Local Government Reorganisation

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

As I said in my statement, the unitary council elections will be going ahead in Surrey this year.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his endeavours. I note that this reorganisation is set to streamline services and save an estimated £2.9 billion over five years. However, from my experience—I am not better than anybody else, but I always try to be helpful—I issue a note of caution. With Northern Ireland 10 years on from our reform of councils, a 2024 Department for Communities report concluded that it is too early to determine whether those reforms have been cost-effective, with the new, larger councils actually spending more than their 26 predecessors. Has the Secretary of State taken into account that report and that uncertainty, and has he ensured that the Government are not promising billions of pounds in savings while actually taking more from taxpayers and ratepayers?

[Steve Reed]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and his observations, but I remain confident that eliminating duplication where residents are paying for two sets of councillors, two sets of chief executives and two sets of finance directors will save residents money, which can then be invested in the frontline services that matter most to people; for example, it can be used to fix the potholes that we heard about earlier.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I can provide my hon. Friend with the assurance that he seeks. Whether in the PRS or in the social rented sector, landlords should address non-decency wherever it exists. We are giving landlords until 2035 to implement our new decent homes standard, but we have made it clear that they should not wait until then to improve their properties. We are acting in other ways to ensure that private tenants have safe, warm and decent homes, including by introducing new minimum energy efficiency standards for the sector, strengthening local authority enforcement in respect of unremediated hazards, and applying Awaab’s law to the PRS through the relevant provisions in the Act.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The private rental sector in Northern Ireland has a slightly different system, as the Minister knows, but the problems are the same across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He is always incredibly helpful when it comes to assuring me and others in this House of the importance of Northern Ireland’s input into the process. Has he had the opportunity to speak to the relevant Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly, to ensure that we in Northern Ireland have the same protections that he is proposing for here?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I can provide the hon. Member with that assurance. I met my counterpart in Northern Ireland some time ago, and this prompts me to check with my private office and ensure that another meeting is scheduled for the near future.

Supported Exempt Accommodation: Birmingham

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered supported exempt accommodation in Birmingham.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I declare my interest as a landlord.

It is fair to say that most people up and down the country will not know much, if anything, about supported exempt accommodation, but in Birmingham it is something that almost everyone has become all too familiar with. In just eight years, the number of people housed in supported exempt accommodation in our city has tripled to more than 32,000 across 11,200 properties. My Birmingham Perry Barr constituency alone hosts 20% of the city’s total units. That means thousands of vulnerable individuals placed in a small number of neighbourhoods. This is not a marginal issue for us; it is shaping daily life.

With the city containing more supported exempt accommodation than anywhere else, Brummies face a completely different reality on the ground from every other community in the country. Of most immediate concern to my constituents is the antisocial behaviour, criminal activity and fly-tipping that come with a high number of these properties in such close proximity.

Let me be absolutely clear from the outset that this debate must not be about stigmatising vulnerable people. Many of those housed in supported accommodation are there because they have experienced trauma, addiction, serious mental health issues, abuse, time in care or even time in custody. They deserve compassion, dignity and meaningful support.

But compassion must be matched with realism. Some of the individuals placed in ordinary residential streets have needs so acute that they require intensive, structured and often 24-hour care. When someone is in such crisis that they are unable to manage basic personal safety, hygiene, or addiction issues in public spaces, that person is not being supported adequately. They are not “bad neighbours”. They are people who require structured, possibly clinical support environments—not standard terraced housing or residential streets. The same applies to certain ex-offenders, particularly those leaving custody with complex behavioural, psychological or substance misuse issues. Reintegration is vital, but it is a delicate process that needs close management and the right resources.

The issues that are being caused in my constituency are a matter not of law and order, but of care. I have had reports of individuals experiencing severe mental health breakdowns defecating in public spaces. Residents have described open drug use on streets where parents are walking their children to school. There are cases of individuals injecting themselves in broad daylight, in full view of families. For many of my constituents, everywhere they look they see visible manifestations of profound vulnerability and unmet need.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

With the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ayoub Khan]

Of course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

I call Jim Shannon, on supported exempt accommodation in Birmingham.

