Decent Homes

Clive Betts Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for what I think is the first time, Mr Bone. I will address my comments, as the title of the debate suggests, to the report by the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government in the previous Parliament called “Beyond Decent Homes”. The report built on a previous report by the Committee—its proper title at the time was the Select Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister—back in 2004. That report examined the decent homes programme, which was then in the fairly early stages of development.

Obviously, the report was written at a certain time, but its analysis of what had happened and its conclusions are relevant today. That said, I do accept—it is a pretty obvious fact—that the political and governmental climate has changed since then, and I shall refer at one or two points to circumstances that have changed since then to bring matters up to date.

It will be appropriate to begin by quoting one or two extracts from the conclusion, because it was a Committee report and I want to reflect fairly what the Committee as a whole believed to be important, rather than what I as a member at the time and now Chair believed to be important. The conclusion began by saying:

“By any standards, the Decent Homes programme can be counted as a very significant public policy success. A substantial backlog of repairs and maintenance in social housing existed thirteen years ago and a significant percentage of council rented properties were of unacceptably poor quality: whilst it has yet to be completely eliminated, huge progress has been made, improving the lives of millions of tenants…The main means by which Government can ensure that standards of decency in social housing are maintained in future will be the regulatory framework designed and implemented by the Tenant Services Authority. That framework sets some important national standards but is not over-prescriptive”.

That sets the context of a very successful programme. It has not been fully implemented—it is not absolutely complete—but it has improved the lives of millions of people.

The report went on to make comments about future regulation, which are probably redundant now, in the light of changes that the present Government have made with regard to the Tenant Services Authority. However, the report also said:

“We have recommended another important extension to the existing decent homes criteria: the addition of a specific minimum standard for energy efficiency…Setting standards is of course no good, however, unless the means are available to achieve them.”

I will try to refer to those issues as I go through my speech. Finally, the report said:

“The decent homes programme in the private sector, meanwhile, has been much less effective.”

Again, I will make comments about that.

Let us consider the overall situation. Back in 2001, there was the challenge of a £17 billion backlog of disrepair and neglect in social housing in this country. That is a salient lesson that we must always hold at the forefront of our minds. It is a stark reminder of what can happen if we put off dealing with maintenance projects and maintenance necessities for too long. A backlog of disrepair builds up and must at some point be addressed. The longer we leave it, the worse the problems are and the more money we have to spend on them.

The reality in 2001 was that, of the just over 4 million homes in the social rented sector, nearly half were not up to the decent standard. By 2010, that figure—there are slight variations on it, depending on the calculations that are done—was down to about 10% of the total. It is probably slightly more—perhaps 12%—but it is somewhere in that region. As the Committee’s report identified, there were problems with counting. To some extent, counting was done by individual authorities, and they had slightly different methods. Sometimes the definition of a decent home varied from authority to authority. For example, authorities sometimes counted as decent those properties whose tenants had refused to have the work done. The programme passed them by and the property was then counted as decent because no work was immediately able to be done on it. That was clearly nonsense, and I hope that it was eventually corrected.

Another issue that comes up is that the standard may be fixed, but homes can fall in and out of decency. They can come into decency through improvement works, but fall out of decency over time. The age requirements of the decency standard come into effect as a property gets older, and then work is required that was not required a year before. As the programme is postponed and work is put off further, more houses can fall within its scope.

About £40 billion of public money—about £12 billion from Government and about £28 billion from local authorities’ own resources—has been spent bringing properties up to a decent standard. If we look at the standards, we can see a number of key factors. Incidentally, I still get great delight from going into the homes of tenants, because in the end these are people’s homes. We can talk about thousands of houses and billions of pounds, but to the individual, it is their new bathroom or new kitchen. They have a sense of pride when they open the door and say, “Mr Betts, come and see my new home. Isn’t it wonderful?” We get that sense of pride and a dream fulfilled with many people as a result of the works being carried out.

The standards for kitchens and bathrooms have been widely welcomed and well implemented. The repair standards, too, seem to have been well implemented. In the middle of the programme, there was a change from the old fitness standards to the new housing health and safety rating system. That is a bit more complicated and perhaps a bit more difficult to understand. I think that there are problems for private landlords in understanding it. It is not as simple as the old system. For social landlords, it should not be as difficult, and I do not think that there has been a real problem with implementing it in the social housing sector. It has been pretty well integrated into the decent homes programme.

