Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered funding for local authorities in inner London.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Dr Murrison. My constituency includes part of the London borough of Lambeth and part of the London borough of Southwark. Before I was elected to this House, I spent five years as a local ward councillor in Southwark. I just managed not to overlap with the Minister, who was also a councillor on Southwark council and stepped down in 2010 as I was being elected.

Being a councillor is deeply rewarding, with a responsibility for delivering services in a way that makes a direct difference to people’s daily lives. From recycling to street cleaning, adult services, children’s social care, roads, parks, playgrounds and council housing, our councils are responsible for important aspects of the fabric of everyday life. They affect people’s quality of life and, in doing so, play a vital role in building trust and confidence in politics, the Government and public services.

I am proud that, as a councillor, I helped turn around a local primary school in a deprived area of my ward from being one of the worst in the borough to one of the best. I am proud that we delivered road safety improvements at a number of dangerous junctions in the ward. I am proud of the work that we did through tenants and residents associations and local community organisations to bring people together and build community. I am also proud that, despite more than a decade of Conservative and Lib Dem austerity, Southwark continued to keep the borough clean and open new libraries. It was one of the first councils to fund universal free school meals for primary-age children and it is a borough of sanctuary that supports the refugees and asylum seekers who are part of our diverse community.

I remember very clearly the Labour group meeting in 2010 in which we were briefed on the coalition Government’s local government funding settlement for Southwark. There was a stony silence in the room as the newly elected cabinet member for finance told us how big the cuts were and the services and investment that the council would no longer be able to deliver as a result.

We had no idea how much worse the cuts would get over the coming years such that, a decade on from the 2010 election, our councils were receiving 60% less in grant funding from central Government, and the capital grant for new council homes had been decimated. That marked a huge shift in local authority funding away from the certainty of grant funding and towards retained business rates, the new homes bonus and endless small, short-term pots of funding, often requiring resourcing for a bidding process.

At the same time, our councils saw rising need. Our ageing population has meant an increasing need for adult social care, and the erosion of support for families has resulted in more children being taken into care and the cost of expensive placements increasing. The rising numbers of children with special educational needs and disabilities has increased the costs of school placements and home-to-school transport.

That is all before we get to housing. Inner-London boroughs are at the epicentre of our national housing crisis. Spiralling rents and a lack of security in the private rented sector mean that more and more families have turned to their council for support with housing, while the lack of investment in new social housing and the loss of council homes under the right to buy has meant that they have had to be housed in temporary accommodation, which is very expensive and often the worst-quality accommodation. London councils are currently spending £5 million a day on temporary accommodation—that is £5 million a day into the pockets of some of the worst landlords, and at times paying for damp, mouldy, overcrowded homes, often far from a family’s home, neighbourhood, community and their children’s school.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I always try to be helpful to the hon. Lady and all hon. Members. We have many brownfield sites in my constituency and there are many in London where the hon. Lady refers to there being a housing crisis. Does she feel that there should be a focus on trying to use those sites for social housing and improve the housing problems that London clearly has?

[Helen Hayes]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention. I will come on to talk about those sites in my constituency that have planning permission but currently are not funded to build the social homes that could be on those sites. I think that is an important part of how we solve these challenges.

The Conservatives’ interventions to reduce social housing rents have also been disastrous for the ability of our councils to fund the maintenance of social housing and to fund new social homes. Southwark council calculated that Conservative-imposed rent cuts and freezes will cost the council’s housing revenue account £1 billion over 30 years. What is a very small saving for tenants has had a really big impact on the ability of councils to keep up with the maintenance needs of their social housing stock.

The Conservatives were happy to cut our councils’ budgets to the core and did not worry about the erosion of services that inevitably followed. Reform imagined that our councils were full of waste and profligacy, only to find that they are lean organisations that have constantly innovated in the face of austerity but that, over time, have become stretched, sometimes to breaking point.

A budget settlement based on a definition of deprivation that did not include housing costs, as was originally proposed, would have had absolutely dire consequences for inner-London councils. The reality is this: if rent eats up so much of someone’s income every month that they cannot afford the bare essentials, or if the only property they can afford to rent is so bad that it causes them and their family to become ill, then they are deprived and they face exactly the same consequences of that deprivation as anyone else anywhere in the country who simply does not have enough money to get by.

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

rose—

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[Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Helen Hayes]

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank my hon. Friend, my constituency neighbour, for making such an impassioned and powerful speech. I declare an interest in that my constituency also covers both Lambeth and Southwark. She is talking about housing costs, which we know are so expensive in London. We have seen housing costs rise over 15 years, pushing more people into homelessness and temporary accommodation. Does she agree that the Government should look at the subsidy paid for temporary accommodation, which has been frozen since 2011? In real terms, rents have continued to go up in our constituencies.

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The maths on temporary accommodation costs simply does not add up at the moment. I have more to say on that a bit later in my speech.

[Dawn Butler]

I thank my hon. Friend for her important speech today. Brent council, which covers my constituency, spends £100,000 a day on temporary housing. We have around 40,000 people on the housing waiting list. It is impossible to match that need, but it is also important to understand that councils, as my hon. Friend has said, are trying to innovate. Housing costs in inner London need to be taken into consideration with any calculations.

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend makes the point very well. It is the reality of people’s lives. People come to all of us who represent constituencies at the heart of the housing crisis in the most desperate of circumstances—in circumstances that everybody would agree are completely unacceptable—and there is no relief for them, because the options that are on the table are simply unaffordable, and what is affordable is unacceptable.

