Local Government Responsibilities: Public Services

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I would like to start by commending the work that our local councils are doing in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Faced with an unprecedented set of challenges across social care, education, children’s services, housing and homelessness, they are providing access to advice and support for many people who are distressed, worried and facing hardship as a result of the public health and economic calamity we are seeing, while sustaining day-to-day services such as bin collections, parks and libraries. Our councils are doing that in the context of 10 years of unprecedented cuts to their budgets and a total absence of coherent strategy for local government from central Government.

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee observed during the last Parliament that there has not been any assessment from central Government of the responsibilities of local government across its statutory and non-statutory functions and no objective assessment of the resources needed to fulfil the task at hand. Instead, our councils have been cut to the bone. Both my councils have lost more than 60% of the funding they received from central Government in grant. They have been forced to raise council tax, which is regressive and hits the poorest residents hardest, while demands on their core statutory services, adult social care and children’s services have continued to increase, and the need for housing and homelessness services has spiralled as a direct consequence of the welfare policies of a decade of Tory Governments.

In that context, the shift to reliance on business rates is of grave concern. Business rates have been the Government’s only game in town for local government, and we now face an economic calamity that may result in business rates revenue simply draining away. It is imperative that the Government come forward with proposals for how councils will be supported to sustain services in the context of the risk of business rates collapsing. Our councils are stepping up to play their part in multiple different ways, as the closeness and proximity of their relationship to communities make them uniquely placed to do so, but there is a lack of resilience across all our public services. After the last decade, that is completely predictable and therefore completely inexcusable.

I turn to a couple of areas of public services that are responding to the crisis as they relate to our councils, the first of which is social care. Our social care system was in crisis before the coronavirus pandemic struck. About 1 million people eligible for social care are not receiving any, and the sector needs about £3.5 billion of additional funding just to meet additional needs. Across the country, councils of all political persuasions are struggling to deliver the social care services that local residents need, and private contractors continue to hand contracts back to councils.

Now, social care workers are at the frontline of the response to covid-19, caring for some of the most vulnerable residents and working hard to take on additional caseloads as hospitals work urgently to discharge people to free up bed space needed for the pandemic, yet many social care workers are paid the minimum wage and remain on zero-hours contracts.

Last week, 100 parliamentarians from both Houses and many political parties joined me in writing to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to ask that social care workers be placed on the same footing as NHS workers with regard to sick pay during the coronavirus pandemic. NHS workers and contractors have been guaranteed full pay if they are ill or need to self-isolate, but no such commitment has been made to social care workers. It is vital that low-paid workers, whose jobs bring them into contact with many of the people most vulnerable to covid-19, are not forced to make an impossible choice between taking action to protect the safety of those in their care or putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their family’s head.

I have not received a response to my letter and, despite raising the issue in the Chamber, there has been no indication from the Government that they understand the urgency of the issue or that any action is being taken. Lives will be lost if low-paid, workers with precarious jobs are forced to make impossible choices. I hope that in responding to the debate, the Minister will provide a definitive commitment to social care workers in response to covid-19.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. On that point if, as seems likely, schools in England are going to close in the next few days, childcare will need to be provided to allow key workers who have been identified in the NHS to carry on working, perhaps through skeleton schools. Should that also be used for key workers who provide social care in local authorities, so that their children are part of any provision that is made nationally?

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Social care workers, together with healthcare workers, are at the frontline of the crisis. They must be offered every support possible to enable them to keep working throughout.

More widely, there are grave concerns about the extra capacity that will be needed in the social care sector in response to the crisis. Earlier this week, I visited Turney School in my constituency, an outstanding school for children with special educational needs aged four to 19. Of the more than 130 children at Turney School, 90% are eligible for free school meals, many have multiple and complex needs, and most have a diagnosis of autism. If, as we hear, schools across the country are likely to close shortly, there will be an urgent and immediate need for additional social care support for Turney pupils and many thousands of children with special needs across the country.

Schools such as Turney fulfil not just an educational role, but a social, emotional and respite role for children and their families. Many Turney families live in overcrowded, poor-quality accommodation. Self-isolation in such circumstances will be intolerable and the need for social care support will be critical. The same is true for all children in receipt of free school meals and those who are potentially at risk at home. The social care sector will need to step up to meet the needs of our most vulnerable children.

