New Housing Supply

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

It is good to follow the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse); I think I agreed with everything he said. I will focus my brief comments on public housing supply across Northern Ireland. We have a chronic under-supply of homes across the country. In terms of public supply, I believe that the Northern Ireland Housing Executive remains the largest public housing organisation not just in the United Kingdom but in Europe. By and large, it does a fabulous job in very difficult circumstances. It used to be the organisation that managed some of the largest housing estates across Europe. Many of those estates were sold off, and some were bulldozed because they were not effective or efficient. The impact resulting from those decisions is that we do not have a good supply of public housing.

Unlike other public housing authorities, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive has a statutory duty to meet need for the homeless when they present as homeless. This is difficult enough in normal UK housing circumstances, but in Northern Ireland community tensions flare up from time to time, which puts additional pressures on public bodies, not least the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. For example, last year we had a feud between certain sections of the community, and that internecine dispute between rival groups and organisations impacted on people’s lives. Threats were levelled at people, and people were put out of their homes. The crisis became a real problem going into a particular weekend during the year. On that crisis weekend, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive had on its books five properties across the whole of Northern Ireland that it would have been able to give people if they presented as homeless. It is little wonder that we have a housing accommodation emergency in Northern Ireland. Those five properties were for the entirety of Northern Ireland, not just for dealing with that particular one-off situation of the feud. Those properties were all that was available to deal with all the other problems relating to the lack of housing supply.

The Northern Ireland Housing Executive has to deal with other routine housing need. Levels of homelessness are hidden from sight, more in Northern Ireland than anywhere else. Indeed, post pandemic, the levels of homelessness have been exposed. The opportunity to sofa-surf at a relative or friend’s house is no longer available. However, the number of properties available is nowhere near the level necessary to meet the need, despite the fact that the Northern Ireland Housing Executive is still the largest provider of public housing.

The figures are significant. The demand for temporary accommodation—a marker of homelessness—soared from a pre-pandemic level of 3,000 placements in Northern Ireland in 2019 to 9,000 placements last year. This week, I got new figures from the Housing Executive to suggest that we will probably exceed the 10,000 mark this year. Those are the most up-to-date figures that the Housing Executive has presented to me in recent days. As an elected official for more than 26 years, I have worked very closely with the Housing Executive. It is an amazing organisation that is staffed by great people who care, but they are struggling to meet very intense need, which must be addressed by a new strategy.

The Mid and East Antrim Borough Council area is not coterminous with all my North Antrim constituency, but it gives a sample of what the Northern Ireland Housing Executive is up against. From November 2022 to January 2023, 438 people presented as homeless and 252 of them were offered temporary accommodation. The rest could not be facilitated. That is approximately three families a day presenting in one part of my constituency and the biggest public housing provider does not have stock available. This is not sustainable and radical action is required to fix it.

Across Northern Ireland, households stay in temporary accommodation for up to 32 weeks on average. Thankfully, the average is lower in the Mid and East Antrim area, at about 16 weeks—it is about 14 weeks in the Causeway Coast and Glens area—but it is still a massive problem. There is so much reliance on private landlords, who are themselves working in a squeezed marketplace.

Migration and immigration have had a knock-on impact on Northern Ireland’s housing need, too. Northern Ireland is pulling its weight with both refugees and migrants, doing proportionately more than some parts of Scotland, but the impact on the availability of housing and temporary accommodation has been challenging.

Hostels and hotels have now become a Home Office policy, and they are regularly filled by long-term contracts for migrants and refugees. They are not available to meet indigenous housing and homeless need. A number of hotels in the Mid and East Antrim Borough Council area are now full-time occupied, so their availability for urgent temporary accommodation has gone.

I would like the Northern Ireland Housing Executive to be given power to assist in two ways. First, I would like it to be permitted to buy back stock and to add to its asset base, including by being permitted to buy no-longer-used nursing homes, hotels and other such facilities to start to address the 10,000 people who require homes. Secondly, I would like it to be able to borrow money and engage the market, instead of having to fight in a buoyant housing market with one hand tied behind its back while housing associations are not restricted in the same way. Allowing the Northern Ireland Housing Executive to borrow money would enable it to compete on a fair basis.

The Northern Ireland Housing Executive invests hundreds of millions of pounds in housing stock each year, and it is regularly the choice of tens of thousands of people in Northern Ireland who want a happy, settled, good-standard home, but in the modern era it must be able to invest to improve and compete.

At the end of this debate, I do not expect the Minister to be able to address all these issues. I respect her greatly, and I know I will not hear any platitudes from her about how this is best addressed through the Northern Ireland Office or how this would all be sorted out if we just got the Government sorted out in Northern Ireland. None of the issues I have raised requires a Northern Ireland Government to be in place; they require the housing sector to be liberated to do the things I have asked. I encourage the Minister to speak to her Cabinet colleagues and to encourage our Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to push for these issues to be addressed, to allow the Northern Ireland Housing Executive to borrow money and to buy back housing stock, otherwise the housing crisis in Northern Ireland will deepen.