Local Government Finance

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I can only reiterate what the hon. Gentleman has said and what I said earlier: they do fine work and most do not do it for money but because they have the interests of their local communities at heart. That should always be the case, and those are the kind of councillors that we want. Where people have expenses to do their jobs, that needs to be properly compensated for.

Will the Minister accept that the majority of the extra money provided through the settlement is raised through council tax increases, which are effectively taxes on local taxpayers—that is, working people? As he is sensible and considered, does he regret the fact that the Prime Minister stood on a stage in Swindon on 30 March 2023 with the Deputy Prime Minister, who is also the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, stating that he would freeze council tax for the first year they were in Government? That has not been the case. The Prime Minister quite clearly promised

“a tax cut for the 99 per cent of working people who are facing a rise in their council tax”.

His words were also that there would be

“not one penny on your council tax”.

We said then that those promises were not worth the paper they were written on. How right we were.

Under Labour, typical council tax bills are to rise by 5% in April 2025, in another increased tax on working people. That means that the average household faces an above-inflation increase of around £100 in their council tax bills in that year. All that will do in many cases is fill the black hole in council finances that Labour is creating due to an increase in national insurance contributions. Furthermore, it is quite clear that Labour is deliberately funding largely Labour-led urban areas at the expense of rural areas.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is one of the more reasonable of his party’s Front Benchers—not that he needs my praise.

Between 2010 and 2024, Stoke-on-Trent city council had a cumulative loss of £411 million. In cash terms, if the budget had been frozen and there had been no increases, we would have had that much more in spend. Does the shadow Minister accept that the damage that his party did in local government cannot simply be fixed in one settlement after seven months of a Labour Government?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I have spoken before about the financial pressures all councils are under. That is principally due to rising demand on services; that is the reality. Eighty per cent of discretionary spend is on the three areas I referred to earlier. There is no doubt that there are challenging circumstances. Nevertheless, the vast majority of money raised through the settlement is through council tax, and much of the money raised for core spending power will go on national insurance rises. There are direct costs, but there are also indirect costs that are not covered. Many councils will be worse off as a result.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) was talking about fairness, which we all believe in. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) will have a different perspective on fairness from other people. The reality is that there is a political division here. One thing that we must agree on is that the statutory duties on councils should be properly funded. My concern is that that will not be the case, and lots of those pressures fall differently on rural councils compared with urban councils.

[Gareth Snell]

Under the formula that has been proposed and on which we will vote this evening, Stoke-on-Trent city council will receive a recovery grant of £8.2 million. I hope that the shadow Minister is not saying that, were the Conservative party still in Government, we would not receive that additional cash, and would therefore be £8.2 million worse off.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

It is interesting, because the loss of the rural service delivery grant cost my local authority £14 million, so it depends where we draw the line and what the priorities are. The change in the rural services delivery grant is robbing Peter to pay Paul. That is the reality.

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[Mr Forster]

I thank the Minister for admitting that the 0.3% rise in DCN funding is happening. I do not think he can say that the Liberal Democrats and I are looking both ways on unitarisation, based on the statement earlier and the questions that took this debate later than Members might have wanted. We have concerns about unitarisation, particularly about the way that the Government are doing it. Fundamentally, we welcome reform of local government, but it cannot be imposed on councils and local areas, and we are concerned that that is happening. My county council, Surrey county council, has 14 days of reserves left—that is how bad of a state its finances are in. The Minister has talked about the past 14 years; I am more worried about the 14 days until my local authority, which is protecting vulnerable elderly people and children, will run out of money.

Social care is another area where the previous Government failed miserably, and I worry that Labour is set to repeat the same mistakes. Councils that provide social care are supposed to be better off under this settlement, but the reality is that demand for care is rising, costs are soaring, and local authorities are still struggling to meet their legal needs—I am sure all Members know that from their casework, and we see it time and again in tribunals. The Government’s allocation of funding for social care is simply not enough, and their refusal to commit to long-term reform, and particularly to have a long-term inquiry, will make the problem worse, not better.

On top of that, local authorities are saddled with extra costs from the Government’s policies. The increases in national insurance contributions will push up payroll costs for councils across the country, yet the Government’s package of support is lacking. Councils will be short of hundreds of millions of pounds just from NI contributions, and once again they will be pushed to increase council tax or cut services.

The Liberal Democrats are concerned that rural councils will suffer as a result of the Government’s decision to remove the rural services delivery grant in favour of the new recovery grant. The new grant will be allocated through a need and demand basis, and we are concerned that that will exclude rural councils from critical funding because it does not consider the specific reasons that the delivery of services is more expensive in rural areas.

[Gareth Snell]

Stoke-on-Trent will get £8 million from the recovery grant, and we are the fifth poorest city in the country. The hon. Member and I want to see services in our communities funded, so I urge him not to fall into the false trap that the Conservatives are setting by trying to pit our councils against one another. I want services, and he wants services; we need to agree to fund them properly and not be put into some sort of “Hunger Games” competition.

[Mr Forster]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his helpful contribution. We should not have councils competing against each other, but although we have to recognise deprivation, and local government funding should be linked to that, we also have to recognise the cost of delivering services. Our fear is that removing the rural services delivery grant will not do that.

Last year the rural services delivery grant provided £110 million to rural councils to compensate for the vast rural areas that they serve, but this means that they will now face higher costs. We are concerned about, and it will leave rural communities and residents struggling, with fewer services and higher taxes. The Liberal Democrats urge the Government to provide rural councils with the funding settlement they need.

The Liberal Democrats believe in properly funding local government so that we can care for the people we need to care for, house the people we need to house, and protect vulnerable residents. I thank the Minister and his officials for putting the funding settlement together. It is a step in the right direction and an improvement on what we have seen, but as I think the Minister will concede, it couldn’t not be—it was always going to be better. This is a step in the right direction, but the challenges we face as a society and a country are huge, and the Liberal Democrats and I need to hold the Government to account to make sure that this is the last one-year single financial settlement. We need to make sure that social care is properly funded. That does not mean kicking the can down the road in three years’ time. It means that the homelessness strategy that we are promised in July genuinely solves the problem, genuinely tackles prevention, and is fully funded.

We also need to tackle special educational needs on a long-term, cross-party basis, not kick the can down the road, which is the fear for those issues. I was pleased that the Minister agreed—almost conceded—to have a cross-party review into the council tax system. The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) highlighted that his constituents in a band H property are charged £3,000 more than for a band H property in London, which is unacceptable. It is well known that Buckingham Palace pays the same level of council tax as an average three-bedroom semi-detached in Blackpool. That is not reasonable. We must fundamentally tackle those issues.

The Liberal Democrats and I are immensely grateful for the councillors and council staff who give up their time and their lives to shape their communities. We cannot let them down in this House, and they need to be fully funded going forward.

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[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (North Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow my very hard-working, excellent deputy on the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who has huge knowledge on local government matters. In fact, whenever we come to local government matters in the Committee, we always defer to him.

I echo the opening remarks by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) about our hard-working councillors up and down the country, whatever their political persuasion. Often, they work many hours and do not get much pay for it. They do it because they want to improve the lot of their local communities, so I warmly welcome that. I even echo his opening remarks to the Local Government Minister, who I always think is a fair and reasonable man. He has dealt with this matter in a knowledgeable and professional way, and I pay tribute to him.

