Social Housing

Emma Dent Coad Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) for bringing forward this debate, which has provoked really good comments across the House.

In my constituency, the council has, at last, initiated a programme of building homes for social rent. This depends on the Mayor of London’s funding pot of £33 million, for which we are very grateful, to provide 330 new homes. That will go some way towards replacing the 120 homes lost in the Grenfell Tower fire and housing 135 homeless households, as of yesterday, still waiting for permanent accommodation—those from the tower itself, those from Grenfell Walk, and those from the neighbouring walkways who cannot bear to continue to live there.

However, this is not just about numbers. Our council, I am afraid, has a poor record in providing new social rented homes. It entered into a devil’s deal with a developer partner whereby a number of homes for social rent, some intermediate and some for private rental, were built. Sadly, some were very poorly constructed. Construction standards in many were appalling. In one new development, the drains constantly backed up into the kitchen sinks. The homes had to be evacuated while the floors were drilled out and new drains fitted. In another, dodgy drains brought rats up into the building’s first floor, where they could run unhindered as the supposed fire doors had such large gaps underneath them. This was a building that some Grenfell survivors had been moved into. The roof leaked. A ceiling collapsed. The lift broke, and a traumatised resident was stuck in it for hours. Radiators were found not actually to be attached to the central heating system. These problems continue.

In some of our new housing association mixed developments, the story is the same. In brand new buildings, roofs have leaked, ceilings have collapsed, loos and hand basins have fallen off the walls, and even a floor has collapsed. Membranes were not fitted into the external walls, so damp came straight through, causing black mould. Balconies were not fitted with drainage, so they flooded. Badly fitted cladding and window surrounds allowed rain to come in. Some basement flats flooded as door jambs were set too low. These properties, which are just three years old, are just a few examples of a common problem.

Throughout all this, the council is powerless to act. We have spoken to environmental health, building control and health and safety, and they do not have the powers of enforcement they need to make a difference. These issues are endemic across the country. We have a generation of, frankly, grotty new buildings. Many may not last 50 years, as did their predecessors that were demolished to make way for them.

The drop in construction standards is due to the total lack of strategic forward thinking. We have relied on skilled workers from abroad for so long that we forgot to train our own. Now that tens of thousands have returned —many to eastern Europe—due to Brexit anxiety, we have huge gaps in our skills, and no one is planning to invest in training for employment in the construction industry. The other issue, of course, is developer greed. They specify the cheapest possible materials to make a larger profit. I do not need to list the horrors that that can produce.

If we are to build 1 million homes, we need not only changes to the housing finance system and Government funding, but a generation of skilled workers, as the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) said, and the building materials to create good-quality, well-built homes. Apprenticeships should be the answer, but many of them are poor quality. Some provide little training, apart from how to wield a glue gun; that is an actual case. The apprenticeship levy was a good idea but is poorly implemented. I believe that the pot has reached £1 billion, but contributing and receiving companies tell me that they do not have time to push through the complex bureaucracy, nor do many of them have the capacity to give good training, with all the best intentions. We must train our young people.

A specific Kensington-based problem is that of luxury developments left empty, which forces up the cost of everything, including social housing, and makes it even more difficult to build the homes we need for everybody. Many luxury homes, we suspect, are bought to launder illegally gained money. We hope that this matter will begin to be tackled next year, when the Registration of Overseas Entities Bill becomes law. I was pleased to sit on the Joint Committee that scrutinised the draft Bill. It will force beneficial owners to register their names and, we hope, will disincentivise the drug lords, people traffickers and other vermin who want to dump their dirty money in my constituency.

I will give an example of a luxury development with empty flats. On Kensington Road, almost opposite Kensington Palace, there was a 700-bed Victorian hotel, of Italianate design, in a perfectly good state. It was quite an interesting building. It was bought up by Candy and Candy, which flattened the site and was given permission by our fabulous council to build a luxury development of 97 flats. I pass that building regularly, and only four of the lights are ever on. Imagining that the flats had all been bought and left empty, I spoke to the staff, who said that some of them had not even been sold after four years but were being kept off the market to keep the price up. I find that absolutely obscene.

As we begin commemorations tonight on the second anniversary of the atrocity of the Grenfell Tower fire in my neighbourhood, it cannot be clearer that we need to create a new generation of social rented homes, with stable tenancies, of good quality, where families can fulfil their dreams, increase productivity and reach their full potential in security and safety.