I am grateful to the Government for listening and for changing the deprivation criteria to include housing costs. I also completely recognise the very deep poverty and deprivation that affect other parts of the country. I grew up in the north-west and before I was elected to Parliament, I worked with communities all over the country. This should be about not pitting different areas of our country against each other, but resourcing and empowering local authorities right across our country to meet the needs of their communities. Some of those needs are universal, and some are specific.

While I welcome the changes made to the formulae in recent weeks, inner-London councils will still remain in a very difficult financial situation as a consequence of the settlement that was finalised yesterday.

[Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

I welcome the tone of the hon. Member’s comment at the end there. I will use the examples of Lambeth and Southwark. When we pull out the contributions from council tax and look only at the money that is coming from central Government, over the next three years, Lambeth residents will have £75 per capita removed from their support from central Government, and Southwark residents will have £75 per resident removed. Does she agree that that is not good enough from a Labour Government?

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Hayes]

There are different ways of looking at the analysis and I am sure that the Minister will speak in detail on the way that the Government have apportioned funding based on the formula. The reality of the settlement as finalised yesterday is undoubtedly that our councils are in a very stretching situation indeed, and that could lead to difficult situations ahead. One of the areas where the Government could really help our councils is by looking at the costs that they have to bear as well as the resources that they have to meet those costs. I will come on to make some of those points in a moment.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour in Lambeth is making an excellent speech. The arbitrary cap, which I believe was initially created in the fair funding review, created the unintended consequence of leaving Lambeth missing out on the funding that it would have otherwise received. That means that Lambeth has lost out on £47.5 million over three years. As she knows, that money is urgently needed to protect our local services. Although, like me, I am sure that she welcomes the uplift to the recovery grant that was announced yesterday, does she agree that it is not enough to meet the needs of our constituents and our local authority with its ever-growing costs?

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend makes the point about the recovery grant very well. I will come on to some practical suggestions for what the Government could do to alleviate that situation in the short term.

Council tax equalisation, such that the grant is now based on each area’s share of the national tax base and not actual local tax levels, penalises low tax base, high-needs areas like Lambeth and Southwark. The business rates reset will wipe out historical strong growth in some inner-London boroughs, and falling numbers of children will also have an impact through the children’s formula, even though need is growing and increasingly complex.

The risk is that our councils are left in an increasingly precarious situation and are forced to make impossibly hard choices about local services in the face of increasing need. Having agreed the final funding settlement—it is welcome that it is for three years, which gives our councils more certainty—there is more for the Government to do to help councils bring down their costs and reduce need, so that service delivery is manageable within the resources that are available.

On behalf of my councils of Lambeth and Southwark, I have a number of asks of the Minister. Our councils desperately need help with the costs of temporary accommodation. The average cost of temporary accommodation in London has risen by 75% over the last five years, and the number of people seeking help with their housing has also increased dramatically, yet the amount that the Government pay councils to subsidise temporary accommodation has been frozen since 2011. Will the Government work towards increasing the subsidy so that it is closer to the actual housing costs that our councils face?

Temporary accommodation is the least stable form of housing and it has terrible consequences for residents. I have known many constituents to get up at 5 am to travel long distances by bus to keep their children in the same school and give them some stability. Those costs could be saved if more residents could afford to rent privately, yet the freezing of the local housing allowance has made that increasingly impossible. Will the Minister work with her counterparts in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury to increase the rate of local housing allowance to stop private renters from needing temporary accommodation? Some of the £5 million that is spent every day by London local authorities on temporary accommodation would be much better deployed keeping residents in stable homes through the local housing allowance than propping up the most awful situations in temporary accommodation.

With the application of the £35 million cap, councils in receipt of the recovery grant currently face a cliff edge. For Lambeth council that will mean, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) said, a loss of £47.5 million over the next three years. If the cap was removed for just next year, it would give the council an additional £11 million to reduce the savings that it is currently having to plan for. Will the Minister consider that?

Councils have expressed concern to me about the Government’s assumptions about the level of council tax receipts. Will the Minister work with councils to ensure that the assumed level of council tax receipts closely matches actual council tax collections? The social housing crisis requires that new social homes are delivered at pace. In my constituency, we have council and housing association-owned sites with planning permission that are not currently being delivered because the soaring inflation caused by the Liz Truss mini-budget priced them out of viability.

The Government’s commitment to invest £39 billion in social housing is very welcome, but will the Minister ensure some of that funding is urgently made available to London boroughs that have sites that are ready to build? We urgently need that.

The overnight accommodation levy is very good news for London but it must be apportioned to where it is most needed. Will the Government mandate that at least 50% of the funds raised by the levy are retained locally by London boroughs to cover the costs incurred by services affected by tourism and to support local growth?

[Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)]

The Government are looking at how the overnight stay levy might be used, and there is some really welcome potential, for example where major events in London happen in one local authority but impact many. I completely agree with my hon. Friend on the 50:50 split. Does she agree that that could help to smooth out some of the longer-term funding issues coming out of the settlement, by providing additional capital that councils could use, for example, on public realm and public safety works?

[Helen Hayes]

I agree completely. The levy is a really important source of additional revenue into London, and it is so important that it is spent where it is needed. That does mean allowing councils to retain some of the receipts—I would say 50%, as London Councils is calling for—in order for them to do exactly that.