I want to pick up on a couple of things from the excellent speech by the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi). She is very knowledgeable on this whole matter. First, the local health grant, which has been picked up by others, is peanuts in comparison with the total health budget, but if we can keep the population more healthy through the things that she said and other preventive measures, it would be far better for them and far cheaper for the country in the longer run. I do not know why Governments of all colours have not paid more attention to that.

Secondly, I want to pick up on local housing allowances, which the hon. Member for Sheffield South East also mentioned. As he said, the impact on homelessness has not really been calculated, which our PAC report made perfectly clear. The Minister needs to look at that relationship and how we can get a closer, more targeted local housing allowance or another allowance to alleviate the problem of some of the poorest in our society who cannot afford the houses that they live in, and who have to be subsidised to a considerable extent by the local authority, putting even more pressure on it.

Often, local government is not understood by our constituents, but they certainly know when they are not getting the services they pay for from their council. Council tax bills are increasing up and down the country. I was shocked to read that some people’s council tax is going up by as much as 10%, as the Secretary of State has given permission to override the legislation in place for a referendum to be called if council tax is raised by more than 5%. I remind the House, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton did, that the Prime Minister stated in Bristol that he would freeze council tax bills for all. Clearly, that is not the case. I would love it if he was able to, but clearly when he said it, it was not realistic.

The Public Accounts Committee, which I have the great honour to chair on behalf of this House to try to expose how the taxpayer’s pound is spent—well or not, as the case may be—has taken a strong interest in local government. We will shine a light on the areas needed, as will the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee. Together, hopefully we can make a real positive difference in the way that services are delivered for people up and down this country.

It is clear that local government finances have increasingly become more dependent on council tax rather than central Government grants. I listened to the speech by the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) about his local council, but it cannot be denied that some councils have managed their budgets better than others.

I welcome the multi-year settlements that this Government have introduced. We often criticise the Government, but I think these settlements will be warmly welcomed by councils, and would, I think, be welcomed in other areas of Government spending, too. Like a business, local authorities will be able to plan, investing taxpayers’ money into longer-term projects with more certainty, and therefore hopefully using money more efficiently.

I urge the Government in their review of the funding formula to keep in mind the rural-urban divide, which we have had quite a lot of discussion about this evening. In what I am going to say, I do not to wish pit one council against another in any way—that is not the object of what I am saying. I simply say that if we put the emphasis more on one facet and less on the other, we will benefit some councils and disadvantage others. The problem with rural councils is that in many cases it costs more for them to deliver services, which is not properly reflected in the grant. Even the House of Commons Library says that scrapping the rural service grant and replacing it with a recovery grant already demonstrates a divide. According to the Library, which is supposed to be independent, the change in methodology for allocating money has meant that rural areas are losing out to urban areas and city centres.

Now, I do not want to get into deep water, but a need is a need. Adult and children’s social services, which have been mentioned today, are both high-consuming, voluntary parts of the budget, and are increasing. If the Government take away the needs basis and put it into deprivation basis, they will benefit some councils and disadvantage others. I repeat: a need is a need. That includes adult social services and children’s social services; it also includes SEND—our Committee produced a report on SEND, which said the system is broken—which is a hugely consuming part of the budget, and is consuming a greater and greater percentage.

[Gareth Snell]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Just a second. Another part of the budget that is consuming more and more is temporary housing accommodation; this, again, needs a fix in some way or another. Structurally, we cannot let these areas of spending go on unreformed, so that they continue to put huge pressure on the finances of all councils.

I give way to a former member of the Public Accounts Committee.

[Gareth Snell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way—I did enjoy my time on the Public Accounts Committee.

For two years, I led a small shire district council. We were often told that there would be money for county councils, because that is where the greatest need was in terms of adult and children’s social care, and various other demand-led services. I do not even think the divide is urban-rural; it can sometimes be between county and district, in the same locality. Is this the hon. Gentleman’s quiet way of telling us that when the Government bring forward the orders for reorganisation, his party will be supporting that, to take out that one element of potential divide in our funding systems?

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am really pleased that the hon. Gentleman has raised the whole business of devolution, because I am going to come on to that at the end of my speech. What I think we should do is build it from the bottom up, as we did, and let local people have a real say in what they want for the future of the delivery of their local services. I am going to say a little bit more about that and ask the Local Government Minister some quiet questions about it at the end.

I turn to a matter that is bread and butter for the Public Accounts Committee, which the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green, the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, also raised, which is the whole business of local auditing. Without proper auditing, there is no guarantee that all the money—I say “all the money”, but I just mean “the money”—that councils get from both council tax and local government grants, in one form or another, is being spent wisely and providing value for money. The shocking position that we find ourselves in with local auditing at the moment is not, I think, helping the whole system.

The Public Accounts Committee recently held an evidence session on the whole of Government accounts, as the hon. Lady referred to, where we found that 44% of councils did not submit any data at all to those whole of Government accounts, and that 46% of accounts had not been audited for nearly five years, in some councils’ cases. The Local Government Minister has laid before the House measures to ameliorate the timing of producing local audits. Hopefully, we can get to a situation where we can start those local audits and get a set of figures we can begin to rely on. The next year, once we have started with an established set of figures, we hopefully ought to be able to get a properly audited set of accounts.

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[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

How on earth does one follow that? I just wish that the hon. Gentleman had spoken up so we could all hear him. He made points about councils raising council tax, selling assets and cutting services. Does he believe that has happened to Bradford in isolation? Does he believe that his is the only council that has looked at its services and budget and said, “This is tough”? What he actually described is eight years of Conservative rule in Stoke-on-Trent, where council tax went up in eight years out of eight, town halls were closed and put up in fire sales, children’s services were on the brink, and a record number of children were in care. What he has described is a fate that every council faced, and the predominant reason is that his party in government took the scissors to the Budget, slashed the services we all had and decided that they knew better. He may make a fiery speech in this place for social media clips, but perhaps he needs to—

[Robbie Moore]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Gareth Snell]

No, I will not give way. We have heard plenty from the hon. Gentleman over the last several minutes. He needs to think less about detaching his constituency from Bradford and more about reattaching himself to the reality of the situation that he put us all in.

I welcome the fact that Stoke-on-Trent city council has received £8 million through the recovery grant, and I have listened with great interest particularly to the hon. Members for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) and for Woking (Mr Forster) about the impact on the rural services delivery grant. I go back to the point I have raised before: we have to move ourselves away from this confected game of Top Trumps that the Conservatives wanted us to have—that deprivation in Stoke-on-Trent is somehow in competition with the needs of rural communities. The Government’s trajectory—with the fair funding review, and a look at how and why we end up with the funding settlements we have—will take us towards that place. I know that it will not be immediate, and I fully accept that there are always winners and losers in everything, but my city is one of the five poorest cities in the country.

Ninety per cent of homes in my city are band A. Every time we raise council tax by 4.99%, it raises less proportionally than when my neighbouring district council authorities and the county council raise it by 4.99%. Not only are we not getting the benefit of having band B through to band E; we are also seeing the difference of what is paid in neighbouring authorities grow every year. That is simply unfair—a system that nobody would design in that particular way.

