Private Rented Sector Housing

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) for calling this important debate. The Minister may be aware that yesterday, at the Select Committee on Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, we heard powerful testimonies from two social housing tenants about similar issues in the private rented sector.

My constituency of Vauxhall, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), has one of the highest levels of private renters in the country. The average house price in Vauxhall is around £600,000, as of June 2021. Private renters also pay more than their fair share, often spending more than a quarter—in some cases, a third—of their income on rent.

For that cost, the very least my constituents deserve is to live in housing in good condition. That means that the properties they are renting should meet modern standards of insulation and energy efficiency. It means that structural defects should be fixed and not left to cause serious problems. It means that urgent repairs should be carried out rapidly, to a high standard. It means expecting the same standards and efficiency from a landlord that homeowners deserve and have in their own properties.

Too often we see private rented properties not living up to those standards. Instead, we see tenants living with health-damaging features, such as mould, for months if not years. We see requests to fix faults met with sticking-plaster solutions. Although many of us may associate disrepair and poor energy efficiency with our elderly housing stock, those renting new homes and flats are not immune to finding some of the issues that I have talked about. That was the case for my constituent, Louise. She moved into new student accommodation in Vauxhall, as her family home was overcrowded and she wanted space during her time at university. The student accommodation was in a new tower block and Louise moved in soon after it opened in September last year.

Unfortunately, where Louise should have expected a new quality build, she instead found something only half done, according to her description. She says her experience has included being stuck in lifts that did not work, with firefighters coming out to help her; hot water issues; dirty water coming from taps; and tailgaters coming into the building. She said that amenities such as the laundry room were not opened until October, despite her moving in in early September. In addition, the kitchen doors and curtains were all missing.

Louise is far from alone in that experience. It is worth remembering that this is student accommodation, where many are accessing the private rented sector for the first time, and so many are scared to speak up, but continue to live in those substandard conditions. We need to understand that lack of agency when we talk about standards enforcement and ensure that conditions across the board meet the standards that we all expect. First, where standards are in place, as hon. Members have said, local councils’ ability to regulate them is drastically undermined by the cuts imposed by central Government. That makes proactive action hard and it means that tenants with so little experience of the private rental sector are unfortunately exploited by unscrupulous landlords. Providing fair funding to local authorities would allow the enforcement bodies to clean up the sector and ensure that those without a voice were not left at the mercy of disrepair.

Secondly, the insecurity at the heart of current private tenancy law goes hand-in-hand with the fears of raising issues with properties and demanding rights as a tenant. Next month, as the Minister knows, will be three years since the Government promised to end section 21 evictions, yet we are still to see that in the renters reform Bill. I hope the Minister will listen to our contributions this afternoon. I know he cares passionately about this area. I hope he will commit to bringing that vital piece of legislation forward as soon as possible to provide that reassurance and, most importantly, the protection that my constituents in Vauxhall deserve and renters up and down the country need.