Finally, in relation to social care, I raise the issue of access to personal protective equipment. Vulnerable people with covid-19 will still need support with personal care, and no one should be made to put their own health at risk in the course of doing their job. I welcome the Minister’s comments on PPE, but will he set out the detailed plans to ensure that all social care workers, whatever setting they are in and whoever their employer is, will have access to PPE? There is serious concern about the impact of the crisis on autistic people and people with learning disabilities, more than 2,000 of whom are still trapped in inappropriate hospital accommodation. As hospitals restrict visitor access, and as the emergency legislation contains provisions to short cut detention under the Mental Health Act 1983, what steps are the Government taking to uphold the human rights of autistic people and people with learning disabilities and to ensure that community services being stretched even further do not result in more people reaching crisis point and being detained in hospital?

The second area of council services I want to raise today is housing and the homelessness service. Homelessness and housing need have risen dramatically during the past decade of Tory austerity. A failure to fund the building of new, genuinely affordable social housing or regulate private renting, combined with cuts to welfare and the disgraceful five-week universal credit wait have driven up homelessness.

I was proud during the last Parliament to be a co-sponsor of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, and a recent report by Crisis concludes that the new legislation has been making a difference, but London Councils has made it clear that the level of funding provided by the Government was far from adequate, estimating that the amount that London Councils alone needed to implement the Homelessness Reduction Act was similar to the total national funding the Government made available.

Now we face two additional challenges: the first is the vulnerability of rough sleepers to coronavirus and the impossibility of self-isolating when someone is on the streets. There has been no Government response on this issue. Will the Minister say what arrangements are being made to contain the spread of covid-19 among rough sleepers? Will funding be made available for emergency accommodation that is suitable for self-isolation in addition to the funding that has already been made available to tackle the endemic problem of homelessness, which existed prior to this pandemic?

Secondly, the economic crisis that threatens to engulf our country has the potential to increase homelessness further. The lack of attention to the predicament of private renters has been disgraceful, but without that thousands of people will find their homes at risk. Will the Minister commit to ensuring that no one will lose their home as a consequence of coronavirus?

Our councils are now being asked to administer large amounts of the financial support that the Government are providing in response to this crisis, yet they have not been provided with any guidance, and they are not being supported with additional capacity. Local authorities that have been cut to the bone might find additional financial administration very challenging, so will the Minister set out what support is being provided to councils to ensure that they are able to administer hardship funds and business support without delay and without impacting on other services?

Across many areas of responsibility, local government is at the frontline of this unprecedented public health and economic crisis. It is the job of our councils to ensure that the burdens of the disease do not fall on the poorest and most vulnerable in our communities. It is the job of central Government to ensure that they are properly funded, equipped and supported to do so.

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[Jim McMahon]

That is absolutely the case, but it is also running on high levels of vacancies—there are 120,000 vacancies in adult social care. We are highly vulnerable to staff in that industry becoming ill and going into self-isolation, which is why the question of the protection and support they are given becomes so important. It is absolutely about making sure that, first and foremost, they are considered in the same way as hospital staff. Making sure that they get the proper protective equipment that they need is critical, not just to protect the patients who are being dealt with and the receivers of adult social care, but for the individuals who are placing themselves in a very risky situation, going into people’s homes without knowing who that person has been in contact with, but doing it anyway because they believe in the care they are offering.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) made a really important point that went beyond adult social care: the fabric of our society has changed as a result of the cuts. The 70% reduction in youth services has almost certainly had an impact on knife crime, on county lines, and on whether people feel they have a stake in the future.

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that in this time of crisis central Government support for local government is urgently needed in respect of protection of our young people, who may be even more vulnerable to violence as a consequence of the lack of support systems, of activities and of the people who are normally are responsible for keeping them safe day-to-day?

[Jim McMahon]

That is absolutely true, and it is also true that many lives are lost, in terms of potential, through the criminalisation of young people who are effectively groomed into criminality by those in positions of power or authority in the community who attract them in and entice them. We need to do far more to make clear to young people across the country that there is a real alternative when it comes to leading a fulfilled life. Until then, we will never break the cycle of young people being caught in crime unnecessarily.