I was first elected to a council in 2010. In fact, the Minister was the peer mentor appointed to my council by the LGA. I suppose that is why I am here and not running a council. We were shown the “jaws of doom” graph demonstrating just how challenging financing was going to be over the next decade, and the predictions that my party made then have turned out to be true. Had the last Government frozen in cash terms alone—no uprates, no decreases—the amount of money we were receiving in 2010 and kept it at that rate until 2024, we would have had £411 million to spend on various projects. Instead, we lost that money. We then had this perverse idea that suddenly we had to start bidding to get some of it back through a levelling-up fund.

If we had had £411 million over those 10 years, the economic regeneration of my towns and city centres would have happened. We would not have had to come cap in hand to a Government to ask for capital funding to build a car park or a new hotel. We simply would have done the things that we needed to do over time in a way that fitted with the other projects we were seeking to deliver. We did not have that; instead, we got levelling up, which in my city was basically a car park, which now costs the council more money than it raises because of where it is and how many people use it.

We should learn from those lessons. I welcome every penny given to my city by every Department. The disabled facilities grant money announced by the Department of Health and Social Care is helpful, but the council administers that to keep people safe in their homes so they do not end up in A&E. We could look at how we join up public spending, in Total Place based way, in order to drive those efficiencies and productivity gains that will make the system of public sector provision much better.

When we look at the funding for local government, I urge the Minister as part of the next phase to think about how we stop the shuffling of wooden dollars. As my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) said, it is local authorities that provide the youth clubs that stop young people going into crime and antisocial behaviour, which then costs much more through the criminal justice system later on. It is local authorities that do the checks on houses to make sure that they are safe and decent, so that people do not end up in A&E because they have lived in cold, damp houses. It is local authorities that make sure that the restaurants we go to meet the food hygiene standards that we want, and that the products we buy are being checked by trading standards. Those services keep us safe and well, and prevent much greater public sector costs further on, so how we fund the public sector, with a Total Place approach, has to be part of the Government’s thinking.

Let me end my short contribution to the debate with this. We in Staffordshire today received the letter that the Minister sent about reorganisation and devolution. Reorganisation in Staffordshire could be a long, drawn-out process because basically no one can agree on anything, and we all pretend we like each other but the secret is that we do not. The comments from council leaders and other Staffordshire MPs about Stoke-on-Trent have been appalling. We are a lovely place and want to work with everybody. We will undoubtedly end up in some form of North Staffordshire combined authority that makes sense logically, economically, geographically and socially—it is where people live, work, and enjoy themselves.

When the Minister invites new proposals from local authorities and there is an appetite for them but one or two councils are holding out—perhaps because some people are more interested in protecting their jobs as leaders than in protecting the jobs of the people we represent—I urge him to move at pace and make it quite clear that we will not wait for them. My constituents deserve the same level of investment that goes into the west midlands, east midlands, Manchester and Liverpool combined authority regions. Without it, we will get further left behind. My constituency is, as I said, the fifth poorest in England. I do not want to be standing here after the next election saying that my constituency is still the fifth poorest in England. I hope that, with this Government, we can make sure that it is not.

Town Centres: Stoke-on-Trent

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Karl Turner (in the Chair)]

I will call Gareth Snell to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for town centres in Stoke-on-Trent.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for this debate, Mr Turner, and to see Mr Dowd offering you a skilled hand.

This year is the centenary of Stoke-on-Trent, which was founded as a city in 1925, following the federation of the six towns in 1910. It is a city based on a partnership of equals: there are six towns, of which I have the pleasure of representing three and a half; I share one of them with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner). As we look forward to the next 100 years, our city has to consider the future of its town centres, what we hope to achieve in them, and what role they can play in delivering the Government’s ambitious programme of growth, housing and economic regeneration.

The past 14 years have been tough for my city. Had the last Government simply kept our revenue grant at its 2010-11 level in cash terms, there would have been over £400 million extra to spend in over that time. As it happens, they did not, and year-on-year cuts by the last Government have left the city in a perilous financial state. That has led to an undignified situation in which Stoke-on-Trent is forced to bid against our neighbouring cities simply to have a share of any prosperity fund, levelling-up fund or other fund—an undignified beauty parade that fails to recognise that every town and city centre in this country deserves to thrive.

Town centres are more than places for shopping. The town centres that I represent in Fenton, Hanley, Stoke and a part of Longton are about pride, community and dignity of place. They not only have an economic benefit, but are the mesh that holds society together in our city.

[Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend join me in commending the fantastic work of the Longton Exchange team and Urban Wilderness in their commitment to regenerating Longton town centre? Does he also agree that we need much more work and investment to return Longton to its full glory?

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend has basically stolen one part of my speech, because I was going to congratulate Longton Exchange on the mini-renaissance that is taking place in that town, and in particular the work it does on the Longton carnival and the pig walk—unfortunately, I was unable to make it last year, but I very much intend to be there in April for this year’s. It is those sort of small cultural events—and the small but determined work of dogged individuals who love where they live and have pride in the place they call home—that will deliver the upturn and improvement to our town centres.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. There will not be a town centre in this great United Kingdom that does not suffer from the problem of online shopping, which takes trade away from the town centre. Does he agree that one of the things that could be done—we look to the Minister on this—is to help micro and small businesses in city centres with start-up funds? Those businesses bring people in, bring employment in and help the economy.

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman, as always, is absolutely right. He has hit the nail on the head. Whether it is Strangford or Stoke-on-Trent, the town centres and small and medium-sized enterprises, whether they are a service, a community organisation or retail, are sometimes the places that people have most affinity with because they have a personal relationship with the owner. In Stoke-on-Trent we find that the microbusinesses that can be run from someone’s garage or back bedroom thrive.

The big stores tend to be able to weather the economic climate that we find ourselves in, but for mid-sized shops the high street is probably just outside of financial reach because of business rates and because the footfall is not there. The high street is struggling because of the decisions of the last Government. Regardless of fault, things need to be addressed by the present Government. I have absolute confidence that the Minister and his team at the Department will do that.

I want to focus mostly on Hanley city centre, but I also want to pay tribute, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, to the amazing work in Longton. I will not repeat what she has already adequately and wonderfully put on the record, but I want to briefly talk about Fenton and Stoke. Fenton is a town that Arnold Bennett did not really forget. He took it out of the books because he did not like his mother-in-law, but that is an entirely different debate.

The work being done around Fenton town hall to turn the area into a vibrant community hub is fabulous; I am thinking of Ben Husdan and the community interest company that he works with, and Restoke, which runs the town hall, and the Step Up Stoke charities. I hold my surgeries in the café there and when I have time off I go there to enjoy the city that I live in and call home. The events run there draw people in from all over the west midlands; they have demonstrated that, with determination and a little bit of community spirit, something wonderful can be achieved. A model has been put together that could be used in other parts of Stoke-on-Trent.

I also want to pay tribute to the work being done by Jeff Nash and his team at the Spode site in Stoke. A hub is emerging there with support from levelling-up funds. To give credit to the last Government, they put some money in, as did the city council. The site demonstrates that the heritage buildings in my constituency, which are sometimes considered to be part of our past, can actually be part of our future. And that demonstrates that with a bit of imagination and a bit of support, which I know the Government are committed to, we can deliver real regeneration, new homes and good quality jobs for the new future for the city that I think is there.