[Jim Shannon]

I spoke to the hon. Gentleman beforehand, and he knows where I am coming from. I congratulate him on bringing forward this critical issue for vulnerable people. He will know that every constituency, wherever it may be in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, has immense housing pressures, and it is often the most vulnerable—the very people he is referring to—who fall through the cracks. Does he agree that every local authority and housing authority—in Birmingham or, as it may be, in Northern Ireland—must have greater access to supported living for those who could thrive with a little help? We have a duty of care, as do the Government, to ensure that everything possible can be done to change the way things currently are.

[Ayoub Khan]

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman’s analysis. Often this comes down to adequate resourcing. As I described, we have a situation in which individuals who need intensive support are not being provided that support. They are being placed in neighbourhoods, which in itself is very challenging; someone might have an addiction to alcohol and be placed in a community where there is very little infrastructural support. It is vital not only that there is suitable accommodation but, more fundamentally, that we have the right level of support in and around particular areas. When we have large saturation without the support, the problems faced by many of my constituents and people in Birmingham more broadly are inevitable.

That brings me nicely to the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023, which was passed to resolve some of the issues that we are facing in Birmingham. It promised to introduce compulsory national minimum standards for exempt accommodation, including on referrals, care and support, and quality of housing. It promised to grant local councils the powers and resources needed to enforce such standards, and greater control over the licensing and planning permission given to providers. Since the Act received Royal Assent, however, it has been stuck in the consultation stage, with disagreements over how to implement it on the ground. While the Act shows no sign of taking effect, the expansion of exempt accommodation in Birmingham continues unabated.

The Government seem intent on painting the situation in Birmingham as simply a local matter that is nothing of their making, and the council’s call for powers to regulate the concentration of these properties as some kind of nimbyism, and yet the city’s importing vulnerable individuals from other local authorities against the council’s will is what caused the explosion in the first place.

While supported exempt accommodation plays an important role in housing vulnerable people, the concentration and volume of provision in Birmingham far exceeds local need. This is not something that the Government have not known about; in written evidence it submitted to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee in 2022, Birmingham city council confirmed that only 42% of properties were needed to meet local need, with much of the remaining 58% being used to house people referred through local authorities or national bodies outside the Birmingham area. In all too many cases, people are being put in exempt accommodation in Birmingham simply because it is available, with no afterthought for the relative level of support that tenants can be provided or for the impact on the local area. Worst of all, Birmingham city council knows that is happening, but the Government still have not given it the licensing powers to stop it.

Inaction on the Government’s part has been glaring, but I am pleased that the same cannot be said of activists in my constituency. During my time as Member of Parliament for Birmingham Perry Barr, I have been encouraged by the tireless efforts of local groups to raise the issue, including the HMO Action Group, the Handsworth Triangle Action Group, the Soho Road business improvement district and Handsworth Helping Hands. I must also thank Birmingham city council and West Midlands police for mobilising in the way they have to try to tackle the crisis.

A particular bright spot has been the council’s in-house SEA pilot, which we can safely say has punched well above its weight and made Birmingham better for it. With minimal Government funding, the pilot has recovered £8.8 million in overpaid housing benefit, while also completing 2,600 antisocial behaviour investigations. That is with only 21 people covering the entire Birmingham city area. We must think of what more can be done to reduce fraud and waste in Government spending by giving the council the means to expand that operation.

The SEA pilot and groups of committed activists have done an incredible job to improve care standards for vulnerable people in supported exempt accommodation, where such action is needed, but they simply cannot fill the gap that the Government have allowed to grow. To make matters worse, rather than supporting them, the Government are refusing to fund the SEA pilot—its funding runs out next month. As a result, the bankrupt Birmingham city council has been left in an impossible position. It must either scrounge the money together to fund the initiative itself, or lose what little grip it had left on the situation.

