Construction Standards: New Build Homes

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Does the hon. Member agree that not only the house must be of a very high quality, but the surrounding estate that the house is built on? That is essential because the guarantees and building certificates that come with a home do not relate to that surrounding estate, and if there are problems with, for example, the drains or the roads, it can be very difficult to get them fixed, which is a nightmare for a new homeowner.

[Michelle Welsh]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention and I completely agree with her point, which my constituents have also raised with me. Homebuyers deserve to feel confident that their new home is safe and will not begin to crumble as soon as the key is in the door.

I will refer to the experience of one of my constituents with their new build home. Kelly and her husband Simon moved into their new home in Bilsthorpe in October 2024. They opted to go for a new build home because of their disabled son, thinking that a new build would be clean and that they would not have to spend much time adjusting it to meet their son’s needs.

Almost immediately, however, they realised that the high-standard and handcrafted home that they had been promised was not to be. They discovered numerous issues with the house. These included an incorrectly fitted and sized boiler cylinder, which left them without heating for three days; an improperly installed bath. which dropped and left gaps in the tiles; dirty tiles; damage to the flooring; and windows with scratches and stickers left on. I could go on. All of this was on top of the usual moving house stress. I know from my own experience that the days and weeks leading up to moving house are taken over by worry about what could go wrong. That a new home could contain even more nightmares is the last thing on someone’s mind.

When Kelly and Simon raised their issues with their constructors and builders, Harron Homes, they were met with more bad treatment. Through their complaints, my constituents learned that despite some of these issues being known to the site manager and sales executive, the home was in fact signed off. Harron Homes stated that there was “nothing to stop them” living in the property and that it was “happy” with the state of the home. I know everyone here will agree that the conditions my constituents faced in the house were certainly not good enough, and should have stopped them from being allowed to live in the property, especially with a disabled son.

Housing Development Planning: Water Companies

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the role of water companies in new housing development planning.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. It is something of a cliché for a Liberal Democrat to be talking about sewage, but today I am breaking the mould and talking not about sewage in seas, lakes and rivers but about sewage in people’s homes and gardens. Buying a home in the UK is not easy. People spend years and years saving penny after penny, and when they finally sign on the dotted line and complete the purchase, they are relieved and delighted. They are not expecting to be forced to become an expert in complex regulations relating to drainage and the planning process. Most of all, they are not expecting raw sewage to start backing up through the manhole covers in their garden, the drains or, in the worst-case scenario, their downstairs loo, but unfortunately, that is what some of my constituents have had to deal with when buying or living near newly built houses in North Shropshire. I think the whole House should be asking itself how any water company, developer, conveyancer or local authority could think that this situation is acceptable.

During my time as MP for North Shropshire, there have been multiple incidents in which constituents have been put in this troubling position by the sewerage network failing, and I am quite angry about the lack of progress in dealing with the issue. Just two weeks ago, I attended a meeting with residents of a village in my constituency that has seen a relatively large amount of development in recent years; their village is low-lying and on a gentle slope. Severn Trent, the water company, has adopted the drainage system from the new developments, so this is not a case of a dodgy developer failing to build suitable infrastructure, but it is an old, medieval village and unfortunately the existing combined sewer infrastructure is inadequate to deal with prolonged rainfall and the additional homes connected to it.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this really important debate. Speaking of medieval villages, I met residents of a little village called Mudford in my constituency last week. Two new housing applications have recently been approved for up to 1,000 homes just upstream on the River Yeo. Mudford already suffers from extreme flooding and relies on inadequate and fragile sewerage systems that already overflow regularly during heavy rain. Worryingly, the developers plan to use the same system despite clear environmental risks. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that water companies must be fully involved in the planning system, to ensure that water infrastructure can handle the demand and prevent future flooding and spills of sewage?

[Helen Morgan]

My hon. Friend describes a situation that I think we are all familiar with. I agree with her about the role of water companies and will go on to talk about that point at some length in my speech, so I thank her for that intervention.

When there is heavy rain, the residents I met struggle with surface water flooding and, unfortunately, with sewage backing up into homes and gardens, which we all agree is pretty horrible. Further homes in the area are in the planning process, so the residents are extremely concerned. Each year, their situation gets worse. An elderly resident told me that sometimes, when it has been raining heavily, she has to ask her neighbours not to use their bathroom, because sewage will flood into her garden if they do. That is not a position that any homeowner should be put in, so we need to ask ourselves how we have allowed this to happen in the first place.