I turn to Hanley—possibly the most challenging town centre of the six towns that make up Stoke-on-Trent. The Minister is aware of that because he kindly met me, along with Councillor Jane Ashworth, leader of Stoke-on-Trent council, chief exec Jon Rouse, and Rachel Laver, the wonderful chief executive of the Chambers of Commerce. For many years Hanley has been a challenge. It has been seen as, “If we fix Hanley, we fix everything else”, and there is an argument that that is correct. But the solutions have always dwarfed the scale of the challenge.

Like Hull, Mr Turner, Stoke-on-Trent deserved more from the last Government. We were given levelling-up funds, but the last Conservative council decided that the best thing they could do with the support offered was to build a car park. An economically deprived city’s working age people in in-work poverty were told that their lives were going to be levelled up with the building of a multi-storey, colourful car park on the edge of the city centre—and “That’s your lot!” That car park, ironically, is now costing the council money because it was so poorly planned and executed that the revenue it should have generated is not there. It is now a loss for the council, which is a demonstration of the legacy of the last Government.

On top of that, the last Conservative council made grand aspirational plans for arenas and shopping centres. On paper, they looked wonderful—what the artist’s impression showed would be wanted in every town centre. But there was no plan, no money and no intention. That is something that the council learned from the last Conservative Government when it comes to economic regeneration across this country.

We look to the Government not to solve our problems for us—I want to be clear to the Minister that I am not here with a begging bowl to ask for handouts; I firmly believe that the future of our city has to be driven by our city—but for them to join us in a new partnership by putting the governmental shoulder behind our municipal wheel. If we are able to forge a new partnership for the city centre, we will meet the housing demand. We can more than meet the demands placed on us by Government, and then some, if we have the land consolidation powers that Homes England executes, and if we had a self-replenishing fund for the pump-priming work, and could look at remediation of brownfield sites.

We have the building blocks in the city centre. The work done by Richard Buxton, Jonathan Bellamy and Rachel Laver, through the city centre’s business improvement district, is phenomenal. They almost always have a bright idea about something we could do in Stoke-on-Trent to bring people into the city, whether that is food markets or their work on supplementing the municipal support they should have had from a council suffering budget cuts. That is the wardens, street cleaning and street scene work.

We have good policing led by Sergeant Chris Gifford, doing their best to ensure that the city centre feels safe. That is also a challenge because of the reduction in drug and alcohol support services that the previous Government thrust upon us, meaning that people who need help cannot get it, so they gravitate to our town centre, causing a social problem.

[David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for this important debate. He notes that crime and antisocial behaviour is an issue that can put off people coming to our town centres. I hear the point about how we use levelling-up funds or certain types of funds to make our town centres better. A key to that is how we engage with local community leaders and retailers to ensure we get the plans right. We got £20 million, including £6.5 million to make improvements to Burslem, Tunstall and Middleport, and we are looking at how we—

[Karl Turner (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Gareth Snell]

I hear what my hon. Friend is saying, but in a half-hour debate I do not have time to address all his points. He is right that reduction in crime in the town centre helps people feel safe and brings in more people to spend money there. There is a virtuous circle of activity that is not just about getting more shops on the high street, but making people who come feel safer.

That also links to public transport. One of the conversations being pursued locally, through the bus improvement partnership and the work we hope might come from future reorganisation and devolution, is that we can massively improve our public transport network, so we can get the people into town centres who want to shop there. At the moment, we have a perverse situation in which the bus station is far away from the shopping centre. Walking down the hill to get there is fine, but walking back up the hill is far too much for some—particularly older members of my community, who simply cannot make the journey and do not go there. It is those small things we can do that will massively impact on economic benefits.

I want to pitch to the Minister something he knows we aspire to. The challenge we now face in Stoke-on-Trent is that we cannot do it alone. We are not asking for it to be done for us, but we cannot do it alone. We would like to explore, with the Government and some form of urban development company, a delivery vehicle that allows the master plan being put together by the city council and the chamber of commerce to have cross-governmental support, demonstrating to businesses in my city that we are taking this seriously.

The other problem we have had, which you will probably have experienced in Hull, Mr Turner, is that plan after plan is written, presented, goes on the shelf and is never seen again. People’s confidence that we can deliver the things we promise has been dented. By demonstrating that this partnership could exist between government locally and nationally would go a long way to getting the business buy-in, which is crucial to the regeneration of our city centre and high streets.

I also want to pitch to the Minister that certain powers come with that. We have brownfield sites across the city in our three constituencies that are ripe for development. But they are owned by people who have no interest in my city. They are often passed through different shell companies and corporations, because they are an asset that is traded, as opposed to being an asset of value to the city. Being able to access compulsory purchase arrangements that Homes England has for land consolidation, would mean we could parcel up those bigger sites for development.

That would allow us to develop city-centre living, for which there is a demand. The Clayworks development in the middle of Hanley has been so successful it has had a 90% occupancy rate from its first day of opening, which is completely unprecedented in the city. It is high-quality, affordable housing for young and aspiring professionals in a trendy setting. More of that in our city centre would bring people who have a disposable pound in their pocket to come and live, shop and work there. We also have two fabulous universities, which are clearly desperate to take some of the work they are doing to attract people to north Staffordshire to give them a night-time economy offer.

Some of the work, which the Minister is aware of, that we wish to do in the city centre links not only to the day-time retail offer, but to how we can turn our city centres into a night-time economy that people want to come and visit. That would support our restaurants, bars and wonderful theatres across the conurbation, and also links to the policing work so that people feel safe at night.

I welcome the work that the Government have already laid out. That includes the additional community policing that we will have in the town centres, which will absolutely reduce some of the latent antisocial behaviour and crime and is a deterrent, as well as the work we are doing on devolving bus powers so that we can have an integrated transport network to get people to where they need to be. I welcome the fact that this Government recognise that high street theft from shops—shoplifting—is a real problem. We will take it seriously and remove the arbitrary cap of £200, so that, if someone commits a crime in the city centre, we will come for them.

I also welcome the investment in drug and alcohol services, so that those in our town centres who are desperately seeking support from the very generous people of my city can get that support in a much more structured and maintained way. We must also make sure that our really ambitious housing targets are achieved in our town centres, so that we can bring people back to our town centres, invigorate them and bring them back to life, and also demonstrate—as we look toward the next 100 years of Stoke-on-Trent, in this, our centenary year—that we have a bright and prosperous future, driven by a partnership between the Stoke-on-Trent city council and this Labour Government.

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

It is an absolute pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Turner, as well as the reassuring presence of Mr Dowd at your side, stewarding the debate along. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) for securing this very important debate in Stoke-on-Trent’s centenary year.

My hon. Friend is a doughty champion for his constituency. Although the city, as he rightly said, has experienced hard times over recent years, his constituents should know that, from the outset of this Government coming into office, he has been pressing me on what more this Labour Government can do, in partnership with local leaders and my hon. Friends, to ensure that we maximise the opportunities in the city as we go forward. I share his passion to support the regeneration of the town centres of Stoke-on-Trent and to create better places to live, work and play across the city.

My hon. Friend referenced the meeting we had just a few weeks ago, alongside members of the council, to discuss their plans for a comprehensive regeneration of Stoke-on-Trent city centre. It was clear from that meeting that they are keen to make sure that the city plays a full role in delivering on the Government’s growth strategy, including delivering on a substantial number of new homes, as part of our Plan for Change milestone to build 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament.