This goes right to the heart of the “cradle to the grave” approach to public service. We cannot ignore the impact on Sure Start centres, which were about investing in young people and giving them a taste of what opportunity was from the time when they were young and receiving that type of care. Taking it away has had a massive impact, and that is before we get on to primary school budgets and special educational needs. Young people are just not receiving the tailored support that they need.

However, today is also about thanking councils for the work that they do. Regardless of party affiliation, I want to place on record our thanks for the work that councillors do. They come into public service from their community because they really want to make a difference. Hearing from some of the councillors and ex-councillors who are now in this place about the passion and connection that they still feel, as I do, is very inspiring. We must also thank our council officers.

After 10 years of austerity, councils have experienced a very stressful period in trying to reconcile delivering balanced budgets to remain within the law with managing the huge demand for adult social care, children’s services and services for the homeless. People believe they pay council tax for the very neighbourhood services that are being taken away because councils cannot afford to make ends meet and provide those services. Councils are placed in a horrible position. They are trying to keep their heads above water, and providing targeted support for people who really need it, but at the same time the public are holding them to account for the real cuts that have been made locally. I do not think that that is a fair burden for central Government to place on local government.

That brings me to council tax, which is a hugely regressive tax. It has increased by a third, and what was hidden in the Budget papers was, within the lifetime of that Budget, an £8 billion increase in council tax income for the Treasury. The Government are not coming to the table and giving councils sufficient funds to deal with the demands of adult social care and children’s services in particular. What they are saying is “It is the survival of the fittest. If you can raise money through council tax or business rate retention, good luck, but if you cannot, I am afraid that you can no longer rely on central Government to step in and provide that partnership solution.”

That is just not a fair way of doing things. How can it be right that today, in England—and we have an English problem, because of the nature of how the country is governed—adult social care and people’s ability to access the care that they need will soon be determined by the house values in their area in 1991? How can it be right that they will be based on historic industrial and commercial land values and the business rate take in that area, when the council has very little control over that base? With every revaluation, we see many regions being devalued, and London and the south-east increasing in value. That will be the model, the baseline, of public service funding in the future.

I mentioned the survival of the fittest, but the fittest are not that fit. Local government still faces a £6 billion funding gap between now and 2025. There will still be people in the most affluent parts of the country who are living in absolute destitution and not getting the support that they need because councils do not have the necessary funds.

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[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. I will come on to talk about social care, but we will certainly be giving those who work in social care the help they need to contend with this crisis.

These measures, which follow on from the Budget and from the Chancellor’s announcement last night, amount to over £330 billion in financial support, which, if I may say gently, is more than just drip-feeding into the system; it is a significant amount of money. The Government are prepared to do whatever it takes to protect the economy, our NHS, our local services and our local authorities in weathering this storm.

[Helen Hayes]

Will the Minister specifically address the loss in core income that councils will experience if business rates revenue collapses? I know the Government have announced large-scale support, much of which will be channelled through local authorities to meet specific needs arising from the pandemic, but the threat to our councils is bigger than that—it is to their core budget. The Government have made councils reliant on business rates revenue in recent years, and it may now drain away from them.

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her further intervention. I know and understand the point she is making, and we have already made funds available to local authorities. The Chancellor, in his Budget speech, made clear the support we want to give. He made further announcements yesterday and, if she is prepared to bear with the Government a little longer, I suspect further announcements will be made as the situation evolves.

As the Under-Secretary of State made clear in his opening statement, this funding is in addition to extending SSP and a range of other measures by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Planning for the Future

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. There is evidence that some local plans have been undermined and that the hard work put in by local communities has not reaped the benefits those areas would have liked—they can spend years creating plans only to see development happening on other sites, not those they have chosen themselves. We are reviewing that, taking examples from across the country where we think that has happened and trying to learn lesson from it, and I hope that will feed into our work and create a strengthened plan-making system in the future.

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

The built environment and planning professions have a core role to play in tackling the climate emergency, yet in his statement the Secretary of State made only tangential mention of the climate emergency. I gently say to him: he will not achieve a green revolution with one single net-zero development across the whole UK. Can I encourage him to think again about this most urgent of challenges, to enshrine the climate emergency as a core purpose and responsibility of the planning system and to set the highest possible standards for net-zero development across our planning system to ensure we are not building new homes that will need to be retrofitted in the future?

