Co-operative Housing

Debate between Gavin Shuker and Lord Stunell

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Stunell]

Indeed. I can look over my constituency boundary at Hattersley. I fully understand the work being done on regeneration there. We have continued it with investment that will deliver 150,000 additional decent social homes in this spending review period. The hon. Gentleman and I have some shared objectives, but I thought that it was important to put on record what has been achieved so far and what our aims are.

I turn to some of the hon. Gentleman’s specific points. The Government believe that getting people involved is the key to making healthy, strong communities and places to live. That is encapsulated in the empowerment White Paper, which the Government recently published. We recognise that members of housing co-operatives are more likely to be active members of the community and engage in other areas of governance in the community. For instance, they are school governors, and so on. In other words, people in co-operatives and with co-operative tenancies are often the joiners and doers of a lively community.

[Gavin Shuker]

The Minister makes a compelling point about the involvement of many people in housing co-operatives. Will he outline what specific work has been done at the Department for Communities and Local Government with reference to the implications of the Berrisford v. Mexfield case that we are discussing?

[Andrew Stunell]

Indeed, I shall come to that shortly.

The Government, working with the Homes and Communities Agency, is engaged with the Confederation of Co-operative Housing as the lead member of the Mutual Housing Group, which is considering how we can develop an investment fund to support the co-operative sector. I understand that a meeting this autumn will take that forward. I hope that that shows the Government’s earnest intent to ensure that the sector is not left out of the investment and development that we have in mind.

I recognise the uncertainty that the judgment may have created for housing co-operatives and welcome the Confederation of Co-operative Housing’s issuing guidance to its members. I am sure that Opposition Members will know that that guidance makes it clear that co-operatives need to think carefully about how they word their tenancy agreements in future. However, if they get that right, co-operatives should still be able to end tenancies in a straightforward way, through service of a notice to quit. Even if a lifetime tenancy is deemed to subsist, a co-operative landlord can still rely on a breach of a term of the tenancy, for example, failure to pay rent, to obtain possession. That is broadly the same position pertaining to most other social tenants.

It is important to recognise—I am sure that co-operatives do—that there is no standard model tenancy. Therefore the Mexfield judgment has to be taken as a case relating to a particular form of tenancy. I believe that the co-operative movement has received advice about different tenancy agreements in different areas, saying either that they are subject to the Mexfield judgment or, alternatively, that a particular version is not. It is certainly a fine legal point and I would not set myself up to judge that. In short, we do not need a new form of co-operative housing tenure. We need existing tenancy agreements to be in accordance with best practice—Mexfield avoidance compliant, if I can put it that way—to avoid any of the consequences that the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde mentioned.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have received the message from my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government about his proposed Bill. We are not clear what a new co-operative housing tenure would look like or what benefit it would bring in practice. His Bill might have the perverse effect of giving occupiers of co-operative housing fewer rights than tenants in social housing, local authority or housing association properties. I am sure that he would not want that to be the outcome.