Stoke-on-Trent city centre is facing the same problems as many town centres across the country: lower occupancy rates and footfall due to consumer habits changing, which make a retail, office-led city centre strategy difficult for the future. I have been pleased to see, in the case of Stoke-on-Trent—as well as other cities across the country where Labour Members and Labour local leaders are in place—that the new Labour-run city council, under the leadership of Councillor Jane Ashworth, has brought forward a committed and energetic programme and a serious plan for Hanley to take things forward, which will see a radical shift to a residential-led model, aiming to create a revitalised city centre that can play a strengthened socioeconomic role and unlock the development of thousands of new homes, through the process that we discussed.

It has been good to see that so much of the regeneration in Stoke-on-Trent is already well under way. My hon. Friend has referenced a number of the very positive changes that are taking place, including the Smithfield Quarter, a fantastic mixed-use development that pays homage to the original Smithfield bottle works on the site and is an excellent example of intertwining cultural heritage while also looking to the future needs of the city.

The Government have supported this vital regeneration work through Homes England, which has been working successfully with the council for many years. In 2022, a partnership agreement was signed with the council to accelerate the delivery of high-quality, place-making, housing-led and mixed-use developments in the city. The partnership aims to unlock, as my hon. Friend is aware, 4,000 homes across a range of sites within the city, and has to date supported 607 homes across several sites.

The city has also been in receipt of considerable capital investment from Homes England over recent years, including £22 million of affordable housing programme investment and £10 million of housing infrastructure grant investment to unlock a combined 1,500 homes. Through that partnership, significant strides have been made to progress 13 priority sites in the council’s pipeline, and support the council’s local plan review.

Homes England has also provided around £800,000 in revenue funding to support the delivery of priority sites. As my hon. Friend will be aware, some of the key interventions that have taken place include: Homes England acting in collaboration with the city council, procuring and jointly leading the production of a city centre masterplan, providing a connected vision for Stoke and Hanley; and a serious delivery plan—I think that is the point—with clear evidence steps for the development of that key strategic corridor.

We have also seen progress on several flagship sites across the city, providing a catalyst for the regeneration that needs to happen and that I know my hon. Friend is working hard to see delivered. Etruscan Square, for example, is a major city centre development to regenerate the former bus station site in Hanley, which has secured outline planning permission for a 300-home mixed-used development, following on from receiving £20 million of Government funding in 2021. The North Shelton opportunity area is a collection of three brownfield sites; through our brownfield land release fund, the council has been rewarded money to remediate the site and make way for up to 50 homes.

To reiterate the point that my hon. Friend made, we need to see that partnership working continue. I urge local leaders to continue to press forward with that ambition across the whole city, and I have impressed on Homes England the need to continue supporting Stoke-on-Trent with the necessary skills, powers and investment needed to bring forward development, including on known complex brownfield sites in Hanley town centre, at the nearest possible opportunity. As my hon. Friend knows, I am committed to working with him and others to ensure that we are utilising all the powers that are already available, or that the Government intend to bring forward, to ensure that we realise the full potential of the city, including powers in relation to compulsory purchase orders, as was referenced.

Despite the previous Administration making a number of unfunded commitments to local authorities and mayoral combined authorities, at October’s Budget this Government confirmed that the majority of local growth projects have been protected, and that the UK shared prosperity fund has been extended for another year, providing much needed certainty for places to deliver locally. My hon. Friend will also be aware that Stoke-on-Trent received £56 million towards key regeneration sites across the city through the levelling-up fund, supporting both housing and broader economic development.

[Gareth Snell]

On the point about funding, we got £8 million in the recovery fund, and I am reliably informed by the Minister’s Department that this was the second largest recovery fund settlement anywhere in the country. I thank the Department for that, because it is a huge recognition of the financial challenges we have had in the past and a down payment on what I hope and believe to be the interest that the Department will take in Stoke-on-Trent going forward.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will pass on my hon. Friend’s appreciation to ministerial colleagues in the Department who oversaw that decision. He can take as given that the funding awarded is a recognition of the importance we place on revitalising cities such as Stoke-on-Trent.

The Goods Yard is another great example of creating new city centre living opportunities, with new apartments alongside work and leisure spaces and next to the main train station. I look forward to overseeing the opening of that in the coming months. More recently, £6.5 million of additional Government funding has been agreed to support public realm regeneration in Tunstall, Longton, Stoke, Burslem, and Middleport, as part of Stoke-on-Trent’s levelling up partnership. In Tunstall, I have been heartened to see the planned artworks to celebrate the town’s heritage and brighten up the area.

I will touch briefly on planning reforms. As hon. Members will be aware, the Government consulted on changes to national planning policy, and other changes to the planning system, last year. Having reviewed the available evidence and feedback from the consultation, we published our formal response and a revised national planning policy framework on 12 December.

The revised NPPF supports the role of high streets and town centres, by expecting local plans to create a positive framework for their growth and adaptation. It also expects planning applications for town centre uses—defined as retail, development, leisure, entertainment and more intensive sport and recreation uses, as well as offices, arts, culture and tourism development—to be located in town centres where possible, to support their viability and inhibit trade from being drawn to other locations.

The planning and infrastructure Bill, which will be forthcoming later this year, will speed up and streamline the planning process to build more homes of all tenures and accelerate the delivery of major infrastructure projects, aligning with our industrial, energy and transport strategies. The Bill will make improvements at a local level, modernising planning committees and increasing local planning authorities’ capacity to deliver the type of interventions that I have referenced today and deliver an improved service. It will also support more effective land assembly for development in the public interest by reforming the compulsory purchase process. I know that in many parts of the country—Stoke is a great example of this—fragmented and complex land ownership can be a real barrier to development.

[Gareth Snell]

What the Minister has just said is music to my ears, because this is not just about compiling the land that we know is available for development; it is about the consequential impact of that. If we can bring that land together in Stoke-on-Trent, we will be able to protect our greenfield sites from unnecessary development. The more we can do to put houses in Hanley, the greater our chances are of protecting Berryhill Fields, in the middle of my constituency, which are the green lungs of north Staffordshire.

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This Government have a brownfield-first approach to development. In all instances where it is possible, we want to see brownfield development prioritised and accelerated, and we are making a number of changes to ensure that is the case. These include not only some of the revisions we made to the NPPF, but the proposals that we have outlined in our brownfield passport working paper, which will feed into the development of national development management policies, which we will consult on later this year. All of these interventions are to ensure that, wherever possible, we can get brownfield-led development.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that in many parts of the country that fragmented ownership of land is a real barrier. We want generally to see more coherent land assembly and master planning of large sites to ensure that we can maximise their potential, not least in terms of density and getting the number of homes we need on site. In that way, in many parts of the country, it will be possible to avoid having to look at green belt release, although we are clear that where green belt does need to be released—and grey belt as a priority release within that—that does need to take place to meet local housing targets.

To conclude, I again thank my hon. Friend for bringing this important debate to the House today and for his ongoing engagement. I would like to assure him and the city council that the Government recognise the vital role that Stoke-on-Trent will play in our growth mission. We want to see councils across the country working in collaboration and partnership with the Government to create a sustainable and suitable housing supply for those who live in and commute to town and city centres. I very much look forward to working with him and my hon. Friends to that end.

