Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point that we reiterated again and again in Committee, but alas the Minister took no notice.

These concerns are spread across all parties and are reflected in the amendments tabled by the hon. Members for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). We broadly support those amendments, as they very much back up the arguments we made in Committee.

In Committee, we attempted to point out very clearly to the Government that we need to build houses across all tenures if we are to address the housing crisis. The largest number of houses we built recently was the 214,000 houses built in 2006-07, but that compared unfavourably with 1969 when 357,000 houses were built. What that demonstrates is that if we are to get something like the 250,000 homes we need, about half of them should be delivered by the public sector. However, there are simply no measures in the Bill to produce those much needed public sector homes. That is why we have tabled amendment 31 on Report.

Amendment 32 seeks to ensure that additional housing is supported with adequate infrastructure. This is a really important amendment.

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

Before my hon. Friend moves on to the substance of her remarks on amendment 32, she will remember that on amendment 31 one of the few chinks of light in Ministers’ otherwise disappointing responses to our amendments was on housing co-operatives. Does she not think that tonight, in the Minister’s wind-up to this group of amendments, there might be an opportunity for him to update us on the progress he has made on offering local authorities useful guidance on how more mutual co-operative housing stock can be built?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, one I hope that the Minister listens to and responds to this evening.

Housing and Planning Bill (Seventeenth sitting)

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Thursday 10th December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Thomas]

I am grateful to the Minister for his reply and his willingness to look at the issue of HCA guidance. A number of contractors and social landlords told the inquiry to which I referred that the framework had worked well, and I gently suggest that that might be another reason for looking at the matter again.

I welcome the Minister’s personal commitment to the area in question. As a last point, I would urge him to consider the point that he ended on—the quality of construction apprenticeships. I worry that, in the past, some apprenticeships on offer have not been of high quality, which might have been a factor in putting some people off going into the construction industry. However, given the Minister’s helpful remarks, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 12

Tenants’ rights to new management in property sold under LSVT

“(1) This section applies to housing which—

(a) was previously owned by a local authority;

(b) was part of a large scale voluntary transfer falling within the definition of section 32(4AB) of the Housing Act 1985; and

(c) the disposal of which was subject to the consent of the Secretary of State under section 32 of the 1985 Act.

(2) Where the transfer took place more than five years before this section comes into operation the current owner of the transferred housing shall consult the current tenants on their satisfaction with the management of that property.

(3) Where the transfer took place less than five years after this section comes into operation the current owner of the transferred housing shall not more than every five years consult the current tenants on their satisfaction with the management of that property.

(4) If more than 50% of tenants responding to the consultation under subsections (2) or (3) are dissatisfied with the management of the property, the owner of the housing must carry out a competitive tender for the management of the property and report the outcome to the tenants.”—(Dr Blackman-Woods.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause is intended to ensure that tenants will be consulted about their satisfaction with management arrangements for their properties and tenancies where there has been a large-scale voluntary transfer. If, after five years, more than 50% of tenants are not happy with the arrangements, it provides for a competitive tendering exercise. This is largely a probing amendment to check whether the Government think it important to gauge tenant satisfaction with the LSVT arrangements, and to provide a mechanism to change them if tenants are not happy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Thomas]

With respect, I do not think that is accurate. The hon. Gentleman is perhaps rushing to read the Whip’s script a bit too quickly.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Is it not another curious inconsistency in the Government’s approach that they are happy to add to the bureaucratic burden of local authorities by making them go through a tortuous article 4 direction application, which may or may not be allowed, to carry out the most basic of planning functions?

[Mr Thomas]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The hon. Member for Croydon South may want to seek the help of the hon. Member for Wimbledon in looking in a little more detail at the example of the Willow Lane trading estate and the conversion of business accommodation into flats there. According to the Local Government Association, Merton Council had attempted without success to get the industrial estate exempt from the Government’s rules.

I introduce this new clause in the spirit of concern about the impact on the business community, while still wanting office accommodation to be converted into housing, where appropriate, as long as there is a full discussion involving the local community.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I rise to support my hon. Friend’s new clause and to ask the Minister a very straightforward question. In October, he said that the changes in the policy on permitted development of office blocks from office to residential were to be made permanent. Will he clarify whether there has been any secondary legislation to bring that about?

Housing and Planning Bill (Sixteenth sitting)

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Thursday 10th December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Thomas]

Taking at face value the question from the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton—and given the conversations on the Government Benches, one should perhaps be cautious about doing that—might he not be tempted to support new clause 37, which would make it easier for councils to build more homes and thus deal with the backlog of people on waiting lists?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I hope that we are able look at that this afternoon, because it would be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say about it.

Traditional secured tenancies are not tenancies for life. They are invariably subject to a probation period of at least a year. If there is antisocial behaviour during the tenancy, the court has the power to take away security of tenure and reduce the tenant’s rights in a demoted tenancy, so there are already measures that enable local authorities to end tenancies if there is a problem with the tenant. Indeed, the Local Government Association wrote to us to say:

“The Localism Act 2011 introduced flexible tenancies in acknowledgement that ‘a one size fits all model on rents and tenancies is not the best answer to the wide range of needs and circumstances of those accessing the social rented sector’. Councils should retain this freedom to manage locally their Tenancy Policy and decisions over tenancies. Every housing market is different and blanket national enforcements may risk impacting on coordinated local efforts to balance efficient use of stock while building stable neighbourhoods and communities. The requirement to review each tenancy every five years would be a significant administrative burden on councils. We would like to support the Government to work with councils in order for it to understand the impact of fixed-term tenancies and to then be able to use the information to inform future tenancy strategy.”

The new clause is not only profoundly unfair and unjust for people who need and are fortunate enough to get social rented tenancies, but profoundly anti-localist. That is what the local councils themselves say.

The 2011 Act gave local authorities flexibility. If, because of local circumstances, they have not used that flexibility to the degree that the Minister would like, under localism that should not give the Minister the right to legislate for them to do things differently. I want the Minister to explain why he thinks it is appropriate to introduce these new clauses on the last day of Committee stage. What work has been carried out with local authorities and tenants’ organisations to understand the impact of the proposals? What is he going to do from now on in terms of both the impact assessment and having the important discussions that must take place before the proposals go any further?

Housing and Planning Bill (Fifteenth sitting)

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Has he not just given a brilliant example of what we are discussing? Having better compulsory purchase powers would enable local authorities to unlock a necessary development for his constituents of the sort that we have all been talking about.

[Mr Thomas]

That is generous of my hon. Friend. It is a particular concern of my constituents, given the huge cuts to Transport for London grant, which might mean that access programmes that exist for other stations are cut, putting even further away the prospect of better access at Harrow-on-the-Hill station. If there were a way to secure some planning gain from the development at the Harrow post office site that might be invested in better access and it might be another route to achieving the objective that my constituents have had for a long time now, under both Mayors of London, which is to make Harrow-on-the-Hill a fully accessible station. I hope that the Minister will be particularly attracted to amendment 282. In that spirit, I support my hon. Friend’s amendment.

Housing and Planning Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Gray. I rise to support the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood. I seek further clarification from the Minister following our discussions on Thursday. Unusually, I want to thank him for putting the policy factsheet on permission in principle into the House of Commons Library yesterday. I think he intended to help us get a better understanding of what the Government seek to achieve in this part of the Bill.

[Mr Thomas]

When my hon. Friend found the Minister’s policy statement, did she by any chance find attached to it the operational document that the National Housing Federation and the Government were apparently going to publish on how voluntary right to buy will work?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Unfortunately, unless I missed it, there was not an operational document attached. Perhaps that is something about which we will get some clarification from the Minister. After all, we do not have many sittings left to be enlightened about the contents of the operational document. Presumably, it will come forward very quickly indeed.

I was somewhat unusually in the middle of thanking the Minister for the document. However, unfortunately, when I actually read the document, I thought, “This provides more questions than answers about how permission in principle will operate in practice,” so I have a few questions to ask the Minister this morning. There are now not three but four ways to get planning permission in this country. We know from our discussion on Thursday that the first way is through land being placed on a brownfield register. The second is clearly outlined in the factsheet, which states:

“The Bill will allow permission in principle to be granted automatically when housing is allocated in future local and neighbourhood plans or identified on brownfield registers.”

