Social Housing Standards

Clive Betts Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.

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

May I associate myself with the aims that the Secretary of State has set out in his statement? I think they will be supported across the House.

I draw the Secretary of State’s attention to the Select Committee’s report, “The Regulation of Social Housing”, published in July—I gently remind him that the Department has not yet replied to it. In the report, we identified some social housing that was unfit for human habitation, and causing the sorts of health problems that tragically have been seen in this case. We identified problems with repair reporting, complaints handling, and a lack of proactive inspection of properties by housing providers and the social housing regulator. We put that in context and said

“some blame must attach to successive Governments for not investing enough in new homes, which has increased the sector’s reliance on outdated stock, and for not providing funding specifically for regeneration.”

Some of those are not individual repairs; there are failures of whole blocks and whole estates. I say to the Secretary of State: let us share the common objectives, and let us work together to get the money to ensure that those objectives can be realised.

[Michael Gove]

Of course, when the hon. Gentleman and his Committee published their report, I think I had just beforehand left office, and only relatively recently have I returned to office. But it is a powerful report, and the points he makes are fair and necessary. The concerns he raised about the state of repair and complaints handling have been articulated for many years, and the report brings very much to the front of mind the need to tackle those concerns urgently. His broader point about the need for investment in our housing stock, and our social housing stock overall, is very much a mission of my Department, not least in ensuring that Homes England, and others, can work with registered social landlords to ensure the regeneration of estates—including in Sheffield—that have been neglected for too long.