When the Select Committee examined the standards in 2004, quite a lot of suggestions were made—such suggestions were made again in our more recent report—about what additional things might be included in the decent homes programme. Noise insulation, particularly in flats, was one. That has never been included, although we can see reasons why it might be. There is always a temptation to go on and on trying to add things to programmes. To have a pretty certain standard from the beginning, in 2001, and continue with it was probably the right thing to do.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Lack of noise insulation is an enormous problem, particularly in London, where there are large numbers of council properties in converted Victorian houses. Often, the conversions were done to a less than acceptable standard, with a total lack of insulation between the properties, and it is very expensive to put in noise insulation at a later stage. Is there any way in which we can ensure that future conversions include a very high standard of noise and energy insulation from the beginning?

[Mr Betts]

I am sure that there are ways to do that. The Committee concluded that, given that the decent homes programme was running to a certain standard from 2001, it was probably not the right thing to do to try to add things halfway through the process. As the Government said at the time, they were basic standards but there was no reason why authorities should not add to them. Indeed, for kitchens and bathrooms, my city had the Sheffield standard, which went beyond the national standard. Perhaps the other way in which the problem can be tackled—I may be corrected—is through building regulations. Perhaps there could be a legal requirement to deal with the issue, rather than adding something to the decent homes programme at this stage, rather late in the day.

Other issues that we considered were the environment, the appearance of an estate as opposed to an individual home, and communal areas, which have caused difficulties under the programme. By and large, where stock transfers took place, housing associations could raise more private finance and were able to cope with those issues. Where work was done within the authority, through the arm’s length management organisations, often, on the environment, they were limited to 5% additional funding in the programme, so all the environmental works and communal area works that were needed were not necessarily tackled. That perhaps needs to be addressed in the future, although in this case it is very difficult to be prescriptive about national standards.

An issue that we considered in some detail in both reports was energy standards. This is not merely a question of comfort for the individual living in their home. It is a question of a national requirement, a public need requirement, because of the need for the country as a whole to meet the climate change challenges of which we are all acutely aware. I shall say a few words about the issue of energy. From the beginning, there was a feeling that the standards in the decent homes programme were set rather low. All right, they are minimum standards and could be added to, but we really need to move on and address those minimum standards.

The previous Government promised, through the household energy management strategy, to deal with that. They promised that, by 2020, 7 million homes that did not have adequate loft or cavity wall insulation would get it. Effectively, there would be a warm homes standard in the social sector that would almost be a decent homes-plus standard. We understand from the current Government’s response—it would be helpful if the Minister could say a bit more about this—that those various initiatives have now been subsumed in the idea of the green deal. It is not quite clear at this stage what that will mean for social housing and private sector tenants and owner-occupiers in terms of bringing their homes up to a standard where they can feel comfortable in them and can afford to heat them—bearing in mind the current and future increase in energy costs—and for us as a nation in meeting the challenge of climate change.

When the National Housing Federation did an estimate of what it would need to do to get the emissions in its homes down to 20% of their current levels and to meet the challenge of bringing down emissions by 80% by 2050, it said that it would need to spend £25,000 on average on each housing association property in the country. It is a long-term challenge, and we need some indication from the Government that they have a strategy for national standards and for targets to be hit. I know that the Government do not like targets very much, but we have overall climate change targets. Perhaps we should find a way forward by improving our energy efficiency standards.

When the Committee considered that, we felt that energy efficiency standards were the right way to go. Certainly, fuel poverty is a real problem, but once we try to link the issue of fuel poverty with the standards in a building, real complications emerge. For example, we could get properties moving in and out of an appropriate standard depending on the incomes of the people who live in the property, and that is an issue of which we must be aware.

As for the methods of achievement so far in the decent homes programme, stock transfer clearly dealt with a lot of properties. Tenants voted to move to housing associations because the associations could raise the money on the private markets and deliver the decent homes programmes that were required. Many other tenants resisted the idea of their homes moving out of council ownership. The Government at the time refused to give funding directly to councils for the decent homes programme; that was a matter of contention and I personally did not agree with that policy at the time. None the less, many tenants agreed to go with a transfer of management, but not ownership, to an arm’s length management organisation.

