Social Housing (Regulation) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 27th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as co-chair of Peers for the Planet, although I have to say I rather like the “commander-in-chief” designation given to me by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. I am grateful to him and to the noble Lord, Lord Bourne—very distinguished spear-carriers—for their anticipatory support.

As others have said, the Bill aims to offer renters of social housing a range of new regulatory standards and expectations, the need for which the tragedy of Grenfell and the inquiries that followed so clearly demonstrated. However, on one area of the regulator’s existing remit, that social housing should be of “appropriate quality”—that is, energy efficiency—the Bill is silent, yet the warmth and the heating costs of their homes is of crucial importance to tenants, particularly those who live in what the Minister described as damp, cold and unsafe homes. I shall therefore focus my brief comments on the importance of energy efficiency.

Back in November, even ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the International Energy Agency reported that it considered energy efficiency to be the “first fuel”, as it still represents the cleanest and, in most cases, cheapest way to meet our energy needs. It also highlighted that there was no plausible pathway to net-zero emissions without using our energy resources much more efficiently. The strength of these arguments has been redoubled following the 54% increase in the energy price cap in April, with an expected further 65% increase in October and analysts saying say that this is going to go on until at least 2030.

However, progress appears to have stalled on energy efficiency, and this Bill does nothing to remedy that. In the Clean Growth Strategy in 2017, we heard of a planned consultation on how social housing can be upgraded to energy performance certificate, or EPC, band C by 2030 where practical, cost-effective and affordable. Four years later, in October 2021, in the heat and buildings strategy, a long-term regulatory standard to improve social housing was still being considered.

This Bill is intended to facilitate a new, proactive approach to regulating social housing on consumer issues such as safety, transparency and tenant engagement, about which we have heard in this debate. The cost of keeping warm is a key consumer issue, and yet tenants of social housing are still waiting for that regulatory standard. Welcome as the drip-feed of funding for selected improvements has been, along with the Government’s promises to learn from schemes that have failed in the past, 35% of social housing remains rated EPC D or below. Increased support for energy efficiency measures would address all three points of what has been called the “energy trilemma”.

On the first issue, affordability, the Building Back Britain Commission, made up of chief executives from some of the UK’s biggest housing groups, has argued that £200 a year could be saved just by improving a home’s energy performance certificate rating of D to C. That sum is equivalent to the originally announced energy bill discount—but every year, rather than a one-off. The CBI has made similar points, with Tony Danker asking whether we want a new normal of energy efficiency, or of billion-pound bailouts every quarter. The Committee on Climate Change has also shown how the capital investment needed to get to net-zero building will more than pay for itself through savings on fuel, healthcare and other costs.

On sustainability, domestic heating accounts for 21% of UK greenhouse gas emissions. The vast majority of homes still rely on natural gas for heating, meaning that every kilowatt hour of energy saved will help us to meet our commitments under the Paris Agreement and our domestic legally binding net-zero target. Regarding homes heated by electricity, it will help by lowering demand in the coldest months of the year, when our museum-piece coal-fired power stations are most often brought out of retirement for additional capacity.

On security of supply and cost, the same considerations apply. Every unit of energy saved will help us to reduce our dependence on imported gas and, indeed, on North Sea oil and gas, which is in any case traded on the global market and priced accordingly.

There is in fact a fourth point: the impact on employment opportunities and levelling up. The Construction Industry Training Board has estimated that net-zero homes will create more than 200,000 new jobs, and energy efficiency retrofits in particular are expected to provide new jobs as an important part of the green recovery. The building back greener commission has also shown that the homes which stand to gain most from government intervention are in areas designated as needing levelling up.

When will the long-term regulatory standard for social housing be brought forward? Will the Government commit to the same trajectory for social housing as they set out for private renters in the heat and buildings strategy? Of course, addressing energy efficiency in social housing is only one part of a necessary wider national strategy to reduce energy demand, but the Government are even further behind on their commitments on social housing compared to other housing types. This Bill provides a perfect opportunity for the Government to put their outstanding public commitments on a statutory footing, setting out a detailed trajectory for meeting them. I look forward to hearing from the Minister a clear plan and timetable for doing so.