[Robert Jenrick]

We are committed to a green revolution in the housing industry. We are doing that in many different ways, most notably through the future homes standard, which we have just consulted on. We have received more than 3,000 responses and will bring forward our final proposals shortly. We have consulted on a substantial reduction in CO₂ emissions in new homes of between 75% and 80%. I do not want to pre-empt what we might choose to do, having listened to the views in the consultation. However, the evidence that we saw prior to the consultation was that that was the most credible reduction in CO₂ emissions that we could deliver across the whole of the country, although some parts could go further and faster if they chose to do so. We are listening to the responses, and I want to see the industry respond, change and have much higher levels of energy efficiency and to see new heating systems come in as quickly as possible.

Housing and Planning

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Westminster Hall

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

I thank the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) for securing the debate and for raising a series of important issues about the planning system. I agree with him that the Land Compensation Act 1961 is in urgent need of reform. In fact, I introduced a Private Member’s Bill in the last Parliament to exactly that end.

We need to remove hope value from the planning system. Lest any Member is in doubt about why that is important, I give the example of a site in the middle part of Southwark—not in my constituency—that became vacant with an existing use value of £5 million, but was put on the market by the developer with an auction starting value of £25 million. That tells us about some of the gross injustices in our housing and planning system. The system recognises the right of a landowner to a windfall value of £20 million, over and above the right of residents in Southwark to genuinely affordable council homes on the same piece of land.

Reform is important, but cannot be limited to looking at hope value. That is important, but unless we also reform the definition of an affordable home, homes that are not affordable to the vast majority will continue to be built in this country. In my constituency, a definition of affordability recognises homes of up to 80% of market rental value as affordable. They are simply not affordable to the vast majority of my constituents.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

As a fellow MP from London and the south-east, does my hon. Friend agree that the current policy has a disproportionate impact on local communities? There are severe shortages of professionals in key parts of the public sector and for some private sector employers. We have a huge shortage of NHS staff in Berkshire, as she probably knows. There is also a shortage of people for key commercial businesses.

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. That is certainly true of some key public services, such as King’s College Hospital in my constituency, where staff are moving further and further away from the hospital because they cannot afford to live close to it. It is a widespread issue.

Recently the Government have come forward with mooted proposals to increase the cap on the Help to Buy scheme to £600,000 within its affordable housing programme. It beggars belief that the Government think that that will do anything to address genuine housing need in this country.

I want to highlight one further aspect of the planning system that needs urgent attention: permitted development rights. In the last Parliament, the Government expanded permitted development rights. They did so against all advice from the sector, resulting in examples of the most appalling accommodation being delivered across the country, with office accommodation being converted into homes without full planning permission.

There are a number of things wrong with this system. The first is that in bypassing the planning system, a number of the checks on quality of design and space standards are being bypassed altogether. Section 106 opportunities are also being lost, so those homes are not contributing anything to public or open space or to facilities in in the surrounding area.

Those homes being delivered under permitted development rights that are good enough and of a standard would not have had a problem getting through the planning system, so I fail to understand why the Government are continuing to cut the planning system out of this important aspect of housing delivery. We cannot be delivering the slums of tomorrow in order to satisfy spreadsheets today. It simply will not do. It has to stop. I hope the Minister, in responding to the debate, will say some positive things about the need to scrap permitted development rights, rather than expanding them further.

Finally, our planning system has a vital role to play in combating climate change. The relationship between the built environment and climate change is substantial, and unless we fully resource our planning system and enable local authorities to play the fullest possible role in place-making and in driving up standards of insulation and carbon reduction in new development and in new housing, we will not achieve the level of carbon reduction that we need to in order to resolve the climate emergency, and we will still be building homes today that will need to be retrofitted tomorrow. I end with that point, calling on the Government to resource our planning system properly and to recognise the role that it has in facilitating and delivering the high-quality homes we need to build, at scale, in order to resolve both our housing crisis and the climate emergency.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

We have a manifesto commitment to more tree-lined streets. I would point my hon. Friend to the new Environment Bill, which will be coming forward. However, she is quite right: we do need to have green spaces and to maintain our ancient woodland. We all want to live in a nice and beautiful environment, and that is certainly something a Conservative party in government will hope to achieve.