We need clarity from the Minister on that very strange wording. Does “future” mean “from now on”? In other words, does it mean that all of the current plans that have been adopted are not the plans on which permission in principle will be granted? Does it mean that it will be granted for new plans that will presumably start at some time that will be set out in regulations? Does it apply to neighbourhood plans that perhaps were approved just last week following a referendum? The factsheet very clearly says “future”, so one has to assume that it does not mean the ones that are currently in existence.

That is a really important point, because in our discussion on Thursday it was suggested that permission in principle will be attached to plans that have already been adopted. We are totally unclear, on the basis of that document, about which plans we are talking about. Are they the ones that have been adopted? Will there be a new system where all the plans have to be redone? Will they go through a process that we do not know about at the moment so that permission in principle can be given? I was really surprised to see that in the document following our discussion on Thursday when no mention was made of the confusion about what plans we might be talking about.

There is a third possibility for getting planning permission, which seems to go direct to the local authority. A paragraph in the document states:

“Recognising the specific challenges that developers of smaller sites can face, the Bill will also make provision for permission in principle to be granted for minor development on application to the local authority.”

Through what process will they make an application to the local authority, and what role will there be for local people having a say? Do the sites have to already be on the brownfield register, or is this in addition to the register? Such matters are incredibly important and will affect all our constituencies and our constituents’ ability to have a say over what development takes place in their area.

I have another question for the Minister, although how he will answer when he is not listening is beyond me. Nevertheless, the document states:

“Permission in principle will only be granted where development is considered to be locally acceptable in principle.”

How will that be known? By what process will people be consulted to give their views on a development, particularly since the paragraph above states that developers can go direct to the local authority? We do not know whether that bypasses the local community or whether it goes via the brownfield register or a local or neighbourhood plan. Those are my questions.

The final mechanism for getting planning permission is where a local authority is designated and people can choose to go directly to the Secretary of State to get planning permission. There could be four ways to get planning permission, or there could be three ways. We are not absolutely clear. Unfortunately, the document, which I know was intended to be helpful, has not given us the answers that we sought on Thursday. Perhaps the Minister will come back and clarify the issues for us this morning.

There are a couple of other matters in the excellent amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood that need to be emphasised. The document that was placed in the House of Commons Library yesterday states:

“The Government has engaged widely with a range of key stakeholders with different interests—including local government, planning sector, house builders, other developers, lenders, and environmental and community groups. This engagement has been tremendously useful and has influenced our thinking. We look forward to continuing discussions as we further work up the finer details, and expect to publish a detailed consultation later this year.”

Who have the Government consulted about the proposals in the document? Yesterday, I contacted several local authorities, a few developers, and some of the main planning umbrella organisations. None of them had been consulted on the proposals. If the Government are going to put that in a document in the House of Commons Library, we need to have some information demonstrating to us who has been consulted and what they said. The summary on my piece of paper does not tell us what they said, let alone who they are. That is a major problem for us when debating the clauses. There is no doubt that it is helpful to have that document, but it would have been more helpful to have had it last week.

Yesterday, we got two consultation papers—one on the equality statement on the proposed changes through permission in principle and other elements of the Bill, and one on the operation of permission in principle—but I hope it will not have escaped members of the Committee that we discussed some of those issues on Thursday afternoon, in advance of the consultation papers being issued. I am not sure whether that is just tardiness on the Government’s behalf or whether there is more to it, but hopefully we will be able to return to the contents of the consultation documents at some later stage, because they go through a lot of the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood questioned earlier about the exact nature of brownfield and how the Government will define “affordable housing”. All those sorts of things are in the consultation documents.

Personally, although the Minister might have a different view, I think it would have been helpful if those consultations had taken place in advance of legislation being produced, rather than afterwards. It is not clear whether significant elements of the Bill will be able to be changed as a result of that consultation exercise because the Bill will probably have completed its passage through Parliament before the consultation reports. That prompts the question why the consultation is happening now. Perhaps the Minister will enlighten us on the consultation’s exact purpose.

As my hon. Friend said, these important concerns are not only being raised by Opposition Members. A number of people have written in to comment. I have brought a sample of five or six to mention this morning, but many, many different organisations from across the planning and housing sector have written in to say, “Look, we don’t really have a problem”—this is where we all are—“with permission in principle as a principle, but approving legislation without knowing exactly how it will operate and without ironing out the issue of what happens with regard to material considerations or technical details that happen, or are discovered, further down the line is a huge problem.”

Wildlife and Countryside Link reminds us all that the clauses are “profoundly radical” and are some of the most contentious in the Bill. Wildlife and Countryside Link says that we are allowing

“the Secretary of State to create a development order, for any land allocated for development in a qualifying document… that gives permission to development in principle.”

Wildlife and Countryside Link says that the Bill allows the granting of permission in principle whether or not the qualifying document is in place, or even in existence, when a local development order is made. That is getting to the nub of the question because, if the Wildlife and Countryside Link is correct, I do not see how it fits with what the Government are saying in this document—the one they put in the House of Commons Library—about future development plans and neighbourhood plans. Or are they in fact saying that this will be some future document, and it does not matter whether it is in existence at the moment because the Secretary of State will be able to grant permission anyway?

Does the document have to be in place? Is it a future document? How is the Secretary of State going to take note of that document? Does he need to take note of it, or can he just decide himself that site A in area B shall have permission in principle because someone has made an application directly to him?

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[Mr Thomas]

You should be knighted for your service on this Committee, but I appreciate your guidance, Mr Gray.

There is a general need to give would-be developers on a floodplain some sense of what might be acceptable so as not to exacerbate the flooding risks.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Is this not where paragraph (b) of amendment 285 would be extremely helpful? After the previous intervention, perhaps I should clarify that that paragraph would require the Secretary of State to ensure the provision of adequate funding to carry out the testing that is needed. That testing might be for the risk of flooding.

[Mr Thomas]

My hon. Friend makes a good point and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

Ministers have occasionally said that they want to help small and medium-sized house builders to increase their market share. Giving those developers much more certainty about what would and would not be acceptable on a site would surely reduce their costs over time and increase their chances of accessing sites that they can afford.

I would have thought that amendment 284 would appeal to the Government, given their enthusiasm for starter homes. Giving greater clarity to would-be developers about the proportion of starter homes required on a site as part of the suitable dwelling mix that a community might expect would surely both encourage the starter homes initiative that the Government want to push and give more certainty to developers.

Finally, I come to the question of the re-election of the hon. Member for South Norfolk. I paraphrase it in those terms because he prayed in aid with enthusiasm tall buildings in central London. I worry that his constituents might not share his love of tall buildings. I see their virtue in places such as Croydon; I am not quite so enthusiastic about the prospect of having them in central Harrow, and nor are my constituents. I have to confess that I do not know, but I suspect that the constituents of South Norfolk would not be too enthusiastic about the prospect of 20-storey blocks of flats being part of developments there or in the surrounding area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

—and with other local authority officers about how to address these issues.

[Mr Thomas]

I rise to support these new clauses. To me, they seem to make eminent sense. They are not an over-the-top provision and they are not creating a particularly onerous regulatory burden. However, they are seeking to re-establish a balance between, on the one side, the need and the appetite for new housing that all Committee members report and, on the other side, the need to maintain centres of cultural activity.

My hon. Friend has just set out some of the rationale for these amendments. I want to draw the Committee’s attention to what motivates my support for the new clauses. I am motivated in part by the experience of one of the grassroots venues that has closed in my constituency. The Rayners pub used to host jazz and ska nights on a regular basis, and when it closed there was a long campaign to stop it being earmarked for development. The campaign was led by an excellent local resident, Bill Ashton, who was then the conductor for the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. He was rightly concerned to protect a local music venue, and he argued that very few such venues in outer London hosted jazz and ska nights. My worry is that, without the amendments, the environmental health concerns that my hon. Friend alluded to will continue to increase the pressure on licensing authorities to take away licences for music venues.