We are acutely aware of the need to build more homes, and we support the Government in their mission to build more homes, but it is essential that the infrastructure for both new and existing residents keeps pace with development. Astonishingly, water companies are not statutory consultees when a housing development goes through the planning process. That means that there is no statutory safeguard for home buyers that the company responsible for dealing with their foul waste has ensured or confirmed that its existing sewers will cope; nor is there any statutory safeguard for existing residents against a new development bringing some unpleasant surprises.

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this very important debate. River Mole River Watch, a local citizen scientists’ charity, has found that smaller pumping stations near new housing developments are seeing a sharp rise in storm overflows. More homes mean more sewage, as she has eloquently explained, and if the infrastructure cannot cope, raw sewage ends up in the River Mole. Does she agree that water companies must be statutory consultees in the planning process, so that sewage infrastructure is upgraded at the same time as building takes place? Otherwise, the problem will only get worse.

[Helen Morgan]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Water companies have certain powers to object to developments that exacerbate existing capacity problems, but they are very much constrained by duties under the Water Industry Act 1991, which obliges them to accept domestic flows from new developments. Moreover, developers have an automatic right to connect to the existing network for domestic flows, which limits the ability of the water companies to object solely on the basis of network capacity. They can apply for Grampian conditions—planning conditions attached to a decision notice that prevent the start of the development until off-site works have been completed on land not controlled by the applicant. Developers can do that through the planning authority, but only if there is already a scheme promoted and a date for the improvements to be delivered has been set, so Grampian conditions are rarely used.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) tabled an amendment in Committee to the Water (Special Measures) Bill, which would have provided some of those safeguards by making water companies statutory consultees and ensuring that water infrastructure requirements were considered.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. She mentions the amendment we pushed in the Bill Committee, which was not accepted by the Government. It is indeed vital that water companies are statutory consultees throughout the process, but we should bear in mind that there is an incentive for water companies to say that there is no problem: the additional buildings mean more water bills and more income for the water company. If the company concedes that there is a problem, it may have to respond by making improvements to the infrastructure, costing it money. Do we not need better regulation? Ofwat and the Environment Agency need to be put together into a single, new clean water authority, so that we enforce clean water standards on the water companies that are currently running rings around our regulators.

[Helen Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He has campaigned endlessly and consistently on that point and I entirely agree with him. I was concerned when both the Government and the Conservatives voted against his amendment in Committee. Perhaps in their winding-up speeches, they will explain the rationale to my constituents, who are faced with the reality of putting cling film over their toilet every time there is a big storm.

The current requirements, all of which allow consultation, have been inadequate in the example I have given, and indeed in many others. The local plan process requires local authorities to consult the water companies on infrastructure requirements. That should be a positive step; it is how future infrastructure should be determined, with plans made by both the local authority and the water company. However, many councils fail to develop local plans. Shropshire’s Conservative council has just had to withdraw an inadequate plan, having failed to satisfy the requirements of the planning inspectors, leaving the county open to a planning free-for-all in which it is unnecessary to consult water companies. I therefore urge the Minister to ensure that in the review announced at the beginning of this week, water companies are added to the list of statutory consultees. I urge him also to tighten up the rules to prevent such a fiasco from emerging again, when after years of work and of taxpayers’ money being spent on a local plan, it is not fit for purpose and the whole process has to be started again. That is unacceptable for my residents, who are paying their council tax.

Another development 10 miles to the north has had similar issues, but in that case, in addition to concerns about the capacity of the pumping station and existing surface water flooding problems, Severn Trent has refused to adopt the drainage network, citing as its reason that the sewers were not built to the standard agreed under the section 104 arrangement in place. The developer, which I should say disputed that there were defects in the system, requested that Severn Trent return its section 104 bond, and it did. All of that was done without the residents’ knowledge. They only found out nearly three years later, following repeated complaints to the water company, which is tanking sewage away from the village on a weekly basis.

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

On the section 106 moneys being returned to the developer, this week I had a meeting with Southern Water and then a meeting with a significant regional house builder in the south-east. A very similar situation was presented to me, wherein Southern Water had not actually managed to carry out the £2 million of improvements to the sewerage network that were required as part of the section 106 agreement. Does she agree that in such a situation it is incredibly hard for politicians and councils to make the case to residents that development is justified, when time and again they are let down by the development system?