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

The Government’s future homes standard would prevent councils from setting higher energy efficiency standards than national building regulations demand, while also watering down the impact of building regulations by allowing homes to pass the standard if their carbon emissions are reduced by general decarbonisation of the national grid, which will mean that homes can still be poorly insulated and meet the new standard. In what way does the Secretary of State think this is remotely fit for purpose as a response to the climate emergency? Will he rethink these proposals to equip our councils to go further and faster in reducing carbon emissions and to ensure that new homes will not have to be retrofitted in the future?

[Christopher Pincher]

I think that a target of reducing emissions by 75% from 2025 is ambitious. It is very clear that the more stringent targets we are setting mean that it may not be necessary for councils to set different local standards. We have had a consultation, which closed on 7 February. More than 3,000 submissions were made to the consultation from big builders to think-tanks to local authorities, and we shall certainly be listening to that and taking it into account.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 1 Report

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I speak in this important debate as someone who has been a member of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee for the last five years. As a Committee, we have had regular engagement with survivors and bereaved families and have undertaken regular scrutiny of successive Government Ministers. The survivors are remarkable in their courage, dignity and commitment to one another and to justice, and I pay tribute to them.

It is absolutely shocking and unacceptable that 10 families are still in temporary accommodation two and a half years on from the Grenfell Tower disaster. The process of rehousing survivors has been far too slow—that it is still ongoing at all now is inexcusable. I understand that there are some complex individual circumstances, but the fact remains that some actions were taken by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea early on in the response that contributed to the ongoing delays, including the failure to undertake sufficiently detailed assessments of housing need before properties were purchased, resulting in homes being bought that survivors could not live in, either because of physical constraints or the impact of the trauma—for example, an understandable terror of living at height.

The lack of clarity on cladding is also a disgrace. The Government have still not tested, identified and specified in a transparent way all the types of cladding that are installed on buildings in the UK, leaving thousands living with constant anxiety about whether the cladding on their building is or is not flammable and whether their lives are therefore at risk when they go to bed at night. We do know, however, that there are cladding types in addition to ACM that are flammable, and yet the funding for removal is limited to ACM. Grenfell brought to light the scandal of unsafe cladding. It is now for the Government to identify comprehensively all the types of flammable cladding on buildings in the UK and fund their removal.

The Government announced this week that they would reduce the height above which flammable cladding is banned from 18 stories to 11 stories. For the survivors who have contacted me, this is simply not good enough. ACM cladding is tantamount to soaking the outside of a building in petrol. They can see no justification for any resident at any height or none being asked to live in such circumstances, and I agree. After Grenfell, the Government promised to address the issues raised about how people living in social housing are treated. The promised White Paper on social housing must be grasped as the opportunity to deliver a legacy for Grenfell. The Government must ensure that people living in social housing are treated with dignity and respect, live in safe buildings and have repairs, complaints and concerns addressed quickly and that all landlords are robustly regulated, whether in the social or private sectors, with swift access to redress for tenants and penalties for landlords who are found in breach of their responsibilities.

This is not just about regulation, however, but about funding. Tory cuts to the funding for social housing mean that a council such as Southwark, which covers part of my constituency, has lost £60 million over the past four years from its housing revenue account. Without proper resourcing, the services tenants need and deserve will be stretched to the very limit.

Grenfell United has continued to express concerns about the inquiry panel and, in particular, would like to see a member of the panel with expertise on culture who understands how social housing tenants are sometimes treated when they raise complaints and how some organisations can foster an environment in which tenants raising serious service failings or health and safety concerns are far too easily dismissed. I hope the Government will listen to the survivors and seek to recruit a panel member who understands these issues without further delay.

Among many important recommendations, Sir Martin Moore-Bick recommends that all high-rise buildings have floor numbers clearly marked on each landing and stairwell, yet during the general election campaign, canvassing in many different constituencies, I came across public and privately owned buildings where even this basic and straightforward recommendation had not yet been implemented, meaning that, in the event of another serious fire, the emergency services and residents would again be hampered in their efforts to evacuate the building safely for want of such basic information. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that building owners are clear about their responsibilities and ensure their implementation? There is no excuse for delaying the installation of simple signage that could save lives.