The Trinity pub in my constituency is still very much going on. It has two floors and the upper floor often hosts small bands, or bands that have not yet made it. There are many offices within the vicinity of that pub. It is an excellent pub—Labour-supporting, which is an additional benefit that the Trinity brings—and I would not want to see it forced to stop allowing performances by local and other bands as a result of the pressure that may or may not come from those who move into homes where there were once offices.

Housing and Planning Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I beg to move amendment 211, in clause 74, page 30, line 13, at end insert

“and shall only apply where the costs of implementation are reasonable as determined by local authority or Housing Association Board of Trustees.”

The amendment would establish that the cost of implementing the high income rent regime provides value for money.

The amendment has two purposes. One is to flag up the additional costs that will be heaped on to local authorities and housing associations in administering the scheme. Again, a great number of the people who have written to us have said that they are concerned that, because they do not have many tenants who would be deemed high earners under the Bill, quite a low aggregate amount of money would be available; and that administering the scheme and having to find out all their tenants’ income could far outweigh any financial benefits.

The amendment is an attempt to test the Government on whether they have carried out any assessment of the likely income that would accrue to local authorities and housing associations across each area of the country and how much money they think councils and housing associations would have to spend gathering the data and administering the whole scheme, and being very clear that more money would be raised than would be expended. To my knowledge, that information is not in the public domain and was not in the impact assessment.

We are concerned that the proposed process is simply adding financial burdens on local authorities, whose budgets have been cut year on year in many parts of the country—my own council, for example, has had a 40% cut in its budget, with more cuts to come until 2019. The Local Government Association—it might be worth noting in passing that the LGA is Conservative-run at the moment—has voiced concern about funding cuts that have left its members with a £10 billion black hole. The LGA is concerned that the provisions in this Bill, including the costly the pay-to-stay scheme, will place a further burden on their finances.

Local authorities and housing associations have raised genuine concerns, as have co-operative housing groups, one of which says:

“Administering Pay to Stay would be complex and time-consuming. Given that our co-op is managed by its member/tenants, costly provision would need to be made to employ a professional to do this. A small co-op such as ours would find this difficult to manage.”

The question the amendment puts is this: what assessment has been made of the money that would be raised in each area for each housing association, and what are the estimated costs of the administrative burden being placed on housing associations, local authorities and co-operative housing groups?

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

I rise to support the amendment. In doing so, I shall focus on the representations made to me about the plight of small co-operative and community-led housing associations—a point I put to the Under-Secretary of State in a previous intervention.

My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham is right to say that the focus of concern for housing co-operatives has been on the administrative costs of managing pay to stay and its impact on the functionality of co-operatives. I take at face value the words of the Minister for Housing and Planning on housing associations. On Tuesday, he said:

“The Government trust housing associations to look after their tenants. We believe that they have their tenants’ best interests at heart and that they will use their discretion wisely.”––[Official Report, Housing and Planning Public Bill Committee, 1 December 2015; c.376.]

That was said in the context of other elements of the Bill, but surely it is equally appropriate in the context of pay to stay.

The Under-Secretary of State made it clear that he will consider the issue of housing co-operatives in relation to the regulations, and I very much welcome that. However, I say to him that many co-operatives, particularly those in London, have made contact—for example, Vine Housing Co-operative and Coin Street Community Builders have been in touch with me, and Edward Henry House Co-operative has made representations to us. They say that, because of the cut in rents being delivered in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, there is no additional funding that they will be able to get to deliver some of the other proposals in this Bill and cover the administrative costs they will face.

The co-operatives are not, in the main, big housing associations with the scale to find efficiency savings naturally, not least because they do not usually have large numbers of staff or other resources. Much of the administration of housing co-ops is done on a voluntary basis, as part of the quid pro quo of being a part-owner of the housing co-operative. If pay to stay is introduced, Ministers will understandably want housing associations to have a series of monitoring arrangements in place. Those monitoring arrangements will inevitably create an additional burden, and at the moment small housing co-ops are struggling to see how they will be able to fund that. They also worry more generally for some of their members, who may face a sharp increase in the cost of staying in the housing co-operative, and therefore housing association, property. Rent arrears could also increase, which would be an additional cost. Because of the small nature of most housing co-ops, that would be difficult for them to bear.

For those reasons, I urge the Under-Secretary to look even more seriously at the potential impact on small housing associations. I will write to him separately outside the Committee, but I hope he will undertake to look at that letter and representations on this provision from housing co-operatives.

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[Mr Thomas]

Is this not perhaps an example of the Chancellor giving with one hand and the Minister taking back with the other?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Absolutely. I draw the Committee’s attention to the written submission from the Home Group, which worked through examples of the effect on its tenants. It thinks that around 11% of its tenants will be affected, and that half of all local authority tenants—a huge number of people—could see really enormous jumps in the amount of rent they will have to pay. The written evidence works through just how serious the jumps in rent charges will be and the potentially devastating consequences for particular families. If the Minister is going to reject everything we put forward to make the scheme a little bit fairer, I urge him to look at what individual housing associations and local authorities are saying, because they are in touch with their tenants and will know the impact of the legislation.

I will not say too much about amendment 216, because it just carries on from amendment 214, but it tries to put some sense into the definition of a high rent with reference to average incomes in the area and with high incomes being defined by the top quartile of incomes in the area. If we were asked what we think is a high income, how many of us would say the statutory minimum wage? Who would? Quite frankly, no one with any sense would say that. We would all say, “Well, perhaps the higher quartile of incomes would seem to be a reasonable starting point.” That would vary slightly throughout the country—for example, in Yorkshire and the Humber the average salary is £23,000, compared with an average salary in London of about £40,000.

As I suggested earlier, we would relate the definition to what is happening to earnings locally, and it would also be understandable. It seems fair that we all understand how income has been assessed and why it has been judged to be a high income, rather than having it judged against the minimum wage, which, as I said before, seems extraordinary. If the Minister wants further evidence, there is yet another excellent submission from a housing association. This time it is from Riverside housing association—

[Mr Thomas]

One of the pilots.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Indeed. Again, with its tenants in mind it worked through exactly what the proposals will mean. It said that the impact of paying to stay

“is likely to be very high and vary significantly across the country. Comparing two local authority areas, Liverpool and Bromley, shows the difference an increase to market rent could mean for our tenants. At present a move to a market rent for a household at the £30,000 threshold living in a 3 bedroom house in Liverpool would result in a weekly increase of £35 (an increase of 38%). However for a similar family (now earning £40,000) living in a Riverside home in Bromley this would mean a staggering increase in weekly rent of £254”—

a 201% increase in their rent.

Riverside continued:

“This would mean that the household would pay around 50% of their gross income on rent, significantly above the accepted affordability threshold of 30% which is usually applied to net income.”

That is a staggering example, but it is just one out of many and would be duplicated again and again across all housing associations in all areas of the country. I use the example to demonstrate once again that the measures will have an impact on the amount of money that real people will have to pay to be housed.

[Mr Thomas]

Not only will that have an impact on real people, but might it not also have an impact on the taxpayer? My hon. Friend may have seen the modelling by Sovereign Housing Association showing that a typical household of two adults earning £30,000 and two children in a three-bedroom house would be eligible for housing benefit in over half of local authorities. That figure rises to some 96% for residents paying affordable rent. For those paying a market rent, the figure would be 100%. It cannot be right that the taxpayer will have to pick up the mistakes of the policy as currently drafted.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes eloquently the point that we made earlier. The lack of a cost-benefit analysis of the scheme is very unhelpful, because we would otherwise have those figures. We would know how much money is likely to be spent on housing benefit, how much it would take to administer the scheme and whether it was worth putting so many families through this extraordinarily damaging series of events.