Exceptional financial support was designed to be a temporary intervention to support councils with acute financial pressures, but the consequence has been a growing number of councils running structural deficits. Will the Minister set out in greater detail how the Government intend to support councils to exit EFS so they are not held back by growing deficits?

Finally, the announcement yesterday on SEND deficits is very welcome. It is a clear recognition that the current costs of SEND provision are totally unsustainable. Writing off 90% of SEND deficits will only help if the forthcoming SEND reforms are properly funded and designed such that they are financially sustainable. What is the Minister doing with the Department for Education and the Treasury to make sure that councils’ statutory SEND responsibilities are properly funded when the schools White Paper is published?

Our councils and councillors are a crucial part of the bond of trust between local residents and the politicians and governments that serve them. We cannot leave our councils in the position in which the Conservatives were happy to leave them, with no answer to the needs of their local populations because they do not have the resources to deliver. Our local residents need and deserve clean streets, well-kept parks and open spaces, good-quality road services, good adult social care and effective children’s services, good-quality homes in the social rented sector, and proper support for children with SEND. They deserve nothing less, so that they can trust that government is there to deliver for them. We owe it to our dedicated, hard-working colleagues in local government to support them.

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[Helen Hayes]

I am grateful to all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate today, particularly the hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune), who is a great champion for his constituents and his borough of Bromley, and to my hon. Friends the Members for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) and for Brent East (Dawn Butler) for their interventions and for speaking up for their boroughs. I am grateful to the Minister for her response.

I believe I am 10 years older than the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor), so I would say very gently to him that perhaps my memory goes back a bit further. When I was elected to Southwark council, it coincided with the arrival of the coalition Government and the beginning, presided over by the Liberal Democrats in government, of some of the deepest cuts to local government funding that we have ever seen.

[Luke Taylor]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Helen Hayes]

I am not going to give way during this very short summing-up. [Interruption.] I would say to him that listening to his impassioned pleas on behalf of inner-London boroughs does sound a little bit like the arsonist complaining that the fire brigade is not putting out the fire quickly enough. [Interruption.]

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Helen Hayes]

I urge the hon. Member to reflect with a bit of humility on what his party did to local government funding when it was in power.

[Luke Taylor]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Helen Hayes]

I am not taking an intervention; I have been really clear about that.

I am grateful to the Minister for her response. I fully appreciate the challenging situation that she is in, the complexity of her brief and the pressures that she is facing from colleagues and from councils all across the country. I appreciate deeply her commitment to local government, and her deep understanding of its workings and the challenges that our council colleagues face. I am encouraged by her assurances on local housing allowance in particular, and on the costs of temporary accommodation. I look forward to seeing progress on those points and will certainly remain engaged on those issues. I would be hugely grateful for anything that the Minister can do to unlock the stalled sites. We have three in my constituency—two of them are council-owned and one is owned by a housing association. Between them, they have the capacity to deliver quite a good number of council and social homes. We would really like to see those come forward quickly.

I believe that the Minister has good intentions in the settlement that has been announced today. I support her in her aim of reconnecting local government funding with deprivation and ensuring that funding is fairly distributed, but the challenges that our councils face will remain. There is further work to do, and I hope to be able to engage with her further on behalf of my boroughs as we seek to repair the damage that has been done over a long period of time, and get things back on a better footing so that our councils can deliver for our communities.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered funding for local authorities in inner London.

Local Government Finance

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Members will have seen that many want to speak, so I make a plea to help one another out and keep questions and answers concise.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her statement. I particularly welcome the restoration of the link between funding for local government and deprivation, and the inclusion of housing costs within the measure of deprivation. It makes no sense to do anything other than that.

Even with the funding settlement, the financial situation will continue to be very challenging for my local authorities of Lambeth and Southwark without meaningful support from the Government with the costs of temporary accommodation. When does the Minister expect to be able to set out more detail on how councils will be supported to reduce the need for temporary accommodation and to bring the costs down?

[Alison McGovern]

My hon. Friend, who chairs the Education Committee, will know that it is not just the cost of temporary accommodation to councils; it is also the cost of children’s schooling. Last week I set out our strategy to counteract that terrible phenomenon and I will talk in detail to councils in the weeks and months to come to do exactly as she asks.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Natasha Irons (Croydon East) (Lab)]

13. What steps her Department is taking to help ensure that councils are financially stable.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

14. What steps her Department is taking to help ensure that councils are financially stable.

[Terry Jermy (South West Norfolk) (Lab)]

21. What steps her Department is taking to ensure that councils in areas with higher levels of deprivation receive adequate funding.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim McMahon]

The questions that have been raised demonstrate why the fair funding review is needed, and why it has to take into account all the different factors that have an impact on whether councils can provide good public services or not. I appreciate, understand and accept that pressures that were previously felt in inner London are now felt in outer London, and in rural areas too. My hon. Friend will know that in February we provided £136 million in EFS support for Croydon council, and we will continue to work with it. We have met and talked about the issues a number of times, and I know that she understands that those are not small problems to deal with.

[Helen Hayes]

The statutory override to special educational needs and disabilities deficit comes to an end in just 10 months. Without a plan from the Government for the end of the statutory override, more than half of all local education authorities face effective bankruptcy. The need for a resolution to the issue is now long overdue. When does the Minister expect to be able to give local authorities the certainty they need?