[Helen Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Residents are genuinely concerned about the impact on their village or town when the rules clearly are not allowing for additional infrastructure to be built. It is reasonable for them to expect that infrastructure to be built. We would see far less nimbyism if people had confidence that the infrastructure will be there when new houses are built.

The point I am trying to make is that the section 104 process is not fit for purpose. It is ridiculous to require a financial bond. The point of that bond is to deal with exactly the situation where the sewerage network has been inadequately built and needs to be adopted. The bond is there to ensure that the water company brings that sewerage system up to standard, so that it can be adopted.

[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

My hon. Friend has just said that a lot of sewerage is unadopted. Say it was built in the 1800s by public subscription and nobody has adopted it since. That allows water companies to shrug and say, “Search me, guv’” when there is a problem. Does she think that the Government should by statute or law require that all of these unadopted watercourses be adopted by a water company or the Environment Agency, so that when there is a problem there is someone we can point to and say, “This is your problem to solve”?

[Helen Morgan]

The problem of historical sewers is particularly difficult, because there is no immediate developer to put on the hook. We certainly need a mechanism for dealing with historical sewers. It is a complicated problem, because we certainly do not want sewage from inadequate systems to start going into the main system, and it is difficult to say the taxpayer should to have to pay for something that happened a long time ago. Nevertheless, we need a mechanism to deal with historical sewers; there is no doubt about that.

The homeowners in The Pines in Higher Heath are in a situation where the developer has refused to rectify the issues and Severn Trent has washed its hands of the matter by returning the bond. They have nowhere else to go. One resident told me:

“The whole system has failed us, from start to finish…we have layers upon layers of Water, Building, Planning, Council Regulations, Controlling Authorities and processes and procedures, all designed to protect the public and the environment. Yet, a pre-existing local drainage problem, a planning process and building supervision and approval all failed to pick up and address it, and then allowed ‘defective’ drains to be built, then a Developer and a Utility company agree among themselves to terminate the S104 and totally wash their hands of us/the people who pay the taxes that fund the system that is supposed to protect us/the people.”

We see there the root of the problem. People who rely on the regulatory system to protect them in their homes are being hopelessly let down by a system that provides no protection when the worst happens and push comes to shove. Clearly, the section 104 process is not fit for purpose. The conveyancing process, when solicitors are involved, never seems to detect this type of situation either. I have sympathy for the people affected. When the section 104 agreement and bond have been put in place, and people have found that through their search, they should be able to have reasonable confidence that the sewerage network will be completed as planned.

I have raised many times the situation of people living in The Brambles in Whitchurch, so I will not go into all the details again. People bought houses in that development, but the developer was a rogue developer, who collapsed the company as soon as the final house was occupied. The sewage pumping system was inadequate, and another property was illegally connected to it. Fourteen households had to spend £1 million between them to fix that situation. Those householders were the people left holding the management company when everything crashed down around them, and they were liable to fix that situation. That was totally unacceptable, as well.

[Richard Fuller (North Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. I have a couple of questions. In North Bedfordshire, the pace of housing growth is about two and a half to three times what it is nationally, and we also have two major watercourses—the River Ouse and the River Ivel. The issue with the way that section 106 moneys go with new housing developments is that it is always about the incremental impact on the network, but the problem is that the overall structure needs financial support. The hon. Lady has been thinking about making water companies statutory consultees. Does she think that that could help with a more comprehensive understanding of the impact across a network of any major development? Secondly, does she think that it could change the system to have greater demand for an escrow of funds by developers for the long-term issues she mentioned, rather than leaving those to individual householders?

[Helen Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, particularly about holding funds in escrow, which is a sensible suggestion. I am reluctant to let water companies off the hook, because they have made enormous profits, and they have been able to predict the growth in housing and changes in the weather, but they have done nothing to invest in the existing infrastructure. Let us not feel too sorry for them, but there clearly needs to be a long-term plan in place for overall infrastructure in an area. I agree that that needs to be taken into consideration in the planning process.

Local planning authorities have discretionary powers to try to prevent the situations I have described. They could stop occupation of the final properties on the development until the defective sewerage has been remediated. There are various conditions they could put in place up front to prevent these situations, but in practice that is not happening.

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

In my constituency, South West Water promised residents in the Chapelfields development in the village of St Mabyn that sewage treatment would be put in place, only for families to move in and find raw sewage being collected in tankers, with no proper connections and frequent sewage back-ups, which is similar to what my hon. Friend has described. Does she agree that water companies must be held properly accountable to ensure that infrastructure is in place before homes are built, not years later when the damage is already done?