Amendment 217 seeks to test the Minister on whether there is another way in which we could consider what might be a high income. If it is not to be above the median of rents set locally and if it is not to be in the upper quartile, what about three times the average income for the area? That is another way in which we could determine what would be a high income, but the Government have rejected that particular approach. Again, we have evidence from Mulberry Housing Co-operative:

“Our tenants will be unable to afford the massive increases in rents...This means the rents would have to rise above the household income of the majority, if not all, of our members. To afford this level of rent the household income would have to be in the region of £170,000pa. A household income of £40,000 would trigger rent rises that are impossible to pay for the ordinary workers who make up our Co Op.”

There we have it from the very people who run the co-op. Using the high-income level proposed by the Government, it will be impossible for people on such levels to pay the increased rent. I urge the Minister to reconsider the thresholds.

Finally, I turn to amendment 215. My understanding of the Government’s most recently published consultation is that they intend household income to be assessed only on that of the tenant and not that of other household members. The amendment seeks to discover whether that is wrong or whether the Government have not decided what they are doing. PlaceShapers and its members are concerned that if incomes beyond those of tenants are taken into account, current tenancy agreements will be called into question. It has asked, as have others, that only the income of tenants is taken into account. Otherwise, family units might be broken up, and it might be necessary for parents to ask an older child to move out of the property if they were not able to afford the higher rent.

Example after example has been given to us of the damaging consequences that the measure could have for households. I would be grateful to hear from the Minister whether only tenants’ incomes will be included, or whether a household will include an 18-year-old who has a part-time job stacking shelves in the local supermarket. Will the income of that adult child be taken into account?

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[Mr Thomas]

We know from the way in which the Second Reading debate and, indeed, debates in Committee have proceeded that the Government are not remotely interested in helping those on low or middle incomes who, although they may aspire to own their own home, cannot afford to do so at the moment. Surely the Government being willing to help local councils to build more homes for social rent with the resources raised under pay to stay might be one way in which they could ameliorate some of that deserved criticism.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Absolutely; my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. If the Government were genuinely committed to increasing the number of affordable housing units in this country and increasing housing supply across all tenures, they would take the opportunity to use this income to provide additional housing, rather than squirreling it away in the Treasury—we know not where; we know not for what purpose.

Housing and Planning Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I already almost answered the hon. Gentleman in my previous statement, but I will reiterate it in a moment. I remind him that the purpose of the Committee—I am sure you will correct me if I am wrong, Mr Gray—is to scrutinise the Government’s legislation and the consultation document in front of me, not to scrutinise the Opposition’s position. As I outlined a moment ago, our position is very much that the system in place at the moment, with a national framework for rent setting that gives discretion to housing associations and local authorities to charge higher rents should they wish to, and to set rents at a level that makes sense for them, including for tenants with an income of more than £60,000, is the right approach. I hope that answers his point.

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

Is this not another example of the Conservative party’s regulatory zeal? Here are institutions in the private sector being told that nanny, in the form of the Minister, knows best.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Indeed. As we will discuss under later amendments, this part of the Bill sets up a whole new bureaucracy and a whole new quango, and greatly adds to the administrative burdens on not only housing associations but local authorities, which is extraordinary given that they are having their budgets cut so substantially.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I have answered the hon. Gentleman’s point more than once this morning. I remind him, his hon. Friends and the Minister that the Government consulted on this scheme; they consulted people who know something about running housing associations and local authorities, and only a quarter of the respondents agreed with the principle of very high earners who live in taxpayer-subsidised housing paying higher rents. Government Members have to engage with that point.

Only a few respondents to the consultation agreed with even a discretionary scheme. The consultation, in case Members are not aware, was on higher rents being charged at income levels of £60,000, £80,000 and £100,000, and even at those levels most people thought there should not be a mandatory scheme, but that it should be left to the discretion of social housing providers.

[Mr Thomas]

Is not a further problem with the Conservatives’ plan to impose yet more red tape on businesses in the housing association world the risk of pay to stay leading in some cases to a higher housing benefit bill and increased homelessness?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend’s point is completely accurate. Many commentators are very much against the scheme in principle and because it does not make a great deal of sense economically. We understand the context of the clause and this part of the Bill: the Government want to establish a rent regime where people on incomes of, initially, £60,000 or more would pay higher rents. However, the measures in the Bill go further than that.

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[Dr Blackman-Woods]

For about the fifth time this morning, there is a discretionary scheme in operation.

[Mr Thomas]

Say it slowly to help them.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Perhaps I will say it again. A discretionary scheme is already in operation, and local authorities and housing associations are able to reflect local circumstances and apply high rents where they deem it appropriate. That is a sensible way forward.

[Mr Jackson]

I have listened to the hon. Lady’s dulcet Ulster tones all morning, but we have not made much progress. To reach a consensus in our scrutiny of the Bill, we must understand Her Majesty’s Opposition’s benchmark. She prayed in aid evidence from housing associations and said that only a quarter of them backed the proposal, but what is her policy? In principle, would she have supported a cap of £60,000? With all due respect, she has failed to answer that straightforward question for the past 25 minutes.

[Mr Thomas]

Say it even more slowly.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I am not going to detain the Committee by saying it again. I will move on.

[Mr Thomas]

Before my hon. Friend does, will she give way?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Very briefly, and then I want to make progress.

[Mr Thomas]

I am sure my hon. Friend has seen the Chartered Institute of Housing’s briefing, so she will be aware that those in receipt of the Chancellor’s proposed living wage—say, those on the living wage in Burton or Peterborough—will by 2020 be earning more than the current threshold in the Bill for a high-value social tenant. Therefore, someone on the living wage will have to pay the higher rents. That is surely another sign of the madness of this provision.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

To answer my hon. Friend directly, I have been sent the briefing. The point I was making a few moments ago was that the household income threshold of £30,000 outside London seems extraordinary to many people, given that it will capture people on the new minimum wage in a few years’ time. The position that the Government have taken seems extraordinary.

Because of the difficult position that lots of people will find themselves in, amendment 200 would exempt different categories of people from having the mandatory higher rents attached to them. Such rents should not apply to people over the age of 65, to people who have a registered disability, or to people on zero-hours contracts. That is particularly important because a lot of housing associations and local authorities have explained to us that one of the real problems they have with their tenant base is that people are increasingly on zero-hours contracts. They have a fluctuating income from week to week, so it is difficult to assess what their annual income would be.

Indeed, we will have to await regulations from the Secretary of State to find out how income will be taken into account, so we are not even sure at the moment what time period the £30,000 threshold will apply to. If in any one week in a year somebody is to have earned an income level equivalent to £30,000, even though they get that income level only for one week, will that be taken into account? Will they be charged a higher rent for that week? We will come back to that issue as we discuss this part of the Bill.

Similarly, what about people who have seasonal contracts of employment? They might earn all their income within a five or six-month period. Will the income be assessed on the whole year or on the months when they earn that amount? We simply do not know the answers to those questions. Also, will the threshold apply when a member of a household receives employment and support allowance, because of the triggering of housing benefit payments, or is in receipt of care? I am sure all hon. Members have received the written evidence from housing associations that have asked whether care costs will be removed from the overall income before it is assessed for higher rent payments. The answer is that at this point we simply do not know, so will the Minister tell us whether there is any intention to do that?

If one member of a household is a carer for another, will they have to pay the higher rent level, even though they are probably saving the state a lot of money by caring for that person rather than having them put into a residential care facility or getting some other form of care and support? Should the higher level apply to those living in supported housing, and to households already in receipt of housing benefit? If so, this measure will simply increase the level of benefit that they receive. To say that that is a bit mad is probably putting it politely, but it certainly is not sensible policy making to introduce a measure that will increase rent and then put that rent into the public purse.

[Mr Thomas]

Does my hon. Friend have any information about whether the Government intend to allow an appeals process under the scheme? I can imagine a situation in which a housing association approaches HMRC seeking information about the income of someone on a zero-hours contract, and HMRC simply provides income details for the last 12 months that it has available. However, that person’s income might be substantially less in the current rental year period than in the previous year, due to their zero-hours contract. A housing association would seek to charge a rent, and the tenant might want the right of appeal. Are we still in the dark as to whether such an appeals process will be available?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I hope to discuss that later in our deliberations.