Social Housing (Regulation) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th September 2022 Lords Chamber

The aim of the Bill is a good one: to ensure safe homes in the social housing sector. Fire safety cannot be ignored as being too expensive or too difficult. As we know, tragically, ignoring fire safety costs lives. I urge the Minister to accept this amendment to provide regular assurance that fire and building safety remediation work is being completed in the social housing sector. With that, I look forward to the rest of the debate on this group of amendments, which are fundamental to getting improvements to an otherwise sound Bill. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, it may be helpful to the Committee to continue the theme of energy efficiency, rather than going through the amendments numerically, so I will do so. I declare my interest as co-chair of Peers for the Planet. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, I have Amendment 21 in this group, and I am very grateful for the support of the noble Lords, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and Lord Foster of Bath, who have added their names to it.

At Second Reading of the Bill in July, there was similar support from across the House—on all Benches—for action on energy efficiency in the social housing stock. The Minister himself described action as a “must”, but I am afraid he stopped there in describing how that action would actually be implemented. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, social housing tenants are among the most vulnerable in the current energy crisis. The Government’s own most recent data shows that 72% of new lead tenants were not in employment; 20% of new lettings were reserved to those who were statutorily homeless. Research by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit shows that houses in EPC band D, which are 35% of social housing, will pay £600 more a year under the cap as it is at the moment than those in band C, and forecasts from Cornwall Insight suggest that that could be doubled next year.

The money that we are led to believe will be spent in subsidising—paying for—those bills is money that literally goes up in smoke. The money spent on home insulation and energy efficiency is money that does not have to be spent year after year when we have an energy price crisis. This was recognised by the Government in the clean growth strategy in 2017, when they committed to consultation on minimum energy performance standards in social housing, but we have seen no plan—not even a consultation on a plan or a plan on a consultation. Hence the need to take action in the Bill to put the requirement in primary legislation and get moving with doing this.

As the noble Baroness said, this amendment is more detailed than hers. We have framed it as a duty on the Government to publish a strategy. I hope that others will agree that this is the most appropriate approach. It should not be a duty on social housing providers to improve properties without any government support, nor a duty on government to go into properties that they do not own and forcibly improve them without landlord and tenant consent. A duty for a strategy will require input from social housing providers, tenants and community groups and the specialist and general firms who carry out the work.

The amendment is relatively simple. Proposed new subsection (1) gives the social housing regulator the power to set standards in relation to energy demand—a slightly different approach from that in Amendment 1 —and requires the regulator to have regard to the Government’s strategy on this topic when it does so. Proposed new subsection (2), which is the meat of it, requires the Government to set out an energy reduction strategy, with four key points.

The first is the rollout of low-carbon heat, so that it accounts for 100% of installations by 2035. The low-carbon heat could equally well come from heat pumps or local heat networks. This is simply putting a commitment that the Government have already made, but are not making a lot of progress with, on a statutory footing.

The second is an EPC rating of C for all social housing properties by 2028. The Committee on Climate Change has recommended that year; the Government have suggested 2030, but it is important that we make progress now.

The third point is to have interim targets for the first two points. We have all seen the dangers of putting very high-level commitments out in principle while not seeing any plan for their implementation and no milestone so that we can tell how far we are going. Interim targets would give transparency for tracking the government target for energy-efficiency improvements made each year and would maintain momentum.

The fourth point is a plan to support social housing providers in engaging with one another, the social housing regulator, and a single source of government advice. This is really important. One of the things that people are flailing around for is the best way to do things in the current crisis. It is tremendously important that the Government, who have referred to providing a source of advice, do so urgently, so that we do not all reinvent wheels all over the place. Proposed new subsection (3) requires the Government to consult the Climate Change Committee, which has significant expertise in this area, when producing their strategy—another belt and braces to ensure that we are making progress.

Ideally, we would be tackling energy efficiency across all fields. There is a huge gain to be made there. The noble Lords, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and Lord Whitty, and I will be tabling amendments to the Energy Bill for a broader government strategy. However, we can and should make progress now with this particularly vulnerable group of people. As I said, 2017 was the first time that this was mooted by the Government. The adage is that the best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The best time to have begun this strategy was five years ago, but the second-best time to plant a tree is today. I hope that the Minister will respond by doing this now.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and to support her in this amendment, along with the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, who has also added his name to it. I declare my interests as published in the register. I am also a member of Peers for the Planet. It sounds like saying that I am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, not that I have ever had to do that. This is an extremely important amendment.

