Decent Homes

Baroness Morgan of Cotes Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I am pleased to follow the thoughtful speech of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal). It is probably one of the most thoughtful contributions that I have heard from a Government Member in my time here. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) on his thoughtful and knowledgeable opening remarks. I have the pleasure of serving under his chairmanship on the Communities and Local Government Committee, and I am pleased to be able to make a contribution to the debate on “Beyond Decent Homes”, which was published before I joined the Committee.

I am also pleased to be taking part in today’s debate because, precisely eight months ago today, when I spoke for the first time in the House of Commons as the newly elected MP for Lewisham East, I pressed the Government on when we would have the chance to debate the future funding of the decent homes programme. I did not think that it would take eight months to get to this stage, but I hope that it will be worth the wait.

For many of my constituents, having a decent place to call home is still more of an aspiration than a reality. Many people in my constituency—in places such as Catford, Downham, Grove Park and Blackheath—live in homes that do not meet the decent homes standard.

Thanks to the previous Labour Government, thousands of properties in my constituency are in the process of being upgraded by housing associations, such as London and Quadrant, and Affinity Sutton, and thousands more are benefiting from improvement works being carried out by Phoenix, a new community-led housing association.

However, many of my constituents, particularly those who have remained local authority tenants, are still waiting in the hope that, at some point, it will be their turn to see their flats, houses and estates turned into places where they feel proud to live, and where decades of under-investment can be put right. I want to focus on how we can achieve a decent place to live for those who are still waiting, not just in my constituency, but in the borough of Lewisham as a whole and in London more generally.

Having a decent home is something that many of us take for granted. It was rightly the ambition of the previous Government to ensure that everyone had a decent home and that those organisations delivering huge housing investment programmes were fit for purpose— efficient, well-run and well-managed organisations that could cope with the complexities of multi-million pound capital projects.

When I first became a councillor in 2004, Lewisham’s housing service, as it was then, could not be described in that way. I represented a ward in which 70% of the population rented their homes from either the council or a housing association, and day in, day out, I came across an attitude that can only be described as, “The computer says no.” I sat in evening after evening of tenant and resident association meetings, being told by people that they were ashamed to invite friends round to their flat, not because they did not have a reasonably modern kitchen or bathroom, but because they were embarrassed to ask their friends to walk up eight flights of foul-smelling stairs when the lift had broken down. They were embarrassed by the broken communal doorways, the peeling paint in the corridor, the broken windows and the leaking roof.

Although Lewisham’s new ALMO has got to grips with the culture of the old housing services and, indeed, with some of the housing management challenges, I am ashamed to say that some of the conditions on estates in my constituency resemble what I have just described. It is not right that people in the 21st century have to live this way. Sometimes, a new kitchen, a new bathroom or new windows are not going to make the sort of changes that are needed. Heathside and Lethbridge is a ’60s estate of nearly 600 properties on the edge of Lewisham town centre, and the only real answer is to knock it down and start again. However, Government cuts to the Homes and Communities Agency budget put the future phases of that redevelopment in doubt. The council has been working hard with its development partner to get the regeneration programme started, and the new Government must step up to the plate and find the funds to ensure that future phases can be built out. If they do not, they will condemn hundreds of residents to a life in completely substandard accommodation. The situation is the same with Milford Towers and Excalibur, which are smaller estates in my constituency, but whose needs are no less pressing or complicated.

Although regeneration funding is incredibly important for many areas of Lewisham, so too is the amount of money that the Government will make available to local authority landlords to carry out decent homes works. That was an issue that my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) raised earlier, and it is the issue to which I will now turn.

I have already touched on the transformation that has taken place in our local ALMO. It has been a long, hard slog for the board, and I pay tribute to the resident chair, Julia Cotton, and the chief executive, Andrew Potter, for bringing about that change. However, as a result of the Government’s announcement in the comprehensive spending review, Lewisham Homes finds itself facing increasing uncertainty about the amount of money that it will receive to carry out desperately needed works. Of the ALMO’s 13,000 tenanted homes, 7,300 do not meet the decency standard.

In March 2010, the previous Government indicated that £154 million would be made available to Lewisham Homes to carry out the decent homes programme if it met the two-star rating, which, I should say, it achieved last summer. However, last October, as part of the CSR, this Government insisted that local authority landlords would have to fund 10% of all outstanding improvement works themselves. Lewisham’s bid has therefore been reduced to £126 million, to be spread over four years from April this year. Like many other ALMOs and local authorities throughout the country, we are waiting to hear the outcome of our bid.

My biggest fear—my right hon. Friend touched upon this—is that Lewisham Homes will not get anywhere near the amount of money that it needs. In the CSR, the Government announced £1.6 billion to meet the outstanding decent homes requirements of local authority landlords. London local authorities alone estimate that their outstanding investment need is £2.5 billion. London has 46% of the 150,000 homes identified by the Government last year as eligible for that funding. Therefore, even if London gets 46% of the overall sum, £736 million is a long way off £2.5 billion. I must therefore question whether Lewisham will get £126 million of that money.

