and for the time they gave to discuss their concerns in this area with me.

Grenfell United believes that a more professional housing sector is one of the main ways by which to create a fitting legacy for the 72 lives that were so needlessly lost on 14 June 2017. In the social housing White Paper, the Government said that they would

“Review professional training and development to ensure residents receive a high standard of customer service.”


But the Bill introduces no measures that would enable professional standards to be mandated in law. Poorly managed and maintained social housing can cause serious harm to renters’ health and well-being—yet there are no requirements to be properly qualified or to undergo professional development.

Ministers have described social housing as the first social service. Well-managed social housing, offering adequate levels of support to residents, takes pressure off health and social care service as well as early years and school support services. But, first and foremost, we believe that professional qualifications and development should be mandatory for senior managers working in social housing. Qualifications and training should aim to provide housing management staff with the skills and knowledge needed to do the job, as well as instilling the values and ethics needed to deliver a care-centred service for residents.

Having senior staff with the appropriate skills and qualifications would ensure that the teams of housing officers and other junior staff that they manage are professionally run, thereby delivering a quality service for all residents. This would balance the need for professionalisation, while not creating barriers to housing associations and councils finding enough staff. We do not intend this amendment to be prescriptive: it requires regulations to define what types of work would require a qualification.

The Minister will no doubt be aware that the Government are currently conducting a review into professional standards within the social housing sector. We believe that there should be legislative backing to ensure that its conclusions can be implemented and upheld effectively. It is also important that the review is published in time for its recommendations to be considered as part of the development of this legislation, so can the Minister confirm that it will be available during the progress of the Bill?

Since the fire at Grenfell Tower, survivors and thousands of tenants of social housing have demonstrated time and time again that they do not have trust in the regulator on its own. The Government rightly recognised the need for action and accountability following the fire and promised a new deal for social renters. This amendment would allow for the monitoring and enforcement of professional standards in the social housing sector, including clear government direction and accountability. Surely this is an area in which the Minister could agree with us, and perhaps we could work together to take some of these issues further forward.

Finally, I am aware that my noble friend Lord Whitty has Amendment 47 in this group. I assure him that we support what he is trying to achieve with it, and I look forward to hearing more detail from him.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will add a brief footnote to the speech made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, who spoke to Amendment 30, to which I have added my name, as she said. As we have been reminded throughout the debate, Grenfell Tower was a tragic reminder of the need for professional management in social housing. Unlike private tenants, social tenants have few options to move to an alternative landlord if they do not get the service that they are entitled to.

During the passage of the Bill on social care, I urged the Government to do more to drive up professional qualifications in the social care sector so that it could compete more effectively with the health service in the recruitment of staff, develop a proper career structure with improved conditions of service and, as a crucial outcome, drive up the quality of care received by the customers. Much of that argument applies equally to social housing, where many of those employed will come across vulnerable families and where those managing social housing need the capacity that comes with relevant training to ensure that those families get the support that they need.

I am well aware of the counterargument that was deployed in the debate on social care and that may well be deployed against this amendment—namely, that there are many committed people working in the sector who have no professional qualifications but none the less provide a first-class service, and we do not want to lose them. We also do not want to introduce barriers to entry for a service that often finds it difficult to recruit. But I believe that the amendment addresses those objections by requiring those managing social housing to have appropriate professional qualifications or satisfy specified requirements. There is sufficient flexibility, not least in proposed subsection (3), which refers to a

“specified qualification or experience of a specified kind”.

Of course, the amendment only applies to those in a managing role, not others involved in the sector.

Now I believe that the Government are aware of this need to drive up standards and quality of management in the sector, as their White Paper said they would undertake to:

“Review professional training and development to ensure residents receive a high standard of customer service.”


I am sure that the Chartered Institute of Housing, which represents those employed in the sector, would help develop the appropriate modules of training, building on its existing expertise—as indeed would the National Housing Federation. However, at the moment, the Bill is simply silent on this issue, which is highly relevant to the regulation of social housing. As the noble Baroness said, the department has set up a working group to review professional standards, but that is no substitute for the clear statement of intent set out in the amendment. As the noble Baroness said, we need to know when that working group will publish its report.

So what I think we are hoping for from the Minister in response to this amendment is a clear restatement of the principle set out in the White Paper, coupled with some identifiable milestones so we can monitor progress towards that destination, and a commitment to a serious and sustained dialogue with the professional bodies concerned so that we get the details right. I look forward to my noble friend’s response.

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[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I thank noble Lords for their support, particularly for my Amendment 30, which is an important amendment on a subject the Government have talked about before: professionalisation of the service. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, for all the work she has done and for the speech she made. She talked about legacy and what the Grenfell Tower community wants to see from this. I shall repeat what I said in my speech, and to which she referred: Grenfell United believes that a more professional housing sector is one of the main ways in which to create a fitting legacy for the 72 lives that were lost. We need to keep that right at the heart of what we are trying to achieve.

I thank the Minister very much for her response. She referred to the review, which is clearly important and shows that the Government are looking seriously at professionalisation. I am pleased that she believes my amendment has merit—that is very important—and that proper consideration will be given to it. As we move through the Bill, this is one area on which we can make some genuine progress and she will have our support in doing so. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment at this stage.

