Draft Licensing Of Houses In Multiple Occupation (Mandatory Conditions Of Licences) (England) Regulations 2018

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Melanie Onn

Monday 23rd April 2018 General Committees

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon, and to discuss these important HMO regulations. I will hazard a guess that I am one of the very rare parliamentarians to have lived in an HMO as a young homeless person and later as a between-homes, slightly older young person. I know how it feels to live in a property that was originally built for a single family, but that has been carved up in weird and wonderful ways to accommodate as many people as possible to maximise rental and housing benefit income. With the charity and housing association I was placed with, I was in the fortunate position of not having to suffer sharing a room or a house with multiple families, but that is the situation that many people across the country find themselves in. It is for them that we should not hesitate in improving the standards of the accommodation available.

The Government have made welcome steps in improving the deal for those living in HMOs, as the Minister outlined in her opening remarks. Labour has long argued for stronger rights and protections for renters, and the regulations will go some way to improving the rights of many of the most poor and vulnerable tenants, who are often the ones occupying such overcrowded houses. I take this opportunity to echo the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North about the impact of HMOs on local communities. The number of HMOs impacts not only on immediate neighbours, but the whole community. With more people residing in individual rooms, people become less and less connected with their local community.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have the great privilege of being the neighbour of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North. The situation in his constituency that he so ably describes also affects mine. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby believe that the Minister’s reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North would have been improved had she said that her Department was willing to support local authorities that want to go down the path of addressing that with additional resources? That would certainly speed up the introduction of such schemes.

[Melanie Onn]

Would that we were all so lucky to have my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North as a neighbour. I am sure the Minister listened intently to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West and hopefully will take them on board. I am sure they are offered with a generous and genuine sentiment.

I am pleased the Government are bringing forward the regulations and supporting the Bill of my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), to ensure that all rental properties are fit for human habitation. Nearly 170 years after the industrial revolution, and a generation on from slum clearances and rife Rachmanism, it is none too soon that we have in one place clear definitions of what is acceptable as a minimum space for a human being to sleep.

However, it would be welcome if the Minister expands on the details of the regulations, of which we are broadly supportive. One concern is the impact of setting a small national minimum room size. I raise that in full recognition of the consultations, but remind the Minister that, in HMOs, the room allocated to someone is not just a bedroom. There are ordinarily shared bathroom and kitchen facilities. Individual rooms provide not only a sleeping location, but everything else—study, hobby, exercise and leisure, and all of that person’s belongings, are within that space. It is not simply a case of considering that there should be enough space for a bed and a chest of drawers. There may be no other space to store, for example, a bicycle by which people might transport themselves, or space for shelving for books, or space for a chair on which to sit rather sitting than on the edge of a bed, or a table at which to study or to eat.

The Minister must take those things into consideration when concluding that the proposed minimum standard for a single occupier should be 6.51 square metres or 10.22 square metres for two people. Those sizes will be further compromised if young children requiring a cot share the space. Would the Minister be happy to live in such a restrictive space?

Local authorities are well aware of the conditions in which some of their residents live and may seek to provide alternative room sizes in their licensing schemes. I note that the regulations do not seek to limit local authorities from setting more generous room size allowances than the national minimum, as the Minister said in her opening remarks, but can she confirm whether she believes that local authorities are protected from legal challenge in the residential property tribunal by landlords who wish to test specific local circumstances? Will she confirm that she has taken steps to allow local authorities to set room sizes freely without fear of a residential property tribunal?

The Minister mentioned fines for anybody letting out rooms that are smaller than the minimum size in the regulations. That requires enforcement and goes to comments made in interventions. Will any additional resources be made available for local authorities? There is no point in having these regulations unless we can properly enforce them and check that they are being adhered to. Local authorities will struggle to do that without resources—officers should be available to go and check on properties.

If the Government are prepared to intervene to set minimum room sizes in private rental HMOs, will they consider doing the same for new build private properties? On a recent visit to a development in Doncaster with Keepmoat Homes, which is working in partnership with the local Labour council, I was shown new builds, some of which will be handed to the council for social housing. They are being built with a 30% greater footprint to avoid the problems that have so often been experienced by people buying new houses—that the rooms are too small for regular furniture and do not have any storage space for things such as cleaning materials.

A number of issues arise when living space is unsuitably small. That applies to all properties, whether they are privately owned or rented HMOs. First, in HMOs there is the obvious danger that overcrowding and over-cluttered space could create a much greater fire risk. Usually there is only one way out, and residents should not be hindered in getting to the exit easily because of insufficient space. Secondly, one of the biggest issues connected with limited space, especially in HMOs, is the impact on mental health. Once someone is in the room, it is usually locked. There is often limited socialising between tenants, and a lack of shared social space can lead to isolation. If children are living in and sharing such a room, the ability to play, develop, be creative and learn is hampered. The likelihood of serious decline in mental health is all too real.

Of course that all fits into the wider problem of a housing market in crisis. It is fair to say that part of the reason for such shocking standards of accommodation is that many of those affected simply have no other option. There is a serious lack of council and social homes, and private rents for sole occupiers are too often unaffordable.