The Grenfell families and the wider north Kensington community have suffered a trauma and loss that runs very deep. They will continue to need support, particularly with both physical and mental health, for the long term. Will the Minister commit to that support, particularly in terms of liaising with the Department of Health and Social Care to secure additional NHS resources, so that whatever the ongoing long-term consequences of this tragedy continue to be for the community, no one will feel abandoned?

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As my hon. Friend knows, the Department spends an enormous amount of time and energy promoting Help to Buy to those who are eligible, and the new Help to Buy scheme, which will come in once the current scheme finishes, will be targeted very carefully at first-time buyers. I am more than happy to take any suggestions she may have for how we can focus it more on those on lower incomes.

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

There is a £3.1 billion gap in funding for children’s services and a £4.3 billion gap in funding for adult social care, but, eight months before the start of the new financial year, local authorities have no idea what their funding settlement will be for the coming financial year or beyond it. What is the Secretary of State doing to address this crisis in local government funding, which is affecting the most vulnerable residents in communities up and down the country every single day? Why is he being so complacent?

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

Far from being complacent, the Government are working hard to ensure that local authorities receive the support that they need, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen). We know about the importance of children’s services, and the importance of ensuring that all authorities benefit from best practice from places such as Leeds, Hertfordshire and North Yorkshire. We are funding those authorities so that they can spread that best practice throughout the country, transforming the lives of children everywhere.

High Streets and Town Centres in 2030

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Westminster Hall

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

I welcome this report, and add my thanks to the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and everyone who contributed to it.

Town centres and high streets matter because they are the hearts of our communities. They are the places where people come together to access goods and services, to meet each other and to enjoy leisure time. People often feel a strong sense of connection to their place and they enjoy local distinctiveness as part of their identity. People enjoy the relationships they have in their local town centres, with the shopkeepers and café owners who serve them, with the voluntary sector organisations they encounter, and with the public services that they can access in such locations.

Our report found that unlike in the 1990s, when high street decline was linked to the wider economic recession, and the threat of the internet was only beginning to loom on the horizon, the issues facing town centres now are much more fundamental and structural. I will high light a number of issues covered by the report that are affecting the town centres and high streets in my constituency.

Whether in West Norwood, East Dulwich, Brixton West Dulwich, Dulwich Village, Herne Hill or Crystal Palace, I am proud of the distinctiveness of the town centres and high streets in my constituency, the independent businesses, which serve their communities, and the sense of place and community, which they help to foster. Businesses in my constituency are really suffering. Rents in London are going up, and rents feed into the calculation of business rates. One owner of a hugely popular, much-loved local shop contacted me to say that following the recent revaluation, his rateable value had increased by 110%, and his bill by 34% once transitional relief had been applied. Added to that, he told me that he is being squeezed by increases in employers’ national insurance contributions and his rent. His turnover is substantially down as a direct result of online competition.

In West Norwood next week we will see the closure of the last bank in the town centre, when Barclays shuts its doors for the last time. That is a particular blow in an area with a high number of elderly and disabled residents, and one that will further increase financial exclusion in that part of my constituency and harm the wider town centre. Trade will be driven away as people go to other places for their essential banking transactions and choose to spend their money elsewhere.

The relaxation of permitted development rights is already a disaster, resulting in poor-quality homes in the wrong locations and no affordable housing or contribution to services and facilities. The good examples of office-to-residential conversion generally would have achieved planning consent in any event, so PDR has simply facilitated the delivery of poor-quality homes. For town centres, the Government have proposed further expansion of permitted development rights to enable shops to be converted to residential. That would be an unmitigated disaster for town centres. It is true that in many town centres there is too much retail space, but how and where to reduce that and introduce other uses is a strategic decision that should be taken by the local authority, in consultation with the community. Allowing landlords that freedom runs the risk of gap-toothed high streets up and down the country, rather than the sensible consolidation of a retail heart where it is needed.

