Renters (Reform) Bill (First sitting)

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 14th November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Hansard has got all that, I hope.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

As per my entry on the register of interests, I receive some support from campaigning organisations that support my office and that campaign on this issue; and I have lodgers at my house.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

Can I declare that I am also the joint owner of two properties that are let out, but are held in trust?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q We have been talking about economic evictions. Currently, if someone approaches the rent tribunal, it can determine whether a rent goes up or down. Citizens Advice and Shelter are particularly likely to support tenants who go to that rent tribunal. Is there a danger that people will not want to risk it?

Polly Neate: I don’t think so, no. I think the provisions in the Bill will make renting so much more secure that it will make sure that people are much less likely to have recourse to all forms of the courts—the rent tribunal and so on. The objective of the Bill will be effective in reducing the burden on all of that.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q So you are saying that the Bill will create an atmosphere in which people will not need to take cases to the tribunal, because these things will be resolved before between tenant and landlord?

Polly Neate: Yes, exactly.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q There is a six-month protection from eviction with a new tenancy, but beyond that no other protections are afforded to people in terms of evictions. Should that be linked to rent rises, so that every time a rent rises, the six-month protection for no-fault eviction is restarted?

Dame Clare Moriarty: We would say that six months is simply not long enough. If you are moving into a property, you want to make it your home—we hear from tenants the idea that you can only feel secure there for six months does not allow people to do that.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q How long should it be?

Dame Clare Moriarty: The original proposition was two years, which we think is a reasonable amount of time. Whether you would restart the clock at a rent rise—that is an interesting proposition. It is not something we have worked on ourselves. I don’t know whether you have at JRF?

Darren Baxter: Our position is similar—the initial period should be longer. Two years or beyond is an interesting idea and one I would not reject out of hand, but it is not something we have worked out.

To jump back to your previous point about the rent tribunal, the risk you identify is valid. Polly’s point about better security giving people a chance to exercise their rights is true, but if you have a rent tribunal where you can challenge your rent, but that rent might go up, there is a risk that people see that as rolling the dice on potentially having to pay even more than they faced originally. Capping that, so that effectively the rent can go down but it cannot go any higher than the landlord was asking for, would be a reasonable reform that would encourage people to use the tribunal.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Should people be able to see the previous rents in that property through the property portal? Should tenants who are now in the property be able to say, “How much did the last tenants pay?”

Dame Clare Moriarty: The property portal could be really helpful for tenants in understanding what has happened with the property in the past. Previous rents would certainly be interesting. Also, there is the issue of whether or not the landlord has previously used the available grounds for what are effectively still no-fault evictions. While the design of the property portal is about landlords, if it had the right information and was properly regulated, it could be a real benefit for tenants and give them more confidence, at the point when they enter into a tenancy, so that they know a bit more about who they are dealing with. Tenants are often dealing with letting agents, and it is only when they have signed the contract that they actually have any contact with the landlord. The quality of the landlord is incredibly important to their quality of life.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Should this information be public, or is it that before you sign the contract you should have access to the check so that you can quality-assure your landlord? I am trying to work out the levels. Are we saying that all this information should be out in the ether, or is there some sort of system that you are thinking about?

Dame Clare Moriarty: Again, this is not something on which I would like to get into too much detail, because I do not have the knowledge. Certainly, the point about a tenant, at the point where they commit to a tenancy, not doing that blind to information about the landlord is really important. Whether the only way of doing that is by making it public, or whether at a certain point in the process there are ways in which they could be given access to information, is probably in the detail of the property portal.

Polly Neate: What is important is that people have access to the information at the right point. This will also be of benefit to local authorities when they are trying to regulate private renting. There are lots of issues around that at the moment. Some of them are about resources, but the property portal would make it much more straightforward and less resource-intensive to be able to properly regulate standards in private renting. That is another important benefit.

[Mike Amesbury]

Q Given that somebody is being evicted every 23 minutes through a section 21 no-fault eviction, should there be a timescale to abolish no-fault evictions? Would a clear timescale be helpful, particularly to the people concerned?