Before I finish talking about amendment 200, it might help the Committee to focus on the real issues if I briefly quote from a letter to a housing association:

“The person for whom I care is now severely disabled and chronically sick. He was diagnosed with a crippling, degenerative illness at the age of 17, but worked all his life…He now requires two carers, so that we can look after him virtually 24/7…He worked very hard despite his medical problems and finished his career as a business unit manager with 204 staff spread over seven locations…He chose to stay in his flat in central London as it was close to his job and, through his hard work, built up a pension, which, in normal circumstances would be adequate. Now, however, because, at his income level, he does not receive help from the council, his pension is mostly spent on his carers and supplies which the NHS is unable to provide. Pay to Stay takes no account of these personal circumstances and does not recognise that, though his gross income will be just about £40k in 2017, more than half of that goes on his carers. I deal with all aspects of his life now, including his finances, and I know that, even though he is no longer able to pay to his carers the ‘going rate’, he is left, after tax, on a four figure income which is at poverty level. This is a problem that is bound to be faced by hundreds of disabled people at this income level.”

This part of the Bill will make people with real difficulties face that set of circumstances. Why does the Minister think that is appropriate? Many other examples have been provided, but I will not go through them—that one case sums up exactly the difficulties posed.

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[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman has shown a great interest in the tenants of housing association co-operatives throughout the Committee’s deliberations. I refer him to the answer I gave the hon. Member for City of Durham: we are considering carefully what exemptions will be in the regulations. We will certainly consider his comments. On the basis of the assurances I have given, I hope the hon. Lady will withdraw her amendment.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I thank the Minister for his response. The detail of the response indicates to me, and I hope to everyone else, that our proposal, far from being a wrecking amendment, as the hon. Member for Peterborough suggested, raises serious issues on behalf of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

[Mr Thomas]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I will not, because we probably need to wrap up our discussion on these amendments.

We are talking about very vulnerable people who are deeply concerned about what these clauses might mean for them. I draw the Minister’s attention to the articles that are appearing in the press all the time with headlines such as “How ‘pay to stay’ housing will penalise disabled people like my daughter”. There is genuine concern out there, and the sooner the Government give some reassurances to these vulnerable people, the better.

On the basis of what I have heard from the Minister, I will not press the amendments, but I hope the Government can respond quickly to the points that have been made by introducing regulations as quickly as possible to outline who might be exempted. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

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[Dr Blackman-Woods]

We now come to a series of amendments on what we might do about the rent charging scheme, which might actually be of interest to the Government Members who were jumping up and down earlier. These are probing amendments, which are intended to elicit more information about how the Government think rents should be set and what degree of prescription the Secretary of State will exercise through regulations on how rents should apply in practice.

Amendment 198 suggests that the clause should apply

“only where a registered provider of social housing has failed to set a graduated rent charging scheme related to income level”.

That goes back to the point about discretion, which we touched on in debating the previous group of amendments. If a housing association or a local authority already operates a scheme with different rent levels for people on different incomes, and if that scheme falls within the national rent setting framework, what is the point in the Government coming along and insisting that those bodies do things very differently? The amendment therefore poses a general question about what the Government think is wrong with the discretionary scheme.

[Mr Thomas]

It seems likely that the Under-Secretary—the more considered, measured and helpful of the two Ministers we have had at our disposal thus far, although that may change—will respond to the debate. Will my hon. Friend seek to elicit from him a commitment that the detail he may be considering including in the regulations will be made available to the House before Report?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I have written to the Minister to ask whether the regulations can be made available before the Committee finishes its deliberations, and, helpfully, I received a letter from him yesterday. He told me that, unfortunately, he could not provide us with the regulations before we finished our deliberations in Committee. I have not yet thought about how I will respond, and I do not want to take up the Committee’s time by thinking about that. I will respond in due course, because I need a fuller explanation from the Minister as to why the regulations cannot be provided earlier so that we know exactly what we are talking about. As we have said a number of times in the Committee, we are working in the dark, because so little information is available. That is why we tabled these amendments—to see whether we can get a bit more information from the Minister.

Amendment 201 is designed to establish, in a pretty similar way to amendment 198, what the Government think should be taken into consideration in rent level setting, whether they will take local circumstances into account and whether their intention is that the scheme that is eventually applied will have been subject to a consultation exercise involving tenants.

Housing and Planning Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Public Bill Committees

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

Mr Gray, it is good to have you in the Chair, so one should welcome you to it.

Before the break, I was about to voice concern that the Government were giving up on the provision of housing for people on low and middle incomes. That concern is based on evidence from Savills, which estimates that an extra 350,000 English households will be unable to access either subsidised or, indeed, market rent housing in the next five years, including many London families with an annual income of up to £60,000. Indeed, Centre for London research estimates that within the next two years people with occupations such as senior nurse and senior teacher will start to struggle to find anywhere affordable to live in London.

In my own constituency of Harrow, my local council tells me the minimum starting salary for a registered nurse is £21,692 and £25,879 for a newly qualified teacher. The reduced availability of affordable rented accommodation provided by housing associations and by councils will reduce such people’s chances of accessing housing via a waiting list or a homelessness route. According to Foxtons, the average market rent in Harrow is £235 a week for a studio, £295 for a one-bedroom flat and £372 for a two-bedroom home, so for a registered nurse starting their career, a studio at market rent in Harrow would cost approximately 56% of their gross—not net—salary, and a two-bedroom home would cost 89% of that salary, which would clearly be completely unaffordable. Reducing the supply of housing association accommodation risks further driving out of London many people who are crucial to our public services and other services on which our constituents rely.

That brings us back to the point about the implications for the national health service, the police and the fire service, as many more families say that they have to move out of London to afford to live. That is the motivation behind my support for amendment 151, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan). Important as it is to help people to buy their own home, it is equally important and incumbent on the Government and the House not to give up on the provision of housing for those on low or middle incomes, and I fear that the Minister has.

I also worry about the impact on the taxpayer of the lack of a requirement to provide a like-for-like property in the same area. If there is a failure by housing associations to provide a like-for-like property in the same borough or the same region, there is a risk. Let us take the example of Westminster. Imagine that housing association properties in Westminster are sold off and there is no like-for-like provision by the housing associations. Westminster will still have its duties under homelessness legislation: it will have to provide temporary accommodation; indeed, on occasion, it will have to provide bed and breakfast accommodation. The risk is that lack of supply or reduced supply of temporary accommodation will drive up the cost for local council tax payers and put pressure on housing benefit and universal credit budgets. The TaxPayers Alliance, had it had the chance to comment, might have supported our amendment, in the clear interest of keeping homelessness costs and temporary accommodation costs low.

The amendment is also in the specific interest of outer London. Almost all housing experts predict that the incentives in the Bill for housing associations to provide like-for-like properties in central London will present great difficulty. They suggest that councils, in order to meet their temporary accommodation requirements and their duties under homelessness legislation, will push ever more people out to outer London and beyond, instead of seeking to provide accommodation in inner London, where people have well established networks and family relationships—a point alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood.

My last point is the concern about London losing out. There is a clear sense that the reason that Ministers have to date been hostile to the idea of a clear requirement for housing associations to provide like-for-like replacement in London and in each London borough is that they want to use the resources generated in London to fund the provision of further accommodation outside London. For that reason, too, amendment 151 makes sense.

I pray in aid London Councils, which makes clear in its representations to the Committee its members’ belief that the voluntary deal poses a genuine risk to the supply of affordable homes in London. They believe that boroughs’ housing waiting lists will rise and that there will be increased reliance on temporary accommodation. They point out that London already has three quarters of the country’s temporary accommodation, with more than 49,000 households in temporary accommodation, and they worry about the rising costs.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful case about housing need in London and our shared desire to address the matter. The amendment tabled by our right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting is important because we know that the proportion of London households living in social rented housing has fallen since 2001, yet London’s population has grown by 14% since 2002. That that has brought about a huge shortage of social housing for rent in London, which is why replacement within the tenure is so important.