Question put and agreed to.

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

After eight years of Conservative rule in Stoke-on-Trent, the council was taken to the brink of bankruptcy, and the Minister will be well aware of the extraordinary financial support that we have received and about which we are having additional conversations. How will the recovery fund interact with authorities in receipt of extraordinary financial support? May I also put on record the thanks of the city to Councillor Alastair Watson and Jon Rouse, the chief executive, for the work they have done to stabilise council finances in difficult times?

[Jim McMahon]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question, and I join him in paying tribute to the council officers and council leadership in Stoke-on-Trent. As a direct cash payment—the down payment I mentioned earlier—Stoke-on-Trent council will get £8.7 million, and its core spending power will increase by 8.6% just in this round, but that may well over 10% by the time the full allocations come through. That is part of the rebuilding process, and as I have said, it reflects the fact that we cannot punish councils because of their inherited historical tax base. We must make sure that the Government step up to their role to equalise the system so that everyone has fair access to public services.

English Devolution

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

In all things I try to be direct, and I have been direct in saying that if those councils that come to the Government with a request for reorganisation meet the test and have a credible programme in place, the elections will likely not take place until the year after, because they will be postponed to elect the shadow authority that would replace the county and the districts. We are clear on that. To give the hon. Lady assurance, there will not be a mass cancelling of elections for the sake of it, in the hope and prayer that some councils might come forward for reorganisation. There has to be a balanced and proportionate approach, and that is what we intend to take.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Stoke-on-Trent is already a unitary authority, but it is surrounded on either side by a two-tier district system of Newcastle and Staffordshire Moorlands, who are our friendly neighbours and proud communities but fundamentally different places. Can the Minister set out what will happen to existing unitary authorities? Can he also say how, as part of this review, he will protect the identities of communities who look to a place rather than to a compass point and a county name? And if we are going to have new mayors with new powers, can he set out what the corresponding reduction of Ministers in this place will be to reflect the reduced number of services they will provide?

Renters’ Rights Bill

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds]

As a constituency Member of Parliament and former councillor, I entirely recognise the hon. Lady’s point, but what the hon. Member for Rugby said was significant because we need to recognise that 76% of tenants in the private rented sector report a high level of satisfaction, a much higher level of satisfaction than is found in other forms of housing tenure. If we are to strike the appropriate balance in this debate in the Parliament of the nation, we have to recognise that the vast majority of landlords provide a good, important and high-quality service, and make sure that the legislation we take through to address the difficulty and challenge that our constituents—citizens—experience is proportionate.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David Simmonds]

I will make some progress and move on to another area that has been debated. I know that the Minister will wish to have time to sum up on many of these points as well.

A number of Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), highlighted the need for appropriate measures to support students in the rented sector. A good many landlords’ organisations have made the point that the Government’s intention to change the tenant and landlord’s full freedom of contract will have an impact, especially on students who wish to rent a property for the entire duration of their course. We need to ensure that there is appropriate flexibility in respect of student properties, so that students at university can find the housing that they need and landlords are not discouraged from entering that market, and so that the points raised by my right hon. Friend are addressed. We do not want a situation in which a landlord, wary of a two-month notice period, decides to take the property off the student market and put it somewhere else, in a way that perhaps addresses housing need less, and fails to support the local economy in the way that student housing would have.

That leads me to a point that I know we will explore in Committee: how freedom of contract particularly impacts constituents who struggle to pass the kind of credit checks and landlord insurance checks that are common in the private rented sector. We all have examples of people who have faced bankruptcy proceedings and entered into individual voluntary arrangements to address significant financial difficulty, and who then got themselves back on their feet; but who, when facing eviction, have found it impossible to find a landlord willing to rent to them. Those people are not eligible to access social rented housing, because they have a job and an income, but cannot access the kind of housing that locks them into a regular payment contract. However, they may be able to offer a significant up-front payment of rent—potentially many months’ rent, or even a year’s rent—to secure a property. That gives the landlord the certainty they need, and it also gives the person the guarantee of the home they need. We need to address that issue, because the implementation of a number of financial arrangements by previous Governments has created both an opportunity for people to get back on their feet after financial difficulty, and a challenge in accessing a long-term home in the rented sector.

As we proceed with this Bill, it is clearly important that policy is based on evidence. Having spoken to the Minister and many of his colleagues about the Bill, I know that there will be a high degree of cross-party agreement on some of the points that are discussed. However, I would like to bring this debate back to the key concern that we in the Conservative party have, which has been expressed by a number of Members: we need to ensure an appropriate supply of housing in the private rented sector, so that citizens who need to access those homes can do so.

We remain a party that respects and supports the aspiration of home ownership. Just like all other important life stages, our constituents are reaching that life stage later in life than has been the case historically. We are in a world where people do not typically leave school or university and spend 40 years working in the same business and living in the same town. People moving around and moving home to adapt to changing needs is a key issue that we need to address. Even those wishing to downsize and looking for a smaller property later in life—the last-time buyer market, as the industry likes to describe it—have their equivalent in the rental sector: people looking for accommodation that comes with a package that provides sufficient care and support. The choice to move into high-quality accommodation of that nature in the private rented sector can free up family homes that are in short supply. All these things need to be seen in the round.

Of course, most Members of Parliament are tenants—not all of us; those of us who commute are not—and will have experience of the London rental market. Luckily, Members of Parliament in that situation have the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to back them up, but that experience highlights the significant differences we see across the regions and geographies of the United Kingdom. My outer London constituency is dominated by owner-occupiers, but has a vibrant rental sector and a significant number of retirement homes. The population and the need are significantly different from the population and need in a university town full of young people looking to secure student accommodation, or looking for a good-quality private rented home for a short period while they get their first job and get their foot on the property ladder. We need to support that market effectively, and to get it right. We need a balance that avoids over-regulation and the unintended consequences about which my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex spoke so eloquently.

Regional variation was highlighted by a good many Members. Places being converted into holiday homes does not tend to be a significant issue in the London suburbs. However, we have heard from colleagues in this House, as we did during the last Parliament, about the massive impact that that has in many of our coastal towns and cities. The impact is not just on those in need of social housing, and those struggling to access, through social rent, accommodation in the private rental sector, but on those in other parts of the country where the local economy has been significantly changed as a result of those issues.

No debate about housing can be allowed to pass without mention of the impact of our Home Office contracts to secure accommodation for those in our asylum system. We know from feedback that many Members of Parliament have provided from around the country that in some areas, that has a significant impact. The initial very good intention behind those Home Office contracts was to disperse asylum seekers awaiting a decision to privately rented accommodation in parts of the United Kingdom where there was accommodation surplus to the needs of the community. That was why those contracts—run now by three private organisations, but run previously by the Home Office, and originated by the now Mayor, Andy Burnham, when he was a Home Office Minister—use that supply of accommodation.

However, we are beginning to hear, as we learned in debates about the use of migrant hotels and so on in the past, that the policy has, in some areas, taken a significant share of accommodation that would otherwise be available to the private rented sector. While it is absolutely right that we seek to reduce the cost to the taxpayer of people staying in hotels, we need to ensure that decision making does not simply tick the “out of hotels” box, and respects the needs and expectations of the community. In particular, given that it is always the lowest-cost accommodation that the Home Office will seek to rent, we need to ensure that the policy does not have an inappropriate impact on those awaiting housing through the local authority, or seeking the least expensive accommodation in the private rented sector.