Social housing in this country has undergone a revolution. There has been an improvement not only in the management of council housing and the delivery of major programmes, but in the management and delivery performance of housing associations. I know that this is sometimes an uncomfortable point for housing associations to address, but the report, on page 45, sets out clearly that, when an assessment was done of the overall performance of ALMOs, 75% had a good or excellent rating. For housing associations, the figure was around 35%. As for major works contributions and oversight, 70% of ALMOs got a good or excellent rating and just over 50% of housing associations did so. ALMOs did very well indeed and some of the best ALMOs are clearly some of the best performing housing organisations in the country.

[Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

Lewisham Homes, which is the ALMO in my constituency, received a promise of £153 million from the Labour Government for decent homes work if it could reach the two-star rating. It achieved that rating in July, but now, under the Tory-led Government, that money has been withdrawn and the tenants of Lewisham Homes are extremely angry, frustrated and miserable that they cannot enjoy the same benefits of decent homes that other tenants in Lewisham have.

[Mr Betts]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her remarks. Clearly, a number of issues are intertwined in that problem. Under the Labour Government’s policy, if an ALMO reached two stars or better, it would automatically have access to the funding necessary to bring its homes up to a decent standard. In the comprehensive spending review, the money available for decent homes was cut by about 50%. Authorities that have not completed their programmes are entitled to bid for funding, although if less than 10% of their homes are not decent at present, they are not likely to get any funding. If up to 20% of their homes are deemed not to be decent, they are likely to get only half the funding that they previously might have been entitled to.

As I understand it, as Lewisham Homes has not started its decent homes programme, it will still be entitled to bid for the total amount, but as the total is 50% less than it was, how much it will get is still open to question. Perhaps the Minister will be able to address that issue in his summing up.

To be fair to the Government—this is an interesting matter of debate— they have relaxed the rule that only two-star ALMOs can get funding. That means that the previous situation in which a tenant could be penalised and not have the work done on their home because their landlord was not performing properly will be removed. On the other hand, the requirement to have two stars as a basic to obtain the funding has driven up housing management standards as a whole, and therefore has achieved considerable success.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I would not want hon. Members to think that all ALMOs have been wonderful successes. The ALMO in Lambeth, Lambeth Living, which narrowly got voted through by a tiny majority after the council spent £1 million on it, has been pretty much a disaster. The chief executive is leaving this weekend and the deputy left just before Christmas. The tenants in Lambeth are in a ridiculous situation. Their ALMO was going to get a two-star rating. That did not happen, and the tenants are now left with huge amounts of very bad housing with no one wanting to do anything about it. The ALMO, therefore, was not the answer; the answer would have been to put the money directly into the estates that really needed it. Lambeth has some desperately bad estates. They need the money and I am not sure that spending money just on ALMOs made any difference.

[Mr Betts]

The evidence suggests that it probably did, but successes in general do not mean successes in every particular case. Clearly, there are some bad examples, and my hon. Friend has highlighted one from her constituency. Tenants should be free to choose their landlord, taking into account their own circumstances. If they want to revert back to council management, I see no reason why they cannot do that. The Minister may say a bit more about the funding possibilities. My understanding is that Government are now prepared to put money directly into councils for the decent homes programme. To be even-handed and balanced, I would suggest that to say that there should be funding irrespective of who manages the houses is a helpful move. Where we would disagree is over the amount of funding; there probably is not enough of it. At least Lambeth tenants now have the option to move back, if that is what they want.

Some authorities have seen ALMOs as a method of getting in the money, making the homes decent and then having the properties transferred back to them. In the end, what matters is not what the landlord or councillors think but what the tenants think. The Government’s attitude so far is that when an authority wants to bring back the management in-house, it should go through the same process that tenants went through to create the ALMO in the first place. However, I would welcome something a bit stronger. The management of people’s homes is almost as important as the ownership, so we should have a ballot to ensure that the proper will of tenants is carried out into practice.

I have Sheffield Homes in my constituency, so I see a different perspective. It is the only ALMO in the country which has had three stars three times running. It has improved the management and maintenance, reduced the costs and got tenants involved. There are still challenges to be faced, such as moving on to a more co-operative style of development in future. Sheffield Homes has been successful; it can be built on for the future and not reversed away from. At the end of the day, however, it is a matter for the tenants. I would like to think that, if there were any possibility of the council changing the management arrangements or the ownership arrangements, it would ballot the tenants, so that it will be the tenants’ views that are taken into account; that is what matters at the end of the day.