Our report is right to identify the critical nature of strong local authority leadership in supporting healthy town centres, but planning departments have been cut to the bone under nine years of austerity. Thriving town centres need a strong vision, effective partnerships between councils, businesses and the community and investment in the public realm, increasingly with a focus on sustainability and climate change at their heart. We need to clean up the air in town centres, deliver safe routes for walking and cycling and create pleasant open spaces resilient to hotter summers and wetter weather. That simply cannot be done with current resources. Government must invest in and empower local authorities to play the leadership role on behalf of our towns centres that we know can be so effective.

I want to return to the issue of business rates. A fundamental problem for our town centres is that business rates do not reflect the value that people place on their local high street. They penalise town centre retailers in more expensive property, to the benefit of internet-based businesses operating out of low-value warehouses. It is the job of the taxation system to redistribute resources according to the public goods that communities value. Town centres are one such public good. The value of the relationship that an isolated elderly person has with their local shopkeeper does not appear on any balance sheet. Our taxation system must take account of that value and redistribute resources to serve our town centres.

It is for the Government to provide the policy and taxation regime that can support our town centres, whether by creating an obligation for banks to provide branch-based services in every community in the country, redistributing businesses rates to support our town centres or investing in our local authorities to equip and enable them to play a leadership role. The Government are not doing enough; they must show more leadership.

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[Mrs Wheeler]

The hon. Lady is obviously prescient. When the Government concluded the last fundamental review of business rates, we decided to keep business rates as a property tax, following stakeholder responses. Respondents agreed that business rates are easy to collect, difficult to avoid, relatively stable and clearly linked with local authority spending. Some respondents suggested alternative tax bases. However, Select Committee members and others may wish to know that there was no consensus on an alternative base, and that even those respondents who put forward alternatives were clear that they were not without issues. To finish on business rates, the Government are committed to listening to views and will keep all taxes under review.

[Helen Hayes]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mrs Wheeler]

I have not got time.

[Helen Hayes]

I will be extremely brief. This issue is killing businesses across the country now. I am afraid that saying the Government generally keep it under review, along with all other taxes, simply does not cut it for businesses in our town centres.

[Mrs Wheeler]

I have outlined how the Government are helping local businesses with many, many millions of pounds, and with £6 billion-worth of relief, so I think the hon. Lady is slightly over-egging it.

Another issue that has been highlighted is our undertaking a planning consultation on permitted development rights to help support change on the high street. Permitted development rights continue to play an important role in the planning system, supporting key Government agendas such as housing and high streets by providing more planning certainty while allowing for local consideration of key planning matters.

To put the hon. Member for Sheffield South East’s mind at rest on local plans and permitted development rights, where a local planning authority considers it necessary to protect a local amenity or the wellbeing of an area, it can consult the local community by removing a right by making an article 4 direction. Proposals for development can change, and a change of use would require a planning permission application.

Equally, on the point from the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) about poor quality homes being delivered through permitted development rights, permitted development rights have actually provided 46,000 really important homes that needed to be built. However, we are particularly keen to ensure that the quality of all new homes meets our ambitions, so in the spring statement we announced a review of permitted development rights for the conversion of buildings to residential properties, in respect of the quality and standard of homes.

Because the Government believe in the high street, we run the Great British High Street awards, with Visa, to celebrate the achievements of our communities and high streets. The awards are a great way of bringing together local players and focusing minds on high streets. In entering the awards, local authorities, businesses and communities work together and get local people talking about their high street, letting local leadership emerge. Last month, I was delighted to launch the 2019 competition in Crickhowell, the town that took the top prize in 2018. I am sure that Committee members will join me in wishing this year’s entrants the best of luck.

We encourage all those with an interest in high streets, particularly landlords and retailers, to consider how they can take the Committee’s recommendations on board in their own decision-making processes. We agree wholeheartedly with the Committee that the elements raised today form part of a bigger whole.

This is a package of interconnected measures to help local areas make their high streets and town centres fit for the future. The different elements will work together to have a real impact on high streets and town centres in adapting and evolving and in becoming vibrant hubs once again. I believe that the benefits of this will be felt more widely, helping to deliver local growth and real change in our communities. This growth will be shaped by the Government’s industrial strategy, which sets out the long- term plan to boost productivity by backing businesses to create good jobs and will increase the earning power of people throughout the UK with investment in skills, infrastructure and places. I once again congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield South East on securing the debate, and I thank hon. Members for their speeches and questions and the Committee for its helpful recommendations.