[Mr Thomas]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Indeed, the Government have exacerbated the problem by insisting, under their right-to-buy arrangements since 2012, that when a property is sold, it does not have to be a social rented property, on offer at approximately 50% of market rent; it can be a property that has an affordable rent, at approximately 80% of market rent. That makes it even difficult for those on low incomes who are trying to do the right thing by being in work, but who are unable to afford a property at 80% of market rent, of getting a property quickly.

It is worth considering another point my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham made in her intervention: London’s population is continuing to rise. Specialists estimate that London’s population is growing at a rate of 100,000 people a year. Clearly that does not mean that 100,000 new homes are needed, but a significant increase in housing stock is needed, which gives us all the more reason to worry about the absence of a like-for-like requirement on housing associations in London. Without making amendment 151 for London and amendment 148 for other parts of the country, we risk increasing the cost to the taxpayer, exacerbating the affordability crisis in London, and making it even more difficult for those on low and middle incomes to find somewhere to live. Indeed, we risk London losing out at the expense of the rest of the country.

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[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The amendment is designed to ensure that the portability provisions that go alongside the so-called voluntary agreement with housing associations have been properly thought through, so that offers made can be delivered by the housing associations within a reasonable timescale.

The issue of portability is very much on the minds of housing associations, as evidenced by their contributions to the Communities and Local Government Committee’s inquiry into right to buy. That is clear, but I will take the Committee through some of those examples. As requested, housing associations will apply portability—for example, Ian McDermott of Sanctuary Group said:

“we have stock in national parks, for example, which was built with covenants around selling. Those will not be for sale, but we will be offering portable discounts to those residents.”

Similarly, David Montague from L&Q said:

“For example, all of our stock in Richmond was acquired on the legal understanding that it would never be sold…That is just one example of many.”

He went on to say that L&Q will therefore not be able to offer its tenants in Richmond the opportunity to buy but will offer an

“alternative through a portable discount.”

Underpinning those statements is a supposition that it will be possible to offer portable discounts, but the lack of information before us about portability means that we must have this probing amendment to test how the Government see portability working in practice.

The PlaceShapers group of housing associations told us that the expectation that tenants living in exempted homes will be able to take their discount elsewhere—that it will be portable—might prove difficult to implement in places where the supply of alternative options is curtailed and constrained. If a housing association’s stock is very limited because a lot of its stock is exempt from the right-to-buy provisions, it might be difficult for that housing association to offer portability. That prompts a number of questions for the Minister. Will there be exemptions from the portability policy? Will housing associations always have to offer full portability? How many offers of portability will housing associations have to make, and in what circumstances? What is the timescale? Are there any restrictions that will enable the scheme to be more workable for housing associations with limited stock? For example, will the scheme expire after a certain period? Is there a different test of the reasonableness of an offer if a housing association has very limited stock?

[Mr Thomas]

My hon. Friend tempts me to take the Committee back to the question of the publication or not of the operational document that the National Housing Federation said it and the Government have committed to publish, setting out the details of how things such as, presumably, portable discounts will operate. Will she press the Minister to give a timetable for the publication of that document? Will it be published before Report?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

As always, my hon. Friend makes an extremely helpful intervention. We could have curtailed our discussion of this clause if more information about how right to buy will work in practice was in the public domain. We appreciate that the Government have set up pilots, but virtually no information is available about how those pilots will operate. It is important for our scrutiny of the Bill that we seek to tease from the Minister the circumstances in which portability might not be able to be applied because of the nature of a housing association and its stock. We have no idea whether the Government are going to publish regulations with some of that detail or whether they will give guidance to help housing associations to make the pilots work.

We also have no idea what is going to happen after the pilots. Will the lessons learned be applied to others in the sector, or will the scheme be rolled out to everybody in the meantime? The lack of information is breathtaking, given the seriousness of what the Bill aims to do. Following the request made so eloquently by my hon. Friend, will the Minister inform the Committee, in writing if necessary, when the operational guide and more detail about the scheme will be available?

[Mr Thomas]

The Minister has not yet instructed civil servants to make that operational document available. Surely there is some indication from the five housing association pilots launched last week about how portable discounts will work. He could therefore give us some information about how portability will work in the context of those pilots.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Given that those pilots were operational from midnight last Wednesday, one would assume that some consideration would be given to having an answer for tenants who got on the phone immediately—the Minister gave an example of one earlier—to register for the right to buy. One can only speculate what answer they received in the absence of any information—certainly any information in the public domain—about how the scheme should operate. There appear to be a series of questions about how the scheme will work from the housing association’s point of view. That is the purpose of amendment 152.

Amendment 153 seeks more detail from the Minister about how the scheme will work for tenants who seek to register for the right to buy and, ultimately, to purchase their housing association home. The purpose of the amendment is to see whether the Government intend to put down any parameters about the nature of the portability offer that should be made and how reasonable that might be. Will the Minister seek to put safeguards for tenants in guidance to enable them to take up the portability offer?

Paragraph (a) of the amendment suggests that a property offered under portability should be of a “similar size”. We want to prevent, for example, a family who live in a three-bedroom house that is not covered by the right to buy from being offered a portable discount on a property that is much smaller, such as a bungalow. Unless the tenants want a property of a different size, it is important that they should not be forced into a much smaller and possibly unsuitable property simply so that they can take up the portability offer. Does the Minister intend for regulations to set out the reasonableness criteria for such an offer made by housing associations?

Paragraph (b) seeks to safeguard the tenant from being offered a property that is of poorer quality. New build housing could, for example, be exempted from the right to buy, so a portability offer could be for older stock in poorer condition. Similarly, it is possible that, under discretion, housing associations would restrict the sale of refurbished property. Someone living in a refurbished property would not be able to buy it but they would be offered a property elsewhere, through the portable discount, that has not been refurbished. This is an issue that I would like the Minister to comment on. We think similar quality for tenants is important.

The Minister is looking at his watch but, as I said earlier, we could have curtailed discussion massively on this section of the Bill if the information that we are seeking was in the public domain or if we knew when it was likely to be in the public domain. If it was going to be in the public domain before we finished deliberations in Committee, we could have come back to it at a later stage. However, because we are lacking so much information, it is important in terms of our scrutiny role that we seek at least to try to have more information in the public domain.

Paragraph (c) seeks to ensure that the property with the portable discount that is offered to the tenant is either in the same area or in an area that is agreed by the tenant. This issue was raised by the Select Committee. There was a specific question asked about tenants who live in national parks, because they are quite extensive in some areas and there was a real concerned expressed, I think by the Chair of the Select Committee, that it might not be possible to offer portability in those circumstances, or not in the same area. It is important to us that, if there is going to be portability and it is going to involve another area, there has to be agreement with the tenant.

Lastly, paragraph (d) of the amendment seeks to tease out from the Minister exactly how an appeal mechanism would work. We know—we already have information from the National Housing Federation—that, if the tenant were unhappy with the alternative offered, for example because it represented a worse housing option than the one in which they lived, or it was in a location that presented difficulties in terms of employment, schooling and other commitments, they would be allowed to appeal to the regulator to arbitrate. Where the regulator considered that the association had acted fairly, it would suggest that the tenant accept the offer or, subject to available funding, offer the tenant a portable discount to purchase a property on the open market. Where the regulator considered that the association had not offered a reasonable alternative, the association would agree to offer another alternative.

I thought that that was quite interesting. Again, it begs a number of questions. Are we absolutely certain that the regulator would be independent? Is there a limit to the number of times that the tenant can go back to the regulator? If a tenant is offered a property that they think is unreasonable, they can turn it down. The regulator might agree that it is unreasonable. The housing association must then offer another property, but what if the tenant thinks that that is also unreasonable, perhaps for a different set of reasons? Can the tenant go back again and ask that it is looked at by the regulator? It seems to me that that is quite a cumbersome way to deal with just one transaction. Is there a limit on the number of times that someone can go to the regulator or a timescale that should be applied? Indeed, is there a timescale for wrapping up an offer of portability for a particular tenant? At the moment, as I have said, we simply have no real information about the appeals process, how independent it is or how fair it will ultimately be to the tenant, and whether the scheme will be workable. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answers to our specific questions on how portability will operate.