I have mentioned the reductions in capital funding as a result of the CSR. Work worth some £3.5 billion is still to be done to bring all social housing up to a decent standard, and there will be about £1.6 billion in the programme for the next four years.

In other words, we are probably talking about 10 years before all homes are brought up to a decent standard. The Minister will, of course, say that councils can use their own resources, and indeed Sheffield Homes and Sheffield city council are planning to do just that. The real problem, however, is that if Sheffield Homes and Sheffield city council use all the funding they currently have to bring the remaining homes up to a decent standard by 2013-14, without additional Government funding they will still be about 7% of homes short, though by and large those will be properties on which people have not wanted the work done and others that have become non-decent since 2010 because of their age. With every bit of Sheffield city council and Sheffield Homes’ capital expenditure being used for that, there will be an end to all heating replacement programmes in other properties that are crying out to have their heating replaced for energy efficiency and other reasons. Therefore, even when other money can be found, it will be at the expense of other important programmes. This is a three-star ALMO that has managed its money very well indeed.

On the decent homes standard, there has been a challenge and, as the report clearly spells out, there is also a challenge for the future. There is no point in bodies getting up to the standard if they then fall away from it. Another thing that we identified was the reform of the housing revenue account. I welcome, in principle, the Government’s proposals to reform that account, to give a say and control back to local authorities. The reform will give some certainty for the future, and is based, with one or two changes, on the proposals that the previous Minister for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), introduced under the Labour Government. One of those changes is that councils will now not be allowed to keep 100% of their right-to-buy receipts. There will also be extra borrowing controls, which are slightly worrying in that they will constrain councils’ ability to expand their resources to maintain homes to a decent standard. On the other hand, the removal of the need for rents to converge might provide a bit more flexibility in rent increases. I am not talking about the rents necessarily increasing to 80% of market rents, but councils that have put in a new heating system or insulation measures that reduce tenants’ heating bills, could put a bit extra on the rent. The tenants would contribute to the cost, but would probably pay less overall under the joint arrangement between landlord and tenant. That bit of flexibility might be welcome.

We have taken expert advice, which has indicated that under the Labour Government’s proposals the major repairs allowance in the housing revenue account was due to rise by about 25%. We understand that this Government also propose that, but we have not yet seen the precise figures. To maintain homes at a decent standard, and in particular to keep repairs up to a proper standard and replace the sanitary and kitchen fittings that were included under the decent homes programme but would have worn out, the figures show that a 40% to 60% increase in the major repairs allowance is needed, not the 25% proposed. It is worrying that there is an inbuilt disrepair element in both the previous Government’s proposal and that of this Government, and that sufficient funding might not be available to maintain the standards. Any future Government will have to address that challenge.

Other Members want to speak, so I shall conclude with some remarks on the private sector. The private sector was added to the decent homes programme as an afterthought, and it is often forgotten that it exists at all. It was not there at the beginning, in 2001, and adding it in has not been a great success. One fundamental problem was that the new fitness standards in the private sector, which came in in the middle of the programme, immediately added about 10% of private sector homes to the number of non-decent homes. The analysis showed that 3 million private homes with vulnerable households were non-decent when the programme began: 40% were homes with private tenants, and 65% were homes with owner-occupiers who were considered vulnerable because of the benefits they received. Those numbers are staggering. There was no general requirement to get all those homes up to a decent standard—only to do something to improve the numbers. While there probably has been some improvement in numbers, there has not been the same drive and the same co-ordinated programme as there has been with social housing tenants. Other problems come from many owner-occupiers of these homes not being able to afford the necessary repairs. They are potentially asset rich but income poor, and that is a real challenge for them.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend rightly draws attention to the fact that there is a housing standards problem in the private sector as well as in the public sector. I wish him to reflect on the situation facing Wolverhampton Homes, which is an ALMO that is a little more than halfway through its decent homes programme. It was expecting, according to the expenditure trajectory, some £100 million over the next two years. It has been estimated that if that were to fall by 40%, 5,000 non-decent homes would be left in the city in the public sector, let alone in the private sector, and there would have to be hundreds of redundancies. What kind of economic or social sense can that make, halfway through a programme in a city with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country?