As has been noted, at Second Reading there was very strong support from around the House for the Bill’s objectives, and I am clear that that will remain the case. There is also strong support from around the Committee for the Government’s commitment to achieving net zero, and for the work of the Committee on Climate Change. What we need to do, through this legislation, is provide some heft to that commitment, because what is lacking, as the noble Baroness noted, is a road map to take us to the very noble aim of net zero. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, rightly said, since Second Reading, it has become even more evident how important this is—in very graphic terms, with the eye-watering price of energy and energy security centre stage following the dreadful situation in Ukraine. I think that is recognised by the incoming Prime Minister, but I say to the Minister, who has a long list of things to take up with the incoming Prime Minister and Ministers, that this is an opportunity for a very early demonstration of this Government’s commitment to tackling this very serious issue by tackling not just climate change but the energy security issue and, not least, the eye-watering cost of energy that we face currently.

At this juncture it is clear, as clear as it can be, that any action to reduce energy demand is sensible and vital. As is often said, the energy that is cheapest is the energy that we do not use. One thing we can perhaps take some comfort from, in a slightly bizarre way, is that we have got more ground to make up in this country than many other countries in relation to energy efficiency. There is a lot we can be doing; there is massive scope for energy efficiency and, indeed, for demand reduction, which this amendment is geared to. By reducing energy demand, we contribute to the fight for net zero, we contribute to helping ease the massive cost of energy and we also contribute to our energy security. These three pillars are all vital in this battle, and this amendment—a very modest amendment, really—would contribute to all three. The commitment to the low-carbon heat target of 100% of new installations of heating appliances and a minimum EPC rating of C for all social housing is, I believe, achievable and vital.

I appeal to the Government to come forward with a positive programme of engagement with social housing landlords, and advice, also very sensible and provided for in this amendment. I am sure it would have support from all corners of the Committee and would contribute in a very positive way to something that we know our country needs to do. I trust that the Government will demonstrate their commitment to net zero, to easing the cost of energy and to achieving energy security by supporting this amendment. It is a practical, pragmatic, sensible response to the energy crisis, will be seen as such, and will be seen as an early demonstration of the commitment of this Government. So I hope that is what the Minister will say when she responds to this group of amendments.

Social Housing (Regulation) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 18th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I draw the attention of the House to my relevant interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a local councillor. I start by reaffirming what I have said throughout our deliberations on the Bill: the Liberal Democrat Benches welcome and support the Bill’s purpose. However, there is always room for improvement, as the tabling of 31 government amendments clearly illustrates.

The purpose of Amendment 1 in my name is to ensure that the principle—and thus importance—of energy efficiency is one of the stated priorities and objectives of the regulator. In Committee, the Minister was not convinced by my argument, saying that energy efficiency is being addressed as part of a separate refurbishment programme. I am pleased to see a positive change of heart and a willingness to accept the argument, as demonstrated by the fact that the Minister has added her name to my amendment.

Adding energy efficiency as a key objective enables the regulator to influence those providers who have so far failed to bring their properties up to a C rating. One-third of social houses are in this bracket, and homes in the UK are among the worst insulated in the whole of Europe. Soaring energy prices mean that, even with the Government’s support until next April, homes will have energy bills that are on average two times higher than last winter’s. That will put a huge strain on household finances.

Now that the Government have pulled the universal support for bills after April and support will be more focused, apparently, average bills will be around £4,000 and completely unaffordable for those on lower incomes. An urgent programme to improve energy efficiency in all homes is urgently needed, but more so in homes in the social housing sector. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has a detailed amendment to this effect, Amendment 14, which has been co-signed by my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath. We wholeheartedly agree with it. Will the Minister commit to an urgent programme of improving the energy efficiency of homes in the social housing sector? After all, this will contribute to the Government’s growth agenda in a positive way, and it could save each household around £800 a year.

Amendment 2 in my name relates to the ongoing scandal of fire and building safety remediation. This amendment proposes that the remediation programme in the sector should be monitored by the regulator. In her reply to the same amendment in Committee, the Minister said:

“The department is currently examining options for monitoring and reporting remediation progress in future, including cladding remediation. We strongly believe that decisions in this area should be based on thorough analysis of available options; this will ensure that the function is undertaken by those with the correct skills, expertise and capacity.”—[Official Report, 6/9/22; col. 114.]


Right. Can the Minister provide information on the progress of this proposed monitoring? What reassurance can she provide to those in shared equity arrangements, some of whom are contacting me with grave concerns that they will have a significant liability as a consequence of the arrangements that have been made?

This group includes Amendment 31 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, which seeks to put more accountability into the hands of tenants. Obviously, these Benches completely support that amendment.