Lewisham Homes has also received scant recognition for its work in achieving a two-star rating from the Audit Commission. As the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) has said, the Government’s current approach does not seem to take account of all the hard work put in by ALMOs that have achieved the two-star status. I think that that says to those people, “Tough luck—you’re now lumped back into the mix, just like everyone else.”

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

I understand what the hon. Lady is saying about the two-star rating and, listening to this debate, I can see both sides of the argument on the two stars. However, I represent part of the borough of Charnwood, in which Charnwood Neighbourhood Housing is the ALMO. It has struggled for a long time to get to its two-star rating. Under the previous Labour-controlled local administration, it had no stars. We are now up to one star, and are trying very hard to get to two. The difficulty with the hon. Lady’s argument is that the tenants, through no fault of their own—the problems with management are not their fault—have lost out on any investment over the past 13 years in relation to decent homes. Now they are in round six and still face receiving less money. Does she appreciate that point?

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

Thank you for allowing me to make a contribution, Mr Bone. My maths is not great, but I have just worked out how long I have to speak, and I assure hon. Members that I will not take up all that time. I want to speak briefly about Charnwood Neighbourhood Housing, which is the ALMO in my part of the borough—my Loughborough constituency is part of the borough of Charnwood.

I entirely agree with the comments of the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) about the work done by the staff in these organisations. I recognised the “Computer says no” attitude, which sometimes prevails when I ask for help with a query, but overall the housing staff at Charnwood borough council offices and at Charnwood Neighbourhood Housing have always been helpful and responsive in doing whatever they can to assist tenants and respond to my queries, which I have raised both before and since my election to the House.

Charnwood borough council has a retained housing stock of just under 6,000 units. The council bid for funding in round 6 of the ALMO programme and was awarded a minimum of £36 million to invest in stock improvements, subject to receiving a two-star rating from the Audit Commission. At the last inspection in February 2010, Charnwood achieved a one-star rating—previously it was a zero-star organisation—with uncertain prospects for improvement, despite an awful lot of work having been done. Clearly, something was not working and the management was not as it should have been. It has carried on working hard on the improvement programme, and a new chief executive is in place. I have met her, and she is working extremely hard.

I have heard both sides of the debate this afternoon, and I am sure that lots of lessons can be learned from organisations that have two stars. I entirely agree with the Minister’s statement in November, in which he said that where organisations do not have a two-star rating, it is the tenants who lose out, because although they have little control over the star rating of their landlord, their not getting decent homes is a result of that. The two-star rating is not in itself a guarantee of ability to run a capital programme or to offer good value for money. There are no easy answers, but what I hear from both sides of the Chamber this afternoon is that we all believe in the importance of housing, in terms of what it means for quality of life, and that, if at all possible, people cannot be allowed to continue to live in non-decent houses. In April last year, 34.7% of Charnwood’s stock was non-decent and, as has already been said, the longer the debate goes on the more housing slips back into non-decency.

The report is extremely valuable. I want to bring to the Minister’s attention two issues that were raised with me by my ALMO. These issues have not been mentioned so far, although I might be wrong and not have been concentrating properly. Additional investment might be required in particular types of stock. For example, Charnwood has non-traditional, precast reinforced concrete housing, which requires greater investment levels, and a large number of sheltered housing schemes which are no longer fit for purpose but which house some of our most vulnerable tenants.

Charnwood is also a rural community. Having been a candidate in Islington South and Finsbury back in the 2001 general election, I know the problems of London, although I now represent a semi-rural constituency. We have a growing elderly population and demand for adaptations is consistently high. That might not fall within decent homes funding, but it still needs to be paid for, particularly if we are asking people to live in their houses for longer and to remain independent for as long as possible. As has been said, funding does not appear to be available for state upgrades or environmental improvements, which would create opportunities for designing out crime and supporting reductions in antisocial behaviour.

In the borough council and the ALMO’s joint response to the backlog funding proposals, the spending review and the difficulty with public finances are noted, and both chief executives say that they

“will respond positively to any changes that are thought necessary by central government to assist in the recovery of the economy.”

They say that they appreciate the impact that less money being available will have on local authorities, but they want to rise to the challenge in a “constructive and creative way”, and I pay tribute to them for that entrepreneurial spirit. The chief executives believe that they can still deliver a decent homes investment programme that achieves value for money.

We have all discussed the importance of decent homes and of funding, and we need money to improve the quality of life for tenants across the borough of Charnwood and to assist the Government in delivering their strategic and financial objectives in doing that. I welcome the Government’s commitment to funding and to addressing the backlog of homes that have not yet reached the decent standard and those organisations that have not reached two-star status yet. I understand that it is important that we end up with organisations that have sustainable, self-financing business plans. I shall make the same point in my conclusion as I made in my intervention: because of having to wait for two-star status, my ALMO has not been able to submit a bid. We are now in round 6, and less money is available due to the state of the economy and public finances that we were left. I know that the ALMO would appreciate a decision sooner rather than later, so that it can get on with raising standards for tenants in the borough of Charnwood. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.