[Mr Thomas]

I rise to support the amendment in my hon. Friend’s name. In doing so, I am struck by an example in Wealdstone in my constituency, where one particular housing association, A2Dominion, is engaged with tenants and leaseholders in what seems to be a never-ending discussion about a series of construction problems with the property. It has been going on since 2008, and the problems still do not seem to have been sorted out. There are extensive leaks, a whole series of flats have been affected and there is as yet no sense when my constituents in Bannister House, an A2Dominion property, will have their problems sorted out.

In the context of the amendment, the last thing that I would want is for other tenants, under the portability arrangements, to be offered a poor property such as those in Bannister House, with a history of maintenance problems. My hon. Friend’s amendment seems to be a sensible pro-tenant safety measure on which it is worth pushing the Minister. I raised a couple of questions during debate on clause 57 stand part, one of which related to portability. The Minister resorted to the classic tactic of Ministers who do not know the answer by referring to some document on a website.

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[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I said that this was largely a probing amendment to see whether there was support from the Minister for giving guidance to housing associations on the sorts of eligibility tests that they might wish to carry out. It is interesting how Government Members have sought to categorise this as just further regulation when what we are really seeking to do on behalf of housing associations is ensure that they can carry out necessary checks to make sure that money is being used widely. At the risk of boring myself, I feel I have to reiterate, yet again, that the Opposition are not against the right to buy as a principle, we are simply deeply concerned and opposed to the way that this particular scheme is being rolled out with so little information in the public domain. As the amendment was largely probing, I beg to ask leave to withdraw it.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 59, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 60 and 61 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 62

Payments to Secretary of State

[Mr Thomas]

I beg to move amendment 186, in clause 62, page 26, line 7, at end insert—

“except in respect of a local housing authority within Greater London.

(1A) In respect of a local housing authority within Greater London the Mayor of London after consultation with the London Assembly may make a determination requiring the authority to make a payment to the Mayor in respect of a financial year.”

This clause would devolve to the Mayor of London after consultation with the Assembly, any requirements by housing authorities in London to make payments relating to the sale of high value Council housing.

Housing and Planning Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

That is very interesting, but it is not in keeping with the purpose of this Committee, which has already had a very lengthy advisory session at the beginning of its proceedings. Could we move on?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent suggestion. If the Minister had let me finish my sentence, I would have said that such communication as I have had with the five housing associations has emphasised that things are still at a very early stage. A lot of the detailed information we are seeking from the Minister through the amendment concerns a set of issues that have not yet been considered.

Proposed new clause 56(1)(a) would exclude supported housing for older people. I am not going to repeat everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West said, but it is interesting that a review of the sector in 2012 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found an almost complete absence of information about the availability of supported housing to rent and recommended that the Government carry out a more detailed analysis of the availability of affordable housing to rent in the sector. It also highlighted that such housing leads to greater self-determination, safety, security and privacy for older people, and promotes greater social cohesion and sense of community, as residents support each other.

The point we are all making is that if the housing is of good quality, with excellent support in place and adequate security measures—that generally describes the supported housing provided by housing associations—its disappearance could be a catastrophe. That is especially true because the way in which replacement schemes would be financed is not clear at the moment. That point was made a number of times in the evidence to the Committee.

As we know, and as a number of hon. Members have already said, the National Housing Federation included in its briefing to us examples of circumstances in which a housing association would seek to exercise discretion over sales. That is how it is being put to us. We have to be clear that the nature of the voluntary agreement between the housing associations and the Government is to allow or to accept a whole series of discretionary exemptions. One of the main purposes behind the amendment is to tease out the thinking on this. Should this be a discretionary matter, or not? Should we have more detail in the guidance or regulations, or should some of this go on the face of the Bill?

The categories that have been outlined include properties where the landlord is a co-operative housing association, properties where the landlord does not have sufficient legal interest to be able to grant a lease, tied accommodation, properties which are chargeable to public benefit resources, supported housing and, critically, housing in rural areas. As we know, a lot of people giving evidence to the Committee were incredibly concerned about the sale of houses under right to buy in rural areas if there was not sufficient funding.

[Mr Thomas]

Does my hon. Friend not think that there is a need to write exclusions onto the face of the Bill, particularly for sheltered and specialist housing? As she and I have discussed, that is particularly needed in the context of the 1% cut in social rents being forced on housing associations. A number of housing association chief executives are worried that they will have to stop providing supported and sheltered housing, or substantially reduce the amount that they provide.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We will come to some of the detail of that point when we debate amendment 147.

We have had evidence from Age Concern and others about the need for supported housing for older people. We know from research carried out by Centrepoint and Habinteg that there is acute need across the country for more housing for vulnerable people. We have had information from the CBI about the need to create and support housing for key workers to ensure that lack of housing does not impede economic growth. I thought that the CBI briefing was extremely helpful, and I point out to Government Members the need for identified housing for key workers, particularly in areas of the country where house values are high and availability of affordable housing is restricted, such as in our major cities.

We have not talked much during this sitting about the need to exempt housing in major regeneration schemes, but again, a number of housing associations have given evidence about the difficulty that they would have funding large regeneration schemes if the properties were subject, particularly in the short term, to the right to buy. We have had a lot of evidence from the Campaign to Protect Rural England and others about the need to protect rural settlements, homes built for charitable purposes, co-op housing, arm’s length management organisation housing and almshouses. I accept that this is quite a wide-ranging amendment; nevertheless, it is important that we hear from the Minister about each of those categories and whether he thinks they should be exempt.

[Mr Thomas]

I have one other concern about co-operative housing. Where a housing association runs co-operative housing—it is a registered housing provider that provides exclusively co-operative housing—is it not sensible to exclude it? Otherwise, there could be pressure, perhaps due to a lack of understanding or directly from the Government or the National Housing Federation, for that housing association still to offer the portable discount, even though co-op housing is, in theory, completely excluded from the Bill. The housing association would have no other housing to offer, as it provides only co-op housing.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Once again, my hon. Friend makes an important point. It would be helpful to have some clarification from the Minister about the exemptions and where and how he thinks portability should operate. Hopefully, we will come to that later in this debate. I agree with my hon. Friend about the need to protect co-operative housing. Many of the issues that we have raised in this debate relate directly to the ability of housing associations in their various guises to offer a replacement and to have the finance to do so. Hopefully, we will come to that later too. I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

Housing and Planning Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I, too, strongly support the amendment that my hon. Friends the Members for Erith and Thamesmead and for Easington have spoken to. I want to ask the Minister some additional questions. I find it very curious that the Government have not sought to give our constituents access to the database so that they do not run the risk of taking a tenancy offered by a rogue landlord.

The Government have put forward a helpful measure. It is not the only measure needed to regulate the private rented sector, but at least it is something. Some effort will be made to create a database of rogue landlords, and that will be welcome. However, it is extraordinary that the only people with access to the database will be the local authority, because the local authority will not be the one taking on tenancies

[Mr Thomas]

Is the Government’s approach not indicative of the Conservative party’s nanny state tendency? Nanny knows best, so tenants should not have access to the information, but the housing authority should. It seems a classic example of the worst form of the nanny state in action.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I agree: it is a breakdown in the desire to provide people with the information they need to decide whether they are being offered a tenancy from a bona fide source. The only justification that Ministers have given is, “We cannot open this up for public scrutiny because it will breach our data protection laws,” but that is not good enough. I want to know how it would breach the Data Protection Act 1998 and why the Government have not thought of ways to get round that and give our constituents access to information that is necessary to them.

I will give another example from my constituency to point out the limitations of clause 30. Durham County Council might carry out an investigation and decide to put a landlord in West Rainton on to the database of rogue landlords, perhaps while working up a case for a banning order. Meanwhile, the said rogue landlord could cross the road from West Rainton into East Rainton, moving from the Durham County Council area to the Sunderland City Council area. Without giving tenants an opportunity to ask Sunderland whether the landlord was on the database, it might never check. It might not be aware that Durham County Council was about to put out a banning order.