[Jim McMahon]

We are laying the groundwork now, ahead of the provisional settlement, which will be the first multi-year settlement in over a decade and will deal with a lot of the structural issues. If it is any help, the Government understand and accept that it is not right or acceptable for councils that have done everything that has been asked of them and provided good public services, particularly for young people, to find themselves at the financial cliff edge as a result. We have an absolute commitment to work through those issues.

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[Matthew Pennycook]

No. We are confident that the protections in place for the green belt—the tests that have to be met for grey-belt release—are robust. It is ultimately for local planning authorities to conduct green-belt reviews and to bring forward those sites as part of local plans.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

T8. Across London, 90,000 children are living in temporary accommodation, denied the essentials of a stable home, which has terrible consequences for their physical and mental health and education. This is a scandalous inheritance from the previous Conservative Government. When does the Secretary of State believe that we will begin to see those numbers drop substantially?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rushanara Ali)]

We have invested almost £1 billion in tackling homelessness and rough sleeping, and we have recognised the scandal of temporary accommodation, which we inherited. We are taking action to ensure that there is a cross-Government strategy to get us back on track to ending homelessness.

Local Government Finances: London

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) on securing this important debate.

I was a councillor in Southwark for six years before I was elected to this place. It is a privilege to serve in local government. Our councils carry the heavy responsibility of delivering local services across a huge range of areas, and they have a unique opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of local residents by delivering vital protections for vulnerable people as well as the services that all of us rely on. I pay particular tribute to my local councils, Lambeth and Southwark, for the work that they did during the covid-19 pandemic and what they have done over the last few years to support residents with the cost of living crisis.

I was elected to my local council in 2010, on the same day that the Tory-Lib Dem coalition Government took power in Westminster. I remember the first meeting of our council, when we were briefed on its financial settlement from central Government at the start of a period of austerity. I remember the shock that descended in the room at the scale of the cuts to our budget as the impact on local services became clear.

We had no idea what was yet to come. For 14 years, the Conservative Government outsourced both the pain and the blame for their austerity programme to our local councils, cutting well over 50% of the local government grant, slashing the affordable housing grant, freezing council rents, reducing investment in the existing council housing stock, and freezing the local housing allowance, driving up homelessness. On SEND—an area in which I take a particular interest as Chair of the Education Committee—the coalition placed almost all the statutory responsibility for delivering services on councils, but took away their ability to deliver new school places directly, driving up home-to-school transport costs and the cost of purchasing places in the independent sector.

There will not be a Member here today who does not see the impact of the housing crisis, and the crisis of temporary accommodation, on our constituents and local authorities. The shortage of homes is driving more and more residents to seek support from their council, and putting more and more into the worst-quality accommodation, which has destabilising effects on families across our city. The Liz Truss mini-Budget had a devastating impact on our councils’ ability to build new homes. Both of my boroughs have ambitious programmes for delivering new homes, but they have had to mothball sites as the cost of materials and labour has been sent spiralling.

On all of these issues and many more, London councils face a perfect storm in their finances, and we urgently need support from the Government. Let me finish with five quick measures that the Government should turn their attention to: raising the local council housing allowance to stabilise housing in London; ensuring immediate investment in small sites owned by councils and housing associations that already have planning consent and can be delivered; addressing the statutory override—there is not sufficient engagement with councils on what the Government plan as they begin to plan for the next financial year—getting housing revenue accounts back on a sustainable footing; and delivering multi-year settlements to give certainty and stability to our councils for the future. I know that our councils have the commitment and determination to keep delivering for our residents, and I call on the Government to support them to do so as a matter of urgency.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 2 Report

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

The hon. Member is absolutely right to raise the oversight mechanism. I think I have addressed some of that and the wider issues, not just in terms of this inquiry, but all the inquiries that we have had. There have been far too many inquiries into tragedies, in the sense that these scandals and tragedies should not happening in the first place. We are committed to looking at oversight mechanisms, and I have detailed the oversight mechanisms I expect from my Department and the recommendations from Grenfell. I am happy for her to share that information with my Department, and I will take those considerations into account.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

My thoughts today are with the survivors of the Grenfell Tower disaster and the 72 families who are still mourning the loss of a loved one. I pay tribute to their immense dignity, as they continue to fight for justice.

I welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s clear commitment to implement all of Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s recommendations. I have constituents living in blocks with fire safety issues. Those are often not cladding-related issues, but issues identified as part of the wider scandal in the construction industry uncovered by fire safety inspections post-Grenfell. In some cases there have been terrifying fires in these blocks, leaving residents feeling unsafe and leaseholders trapped in unsellable flats, as building owners and construction firms argue over who is responsible for the fire safety defects and fail to resolve the issues. Can the Deputy Prime Minister therefore say, as she moves forward to implement Sir Martin’s recommendations, when she would expect my constituents to have a clear plan, with a timescale attached to it, for the remediation work needed in unsafe buildings? Where is the accountability in the meantime?

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that, nearly eight years on from the tragedy of Grenfell, it is completely unacceptable that people are still living in unsafe buildings. I respect and pay tribute to what previous Governments have done. That legislation has enabled authorities to take action, and we have been supporting them in making sure that action is taken. Our remediation acceleration plan will also outline how we can ensure that those responsible for remediating buildings, whether that relates to fire safety or any other defects, are held accountable, so that we can take those actions and get that remediation done as quickly as possible. I do not want it to take another eight years before people are living in safe and secure homes. I expect to do it as quickly as possible, and action is already being taken.