[Mr Betts]

To my mind, it makes no sense at all, and it means asking people to remain in non-decent properties for a long time. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. In many ways it is the tenants who have been waiting the longest for the work who will now have to wait even longer: people at the back of the queue will find the head of the queue disappearing, and that is very worrying. At the rate of spending currently proposed by the Government, it could be 2020 before the backlog is cleared, remembering, of course, that the backlog will be added to because in the meantime more homes will fall into the non-decent category, through age or increasing disrepair. Unless we get increased public spending, the problem will be compounded rather than improved.

Another issue that we need to consider is the very worrying decline in construction activity in the last quarter of last year—the weather might have had a bit to do with it. Cutting back on the decent homes programme, which is more labour intensive than building new homes is, because pro rata more labour than materials goes into refurbishment than into construction, means even more job losses for every £1 million that is cut from the programme.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

On the private sector, 30% of my constituents live in private rented accommodation. I cannot give the figure for properties that do not meet decent homes standards, but I suspect that it is a considerable number. I expect that many landlords are loth to do necessary repairs and maintenance, so the condition of the properties rapidly deteriorates. They know that there will be a market out there in the future. Does the Select Committee see any way in which we can bring in better regulation to ensure both fair rents and decent standards in the private sector?

[Mr Betts]

There are ways, and some of them have been rejected by the Government, but I do not think that the decent homes standard is necessarily one of them because it was not enforceable. That is probably one reason why it did not really succeed. The new fitness standards are an improvement, and are tougher, but the problem is that many authorities do not put the resources into the private sector to ensure that the standards are implemented in a co-ordinated way. There should be a strategy for private housing in every local authority area, but many local authorities do not have one, and co-ordinated enforcement action is rarely taken in many parts of the country.

The Rugg report into the private sector proposed that we should have a register of all private sector landlords, but the Government have said that they are not going to go ahead with that. There were also proposals to have licensing of managing and letting agents, but the Government have said that they are not going to go ahead with that either. The possibility of regulation is, therefore, probably disappearing. The previous Government’s proposal for the household energy management strategy, which was going to cover all sectors, has been taken away and replaced by the green deal.

The Government have said that there will be proposals that reasonable tenant requests for energy efficiency improvements should not be refused, and proposals for minimum benchmarks for energy efficiency in properties, but there were caveats about them being subject to the availability of funding. I do not know how far the Government are prepared to go on that but, along with the repair requirements, it is a starting point for putting some basic energy efficiency requirements into private sector homes, which could be done separately.

By and large, we concluded in our report that it would be difficult simply to take decent homes from the social sector and transfer them to the private sector, but under the new homelessness provisions, landlords will be able to discharge their obligations to homeless families by allocating not social housing but a property in the private rented sector. If homeless families can be allocated such properties by local authorities, are the Government prepared to do something about the standards of those properties? They should not allow any council to put a family in a private rented property unless it meets very high standards indeed. Some form of regulation would be another way we could seek to drive up standards.

I have spoken for a while and taken interventions. As I have explained, the report was generally congratulatory as regards the success of the decent homes programme, but we recognised that this is also about individual tenants. For the many thousands who are satisfied, a substantial number are still waiting for work to be carried out, as my hon. Friends have indicated, and they are now likely to have to wait even longer.

There are challenges, and we need to ensure that standards are maintained—it is a question not just of achieving standards, but of maintaining them. In terms of energy efficiency, it is also about doing something to improve standards. There is still a long way to go in the private sector, because the decent homes programme really has not had a major impact there.

To conclude, the Committee said, “We congratulate the Government”—the last Government, I should add—

“on its achievements so far in the decent homes programme. Notwithstanding the difficulties of the current public sector spending climate and the importance of continuing to make progress towards eliminating the remaining backlog, however, now is the time to build on those achievements, not to sit back on them. The Government needs to look beyond the existing decent homes programme and plan for a future in which social tenants, private tenants and owner-occupiers all have the opportunity of living in a warm, well-maintained and reasonably well-equipped home.”

