Non-commissioned Exempt Accommodation

Dan Carden Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes]

The hon. Lady gives me the opportunity to make an important point. The “more than minimal” line was not prescribed in law—to a degree, one might say that it is even worse than that, because it came about through case law and legal challenge. Landlords and the services that they provide are a difficult area and are difficult for councils to challenge.

Fortunately, through the pilots, we have been able to help to educate council officers and explain best practice so that they have been able to challenge. The problem is that that needs to be focused and done all the time. Obviously, any council can challenge the support that is being provided, but that requires the council to put in the effort—perhaps to go round and visit the property and speak to the tenants to understand the support that is being provided—and determine whether it feels that meets the threshold and subsequently challenge. Part of the problem is that councils have done that, but because of the low level, they have lost such challenges. We need to ensure that we are helping those providers because there are a lot of good providers out there. We need to do our best to support and encourage them and then, I hope, signpost people to the appropriate accommodation for them. I appreciate and accept the difficult situation, but as I say, I hope that we will understand best practice better from the pilots and share it more widely. As I have said, should legislative changes be required, that is not something we would shy away from.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

But this is bigger than just the regulation. What we have in the most deprived communities, such as Walton and Anfield, is property management companies in London, Milton Keynes and other parts of the country buying up swathes of property to run a supported housing racket. It needs intervention from Government.

[Eddie Hughes]

Just as a particular example, it is possible for councils to investigate such properties, and where landlords are seen to be letting out unsafe properties, they can apply for banning orders and fines of up to £30,000 are available, so powers are available—

[Dan Carden]

indicated dissent.

[Eddie Hughes]

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is shaking his head, but I would just say that councils need to be encouraged to use the legislation already available to them to the max before we reach for a legislative answer to the problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood). I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), who made a tour-de-force contribution to the debate. The Minister could not do better than getting her into the Department and taking some of her sage advice. It is reassuring to hear us debating exempt accommodation in the House of Commons, because in recent weeks I have visited constituents of mine who are neighbours of some of the rogue providers. It is a dominating issue, because it is about vulnerable people, often with significant challenges, and they are losing out in all of this. Exempt accommodation should be a vital function, helping the most marginalised and vulnerable groups in society, but instead all too often it seems to be making up for the chronic shortages of affordable social housing.

We see social housing now at its lowest rate in decades, and there is an annual net loss of 24,000 social homes. One outcome is that we are now over-reliant on exempt accommodation, often at extortionate costs. Supported housing commands far higher rents, which is one of the reasons why it is not under the housing benefit cap. Landlords can demand higher rents than for social or privately rented housing. Of course, there could be a legitimate reason for that, and there are good providers delivering quality services, but let us be under no illusions: unscrupulous agencies are exploiting the enormous gaps in the regulatory regime to rake in higher rents while providing minimal support and, as is too often the case, substandard housing.

In theory, transitional forms of supported housing should be a bridge to independent living. They should be a way for vulnerable people to have a safe place that they can call home where they receive the support that they need to regain their independence. There are shining examples. Damien John Kelly House in Picton in Liverpool—a home for men in recovery from addiction—is one such place. It is a fantastic community that supports, inspires and allows for transformational change. The difference between substandard housing and a good provider is that the good provider offers a community and support work, including support for mental health, while a bad provider might only give someone a key for a cupboard in a shared kitchen and an extra lock on their door. The difference is so significant, and it either makes or ruins people’s lives.

People in my constituency have written to me for help. They live in what they thought was supported housing only to realise that the support package they were promised does not exist and might consist of as little as a CCTV camera in the hallway. The reality of the supported housing racket is vulnerable residents with complex needs living in squalor, isolated, without access to local services, sharing a house with residents who all require specialist support. What is bad for those people living in the properties can quickly escalate to blight the lives of their neighbours and the local community. That experience is all too familiar for my constituents in Anfield and Walton and those further afield.

While vulnerable residents and the community around them suffer, rogue landlords and agencies collect rents from the taxpayer far in excess of allowance rates and without proper regulation. They game the system easily and without consequence. It is a lucrative enterprise for some, operated and funded by the state, and it is almost completely unaccountable. Liverpool has seen a recent influx of these properties, because we have many larger properties that are ripe for conversion to HMOs or exempt accommodation. They are targeted by investment companies from far and wide who buy up cheaper properties in the most deprived areas and lease them to umbrella management companies who moonlight as supported housing providers. The result is that rents are set artificially high to maximise the yield for investors. The net cost to Liverpool after receipt of Government subsidy has risen year on year, to £4 million in 2020. As profits for landlords increase, so do reports of poorly managed, unsafe accommodation that provides threadbare support.

There are so many loopholes that allow for that profiteering. Registered providers are not even subject to the most basic licensing requirements that HMOs must legally comply with. That must be unjustifiable. In 2020, the Government introduced the national statement of expectations for supported housing, so they have tried to deal with this problem fairly recently. The statement sets out standards for the accommodation element of supported housing. However, it is a reference tool—a polite suggestion at best. It must be developed, toughened up and put on a statutory footing. The standards must be legally enforceable. The statement does not even include minimum quality standards for the support, care and supervision that these companies are being paid inflated rents to deliver. It is so poorly defined that an extra lock on a door would pass the test every time. Local authorities could be given the powers to regulate the sector, but that must go hand-in-hand with proper funding and support.

Finally, I see providing a decent home for every person as the most important challenge facing our country. The public pays in the region of £20 billion each year in housing support—money that more often than not lines the pockets of property investment companies and landlords. The reason we are not building decent homes for all has nothing to do with constraints on public spending, It is a free-for-all when public spending lines the pockets of profiteers—we see it time and again. It is this Government’s choice not to invest public money in public provision and that is unjustifiable. It would cost the Government half of what they pay in housing support each year to return us to the spending levels on housebuilding of the post-war Governments of the 1940s and 1950s who strived to make this a country that works for all its citizens, and from which we have today diverted so far away.