Amendment 6 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I will first of all speak to Amendment 29 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best. My noble friend Lady Thornhill was going to speak but unfortunately has had to leave; she is not feeling too well.

I will just say that it has been eloquently expressed why it is very important that this amendment is included in the substance of the Bill. It gets our wholehearted support and there is no need for me to say any more.

I will also speak to Clause 4 stand part. I added my name to that of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, after he raised the selfsame issue at Second Reading. It seemed that this was an area of confusion that we need to clarify before the Bill is passed.

The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, explained that the extension of the powers of the regulator will almost certainly lead to confusion about the power of the Housing Ombudsman. They both have responsibility for seeing that social housing landlords treat their tenants fairly, and the regulator has considerable new powers to ensure safe and secure housing, including the power to obtain a warrant to enter a property if a landlord fails to comply, as set out in Clause 24. The regulator has been given huge powers of enforcement. What can the ombudsman do? Similarly in housing as elsewhere, the tenant turns to the ombudsman if there is an unresolved issue, but it does not have those extensive powers, as the noble Lord explained in some detail. It cannot make any practical intervention. All the ombudsman can do is write a report, make recommendations and possibly award compensation, if that is appropriate—that is it.

It is not clear to me, and I do not think it is clear in the Bill, at what stage the tenant should appeal to the ombudsman. Is it as a last resort, where the regulator’s efforts have not provided a full solution—in which case, how will a complaint to the ombudsman help to resolve it? Is it envisaged that the ombudsman is the final arbiter where the regulator has not succeeded? If not, then whom? The section on appeals in the Bill is totally focused on an appeals system for registered providers; there is nothing in it about appeals for tenants. If the ombudsman is the final arbiter for tenants then more needs to be done to clarify the roles, responsibilities and powers of the ombudsman.

I am totally with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, in what he has said. There is confusion. I am looking at it from the side of the tenant. If there is an unresolved complaint—be it about rent, repairs or whatever the issue—where does the tenant go? They go first to their landlord and, if it is not resolved, they go to the regulator, because it will be a practical issue. The regulator has huge powers, so it ought to be resolvable, but if not, do they go to the ombudsman? What can the ombudsman do? From the tenants’ point of view, this is not as clearly worded as it should be.

I hope the Minister will be able to say that she will go back to the department to sort out how each of these roles will work so that there is no confusion from the tenants’ point of view, which is where I am looking at it from. I support the objection to Clause 4 standing part and look forward to what the Minister will say.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, my Amendment 33 is in this group. It would mean that the Secretary of State must bring forward an affirmative SI to make provisions for monitoring the compliance of social housing with the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act. I think we can all agree that there is not a lot of point in having a standard if it is not complied with. I hope that, by recognising that, the Minister will consider accepting my very simple amendment.

I have also added my name to Amendment 29, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Best. As he said, it would impose a duty on the social housing regulator to carry out regular inspections of all registered providers to ensure compliance with the regulatory standards. This is incredibly important, which is why I was very pleased to add my name to his amendment. He introduced it in such a way that we are all very clear why it is needed and would be an important improvement to the Bill, if accepted.

As it currently stands, reactive investigations are an important aspect of the system, but, unfortunately, they often come too late and sometimes they are too heavily reliant on other parts of the system revealing issues. We know that self-reporting by landlords can mask the scale or severity of problems and that action is sometimes not taken until it is too late. We need properly designed routine inspections that can be done at short notice so that we can uncover issues in a more timely manner and, most importantly, act as a deterrent to poor service and ensure that good practice is an everyday responsibility for landlords and their staff.

As we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Best, when the Government introduced the social housing White Paper, they promised routine, Ofsted-style inspections. In this way, we would deliver a truly proactive system of regulation of social housing. As the noble Lord said, if we are genuinely to deliver what the Government seem to want with the Bill, we must ensure that good standards, right across the board, are delivered within the system. Having such inspections would help to achieve that, which is why we fully support his amendment.

I move to Amendment 11, in the name of my noble friend Lord Whitty, which we also strongly support. His amendment to recognise the impact of unsafe or overcrowded conditions on mental health and well-being is incredibly important. A lot is talked about the impact of poor housing standards on physical health; not enough is talked about their impact on mental health, so we strongly support his amendment.

Finally, I come to the opposition to Clause 4 standing part from the noble Lord, Lord Young, who, as always, introduced it very clearly and effectively. He was absolutely right when he said in his introduction that we need clarification of the roles of and relationship between the regulator and the Housing Ombudsman. He talked about the overlapping of their responsibilities and the importance of avoiding confusion and duplication. If this is to be truly effective, everyone must know their role and each role must be effectively delivered. I shall be interested to hear the Minister’s response and to see whether the Bill could be amended by the Government to try to bring clarification so that we do not get confusion once this becomes law.

I finish by saying that we have had a number of excellent discussions today on the Bill and I look forward to working with the Minister to positively move forward the issues we have raised today.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Young, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Best, for tabling these amendments, which all relate to changes to the proposed proactive consumer regulation regime. I shall start with the opposition to Clause 4 standing part, raised by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and my noble friend Lord Young asked questions on the blurred lines and lack of understanding as to who does what. I shall try to explain.