Finally, I return to the important need for substantial energy-efficiency improvements in the homes of those least able to meet the enormous hike in energy prices. Both the amendment in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, propose practical solutions. I look forward to the debate on this group and the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests as set out in the register and also note that a member of my family has recently undertaken some work in this field. I thank the Minister; she has been very approachable between Committee and Report and has given a lot of time to this. I am grateful for her attempts to come to some sort of positive conclusion on this.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, with this group of amendments, we return to the need, which was supported around the House at all earlier stages of the Bill, for a concerted effort to improve energy efficiency in social housing and bring social housing tenants the benefits achieved in terms of warmer, safer, better-insulated and healthier homes and, of course, reduced cost. That cost reduction extends to the Government and taxpayers, who are currently spending eye-watering amounts of money to reduce bills this year, with no benefit for years to come.

I have Amendment 14 in this group, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said. I am extremely grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Bourne, Lord Foster and Lord Whitty, who added their names to this amendment, demonstrating that cross-party support. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is still unwell and is unable to be with us.

Before focusing on my own amendment, I will say a few words about Amendment 1. I am delighted that the Minister is supporting the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. It is always helpful to have the importance of energy efficiency made explicit in statute and I welcome that. But I have to say that even if such an addition to the duties of the regulator is technically necessary—and, of course, the Minister argued in Committee that it was not and would be only “symbolic”—it is certainly not sufficient to ensure that we make progress. I am afraid that the history of the last five years suggests that without a firm and specific legislative mandate, we will not make the step change that is necessary.

The Government first promised a consultation on improving energy-efficiency standards for social housing as part of the clean growth strategy in 2017. No such consultation emerged in the following four years, then in last year’s heat and buildings strategy, the Government diluted their commitment to one of “considering” setting a long-term regulatory standard and consulting before bringing any such standard forward. Nothing more has happened, so we are back to where we were in 2017, and social housing tenants and the taxpayer have become increasingly exposed to the costs of much higher energy bills, some of which are not down to global factors but to domestic inaction on energy efficiency.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Hayman]

14: After Clause 20, insert the following new Clause—
“Standards relating to energy demand
(1) In section 193 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 (standards relating to consumer matters)—(a) in subsection (2), at the end insert— “(k) energy demand.”;(b) after subsection (2) insert—“(2A) In setting standards relating to energy demand, the regulator shall have regard to the Government’s strategy on reducing energy demand for social housing properties.”(2) The Secretary of State must, before the end of the period of 12 months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, publish a strategy on reducing energy demand for social housing properties, to include but not limited to the following—(a) achieving a low-carbon heat target, of 100% of installations of relevant heating appliances and connections to relevant heat networks in social housing properties being low-carbon from 2035;(b) achieving an energy-efficiency target, of all social housing properties attaining a minimum EPC C rating by 2030;(c) interim targets relating to the targets in paragraphs (a) and (b) at not less than three-yearly intervals;(d) a programme to support registered social housing providers in engaging with each other, the regulator and a source of advice provided by the Government to encourage energy demand reduction.(3) Before publishing their strategy, the Secretary of State must—(a) consult the Climate Change Committee and its sub-committee on adaptation;(b) publicly consult on the most practical, cost-effective and affordable way of achieving the targets in subsection (2)(a) to (2)(c), and(c) publish an assessment of the long-term impacts of the strategy on tenants of social housing and registered social housing landlords.”

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I listened very carefully to the words of the Minister in responding to our earlier debate. I do not have a scintilla of doubt about her sincerity and integrity in offering a consultation, but the House will understand that many of us have been promised consultations and not seen them, or they have not been acted upon. In this area, we were promised the consultation in 2017. It has not happened yet. This amendment would give us a coherent and costed plan for energy efficiency in a sector that needs it very urgently. In view of the support from all Benches—I am particularly grateful to the Bishops’ Benches for joining the political parties—I would like to test the opinion of the House.