I think that is a reasonable point on which to finish.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan). This debate has demonstrated how much every speaker cares about housing in their own area and on how much we agree, although we will always disagree about how much money is spent by whichever Government are in power. Many Labour Members were cross during the first four years of the Labour Government, way back in 1997, when we felt that housing was being given the least priority. That changed, but if we had given housing a great deal more priority from day one, we would be in a much better position today.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who introduced this debate, on his commitment to housing over a long period. He has always ensured that the matter is raised in Parliament. I say to the Minister that his job is probably one of the most difficult in the Government, because housing affects every MP from the inner city to rural areas, as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) has said. It is the most important issue that I encounter at my constituency surgeries. For many of us, it is there all the time, and we get more and more frustrated and depressed, because we know that we can do little to help people who are desperately overcrowded and want to move or who are homeless.

On cost, there is no point arguing about how another Government would have spent more or done things differently. Undoubtedly, cuts would have had to come. We all want to support the Minister in arguing his case with the Treasury in terms of the cost-benefit analysis of spending and investment in housing. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North has discussed the cost of people living in bad housing. The cost to our national health service of the people affected by bad housing conditions and overcrowding is huge, as it is more likely that they will need treatment, which costs money. Although we have our differences in terms of specific party politics, we must do everything that we can collectively to say to Governments of all parties that investment in housing saves money in the long term.

I will make one or two quick points. The reason why I did not put in my name, Mr Bone, is that I was not sure how long the introduction to a new report on a ban on Heathrow night flights would take. It did not take as long as I thought it would, so I am able to be here.

Many of the Adjournment debates that I have secured concerned housing in Lambeth. Lambeth is one of those boroughs in which politics change, council leadership changes and coalitions form—we have had it all during my time as a Member of Parliament—but one thing that does not seem to change is the culture and how it is run, particularly in terms of housing. I opposed the ALMO in Lambeth, as I thought that it would end up simply as a change of function from the local authority, and that the same kind of people would run the ALMO. I have been proved more or less right. The ALMO was approved by a tiny majority—3,518 to 3,362—so I appreciate that it did not start with a mountain of support. Some good people have been involved, and some have worked hard.

I add my thanks to the people at the bottom of the structure—those who do the cleaning on the estates, particularly those who are in-house. Despite all the changes at the top, in which they never seem to be involved, and despite all the factors against them, they try to deliver good services, where they can. They are at the sharp end where the cuts will come, which will not affect the people on £250,000 a year—the directors and assistant directors of when we seem to have so many, who get huge amounts of money that never seems to be cut. I would love the Select Committee to investigate the costs of how we deliver services. Any tenant or resident leader who has been involved in their tenants or residents association for a long time could simply come in and say how much things could be changed and made different.

We did not get a two-star rating in my constituency. When the ALMO was set up, most people moved to it. We got a few changes, but we are no nearer to getting a two-star rating now than we were when we started. The tenants and I have always said, “What happens when there is a change of Government? Is there a plan B? Will ALMOs still be supported? Will a two-star rating mean anything?” I am quite pleased that we have got rid of this whole two-star thing, because in the end, it is not the tenants’ fault that the ALMO does not have a two-star rating. The tenants worked so hard to make it happen. Now we are in a situation in which we do not have a two-star rating, and we have a huge number of homes that are not up to the decent homes standard. We have put in a bid for £217 million, but we are unlikely to get it, and we should be coming to the Minister now with our priorities.

One or two estates are real priorities. I could take hon. Members to an estate, which is a 10-minute walk from the House of Commons, where the windows are falling out, which is something that people have been living with for a long time. I cannot understand why we do not have a system where we look at the estate and assess how much it would cost to get the windows in. We will spend more money—just like we spent more than £1 million on getting an ALMO—on preparing the costs and the analyses, and companies will come back time after time. It is usually the same old companies that get the jobs anyway. All those people go around tendering against one another and operating cosy little cartels. It often ends up with someone getting a lot of money, and sometimes the standard of the work is not adequate.

Decent homes standards cover more than just the home itself. Some of my older residents do not want a new kitchen and like their sinks or whatever. In fact, some of the sinks that were taken out were sold to rich people who wanted to install an old-fashioned sink. A decent homes standard is different for everybody.