My local high street in Swadlincote is thriving, my wonderful South Derbyshire District Council has no car parking charges in any of its council car parks, and we moved the market back down the high street, making it a vibrant place to be. I am sure that, as the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) said, we all have marvellous examples that show how our high streets can get back to being the best places that they can be. The challenge of rebalancing the functions of our high streets and town centres is a real priority for us across the nation. Having adapted successfully before to new demands, we believe that places can and will do so again.

Housing

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

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

The Minister spoke of the difficulty of quantifying Government targets for different types of housing. This is what can be quantified: the 1.25 million people on the waiting list for social housing, the 123,000 children living in temporary accommodation, and the fact that more than 99% of homes to rent in the private sector in Lambeth and Southwark have rent that is above the local housing allowance cap.

This Government are failing, as the coalition did before them, by cutting the subsidy for new social housing, redefining affordable housing to make a mockery of the word “affordable”, penalising residents with the bedroom tax, and lining the pockets of shoddy developers such as Persimmon and unscrupulous private sector landlords. The Government are also presiding over the disastrous relaxation of the rules on permitted development rights. In the time left available to me, it is this policy that I will focus on.

The expansion of permitted development rights is delivering poor quality homes in former office buildings up and down the country, resulting in children playing in industrial estate car parks, poor fire safety standards, and homes that are not homes but essentially hotels by the back door that are let out through Airbnb and other platforms for short-term lets. Most shockingly, having introduced this major planning reform, the Government have undertaken no evaluation of its impact and propose further expansions that would enable developers to demolish and rebuild office buildings without planning permission.

This policy is removing quality control and democratic accountability from housing delivery. Councils and communities have no say, and the developers who profit from these developments make no contribution to local community needs or the delivery of genuinely affordable housing. In many areas, the expansion of permitted development rights is delivering the slums of tomorrow and the fire safety horrors of tomorrow. This is happening on the Minister’s watch.

I therefore urge the Minister to do one small practical thing: to halt the expansion of permitted development rights while a full evaluation of its impact is undertaken, and to restore housing delivery to the full democratic control of local authority planning departments, which can decide where their communities need new housing, say where it should be built, and secure affordable housing contributions and funding for community facilities, so that we build not the slums of tomorrow but the high-quality, sustainable, affordable communities that this country so desperately needs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

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

The permanent secretary recently confirmed at the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee that the Government have undertaken no evaluation of the impact of permitted development rights since they were expanded in 2013. While the Minister states that more than 46,000 homes have been delivered under the policy, he can have no accurate idea of the quality of those homes. Amid increasing reports of appalling quality, unsafe homes being delivered under permitted development rights, will he pause this policy so that a proper evaluation can be undertaken?

[Kit Malthouse]

There is obviously a concerted attack taking place against permitted development rights, which I find distressing, given the sheer number of homes that they have produced for people who are desperate for those homes. As I have said, all homes, whether under permitted development rights or normal planning permission, have to comply with building regulations, and it is down to local authorities to ensure that that is the case.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

It is always a pleasure to be greeted by impatient Members who, as I say, want more housing for the next generation. My hon. Friend is right: we need to constantly examine the effect of the planning system on the production of new homes. As he says, we issued a new planning framework back in July. We are carefully assessing the impact of those policies, but if my hon. Friend has useful and constructive suggestions, I shall be more than happy to hear them.

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

The Government’s expansion of permitted development rights has caused multiple problems across the country. Such developments make no section 106 contributions towards new social housing. There are reports of homes of appalling quality, with children forced to play in car parks on industrial estates, and of homes in some areas being used only for short-term holiday lets, while developments in other areas are causing the loss of valuable employment space. Last week, the permanent secretary confirmed to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee that the Government had undertaken no evaluation of this policy. Will the Secretary of State call time on the policy, so that a full evaluation of the impacts can be undertaken?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There seems to be a competition between what I would call parliamentary essayists today. That was an extremely eloquent essay—very erudite—but we could do with a paragraph.