Housing Disrepair

Kemi Badenoch Excerpts

Friday 25th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Levelling Up Communities (Kemi Badenoch)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) on securing this debate, and I thank her for raising this subject on behalf of her constituents. She is absolutely right to raise the issue of housing disrepair at Evelyn Court on Amhurst Road, and the conditions she describes are unacceptable.

The Government are committed to creating a fair and just housing system that works for everyone, and nowhere is the need to improve quality more urgent than in housing. The right hon. Lady asked several questions that I will address in my response. I do not have figures to hand on the number of cases brought under legislation, but I am sure officials can write to her with an answer.

Good-quality housing can help to improve a wide range of outcomes, including better health, quality of life, educational attainment, community cohesion, labour mobility and carbon emissions. There are significant societal impacts of poor-quality homes—we know that the Building Research Establishment recently estimated that poor-quality homes cost the NHS £1.4 billion a year and research funded by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities estimates that the total annual cost to society is £18.6 billion.

We have made considerable progress on housing quality. It has improved significantly since 2009. Then, 30% or 6.7 million homes were non-decent. In 2020, that had fallen to 4 million or 16%. Despite that progress, we recognise there is still more to do. Poor-quality housing is not spread evenly by tenure or region. Some 13% of social rented sector homes are currently non-decent. The highest rates of non-decent social housing are in the south-west, at a rate of 16.9%, and the situation is worse in the private rented sector, which has a 21% rate of non-decent homes, with Yorkshire and the Humber having the highest percentage of non-decency at 33.7%.

The Government want to take action and I will let the right hon. Lady know what we are doing. The levelling-up White Paper outlined a set of ambitious missions to level up the country and support communities. The Government set the ambition to halve the number of non-decent rented homes by 2030, with the biggest improvements in the lowest-performing areas. That means we will bring about 800,000 homes up to a decent standard across both the private and social rented sectors, and that will support the most vulnerable in society.

We recognise the issues that the right hon. Lady raised. She talked about the White Paper. That is why we are implementing the commitments in the social housing White Paper, which will drive up the quality of housing stock and housing services, and improve the lives of social housing residents in England. That work is critical to meeting our ambition to halve the number of non-decent rented homes by 2030, with the biggest improvements in the lowest-performing areas as part of our levelling-up agenda.

The social housing White Paper measures will transform social housing regulation and redress, creating proactive consumer regulation and rebalancing the relationship between landlord and tenant. We will introduce legislation to give the regulator of social housing stronger powers to drive up consumer standards, with regular inspections of the largest landlords. We will give the regulator greater enforcement powers to tackle failing landlords, including unlimited fines for the worst offenders and powers to complete emergency repairs where needed. Landlords will be required to report on new tenant satisfaction measures that tenants and the regulator will be able to use to see how a landlord is performing.

The right hon. Lady mentioned the housing ombudsman. We have already strengthened the housing ombudsman’s powers to ensure that when residents make a complaint, landlords take quick and effective action to put things right. In October last year, the housing ombudsman published its “Spotlight on: Damp and Mould” report, which made 26 recommendations on how landlords can improve services for residents based on learning from hundreds of investigations across 142 landlords and more than 500 responses to its call for evidence. In February and March 2021, the Department delivered on its commitment in the White Paper to run a campaign to raise awareness of, and confidence in, the social housing complaint-making process. To build on the success of that campaign, we are running a second four-to-six week campaign, which commenced this week on 21 February. The campaign consists of adverts on social media and radio, which guide residents on how to make things right.

We will publish a White Paper in the spring, setting out how we will support those in the private rented sector, including ending section 21 evictions and giving all tenants a strong right to redress. The White Paper will explore new standards for rented homes, introducing a national landlord register and taking tough action against rogue landlords. We will also review the decent homes standard to make sure it is fit for the present day and applies across all rented tenures.

We will also address poor energy efficiency by targeting retrofit funding at the worst performing homes and those least able to pay. The £2.2 billion funding through the home upgrade grant, social housing decarbonisation fund and boiler upgrade scheme will help to improve energy efficiency and lower energy bills. The future homes standard and future building standards will also ensure that new homes and buildings reach much higher energy efficiency standards. Through the Building Safety Bill, we will also legislate for the new homes ombudsman to support the purchases of new build homes when things go wrong.

I close by thanking the right hon. Lady again for securing today’s debate and speaking so passionately on behalf of her constituents. I hope the residents of Evelyn Court know that we really do care about this issue. I reiterate that we are committed to ensuring that housing works for everyone. The Government understand the scale of the challenge that we face, which is why the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has set those ambitious missions to halve the number of rented homes that fail to meet the decent homes standard across both the social rented and private sectors.

Question put and agreed to.