That point is worth repeating. After depriving the council of the powers to regulate the market for three years, the Government are now refusing to give it the means to provide even a band-aid solution to a problem that they are compounding. While assurances were given that the Government would respond to the consultation as soon as possible, we have been hearing that for a long time.

This is not just about some additional antisocial behaviour taking place on the streets; it is about the vulnerable individuals who are being let down by the system, and it is about the residents who have paid the price for Government inaction and seen the character of their streets tainted. Residents feel that their neighbourhoods have been lost and, worst of all, they feel as though no one in Whitehall cares enough to solve the problem.

This is not to say that there is no place for supported exempt accommodation in Birmingham, because it plays a pivotal role. When it works well, it changes lives. I have been to neighbourhood forums in my constituency and spoken to people who have turned their lives around because of the support they receive from their registered providers—people rebuilding their lives after serving prison sentences, suffering domestic abuse, leaving care, or combating debilitating addictions or mental health conditions. But without the efficient, effective and meaningful licensing scheme for supported housing that the council was promised three years ago, Birmingham is simply unable to cope. We are asking neighbourhoods to absorb extremely high numbers of people with complex needs, but we are not providing the council with the tools required to support those individuals or reassure residents, and inevitably it is only the vulnerable individuals and the residents around them who stand to lose.

The problem of over-concentration is exacerbated by the inefficient support infrastructure that comes with it. The SEA pilot shows that when Birmingham is given tools, it delivers, but the city has more supported exempt accommodation than anywhere else in the country, and yet it does not have the corresponding level of funding, enforcement capacity, clinical provision or community-safety staffing required to manage the consequences.

If someone requires 24-hour wraparound care, addiction services, psychiatric input and structured supervision, they need a properly funded care facility, not a standard residential property with light-touch oversight. We must distinguish individuals who are stabilised and ready for supported community living from those in acute crisis who require secure, high-support environments before they can safely transition into neighbourhoods.

At present, that distinction is not being properly resourced and the result is unfair on everyone. It is unfair on residents who see behaviour that is deeply distressing and feel that their concerns are dismissed, it is unfair on vulnerable individuals who are placed in environments that do not meet the scale of their needs, and it is unfair on Birmingham city council, which is expected to manage the situation without adequate funding or authority.

The council’s supported exempt accommodation pilot has demonstrated what can be achieved when resources are provided, but pilots and short-term funding are not enough. What Birmingham needs is sustained funding for community safety, including more community safety officers and a greater neighbourhood policing presence in areas with a high concentration of supported housing. I would be incredibly appreciative if the Minister could make the necessary representations to his colleagues in the Home Office on that front.

The council needs the ability to manage concentration and set boundaries on the number of people from outside the city that it must house, because no neighbourhood should be asked to shoulder a disproportionate share of highly complex placements without the consultation, infrastructure and services to match it. When it comes to managing such complex matters, having an ineffective, watered-down licensing scheme is worse than having nothing altogether, because we end up with the same outcome at a higher cost to the taxpayer.

I am looking forward to hearing the Minister’s reflections on what can be done to ensure that the 2023 Act is implemented in a way that reflects the impact that exempt accommodation can have on neighbourhoods and community harmony. I would also be grateful to hear what is being done to increase the speed with which the Act is implemented, and clarification on when the Government will respond in full to the most recent consultation.

Finally, the council needs the necessary powers to ensure that vulnerable individuals receive the best care possible. That means clarifying the extent of providers’ duty of care to their tenants, with tailored and specialist plans that not only provide personal support to the individual, but outline their obligations to ensure harmony with neighbours and the local community.

To conclude, I have a couple of final questions for the Minister. What financial support do the Government intend to provide to Birmingham city council in its efforts to contain the local crisis that the Government’s prolonged inactivity has exacerbated? The SEA pilot, in particular, is of great value to my constituents, and it would be a real shame if it disappeared. Will he agree to meet with me and local groups so that they can convey to him the true scale of the impact that the oversaturation of SEAs is having on their neighbourhoods and communities?