Renters’ Rights Bill

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Commons Chamber

Let me clear: this Bill is pro-market, not anti-landlord. It will help create a more stable rental sector in which good landlords can thrive and bad landlords are held to account. This is good for tenants, it is good for responsible landlords and it is good for our economy.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I rise to speak on new clause 10 in my name and Government new clause 15, but before I do so, I would like to make some brief remarks about other aspects of the Bill. In my constituency of Dulwich and West Norwood, housing is overwhelmingly the biggest challenge that my constituents face. Housing costs have spiralled, and the previous Government wasted more than a decade failing to build the homes we need. The effect of this has been that more and more of my constituents are living in privately rented homes, in which they are currently systematically denied the basic stability and security that most of us would agree are essential to being able to function properly in the rest of life.

Private tenants live with the constant fear that their landlord can at any time, without reference to the terms of their tenancy agreement, decide that they want their property back and serve an eviction notice. I have seen this happen time and again. It stops people putting down roots in their community, because they know that they are likely not to be able to stay. It means that parents live with the constant anxiety that they may have to move far away from their children’s school. It means that older people are denied security of tenure in their retirement. In return for extortionate rents, tenants all too often face appalling standards, and find it far too difficult to get basic health and safety issues addressed.

I therefore welcome this Bill, which delivers the biggest package of reforms to private renting for 40 years, redressing the current imbalance between landlords and tenants, strengthening tenants’ rights and providing much-needed additional security. I particularly welcome the scrapping of section 21 evictions—I have been speaking on them in this place since 2016—the strengthening of local authority enforcement powers and the creation of a new private rented sector ombudsman, and the application of Awaab’s law to the private rented sector.

There is a very great challenge about the affordability of private renting, particularly in London, and my constituents experience that every day. I hope the Minister will keep under review the measures in this Bill that are designed to limit the rate of rent increases to ensure they are as effective as they need to be to create a functioning rental market. I trust that the Minister will do that, and will not hesitate to take further action in future if it is needed.

I now turn to my own new clause 10 and Government new clause 15, which would ban the use of guarantor agreements in the event of the death of a tenant. In this place, all of us know that there are sometimes emails that stop us in our tracks. So it was for me when, in 2023, I received an email from a constituent that read as follows:

“Late last year I became a guarantor for my son so that he could secure accommodation with some friends for his second year at university; without me doing so, he would have lost the house. I had no real concerns about my son paying the rent as he had shown he was a hard worker in a variety of jobs he engaged with to supplement his student loan, which would have covered the rent anyway. The tenancy was due to start at the beginning of July. Tragically, two weeks ago he took his own life, leaving myself, my wife and his sister utterly devastated. On top of everything, I now find myself liable to pay the rent for his room for the entire length of his tenancy if a replacement tenant cannot be found…I wonder if there might be scope to look into the practice of expecting bereaved parents to continue in a role of guarantor to a loved one after they have died.”

I do not think anyone could read that email and think that what happened to my constituents who were facing the worst kind of pain was remotely acceptable. I contacted the letting agent who refused to budge, simply stating that they were following the contract that had been signed.

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for making such a powerful speech and reading out what must have been a difficult email to receive on behalf of her constituent. Does she agree that, sadly, many other tenants up and down the country might have had to go through that, and suffered in silence because they were grieving?

[Helen Hayes]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I will speak in a moment about evidence I have received that this issue is more widespread than any of us might have imagined. I raised the issue at Prime Minister’s questions, and after that I was contacted by many people, including families who had experienced exactly that, as well as letting agents who told me that they explicitly did not use such clauses, and that such clauses were not necessary because the loss of rental income in the event of the death of a tenant is an insurable risk for landlords.

I am grateful to Members across the House who have supported my campaign, including 48 Members who signed new clause 10, and those who signed my amendment to the Renters (Reform) Bill in the last Parliament. I engaged extensively with two different housing Ministers in the previous Government, both of whom said that they were sympathetic but declined to take action in that Bill or support my amendment. I am therefore grateful to the Minister for Housing and Planning for his compassionate and rigorous engagement on this issue. He has listened and, more importantly, he has acted where his predecessors did not. Government new clause 15, tabled this week, bans the use of guarantor agreements in the event of the death of a tenant who is a family member. That is what my constituent asked of me, and I am proud that that is what we will achieve today. I hope my constituents will take some small comfort from knowing that by speaking out and contacting their MP, other families faced with the heartbreak of losing a loved one will not be pursued by a greedy landlord or letting agent, adding financial stress and hardship to an already unbearable situation.

New clause 15 does not go as far as new clause 10, extending protection only to bereaved guarantors who are related to the tenant. While that protection would have helped my constituent, and while I agree that institutional guarantors should not automatically be released from their responsibilities on the death of a tenant, the limitations of the new clause mean that there could still be hard cases in future—for example, a close friend who is bereaved. I therefore trust that the Minister will keep the situation under review to ensure that new clause 15 is as effective as he intends. As a consequence of the Minister’s engagement on this matter, I am content to withdraw new clause 10 and support Government new clause 15. I urge all right hon. and hon. Members to do the same, and to support this Bill, which will deliver the step change in regulation of the private rented sector that we have all been needing for far too long.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), and I pay tribute to her for the work she has done in trying to alleviate the pain caused when someone dies and all the demands then descend unexpectedly on those who were rent guarantors. She has done a very good job on that and I welcome Government new clause 15.