In the meantime, my constituents would not be protected at all, despite the fact that the information would be available to the local authority, while my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) would not be aware of a lurking constituency problem with a rogue landlord either. Indeed, her constituents could not know there was a problem. That seems to be a major weakness of clause 30, which is why the amendment is so important.

[Mr Thomas]

Would not another benefit of the amendment be that Members of Parliament and their researchers and caseworkers would be able to access the information? I suspect that all members of the Committee—certainly Opposition Members—hold regular surgeries and have large numbers of people coming to them who are concerned about the private rented sector. If our staff could access information on the database, Members might be able to provide even better advice to constituents on whether to approach a housing authority to take action against a landlord or to have a direct conversation with a landlord about how a problem with a property might be sorted out.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. When the Minister responds, will he explain to the Committee how making this information available to Members of Parliament would be a breach of data protection, especially if we used that information very carefully and limited its use to advising potential tenants that they might be about to take on board a tenancy provided by a rogue landlord?

What the amendment is asking for—protection for our constituents and for possible tenants—seems to me a really reasonable thing. It would show the public that the Government were serious about addressing the issue of rogue landlords. I am sure that none of us would dream of accusing the Government of not being reasonable in trying to do something about the significant problem of rogue landlords, but this clause perhaps suggests that the public are not being given all the information they could have.

Without a better rationale than the one we have heard, Opposition Members will have to think carefully about whether we will agree to clause 30 standing part of the Bill. It is interesting that protecting tenants or future tenants is not on the long list in clause 31 of all the things the information is supposed to do. That is extraordinary. Why would that be left off the list of uses of information in the database? On that basis, we need to hear more from the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Thomas]

Were the Government not to accept the amendment, is there not a further potential problem, related to freedom of information legislation? Presumably, freedom of information legislation would cover submissions to the relevant official in the housing authority who was drawing up or was responsible for putting information into the database, so a dedicated and disciplined Member of Parliament could put in FOI requests and get access to the information anyway. Why not save us all the trouble and accept the amendment in the first place?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes another excellent suggestion. It is interesting that the Government have not thought to exempt that information from the Freedom of Information Act—at least, there is nothing in the Bill that suggests they are thinking of ensuring that information cannot be released about the database through an FOI request. That could lead to an even worse situation than the one we have outlined, where some tenants or advocates working on behalf of tenants get access to the database because they have made freedom of information requests, while other tenants or future tenants find it difficult, if not impossible, to get such access. We seem to be dealing with a situation that is not only extraordinary, but totally unfair as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The point my hon. Friend made in that excellent intervention is that the information should be available as quickly as possible in order to give maximum protection to potential tenants. As it stands, the Opposition are not convinced that tenants are being given that maximum protection. Our argument is a reasonable one. I can see how Ministers might be concerned about the Data Protection Act, but it would be possible to address any concerns by prescribing who can access the information, in what circumstances, and what it can be used for, with some caveats. I therefore look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the very specific points we have raised.

[Mr Thomas]

I am grateful to have caught your eye, Sir Alan. I welcome the intervention by the hon. Member for Peterborough and hope we might hear a little more from him about his concerns about freedom of information and housing associations. In answer to his question, I must confess that I have not yet made my mind up, but I am tempted to say yes when I wake up in the morning and think about the activities of A2Dominion. That organisation is a housing association in my constituency that has been very slow to sort out the problems at Bannister House, where a number of its tenants and leaseholders have been suffering over the past eight years from a consistent pattern of leaks. I have written to the chief executive seeking clarity on the association’s intentions but have yet to receive a coherent answer or have the courtesy of a meeting with the relevant decision maker.

If the hon. Gentleman was proposing that, now that housing associations are part of Government for the purposes of ONS stats, freedom of information legislation should apply to them, I would be tempted by that argument. He will, I am sure, be grateful to me for tabling amendment 99, which we will come to later in our considerations. It might provide a useful opportunity to have that discussion and a chance for him to set out his views one way or t’other.

The crucial point of amendment 106 is that if, as I suspect, hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have the capacity, through their experienced staff, to apply under FOI legislation to see which people are covered by the database—albeit it is intended to be used only for research—it would surely be better for the Minister to save housing authorities some time and simply accept the amendment. I could envisage a situation in a year’s time, when the Bill has gone through, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich is approached one Friday in his surgery by a constituent who is worried about the quality of accommodation that he is seeking to access. My hon. Friend might be tempted to put in a freedom of information request to see whether the landlord of that accommodation had in any way come to the notice of the Greenwich housing authority.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Thomas]

I am very happy to have been the vehicle for the revelation that the hon. Gentleman has just provided. His intervention reminds me that I have not yet sent to him the membership form for the Co-op party. Perhaps I should also send him a Labour party membership form, although I do not want to fall out of order.

We were discussing whether the hon. Member for Peterborough, during one of the speeches by the hon. Member for South Norfolk, might put in a freedom of information request, and I was about to appeal to the Minister to prevent the hon. Member for Peterborough from being tempted to do so. Allow us to see that information as Members of Parliament. Allow us to help our constituents. I think of the caseworkers in my office. They are extremely experienced and effective. If they are concerned that a rogue landlord is operating in my constituency and there might be a way of teasing out confirmation of that fact through an FOI request to the local planning authority, they would be at me straightaway to suggest that I put that FOI request in. I suspect that that would be the case for all Opposition Members and even, I suspect, for one or two Government Members. I therefore say to the Minister: let us try to avoid that situation by accepting the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful point. Does he agree that an extraordinary thing is being asked of local authorities? They would have information on their database about a rogue landlord—someone who might inflict quite a lot of damage on a tenant—yet they would be prevented by the clause from passing that information to a potential tenant, even if the potential tenant asked specific questions about the landlord. Surely that cannot be right.

[Mr Thomas]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Easington said, surely this is, perhaps inadvertently, an opportunity to continue to name and shame rogue landlords who are guilty of poor practice. For prospective tenants who are looking for a new home to move into, looking at a register and being able to judge whether the person who owns the place that they are about to move into is a rogue landlord is a basic defence. The hon. Member for Peterborough, I believe, wanted to hear more about the rogue landlord Andreas Stavrou Antoniades. As I said, he illegally converted a house near Finsbury Park—

Housing and Planning Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Thomas]

Perhaps you could look at Croydon, Wimbledon, Harrow maybe as well.

Campbell Robb: I think we might find that in those areas comparatively, starter homes will be less accessible to those on the average wage. I suspect that would be true, as opposed to in Burton.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q 147 We will get more evidence from you and can come back to that. What I have picked up is that you have real concern about whether the starter home scheme will crowd out genuinely affordable housing. What do you think can be done to prevent that from happening?

Jon Sparkes: Clearly, the Bill makes it advantageous to build affordable starter homes as defined. It not being advantageous, leaving local authorities to have the flexibility to have houses for the population that they have, and to make an assessment on the availability of truly affordable social rented housing for the people who need it. The answer to it being crowded out is to not crowd it out, and to leave it for local authorities to decide and be flexible.

Campbell Robb: I would agree with that. Section 106 currently delivers about a third of all genuinely affordable for rent properties in England. Removing that stipulation on local authorities could reduce those numbers and replace them with starter homes. That is the difficulty in that situation. More local flexibility would definitely help us to answer it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Thomas]

Q 199 Mr Montague, can you flesh out a point you made in your opening remarks about your concerns that the Bill will not add to supply in London?

David Montague: We believe there is a lot that is positive in the Bill, as I mentioned earlier—brownfield sites and so on—which will help us to deliver more homes in London. The tides that we are swimming against in London are the loss of local authority stock that will be difficult to replace and the effect of the starter home initiative, which is still difficult to determine. Our fear, as others have suggested, is that it will replace social housing.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q 200 Can I follow on from that? The G15 are quite strongly against this forced sale of council housing. Do you share the concern that the Government should not be seeking to support the right to buy through the forced sale of council housing?

David Montague: We are concerned that it will lead to the loss of affordable social rented housing in London. We would have preferred to have seen the voluntary right to buy funded through other means—means which we suggested. Given that we are where we are, we are determined to work with local authorities to protect against the loss of social housing in London.