At the end of the day, this is about vulnerable people who need structured care, communities that need reassurance, and a local authority that cannot continue to carry a national burden without national support. Birmingham is not asking to step away from its responsibilities; it is asking for the means to fulfil them properly. It is my sincere hope that the Government will escalate their efforts to deliver exactly that.

Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

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

[Helen Hayes]

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

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

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

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

Holocaust Memorial Day

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

It is an honour to represent the SNP in today’s debate on Holocaust Memorial Day. Six million Jews were murdered. I was trying to think about what words to use to describe it. The word “tragedy” was one of the first I thought of, but a tragedy is something that is unavoidable—in my head, anyway, it is something that was going to happen. This was evil perpetrated by humans. The hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) talked about the brutality of which man is capable. That was the phrase that stuck with me from today’s debate. It is about the brutality that human beings are capable of inflicting on one another.

The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) talked about othering. The ability that human beings have to begin to “other” humans by grouping them together because of some perceived difference is horrific, and something that we should all be aware of and think of when we talk about the lessons of the Holocaust and learning from what happened in Nazi Germany.

The hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison) talked about what happened, and a number of other Members have also talked about what did not happen. Not every single person in Nazi Germany was a Nazi, responsible for taking Jewish people to the camps, but enough people in Nazi Germany were willing to turn a blind eye to that. I am not blaming individuals for their actions—maybe their family were being threatened, maybe they were terrified, maybe they had circumstances that we cannot contemplate today—but every one of us who has moments when we do not stand up against hatred and othering needs to think about why we are not doing so. Whether we are Members of Parliament, members of the public, community leaders or faith leaders, we need to think about whether we would be able to sleep at night if we knew people would be looking back through history at our actions and considering us to have been bystanders, rather than people who took action when it was needed—when that othering was happening.

Every human being has value. A person’s value is not based on their religion, their country of birth, the colour of their skin, which town they currently live in, how much money they make or what job they do. Every human being inherently has value, and we all have a responsibility as representatives to ensure that whatever differences exist between us, we recognise and stand up for the value of every one of our constituents and every one of the people across these islands. We have a responsibility to stand up to anyone, whether they are a Member of this place, a politician at a different level or a member of the public, and say to them, “No, somebody is not less because you have put them in a box—because you have suggested that they are somehow other. They have just as much value as you do; it does not matter what country they were born in, who they worship, or what religious text is sitting on their bedside table.” We all have value just because we are human beings, and we all have that responsibility.

I want every one of us, whether we are in this Chamber or outside of it, to be able to sleep at night because we know that we have done the right thing—that we have stood up against that drip, drip, drip of the beginnings of hatred that can culminate where we ended up with the Holocaust. I find it very difficult to comprehend how someone can go from being slightly negative about somebody, or about a group, to the mass industrial murder that we saw, because I am not in that situation. I find it very difficult to contemplate how that can happen, but we know that it has—it happened not just in Nazi Germany, but in Srebrenica and Darfur.

The hon. Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) talked about the international rules-based order and the reason why it was set up. None of the international organisations that we have relied on and listened to was set up simply as a trading organisation. The genocide convention was put in place because every country needed to ensure that we had learned those lessons, and were collectively resolved to never do it again. Some comments are being made about international organisations, saying, “We can step away from that trading organisation,” but that is a bit misinformed, because it is not just about that. We must ensure that we are working together to prevent genocide, not by policing one another, but by assisting one another to ensure that every country sees the value of every human and that we never “other” people like that again.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady on her speech. One way to start to address the issue is in schools, at an educational level. Some of the history teachers back home tell me that they struggle to include the Holocaust in the history curriculum. Politics students can come to Parliament and learn all about it and then take it back to their school. I think of my son and his friends from Glastry college back home. They went to Auschwitz as children, and their attitude and life changed dramatically. Does the hon. Lady agree that helping educationally by funding trips to Auschwitz would be a way of addressing these issues?