Social Housing (Regulation) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 27th June 2023 Lords Chamber

There will be a cost and some disruption during the transitional period in implementing this new requirement for social landlords. These bodies currently face a whole range of other challenges: upgrading their “non-decent” properties, as I have mentioned, fixing building safety issues, grappling with costs rising higher than their rents and contending with higher interest rates and skills shortages. Social landlords might have been expected to resist the extra burden that will come from enhancing the professionalism of their workforce, but I am delighted that the National Housing Federation and senior figures in the sector have welcomed the new obligations and will engage very positively in shaping the new regime in due course. This will undoubtedly make for a more skilled and better-performing social housing sector. I hope the Grenfell team will be pleased that its input has proved so influential. I commend these amendments.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as co-chair of Peers for the Planet and in that I have a family member currently working in the field of energy efficiency. I will respond to the Government’s Motion to agree with the Commons in its Amendment 16. It removes Clause 24, on energy efficiency, which was inserted with cross-party support on Report. Our amendment sought to ensure a comprehensive approach to energy efficiency for tenants in social housing, to reduce their costs and to improve living conditions. It would also have cut the costs to government—and the taxpayer—of subsidising energy bills and helped with energy security and achieving the Government’s target of reducing energy demand by 15% by 2030.

The importance of energy efficiency has been highlighted by numerous committees and reports from this and the other place, including one recently from the Public Accounts Committee which highlighted the problems so far with energy efficiency schemes, including the lack of coherence. It said they had been “fragmented” and that

“stop-go activity has hindered stable long-term progress towards government’s energy efficiency ambitions.”

It is important that real progress has been made during the passage of this Bill. We should remember that, at an earlier stage, energy efficiency was added to the objectives of the Regulator of Social Housing, with the support of the Government. I pay tribute to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, in achieving that end.

The Minister and her officials have been generous with their time in discussions prior to today’s proceedings —I am very grateful for that—in which she stressed the centrality of consultation with the sector before imposing standards. We have made progress, as she said, with a commitment to publish a consultation within six months of Royal Assent. As the Minister has heard me say before, in the past, the Government have been rather better on publishing consultations than responding to them, and much better than on actioning the policy that was their original subject. Can she give any further reassurances about timelines for a government response to the consultation and the provision of a final plan to improve the energy efficiency of social housing within 12 months of Royal Assent?

While we have not made as much progress as I would have wished on this issue, we all understand that the priority of the Bill has been the urgent need for effective regulation of social housing, and I completely recognise any concerns about diverting from that central objective. I also recognise that energy efficiency is an issue not just for the social housing sector but across the whole of our housing stock. It arises mainly from the quality, or lack thereof, of that housing stock. As the Minister knows, I have tabled amendments to both the levelling-up Bill and the Energy Bill to try to address what we are talking about in this Bill: the need for a long-term strategic plan of action which would include but not be exclusive to the social housing sector.

This is an issue to which we will return, but I hope the Minister can give me some reassurance on the issues I have raised when she sums up.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, amazingly, it has been eight months since this House last discussed the Bill. At that time, I welcomed it and many of the details it provided to improve the regulation of social housing. However, across the House, noble Lords challenged the Government to think again on some of the detail of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, have outlined some of the ways in which the Bill was challenged and subsequently improved.

I am pleased to say that some of the government amendments in the Commons have indeed built on the amendments made on Report in this House. I particularly support Commons Amendment 13, which sets new professional standards for senior social housing managers, as I do the power for the ombudsman to provide best practice guidance. Those are two great improvements made to the Bill since it first started in this House.

The Commons also introduced into the Bill “Awaab’s law” in memory of the tragic death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak, which was caused by appallingly damp and mouldy conditions in the flat where he and his family lived. The response of the social housing landlord was shockingly neglectful—and, as it turned out, fatally neglectful for poor young Awaab. I congratulate the Government on introducing that new clause to address those responsibilities and to ensure that social landlords properly address what is described in the amendment as “prescribed hazards”. Let us hope that this is sufficient to ensure that no family lives in such dreadful conditions again—albeit it applies currently to social housing only.

Finally, although I am pleased that on Report the Government accepted my amendment to include energy efficiency as a core responsibility of the regulator, I am disappointed that they have not been able to be as positive about the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, agreed by this House, which contained a comprehensive approach to energy efficiency that my simple amendment failed to do. We have a challenge as a country, and the Government have a responsibility to make changes so that homes are warmer and less expensive to heat. There was an opportunity to do so; unfortunately, the Government failed to accept it.

However, I am pleased that the Government and the Minister have agreed to consult—although, as always, the caveat is the question of what that will lead to, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, alluded to. I am sure that the noble Baroness and many of us in this House will scrutinise closely the outcome of such a consultation. This is an important matter. We need to get it right. People should not be living in cold homes because they cannot afford to heat them. If the Government have the power to make a change, we will press them to do so.

I want to end on a positive note. We on these Benches support the Bill and trust that social housing tenants will see the benefits that it should bring.