All these different issues—temporary accommodation, short-term lets for students, accommodation for asylum seekers and owner-occupation—are impacted by this debate. I hope that the Minister will accept that we approach this topic in a constructive spirit, and that our challenge, as we go through the next stages of the Bill, aims at addressing the issues to get the Bill right.

My hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) and the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) all brought their direct personal experience to this debate, and set out why the points raised at the very start of this debate are so significant.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will bring forward further detail as the Bill progresses, but those conversations with Ministry of Justice colleagues are ongoing, and they are constructive. We want to get to a place where the system is ready to take the new tenancy provisions forward. We will not act precipitously, and what we are not prepared to do—this is the most important point on courts—is make the necessary and long-overdue transformation of the private rented sector contingent on an unspecified degree of future court improvements subjectively determined by Ministers, as the last Government proposed in their Bill. We are determined to move quickly to give renters the long-term security, rights and protections they deserve.

A number of hon. Members raised the issue of standards, and many shared horrific stories of tenants trapped in substandard properties. It is essential, in the Government’s view, that we take decisive action to tackle the blight of poor-quality, privately rented housing and to ensure landlords are required to take swift action to respond to serious hazards.

[Gareth Snell]

The Minister is giving an excellent speech. Landlords in Stoke-on-Trent have told me that they welcome any move that drives the rogue landlords out of the system. That is because rogue landlords undercut the market and prey on the vulnerable and those locked into low-income jobs by offering relatively low-rent accommodation, safe in the knowledge that if they complain or seek any form of improvement, they are simply out, to be replaced by somebody else who is desperate. While my hon. Friend is talking about improvements to the landlord system, will he say more about how good landlords welcome the Bill?

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend is right. We have engaged constructively and intensively with tenant representative groups and with landlord bodies. Most of them will say that what he describes is part of the problem, because they represent the better end of the market, and that good landlords welcome the new system because it forcefully targets the unscrupulous landlords, mainly at the bottom end of the market, who bring the whole sector into disrepute. That is one reason why the characterisation of this Bill as overly pro-tenant and harmful to, and unwelcomed by, landlords is misplaced. Good landlords should welcome this legislation.

I welcome the support expressed on both sides of the House for the provisions that will see a decent homes standard applied to the private rented sector and Awaab’s law extended to it. It is important that we get the detail right, and I assure the House that we intend to consult on the content of the decent homes standard for both social and privately rented homes, and on how Awaab’s law will apply to the latter, given the obvious differences between the private and social rented sectors.

I want to respond briefly to a question posed by the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Mr Amos). I thank him for his kind remarks about me in his speech. The approach we are taking in this Bill to applying and enforcing the decent homes standard to the private rented sector is not, in our view, suitable for the unique and distinct nature of Ministry of Defence accommodation, but I hope he will welcome the fact that the MOD is reviewing its target standards so that we can drive up the quality of that accommodation separately from the Bill.

A large number of hon. Members raised concerns about affordability, and several argued forcefully for rent controls to be incorporated in the Bill. While we recognise the risks posed to tenants by extortionate within-tenancy rent rises, we remain opposed to the introduction of rent controls. We believe they could make life more difficult for private renters, both in incentivising landlords to increase rents routinely up to a cap where they might otherwise not have done, and in pushing many landlords out of the market, thereby making it even harder for renters to find a home they can afford. However, we are introducing a range of measures in the early part of the Bill that will empower renters to challenge unreasonable rent increases and prevent rent hikes from being used as a form of back-door eviction.

Measures in the Bill will prevent unscrupulous landlords from using rent increases in this fashion. All rent increases from private landlords will take place via the existing section 13 process, so the tenant can challenge them if necessary. That will protect landlords’ rights to achieve market rent while preventing abuse. We will also give tenants longer to prepare for rent increases, and allow only one rent increase per year. For too long—this is reflected in the low numbers of tenants going to tribunal —tenants have feared challenging a rent increase at the first-tier tribunal. We will end this situation by ensuring, by contrast to the previous Government’s legislation, that a tenant will not pay more than the landlord asked for in circumstances where a tribunal might determine otherwise.

We are going further: we will end the practice of backdating rent increases, to stop tenants being thrust into debt if they take a case to tribunal. That would have acted as a powerful disincentive for tenants to take such cases to tribunal. Let me be clear: we do not want the tribunal overwhelmed, but we want more tenants to take a challenge against unreasonable rent increases to the tribunal. The tribunal will play an important role in looking at what a reasonable market rent is in their area, and assessing whether a particular rent increase is reasonable. To protect the most vulnerable residents, in cases of undue hardship, the tribunal will be able to delay the start of the rent increase for tenants caught in those particular circumstances.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Dr Alan Whitehead. Not here.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

7. What steps he is taking in relation to local authorities that do not have an adopted local plan.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

Under the current plan-making regime, 37 local authorities have yet to adopt a local plan. Of these, 27 have submitted their draft plan for examination. We continue to monitor progress and offer support where appropriate in all these areas.

[Gareth Snell]

The Minister’s Department is taking action against only 15 local authorities where no local plan is actively in place. The Department also has an ambitious target of 300,000 homes a year—about 80,000 a year short. What action will he take to ensure that local authorities like Stoke-on-Trent that are failing to get a local plan in place do so quickly, so that they can develop and address this country’s housing need?

[Kit Malthouse]

As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, we commenced a formal process of intervention in 15 local authorities to ensure that they fulfil their obligations. I have spent the last 12 months touring the country, exhorting local authorities not only to get a local plan in place, but to do so on a long-term basis so that people can see the kind of decadal-scale planning that is required to get to 300,000 homes a year. If local authorities remain sluggish in producing a plan, as the hon. Gentleman claims his local authority has been—I think that its plan is due for submission in August 2020, which does seem a little tardy—action may be required, beyond just a stiffly-worded letter.

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

Gareth Snell Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is an honour to follow the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel). Being married to a councillor, she will appreciate most acutely the tough decisions that councillors must make. Let me begin my speech by thanking councillors of all political parties for their work. Looking around the Chamber this afternoon, I see many Members who I know have served as councillors, in senior leadership roles or as back-benchers. I believe that one of them is still serving as a local authority member today. No councillor stands for election to deal with a five-year budget forecast. They do so for good reason, to help the local communities. We should always remember that, regardless of the decisions that they are forced to make.

That leads me neatly to the main points that I want to make. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) began by talking about the overall global figures that are affecting local government finances. The speeches that we have heard from Members on both sides of the House today have shown that every Member, everywhere, has a series of problems that can be attributed to the way in which the local authority is either run or funded. I agree with the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) that when this is fixed, a rising tide will lift all those problems. Sadly, however, that rising tide will simply drown some of them, either because they cannot keep pace or because they are already enmeshed in problems that no amount of additional funding will solve.