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Morgan]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is where we are going with having them as statutory consultees in the process. It is no good the water companies saying, “You cannot build those houses.” They need to be able to say, “We have this plan to improve the infrastructure. You can build those houses when we have done it.” It is probably also quite critical that they are able to say, “We are doing it fairly quickly.”

I will come back to section 104 for a second. One problem is that council planning departments are hollowed out. They have neither the human nor financial resources to get involved in expensive planning enforcement action, or to ensure that every person has been thought about and invited to consult on a planning application. They need to be required to do that, because the idea that cash-strapped councils will go above and beyond is currently unlikely; many are desperately just trying to stave off a section 104 situation.

We have planning legislation coming, which is welcome. I implore the Government to address section 104 agreements and the bonds that secure them, because at the moment they are not the iron-clad guarantees they should be. We need to ensure that drainage systems are built to an appropriate standard and adopted, so that people can have confidence that, when they buy a home, they will not have to deal with a raw sewage problem for years and be unable to sell their house in many instances.

[Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)]

The hon. Lady makes an eloquent and moving case about the impact of inadequate sewerage systems on residents moving into new properties. Does she agree that there is also a need for a stronger regulatory system for the supply of fresh water? In my constituency we have a water management zone, which prevents new businesses, such as a brewer I spoke to recently, from expanding. At some times of the year, there is too much water, and at other times, there is too little. Does the hon. Lady agree that more effort needs to be put into strategies to manage the supply of fresh water, as well as the issues she raises?

[Helen Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Shropshire is quite wet, so we do not often find ourselves talking about a lack of water; it would have to be an extreme summer before we found ourselves in that situation. He makes a good point that the country increasingly sees very dry periods and then extreme rainfall in winter. We need a water system fit for the future to deal with that and with localised capacity issues in the freshwater network.

Finally, I call on the Government to implement the recommendations of the report published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2023 on schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. The schedule would provide a framework for the approval and adoption of drainage systems; a sustainable urban drainage systems approving body, or a SAB; and national standards on the design, construction, operation and maintenance of sustainable urban drainage systems, which also have a lovely acronym—SUDS. Critically, it makes the right to connect surface water run-off to public sewers conditional on the drainage system being approved before any construction work can start. Currently, that is not a statutory requirement, but those things are often built as part of the planning process. That means that when a development happens in an area that has previously been, say, fields, the water must drain off at the same rate as it would have done had the area still been a field. That is a clever way of managing surface water, and it seems odd that the previous Government, and indeed the current Government, have not yet adopted schedule 3. That would be an important start in protecting new and existing residents from the nightmare of both surface water and foul water flooding.

In conclusion, the current planning-led approach is clearly not fit for purpose. Numerous colleagues have turned up today to tell similar stories of residents dealing with raw sewage in their homes, which is just not acceptable. The planning process is failing to protect residents of both new and existing homes, opening the risk of surface water and foul water flooding. Most of us cannot imagine how awful untreated sewage in the home must be, but a failed planning system is making it a reality for far too many people. I urge the Minister to make water companies a statutory consultee in planning, to implement schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act and to tighten the rules around section 104 so that rogue developers cannot get away with building illegal connections to the sewers.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that if they wish to be called to speak, they should bob. I ask Members to try to keep their contributions to around four minutes so that everybody who has put in to speak can get in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Morgan]

I thank everyone who contributed to the debate. It was good to see cross-party agreement on some of the issues that our residents face, such as the lack of capacity in local drainage systems when houses are built and the lack of appropriate planning conditions in some of these localised incidents.

I also thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), the Minister and the Lib Dem spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), for their thoughtful contributions. They were all excellent. I particularly thank the Minister for not ruling out the adoption of schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act.

I understand the Minister’s point that water companies being statutory consultees would pose a risk to getting planning applications through the process, but I ask him to consider the fact that the local planning system does not work either. Many councils do not have a local plan. They do not have the planning officers, and cannot afford them, to develop good local plans. We have to find a way to address that problem.

Finally, I will write to the Minister on the specific issues that I have had in relation to section 104 agreements. I would be grateful for a meeting with him to go through them in detail.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the role of water companies in new housing development planning.