It upsets me that we have many empty flats and homes in Lambeth. When a tenant moves out or dies, their home is empty. Suddenly, that home cannot be let, because it is not up to decent homes standards, even though someone was living there two or three weeks ago, which is absolutely ridiculous. We should be able to allow people with a bit of nous who are on the housing waiting list to go in and do their work, like the old Greater London Council used to do. As long as the electrics and the health and safety are right, I do not see why anyone should not be allowed to go in and take the flat. Instead, we have flats sitting empty for months and even years. Then the council says, “We had better sell them off now because we cannot afford to make them good.” It is absolutely scandalous, and I hope that the Minister will say that he will encourage such a route.

[Mr Betts]

Where councils let a property which is not decent and the tenant moves in, there is a guarantee that once they have been in for a short period of time, it will be brought up to a decent standard, which is a condition of the letting being accepted. In such a case, the money might be taken away and the council might not honour its promise, which would be a real problem for a tenant who had moved in under such circumstances.

[Kate Hoey]

I want to go further. If a person is handy and can do a bit of plumbing, why can we not let them move in and fix things up themselves? For the first six months, they could live rent-free or pay a reduced rent, which is what the GLC used to do. If the flats are used, more rent comes into the borough thereby giving councils more money. If we leave the homes empty, no one is paying rent. I feel strongly about that.

Finally, housing associations have become more and more like the old style, one-size-fits-all council, which we have tried to get away from. I was very supportive of the tenants who wanted Hyde Housing to take over a great deal of the housing stock in Stockwell, but we have recently experienced the most appalling problems with that organisation. When it finally realised that things were going wrong, representatives came down and were responsive to the tenants. The chief executive has now gone, which may be why things have changed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes]

A fantastic unity is developing: I see the Minister nodding; the hon. Member for Islington North, who is not regarded as a right-wing socialist, is making the point; and I agree with the hon. Member for Islington North, so we are all in it together. That is absolutely the point. Many people improve their council properties and make them really nice. If they move, there is absolutely no reason why the new tenants should not be offered the option to keep the property as it is. It might need a bit of a tweak, but the tenants should be offered the chance to find somebody to help them make whatever small changes they need before they move in. Let us be intelligent about such things rather than monolithic, prescriptive and centralised. That approach is frustrating; it wastes time and money; and it keeps people out of housing at a time when we are desperately short of it.

I want to finish in good time—we might even finish the debate early. I have argued for a flexible decent homes standard that is agreed locally, and it should be for local authorities to negotiate that. Possibly such a standard would need Government clearance, but I am relaxed about that. If the local authority is happy, provided that the minimum health and safety standards are met, that is fine.

I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell), has made this point, and I, too, am keen to have a modern, green homes standards. If we refurbish, let us make the homes energy-efficient at the same time and save on bills, as well as just making them look nice with new windows and so on. Let us try to minimise the short turnaround.

This is not special pleading, because I have a reason for making this plea. When money is being allocated to local authorities, sometimes there are high expenditure issues that should be factored in so that councils are not disadvantaged as a result. We had a huge fire in Camberwell. It was not in my constituency but in the neighbouring constituency of the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman). It was just a couple of years ago and there were six fatalities. It was in Lakanal house on the Sceaux Gardens estate.

We had a fire in my constituency two weeks ago. It was in a tower block—Brawne house—on the Brandon estate. Mercifully, there were no fatalities and no serious injuries. I visited the 12th floor with the local councillor and secretary of the local tenants and residents association. Sometimes there are unexpected bills, because a terrible event has occurred, and I hope that councils will not be not penalised when such disasters strike, because they need to ensure that the properties are put back into decent nick. The matter concerns not only the homes affected but the block, and the council might need to repaint or deal with fire damage or whatever. It is not right to tell a local authority that there are no circumstances in which it cannot be regarded as a special case for extra help. I am not suggesting that there should be a differential formula for special help, but occasionally there has to be special help for those who have such problems.

Decent homes work is a fantastic opportunity for enhancing local apprenticeships and skills in the local community. There should not be any local authority or local housing association-owned property where decent homes work is going on that does not engage people from the local community in apprenticeships, skills enhancement and training. I hope that that can be encouraged and that the experience is positive. I know that Southwark does it, and we could do more of it.