What we need to think about—and I offer this as a radical suggestion which I hope the Government will consider—is moving away from the idea that we fund councils, fund the police service and fund clinical commissioning groups, and adopt a place-based approach to the way in which money goes into a community. One of the things that we do very well on the Public Accounts Committee is following the taxpayer pound. We have noticed continually that consequential impacts of a decision by a clinical commissioning group will drive up the costs of a service in a local authority. The decision by a police commissioner to close a police station—as is happening in Stoke-on-Trent—pushes up the incidence of antisocial behaviour. It will then be said that it is the council’s responsibility. Littering because of the lack of a recycling service will become detritus, with bricks left on streets. It becomes vandalism.

So many things happen not because of local authority funding, but because of the way in which we fund our entire public service. If the Government and, I hope, our own Front-Benchers—who I can see are listening—would seriously consider that place-based funding, we could eradicate some of the problems without necessarily having to throw lots of money at them. I know that that will not be easy, but if we are serious about a sustainable long-term public sector, we are going to have be honest about it.

The same goes for our social care funding arrangements. The National Audit Office report shows that 80% of social care budgets are overspent. I am pretty sure that if the Ministers at the Dispatch Box were to design a system today for funding adult social care, they would not say, “Let’s take the value of a property from the 1970s and its total value across an entire geographical area determined by a review in the 1970s and say that incremental increases of 2% every year is the best way to fund adult social care.” It is the way that we do it, but it is not the way we would design. If we are genuinely serious about tackling the funding issues in local government, we are going to have to look at the way in which we fund these things long-term and not simply tinker at the edges hoping to massage the figures so that marginal constituencies in one part of the country are better off at the expense of safer constituencies for Opposition parties elsewhere, which is what we talk about in fair funding formulas if we are being brutally honest.

[Mr Betts]

My hon. Friend is making an interesting point about Total Place and how we should approach things, and we had some evidence on that in our recent Select Committee inquiry into local government funding. Does he accept however, that in order to hold that all together we need some local accountability, so we ought to be looking at how we devolve some of those powers to local government, and with it a better system of funding, as my hon. Friend has rightly said?

[Gareth Snell]

I thank my hon. Friend for that and for presciently leading on to my next point, which is about how devolution settlements work and the myriad different settlements that we have, across England predominantly, with city deals, local enterprise partnership arrangements or mayoral combined authorities. That means there are lots of arrangements we can look at to find best practice and then share it. There are examples of mayoral authorities dealing with their housing crisis in clever ways which traditional two-tier local authority areas have neither the capacity in their staff base to do, to be candid, nor perhaps the demand in their local areas for.

If we are to have that accountability structure, there needs to be a greater role for the Department, whatever it might be called. Civil servants from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government were asked a very simple question at a recent appearance before the Public Accounts Committee: “You say local authority funding is sustainable; what is the matrix by which you make that assessment?” The civil servants were very good at answering some questions, but were unable to give us an exact demonstration of how they make that decision. The NAO disagreed with them on a fact-based, evidence-based assessment, yet when that question was put by numerous members of the Committee, some more vociferously than others, they were unable to give us a clear explanation of how they make those sorts of determinations. If we are going to be serious about the way in which local government is funded, there has to be strong overview and oversight by Departments, but we also need to trust local government.

Local government has been given a series of new responsibilities. I was a councillor and I know that local authorities welcome new responsibilities because it allows them to flex their muscles and do things in an imaginative and innovative way. However, they are restricted in how they are able to deliver them—they find themselves straitjacketed—and they suddenly find themselves carrying unnecessary burdens in order to deliver something that they know they could do better if they were allowed to. They do not make a hash of it but they end up not reaching their full potential.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

My hon. Friend is making some good points, but does he also agree that one of the Government’s mistakes in terms of devolution is holding to the idea that that can be done only if there is a mayor? That has led to some very strange situations. For example, in the north-east we have a hotch-potch of different responsibilities in different areas.

[Gareth Snell]

I entirely agree, and the same goes for LEP boundaries. If we are going to do this, there has to be a way forward that fits local area needs.

According to the NAO, £6 billion is currently tied up between section 106 agreements and the community infrastructure levy. That is a huge amount of money, but the CIL aspect of that cannot be spent on building new affordable housing because it is for low-level infrastructure. I urge the Minister to review that. It is a pot of money that exists in local authorities that could be unlocked to readily transform the way in which our local authorities work.

At its best local government is flexible, lean and hungry to do things, but that agility is fast becoming fragility, and I fear that if there is one more knock to the system everything will shatter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. Her county council is a leader when it comes to dealing with vulnerable children; it is an example for others across the country to follow. I assure her that we are working very closely with the Department for Education. We are jointly undertaking a review to understand the exact drivers of the increased need that she mentioned, and we will make a compelling and evidence-based pitch to the Treasury come the spending review.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am sure the Minister will agree, as he said to my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Jo Platt), that political leadership is exactly what is needed when we look at children’s services. He will therefore be as upset and aghast as me that Stoke-on-Trent City Council was rated “inadequate” in all four areas of its Ofsted inspection of children’s services. The opening line of the Ofsted report said that children were not being kept safe from risk. A failure of political leadership has meant that children have been put into unnecessarily risky situations. On top of that, the leader of the Conservative group—the deputy leader of the council—has failed to attend any corporate parenting committee meetings in the past two years. Does the Minister agree that it is time for change at Stoke-on-Trent City Council? If they will not change, the electorate will do it for them.

[Rishi Sunak]

When we talk about vulnerable children, it is important that all councils take the precautions that are required. Of course I will listen very carefully to the findings of that Ofsted report. The Department for Education has recently made available £80 million in innovation funding. All councils can avail themselves of it to improve their practice and ensure that vulnerable children everywhere get the support and care they require.

Local Government Funding Settlement

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I know that my hon. Friend is a champion of district councils, and I commend him for all his work. As I said in my statement, I hope there will be recognition that we have listened on a number of issues, including negative RSG and the new homes bonus. This is a settlement that councils can get behind, so that they can get on and deliver for their local communities.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Secretary of State for allowing Stoke and Staffordshire to be in the business rates pilot. It is late—it should have been last year—but it is welcome. However, I remain confused. When I wrote to the Conservative leadership at Stoke-on-Trent City Council last February about their increase in revenue support grant, they told me that it was an ineffective measure of their spending ability and that they will still have to make severe cuts in their budget. Who is right—the Conservatives at the council who tell me their budget is still being squeezed, or the Conservatives in Parliament who tell me that spending has never been greater?

[James Brokenshire]

I would highlight the additional core spending power of £3.9 million that will be delivered for Stoke-on-Trent. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s recognition of the inclusion of those areas in the business rates retention pilots. The point is that councils can look to a number of different funding streams for the delivery of their services, including direct grants, business rates retention and council tax. We look at the funding that councils are delivering for their communities in that overall context.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I note my hon. Friend’s fingers are crossed. I am delighted to hear that Talgo is considering investing in the UK. I hope he will understand that as there are still a number of locations under consideration, it would be wrong for me to comment further—although, having visited the potential site in his constituency this summer, I can say that it is clearly an excellent site for investment.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The midlands engine is working with Stoke-on-Trent City Council as part of the transforming cities fund and making bids for significant investment. It was heartening to hear the Chancellor refer to that in his speech last Monday. Could the Secretary of State put us out of our misery and announce from the Dispatch Box today that Stoke will receive that funding, which would save a further round of hoop-jumping?

[Mrs Wheeler]

Good try!