My constituency, like other constituencies in London and most of our big cities, has a huge number of people living in the private rented sector, with probably more than one-third of the electorate living in private rented accommodation. Collectively, they face insecurity. Collectively, they are often stressed. Collectively, they are often paying high and excessive levels of rent. It is heartbreaking to see the number of people who make their home in the area, become active in the community and make a huge contribution to our community life in lots of ways, but then the rents go up and up, and they simply can no longer afford to stay. Anyone looking for private rented accommodation within the local housing allowance in most inner London constituencies would search for a long time and be unlikely to find anywhere remotely near that allowance. I see my friend the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) nodding, and the same situation exists in many other cities across the country.

People on average earnings and working-class communities are simply being driven out by the greed of the private rented sector and the market that goes with it, with rents going up by 10%, 15% and sometimes 20%. That is why I intervened on the Minister earlier, and I am grateful that he gave way and acknowledged the real crisis happening day in, day out across the country. Long-term private sector tenants are at threat, because their landlords know this Bill is coming and that there will be greater restrictions—perhaps there should be more—on their raising of rents and doing no-fault evictions, so they are presently trying to evict large numbers of tenants. I meet many constituents who are going through incredible levels of stress about that. I realise that the Bill is not yet law and has to go through the House of Lords, and I am not clear what date it will be finally enacted; I just hope it is soon. I urge the Minister to consider any kind of urgent action and advice he can give to protect existing tenants in the run-up to the introduction of this legislation.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) for the amendment she has tabled on rent levels. While there is much in the Bill that I welcome, it is sadly a bit of a missed opportunity. Although it restricts the ability of landlords to raise rents in the future, it does not protect those rents being at a reasonable level. Her amendment, which is a good step forward, would link all rent increases to a combination of wage levels and CPI and give local authorities the power to enforce that. We surely should return to that. I hope that the Government will accept one or other of the many amendments that talk about the ability to review this legislation a year on and two years on to see its effects on rent levels and, above all, on security of tenure and whether ways have been found to get around it.

New clause 9, tabled by the hon. Member for Bristol Central, concerns the protection of tenants with disabilities to ensure that they are not discriminated against, and it is important. It has been widely supported across the House, and I hope the Government will agree it, or at least introduce something similar on Report in the Lords if necessary. The hon. Member is representing an important and genuine need across the country.

Lastly, we have a housing crisis in Britain that is utterly beyond belief and utterly unnecessary. I talk to people every day where I live who are rough sleepers. They are walking around, spending the whole day trying to sell The Big Issue to raise £10 or £20 to pay for a bed in a night shelter that they can only access in the evening and have to leave in the morning. It is not accommodation, it is literally just that: a night shelter. Their life is searching for £20 in order just to survive. I am not saying that the local authority does not do all it can to help—it does. I am not saying there are not lots of housing charities that do the same—there are.

But we have a well known number of people living in destitution in our society, grotesque overcrowding in many council and housing association homes, and insecurity in the private rented sector. The Bill goes a long way in reducing insecurity in the private rented sector, but it must be a wake-up call for our society to invest far more in council housing and in sustainable, affordable social housing.

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

Either the hon. Gentleman does not know the status of the rural services delivery grant, or he is trying to mislead the House. A large share of large rural authorities should have got the rural services delivery grant but did not, because that grant was not about rural services. When the previous Prime Minister stood up in Tunbridge Wells and said that the Government had taken money from deprived communities and moved it across, he did not mean that it was for all communities; it was for party politics. So where were Conservative Members then when it came to those rural communities that did not get the grant? I did not hear anybody standing up and asking for their rural community to get the money for those services that Conservative Members are now trying to champion. We will absolutely make sure that deprivation and need are part of the funding reforms that are coming, but we will also make sure that we genuinely take into account the cost of delivering services in rural areas. The sector needs a fair funding review, and we are determined to deliver one.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement, particularly the additional funding to tackle homelessness and provide early help and support for families. I also welcome the principle that resources should be directed according to need. However, as the Minister knows, the elephant in the room of local government finance is that the statutory override for deficits related to special educational needs and disabilities is due to come to an end in March 2026. Councils will be setting their budgets in the new year through to the end of March 2026, and if there is no plan to address the SEND deficits, many councils will be issuing section 114 notices. Councils urgently need certainty at this point, so what discussions are taking place with local authorities about the statutory override, and when will they have the certainty they need?

[Jim McMahon]

I agree about the importance and significance of the statutory override—that is felt very acutely in the Department and in the sector. We are consulting now on a number of matters, including the statutory override, and we are in constant dialogue with the Treasury about how we deal with that in the long term. In the end, this is another example of the legacy we have inherited. We are taking very difficult decisions to reconcile, reform and repair the system—decisions that should have been taken earlier but were not. That issue is very much on our agenda.

Renters’ Rights Bill

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I support this long-overdue Bill. Almost a quarter of households in Dulwich and West Norwood are renting privately, and many of them live with the instability caused by an under-regulated market. I am contacted every week by constituents who are living in unacceptable conditions, facing unaffordable rent increases or threatened with a section 21 no-fault eviction. Private renting is fundamentally unsustainable and unstable.