Colleagues have made the point that leaseholders have a huge interest in what is being done. We need a better system for consulting about works. I have twice tried to get a Bill through to improve the rights of leaseholders, otherwise the leaseholders get ridiculously high bills. Pensioners with no savings can get a bill for £27,000 for works that they never assented to. The work may include replacing windows after people have already replaced them themselves, which is nonsense. I am not aiming that point at one particular council. The City of London corporation owns estates in my constituency and has been guilty of that in the past, when I had to struggle to get the bills down.

We need to ensure that there is fairness across communities and estates as part of the decent homes programme. That is a matter for the local authority to lead. Nothing is more frustrating for tenants who have been on an estate for 30 years than seeing that blocks one, two, three and four have had all the work done and look like new builds, and then somebody says, “You can’t have anything in block five for the next five years.” Those are all matters for local management. There needs to be sensitivity about how we roll out the decent homes programme. We are at the beginning of a new Government and the decent homes programme will continue for the next four years, which is welcome.

[Mr Betts]

The right hon. Gentleman is right that these are matters for local decisions, but they are also a matter for central Government if the first group of houses—blocks or individual houses—have been done under the first part of the programme, and suddenly central Government funding is cut, as some of my colleagues discussed earlier, perhaps before the right hon. Gentleman came in. Therefore, half the houses in the ALMO have been done, and the other half remain to be done, but then money is cut off as a result of the CSR, so it is surely a central Government rather than local government decision whether the programme continues.

[Simon Hughes]

I hope that we can finish the debate without falling out with the hon. Gentleman on fairly obvious political ground. The reality is that Governments allocate money for periods of years—years rather than one year—which is a good thing, because it gives certainty. The Government have chosen, as they were entitled to do, to have a four-year plan, but it has been broken down into two periods of two years each, which is the right sort of balance. I hope that Ministers will be able to show flexibility at the end of two years. That is my wish, but it will be their call.

Obviously, when we change Government, or when we have a new CSR, we will have to reassess what the public finances can afford. I have not met a single person in England who does not understand that we have to tighten our belts collectively—Government, local government and everybody else. Nobody fails to understand that point. The question is how we continue the programme that the Minister has announced and deliver it fairly. As councils make decisions about what they will do, I hope that they will seek to have fairness in their community, so that everybody feels part of the improvement programme not only for their own home, but for that community as a whole.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) on securing the debate—or, rather, the Backbench Committee on nominating it and the Chairman of the Select Committee on securing it. It has been a high-quality debate and, after listening to it for the past three hours, I know why. It started with a political back and forth in the opening few minutes, but it then settled down to be a most intelligent and well-argued debate, with people who are passionate about social housing. It has been very good. In that spirit, I will follow the same path.

Let us get the politics out of the way. We know that the money had run out and that it was no longer possible to continue borrowing money we did not have to build a greater deficit that our children and their kids would carry on paying for the rest of their lives. Something had to change. When the hon. Member for Sheffield South East spoke about “our cuts,” I had to resist shouting back, “But they are not ‘our’ cuts!”; they are the cuts that the previous Administration were not prepared to make.

I am delighted that that is out of the way, because I can now start to address, in as much detail as possible, the excellent comments that have been made this afternoon. I shall preface my comments by saying that, despite the economic environment in which we find ourselves, the decent homes programme has not been cut by anywhere near as much as the Chair of the Select Committee suggested. I want to pick him up on his twice-repeated claim that there has been a 50% reduction to the programme. That is untrue. A reduction was made to the programme under the previous Administration. My predecessor, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), raided the programme for £150 million in—I speak from memory—July 2009 to pay something towards the so-called housing pledge, which is the new build programme. That was the first cut to the decent homes programme.

I think I am right in saying that some £319 million was indicatively signalled to have been spent on the programme, but, despite these economic times and some tough decisions, we are still spending just over £2 billion on decent homes, which, thinking back to the spending review, is more than most commentators thought likely. It is divided into about £1.6 billion to local authorities and £500 million to help some of the organisations that are in transition having left local authorities. I just wanted to put that on record. It could be argued that the reduction is 15% or 20%, but not 50%.

[Mr Betts]

I have a note based on information from the scrutiny unit of the House, which indicated that the reduction was from £2.6 billion over three years to £2 billion over four. It said that that was a cut of 42% without taking account of inflation, so I think that my figure of a 50% cut is about right.

[Grant Shapps]

We could knock these figures back and forth, but I reject the idea that the cut is about 50%. I accept, however, that more money needs to be spent on decent homes.