Planning Committees: Reform

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I say, we inherited an acute and entrenched housing crisis, with 1.3 million people languishing on social housing waiting lists and a generation locked out of home ownership. To their shame, the Conservative Government passed on a situation where 150,000 homeless children are in temporary accommodation as we speak. We have to build the homes that our people need, and we are determined to do so.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on flooding and flooded communities, and the MP for a constituency that suffers from surface water flooding as well as river flooding, I am concerned that the proposals will divert decision making away from those with the greatest local knowledge. When a flooding area is drained, the water has to go somewhere else, and where it goes is critical to the people living in the surrounding area. Can the Minister reassure me that the proposals will not dilute the importance of local knowledge in making critical decisions about draining and flooding when we build?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I can reassure the hon. Lady on that point. The proposals will operate within the context of a national planning policy framework that has very clear requirements in relation to flooding. We are in no way removing local expertise and knowledge from the system; either experienced and trained local planning officers or locally elected authority members should make the decisions, but we have to ensure that they are making the right ones, and that their energy is focused in the right way, to streamline the decisions that we need. We heard the statistics on how planning applications are not progressing through the system at a timely pace. We need to turn things around.

Deputy Prime Minister

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Written Corrections

The following extract is from Prime Minister’s questions on 23 October 2024.

[Helen Morgan]

Shropshire’s farmers have been suffering from flooding following 18 months of incredibly wet weather, topped off last Wednesday by a month’s worth of rain in 24 hours. They were not eligible for the farming recovery fund, and a freedom of information request by Farmers Weekly found that only £2.1 million of that £50 million has been handed out to farmers. Will the Government consider extending the eligibility of that scheme so that we can keep farmers going when they are deluged by floodwater?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am really sorry to hear the plight of Shropshire farmers. We inherited the flood defence programme in disrepair, and thanks to 14 years of mismanagement and failure, communities are unprotected and families and businesses are forced to pay the price. We launched a flood defence taskforce to turbocharge the delivery and co-ordination of flood defences, and we are investing £1.5 billion this year to scale up flooding national resilience. I will ensure that the hon. Lady gets a meeting with the Minister.

[Official Report, 23 October 2024; Vol. 755, c. 276.]

Written correction submitted by the Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner):

Exempt Supported Accommodation

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Mark.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) on securing this debate and on her excellent speech, in which she highlighted all the difficulties that we knew existed in this sector. She also provided some real colour about what those difficulties mean for residents of exempt supported accommodation units, for local residents who are impacted by some of the bad-faith actors, and for local communities. I do not want to go back over some of the ground that has already been covered, because she covered it so well, but I am afraid that I will have to. Before I go any further, however, I should declare that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

In 2022, I served on the Public Bill Committee for the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023, which was introduced by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) as a private Member’s Bill. It was an important step forward that had cross-party support from the then Conservative Government, the Labour Benches and the Liberal Democrat Benches, because the issue had become so severe.

The system of exempt accommodation was well described in the October 2022 report by the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee as:

“a complete mess. There are many good providers, but in the worst instances the system involves the exploitation of vulnerable people who should be receiving support, while unscrupulous providers make excessive profits by capitalising on loopholes. This gold-rush is all paid for by taxpayers through housing benefit.”

That is a sorry state of affairs.

The then Government supported the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Harrow East, because it was seen as a good way to deal with the situation that was described by the Select Committee and by the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston today. In response to the Select Committee’s report, in early 2023 the Conservative Government said that the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023 would address most of the concerns that had been raised in the report, because it would introduce national standards for support and give local authorities the powers they need to set up licensing schemes to tackle poor-quality supported housing in their area.

The Act provided for local authority supported housing strategies to review the situation in their area and the availability of and need for supported housing, and those strategies were to be renewed every five years. It also required the Secretary of State to set up a supported housing advisory panel to provide information and advice about supported housing; it allowed for the Secretary of State to set standards for the support provided in supported housing; and it allowed for regulations to be made to establish licensing schemes, which would include consideration of the condition of the property, the adequacy of the care and support provided, interactions with other licensing schemes, the costs, the financial penalties and all the things that needed to go with a properly functioning licensing scheme

The Act also required the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, as it is now called again, to formally consult on elements contained within it, including the licensing regime, standards and any additional measures for securing compliance with the standards. As we have heard, however, much of that has not yet happened, despite the Act going through Parliament in 2023.