[Kirsty Blackman]

I absolutely agree, and I know that a number of schools in Scotland take part in trips to Auschwitz. It is important that that continues, particularly given the theme of “Bridging Generations”. Fewer and fewer individuals can talk about their experiences, and it is incredibly important that we remember that history and that this was a real thing that happened. There is too much Holocaust denial of all sorts. We need to be showing people, so that they can tackle that disinformation and misinformation with the evidence of their own eyes.

Commonhold and Leasehold Reform

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

Absolutely. Commonhold is a purpose-built tenure designed specifically for people to own and manage a shared building without a third-party landlord and without a ground rent. We want to see its uptake grow significantly over this Parliament, and that is what the measures in this draft Bill are designed to provide for.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister very much for his statement. It is indeed a joy to have some good news in the Chamber for everyone out there, and we welcome that. Thank you for that, Minister, and for the Government’s proposals. The Government have an interest in Northern Ireland, and while homeowners in Northern Ireland have the ability to buy out leaseholds under the Ground Rents Act (Northern Ireland) 2001, that Act does not provide for a cap on ground rent in its calculations. Will the Minister undertake to discuss these proposals with the devolved regions to enable a blanket costing to apply UK-wide at this time of austerity?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I always thank the hon. Member for his constructive contributions. As he knows, England and Wales can learn lots from Northern Ireland, but, as ever—particularly in relation to our reforms to housing and planning, as well as to leasehold—there are many things that Northern Ireland can learn from our reforms. I can give him the undertaking that the devolved Administrations will be kept up to date with what we are doing.

Local Government Reorganisation

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

I remind the hon. Member that his party did the same thing in the same circumstances—I should say his “former party”, because he walked out on it last week. Proposals about what happens in Essex are currently subject to consultation, and he is more than entitled to make his views known.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. He has outlined that the purpose is to save moneys, cut down on waste and improve efficiency. In Northern Ireland, we undertook the reorganisation of councils, reducing their number from 26 down to 11. Councils need only one chief executive, one head of each department and one council headquarters. Two or three councils together have greater buying power than one, so ultimately there are greater savings. However, seven years later, local people still feel disenfranchised from their local council. I am trying to be helpful in asking this question, but can he look at the Northern Ireland experience, and does he acknowledge that restructuring is a very delicate balance and must have public buy-in?

[Steve Reed]

I do agree with the hon. Member. I think it is very important that we get this right, which is why I was careful to listen to representations from councils due to undergo reorganisation to ensure that we do get it right. I want to see those savings made and to see council tax payers’ hard-earned money spent on frontline services, not wasteful duplication.

Local Government Reorganisation: Referendums

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bedford]

A lot can be learned from previous Governments of all different colours, and I ask the Minister to look at history and not repeat any mistakes that may have been made in the past.

Local identity, democratic consent and keeping council tax low are all at the forefront of my constituents’ concerns. First, there is growing concern throughout villages such as Glenfield, Leicester Forest East, Birstall and many more that if they are absorbed into the city council area, they will have development after development quite literally dumped on their green and beautiful spaces. These communities see their villages—currently served by Leicestershire county council—coming under increased pressure from the city council expansion.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Member for securing this debate. Having been elected as a councillor back in 1985—in those days, I had some hair—and served some 26 years on the council, there is a special place in my heart for local government and the real benefit of local councils making local decisions. Does he agree that accessibility to the council for the general public must be protected at every level, and the removal of access for people in towns and villages by centralisation can never be acceptable?

[Mr Bedford]

I absolutely agree: council services should be accessible to all. One of the concerns that my constituents have—particularly those in rural areas—is that if they are absorbed into a city unitary authority, they will have less access to be able to get their views and thoughts across. I share the sentiment that the hon. Member expressed.

Temporary Accommodation: Out of Area Placements

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Josh Babarinde]

I am grateful for the opportunity to spotlight the challenges faced by people experiencing homelessness who are placed by their local authorities into temporary accommodation outside their local authority areas.