Too many local renters are living in poor-quality accommodation, suffering with damp and mould, but with limited levers to hold their landlord or letting agency to account. Those who complain risk reprisal evictions, from which they have no protection. Tenants are forced by rent hikes and section 21 notices to move frequently, and they are denied the security of a long-term home. Parents put children into school not knowing whether they will be able to afford to stay in the area for the duration of their education. Increasingly, young families are being priced out of London, and that contributes to a dramatic drop in school rolls, so I warmly welcome this Bill.

[Nesil Caliskan]

I recognise the crisis that my hon. Friend describes. Does she agree that individuals and families are paying the cost of this crisis, not only with money but with the trauma of being moved from home to home?

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. This crisis in private renting is taking an unbearable toll on the health and wellbeing, the financial security and the stability of families across the country, which is why this Bill is so welcome.

I will table an amendment to the Bill. Last year, constituents of mine tragically lost their son to suicide. He was in his first year of university and had signed a tenancy for his second-year accommodation shortly before his death. The tenancy, which had not started when this young man died, included a guarantor agreement signed by his parents. After their son’s death, the letting agency insisted that the agreement applied even in the event of a tenant’s death and, shockingly, began pursuing my constituents for rent payments. While facing the unbearable loss of their son, my constituents were forced to find another student to take on his tenancy in order to be relieved of their responsibility for the rent. This type of clause is not in every guarantor agreement, and it is wholly unnecessary. Landlords can insure themselves against loss of rent in the event of the death of a tenant. My amendment would outlaw the pursuit of guarantors for rent owed by a deceased tenant, to protect other families from this cruel treatment while they are grieving.

I am grateful to the Minister for Housing and Planning for his positive engagement on this issue, both in opposition and since he has been appointed to the Department. I hope the Government can accept my amendment, which was drafted with assistance from lawyers at Shelter, as a straightforward solution. I hope Members from across the House can all agree that no one facing bereavement should have to worry that they will be pursued for their loved one’s rent.

Finally, on affordability, rents in Lambeth and Southwark have grown rapidly in recent years. I welcome the measures in the Bill to ensure limits to rent increases under the section 8 process, and to ban landlords from accepting rents from prospective tenants above the asking price. However, the scale of the crisis in London is so significant that there is a need for further action on rent rises. I hope that as the Bill progresses through the House, my hon. Friends will listen to the calls of the Renter’s Reform Coalition and the Mayor of London, and will consider what more can be done to stabilise rents and assist with affordability.

For too long, reform of the private rented sector has been neglected, leaving renters in Dulwich and West Norwood suffering with insecurity, poor accommodation and rising costs. The effect of this crisis in private renting is destabilising for our communities and harmful for health; I see the impact of the crisis every single week in my constituency. The Renters’ Rights Bill will be transformative for my constituents, and I will be proud to support it this evening.

Renters (Reform) Bill

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 40, which stands in my name, but before I do so I will say a little about the Bill more generally.

Legislative reform of private renting is urgently needed. My constituency is in the eye of the storm of the housing crisis, and every year since 2010 the situation has worsened. The waiting list for a genuinely affordable social home has become longer, the number of people living in temporary accommodation has become higher, and private sector rents have continued to spiral. Despite many promises, the Government have delayed action for far too long. Private renters, housing campaigners, charities and Members from across this House are united in their support for bold reform of private renting. But now, after years of delay, we see a Government unable to deliver the effective and urgently needed reforms that were promised, because they are too weak to face down their own Back Benchers.

At the heart of the matter is the urgent need for an end to section 21 evictions, which I have been calling for since the debates on the Housing and Planning Act 2016. Section 21 is the basis of insecurity in private renting, because it gives landlords the ability to evict tenants for no reason at all. Time and again, I have seen in my constituency how section 21 is used egregiously to ratchet up rents and to stop tenants complaining about basic repairs or safety issues, such as damp and mould. Because a section 21 eviction does not need to be justified with a reason, all the power is in the hands of the landlord. Tenants live with the daily threat that they will be told to leave their home, with all that that entails, such as having to find a new home as rent costs continue to rise.

In a housing crisis characterised by an acute shortage of genuinely affordable social housing, private renting is a form of tenure on which millions of people rely. They must have a degree of security so that they can put down roots, know that their children will be able to remain at the local school, and live without insecurity and the constant fear that they may have to move. Section 21 is destabilising for families and communities. It is therefore beyond disappointing that the Bill will not result in an immediate end to section 21, and that the Secretary of State cannot give a date for when it will end.

The reason for the delay is the shocking mess that the Government have made of the court system. My constituents, who used to be able to attend Lambeth county court, now have to travel to Shoreditch, because the court was closed in 2017. When we challenged the closure of Lambeth county court on the grounds that it would involve a much more complicated and costly journey for constituents facing eviction who wished to attend court, we were promised digital reforms of the court service. We were promised investment in infrastructure to make hearings accessible to anybody who had to attend court, and to ease the complexity of the distance and journey time being increased, but no such investment has been forthcoming. Legal aid lawyers in my constituency who work in the courts speak of the chaos, the crumbling infrastructure and the overburdening workload falling on staff, yet this is the excuse today for why section 21 evictions cannot be brought to an end.