The Act provided for better planning regulations; it said that somebody would not be treated as intentionally homeless if they left supported accommodation; and it provided for information management and sharing powers for those involved in the provision of supported housing. All in all, it seems to have been a pretty good piece of legislation, and the problem that we are experiencing now, as the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston described in great detail, is that those provisions have not been enacted quickly enough. Today’s debate is about urging the Minister to bring forward the actions that are needed now to make sure that we improve the sector.

The LGA is supportive of that legislation and has been a main stakeholder working with the Ministry to ensure that the Act works for councils, providers, and most importantly, residents in supported accommodation. But the LGA has raised significant concerns about the time taken to implement the Act and about the fact that councils have limited means to challenge poor providers, other than through housing benefit claims, which is problematic. We heard from the hon. Member that Birmingham city council has actually been able to challenge providers, so it would be interesting to find out from the Minister whether that is likely to be a model in future or whether better mechanisms will be put in place.

As the hon. Member said, the delayed implementation of the Act is a problem for councils that have used the SHIP payments to improve supported housing in their area. The gap in funding between the SHIP payments and the new burden spending that comes with implementation of the Act means that councils will potentially have to let go of their skilled workforce and people with good experience of dealing with the problems and social implications of poor housing.

It seems that in every debate at the moment, we must talk about the funding crisis for all councils. They need long-term funding arrangements with ringfenced support for housing, because the increased pressure on council budgets from that sector means that not only are we letting people down who have an acute housing need, but we are letting down everyone else whose services are impacted by the exorbitant cost of providing housing across the whole of England, particularly in communities where the sector is out of control, as the hon. Member alluded to.

The calls of the LGA are, as always, very sensible. We need to review the current funding regime for supported housing. We also need to recognise the savings to the public purse that will come from not giving those unscrupulous providers limitless amounts of public money for a very poor service that will not realise any of the benefits that supported housing should realise for its inhabitants and wider society by providing the support they need.

We need to ensure that the SHIP funding is there in the interregnum between now and the new burden spending, so that councils can continue the work that they are already doing, and crucially, can retain the skilled officers who are experienced in dealing with this situation. We also need to acknowledge that a licensing scheme and its enforcement, with improved standards for supported housing, will require proper funding. Otherwise, councils will be unable to deliver on the statutory requirement that we are about to place on them.

The funding is so important. I know that the Government are dealing with a financial crisis, that they have extremely difficult choices to make, and that almost all Members will standing up in every debate to ask for more money—it is a difficult position to be in—but I urge the Minister to consider that, as taxpayers’ money is wasted so flagrantly on these unscrupulous providers, it would be a good use of public money to establish a proper licensing scheme. That would mean that we were not wasting taxpayers’ money and were instead putting it into support for the individuals who have had a crisis, hopefully turning their lives around, and costing the taxpayer less in future. That would be a wise investment of taxpayers’ money.

On the important issue of resource, many councils are having to let staff go because of funding pressures. We cannot enforce and practise a licensing scheme without the right people in officer roles in councils, so the recruitment and retention of those critical staff is also extremely important. I honestly do not think that I have added much to the hon. Member’s excellent speech, but I hope that I have added my voice to her cause on regulating the sector properly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Recent freedom of information requests by the Liberal Democrats found that four out of five councils that responded had someone on their social housing waiting list for more than a decade, and this shocking statistic comes all while the stocks of social housing have been reducing. Will the Minister consider reforming the land conservation Act, so that local councils can buy land at current value rather than hope value and get on with delivering the social housing that we so desperately need?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the hon. Lady for drawing attention to the appalling record of the previous Government on affordable housing, in particular social rented housing. Over the past 10 years, the number of social rented homes owned by registered providers fell by over 205,000. We have to take action to better protect our stock and build new social rented homes, but she is absolutely right that further reform is needed of compulsory purchase orders, how they are drawn and the powers available to councils. We first need to enact the changes that were introduced by the previous Government though the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, but we intend to go further, and will consult on that in due course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Lib Dem spokesperson.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Residents in rural areas such as my constituency are seeing drastic cuts to local services despite their council tax having gone up this year. That is because councils are struggling to balance budgets. When the fair funding review takes place, will the Secretary of State commit to considering the cost of delivering services in vast rural areas, which is in excess of the same cost in urban areas?

[Jim McMahon]

We will absolutely ensure that the true cost of public service delivery is accounted for in different parts of the country and in different local authorities—that will be part of it. However, I say gently that although the Conservatives were the architects of austerity, the Liberal Democrats were definitely there sharpening the pencil.