In many cases, out of area placements are both necessary and an appropriate means to safeguard vulnerable individuals. A clear example is survivors of domestic abuse, who may be forced to relocate to ensure their own safety. But too often, for placing authorities, “out of area” becomes shorthand for “out of sight and out of mind”. A scandal has unfolded across our country, in which homeless people are dumped from one place to another without the proper assistance that they need to address the causes of their homelessness, or other support that could help to get them back on their feet.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. I am absolutely incredulous that any authority should send a family way out of their area. I was shocked when I read about an example of this issue in my constituency, with a family whose child attended a special school being offered accommodation in County Tyrone, which is three hours away from where they live and from where their child goes to school. There is absolutely no way that that family could cope with that. The disruption to their children’s routine would have been severely detrimental. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that special consideration must be given for family units, and particularly to those with children who have particular educational needs?

[Josh Babarinde]

The hon. Member is absolutely right to highlight the scandal that families face in his own constituency, but what is even more scandalous is that that is not the exception; it is happening in too many places. Due consideration is not given for families with children with special educational needs. That consideration does not go far enough, and too many councils are not just failing when it comes to making those kinds of assessments but failing to uphold their wider duties of care, communications standards and accountability in following those people and their families wherever they are placed.

In Eastbourne, this issue particularly grew during the pandemic following the introduction of the last Government’s “Everyone In” directive, under which people who were experiencing homelessness were rapidly—and rightly—placed into temporary accommodation, including hotels and bed and breakfasts, in order to protect their health and public health more widely. Although that approach was formally stepped down by the Government after the first lockdown, many local authorities have continued to use that model.

While “Everyone In” was extremely well intentioned, it has since become an embedded, informal and unregulated practice that contributes to the sustained use of out of area temporary accommodation without the necessary support in place. Over the last couple of years, out of area placements in Eastbourne have increased fourfold, to the 209 that Eastbourne hosts today. As I have said in this very room before, out of area placements now account for 46% of all temporary accommodation placements in Eastbourne, with the majority being from Brighton and Hove city council. There are currently 178 placements by Brighton and Hove city council in Eastbourne, and 31 from other neighbouring districts, such as Hastings, Worthing and Rother, and a small number from London.

To the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), this is not just a local issue but a national one. At the end of June 2025, 42,080 households were living in temporary accommodation outside their home local authority. That represents an increase of more than 10% since 2021. London accounts for a significant proportion of such placements, reflecting the acute pressures in the capital. I recognise the scale of the challenge there, but that pattern has clear consequences for other towns and cities across the country, which are increasingly expected to meet these needs without the resources, co-ordination or accountability that should accompany that expectation.

After years of sustained pressure and negotiation by Eastbourne borough council, our town has finally secured somewhat more consistent notifications from placing authorities when individuals are moved into the borough. Although that progress is welcome, serious information gaps remain. Too often, notifications are incomplete, with receiving authorities not provided with information on key risk factors such as histories of domestic abuse or other serious vulnerabilities. That leaves frontline services without the information that they need to keep those individuals, staff and the wider community safe. If a duty of care is to mean anything, it must include the timely sharing of appropriate and proportionate case details across local authority boundaries to ensure that safeguarding responsibilities can be properly discharged.

Local Elections: Cancellation

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

Elections will be happening up and down this country in May. We are committed to democracy and it is very important that people have their say.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady is indeed a very honourable lady, in her response and in the way that she does things in the House, but the fact is that, whether it be down to reorganisation or a new strategy—whatever reasons the Government put forward—3.7 million people will be denied the right to cast their vote. They will see it as a denial of their franchise, which will reduce their confidence in the Government, the Minister and local government. What will she and the Government do to restore that confidence, in the light of the denial of people’s franchise and their right to express themselves democratically?

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the attention and care that he gives to these issues. He gives me the opportunity to come back to the underlying reason for this whole process, which is reorganisation to get councils in a good position. In those areas that are undergoing reorganisation, once we have got the new institutions set up, which we are doing without delay, people will be able to elect representatives to those new institutions. That is what happened when we had reorganisation previously—as has been mentioned, this process has been gone through recently—and it will mean that people can elect their councillors, and have their say about the kind of public services they want in their area.