New clause 40, which I tabled, arises from a tragedy that happened to a family in my constituency. Their son, a first-year university student, had signed a tenancy agreement on a house for his second year. In common with parents of university students across the country, his parents were the guarantors for his tenancy, but before their son had finished his first year at university and the tenancy had even started, he tragically died by suicide. Faced with one of the most terrible tragedies that any of us can imagine, these bereaved parents were then pursued by their late son’s letting agent for the rent he would have owed on a tenancy that he would never take up. I wrote to the letting agency several times on behalf of my constituents, but it refused to budge. It maintained that a contract was a contract and that my constituents were liable as the guarantors, so they would just have to pay. Surely we in this House can agree that a contractual provision that financially penalises bereaved parents for the suicide of their child is straightforwardly wrong.

After I raised that case during Prime Minister’s questions, I was contacted by a number of families who had signed guarantor agreements on similar contracts, but also by a number of landlords and letting agents who said that they did not use such clauses in their tenancy and guarantor agreements. This demonstrates that such clauses are simply not necessary. Loss of rental income due to the death of a tenant is an insurable risk for landlords, and it should be a matter for insurance, not for bereaved guarantors.

I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me to discuss new clause 40, but I am baffled by the Government’s response, which is to suggest limiting the obligations of a bereaved guarantor to two months, including during the proposed six-month minimum commitment at the start of a new tenancy. While two months’ rent is clearly preferable to six months or a year’s worth of rent, it is still quite literally a financial penalty for the death of a loved one. Bereavement is one of the hardest things anyone can experience, and the Government should use the powers at their disposal to provide comfort, security and peace of mind to the bereaved so that they can focus on grieving the loss of their loved one. It is simply not fair for bereaved guarantors to be charged for the rent that their loved one is no longer alive to pay, and it is not necessary because the loss of rental income due to the death of a tenant is an insurable risk.

New clause 40 would bring this practice to an end and give peace of mind to guarantors that, should the unthinkable happen, they will not have to find hundreds or even thousands of pounds as they grieve. The Minister has said that he will continue to reflect on this issue. I urge him to do the right thing and to accept new clause 40 into the Bill. It is a simple measure that would prevent anyone else from experiencing the additional distress that my constituents suffered when their son passed away. This new clause has not been selected for a separate decision today, but I will continue to pursue this reform. It is the right thing to do. I urge the Government to look again at this issue. It is a reform that would cost the Government nothing, but it would give peace of mind to anybody facing bereavement, as my constituents have had to do, that egregious landlords and letting agencies will not come after them for a cost that they may not be able to afford at a time when they need help, support and comfort, not additional financial penalties.

Renters (Reform) Bill

Helen Hayes Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I see the impacts of the lack of regulation in the private rented sector in my constituency every single week. In Dulwich and West Norwood, rents have been spiralling for many years, and all too often the quality of accommodation falls way below what any tenant should be able to expect.

I have in my constituency a landlord who owns 90 homes in a development called Dorchester Court. The landlord is on the Sunday Times rich list. Their properties are in an absolutely dire state. Wooden props support the window frames. Plastic sheeting acts as an ineffective shield against moisture penetrating the walls. The heating is unreliable in the winter. The water pipes are made from lead, which contaminates the water supply to a level that is not safe for human health. The council has been trying for a number of years to take enforcement action against this landlord, but it has been waiting many months for a court date. In the meantime, the same landlord has used section 21 eviction notices—in a way that, in my experience, is entirely common—simply to ratchet up rents. Tenants are served with a section 21 notice terminating the tenancy, alongside an offer of a new tenancy at a higher level—often a significantly higher level—of rent. If any Member doubts the need for additional regulation of the private rented sector, they should visit Dorchester Court in my constituency, and, in five minutes, they will see how the regulatory framework is failing tenants across the country.

Section 8 allows for landlords to get their property back when they have a legitimate reason to do so. Section 21 is a pernicious, destabilising force in the housing rental market and there is no place for it. The consequences of section 21 are more than simply contractual. They are found in poor mental health and anxiety, in increasing homelessness and financial hardship, in children living in accommodation that no child should have to live in, and in children having to worry about the anxiety that their parents are experiencing because of the possibility of losing their home at any time. It is very disappointing that the Government are delaying the ban on section 21 evictions by allowing a loophole in this legislation. I sincerely hope that, in Committee, they will reconsider their position.

I turn now to an amendment to the Bill that I plan to table. Earlier this year, my constituents lost their son, a first year university student, to suicide—a devastating loss for any parent to bear. Their son had signed a tenancy for his second-year accommodation and his parents had signed a guarantor agreement. After their son’s death, they discovered that the guarantor agreement applied even in the event of his death, and the letting agent began pursuing them for the rent. It was rent for a tenancy that had not yet started and a tenancy that he would never take up. This is a shockingly punitive act against parents who were already suffering the worst possible loss.

In extensive correspondence with the letting agent on my constituents’ behalf, it refused to budge, simply stating that the rent was a contractual obligation and, although it was unfortunate, my constituents were bound to its terms. I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me to discuss the issues raised by this case. She has explained that the Bill will enable any tenant to terminate a tenancy with two months’ notice, but two months’ rent is a financial penalty that no bereaved guarantor should have to pay. This type of clause is not in every guarantor agreement, and it is not necessary. Insurance policies can cover loss of rent in the event of the death of a tenant. I ask the Government to reconsider their position and, in Committee, to accept my amendment, which would straightforwardly outlaw the pursuit of guarantors for rent owed by a deceased tenant and stop any other family having to suffer this egregious additional pain, anxiety and hardship at a time of great sadness and vulnerability.