My second point is about prevention. What more needs to happen regarding the duties of local authorities and councils to people who are not evicted, given some of the current holes in the Bill?

Polly Neate: Yes, it would be very beneficial to have a clear timetable. I cannot stress clearly enough my previous point: this was always going to be subject to lobbying for delays and it is really important that the Government hold their nerve. We need clarity about when this will happen, because we also have a commitment to reducing homelessness and this is a really important way of doing that. When people get the eviction notice, for whatever reason, it is really important that they still have the right to access homelessness assistance from their local authority. It is really important that that right is not watered down as a result of the Bill.

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[Jacob Young]

Q Thank you to members of the panel. You heard comments from the previous panel on antisocial behaviour. What do you think of the changes that the Government are introducing to the antisocial behaviour grounds? Do they strike the right balance, and ensure that landlords can evict tenants that cause significant disruption? Timothy, you mentioned students. Do you agree that the new possession ground for student landlords will be effective in supporting the operation of the student market?

Timothy Douglas: I think we need more detail on that ground. I have not seen it, I do not know what it looks like and I do not know how it will work in reality around when it is served at the time of the year. There are myriad student semesters, term times, different types of students and mixed properties. Defining a student let is really difficult. You can do it under an HMO because the licence conditions will be in place, but a lot of students these days rent in a high-rise modern flat. How do we define them as students?

From the point of view of our members, if we retain that fixed term, you have the clarity. A UK student—this is important as well for rent in advance for UK students—can have a letter from the uni. For overseas students, it is the right-to-rent check, the visa and the share code. On the students, we remain sceptical about how that ground works. The simplest and easiest way would be to retain fixed-term tenancies as an option for any household that is either a student or mixed student household, to give that flexibility as a fixed term for 12 months as an option.

On the antisocial behaviour ground 14, I am not sure what the difference between “capable” and “likely” is. That is why I reiterate the point that local partnerships between police and councils will be really important. The guidance, defining antisocial behaviour and prioritising it in the courts will be important for that ground to work.

Ben Beadle: We like the suggestion around antisocial behaviour. The Secretary of State has been very clear that managing antisocial behaviour is important. This is one of the challenges in section 21 being abolished. Like it or loathe it, section 21 allows landlords to deal with antisocial behaviour effectively. What we are trying to do is to not end up with just the perpetrator of antisocial behaviour in the property.

I would take issue with the comments that were made in the previous session. This will be tested by a judge. It is a discretionary ground. Although the wording is wider, I think that is absolutely right. It goes before a judge to assess the merits of it, and it succeeds or fails based on judicial discretion. That sounds like something that we can all support, because it means that antisocial behaviour can be dealt with. No politician wants to write back to constituents in their area to say, “That noise that is waking your kids at night cannot be dealt with because of this, that or the other.” This strikes a balance, to coin a phrase, between protecting those who are at the hands of antisocial behaviour and not making it too easy so that it is a back door to section 21, which I absolutely get.

The second thing came up around domestic violence in the previous session. I see this as quite different. We have ground 14A, which allows social landlords to evict the perpetrators of domestic violence. I suggest that something like that is more clearly made available to the private rented sector. What happens in practice is that the landlord is working closely with the victim and wants to keep—I would say “her”, but it does not have to be—the victim in the home and to deal with the perpetrator. Anything the Government can do to make that clearer would be very helpful.

The third point is on the student market, which is an area we have been campaigning on vigorously. We support the ground, obviously, and think that it can work, but a lot of good things come as a pair—Ant and Dec, strawberries and cream—and what is missing from the ground is that it does not fully protect against the cyclical nature of the market, which Tim spoke about.

We propose an amendment that would deal with a whole range of matters. In the first six months, landlords cannot give a no-fault reason for repossession; we propose that that moratorium be extended across the sector, to deal with issues in three or four areas. First, it would provide for a fixed period, and that would deal adequately —but not fully, granted—with the need to keep the cyclical nature of the student market, because it is not broken, and we want to protect it, in the interests of both renters and landlords.

Secondly, more widely, outside the student sector, it is a possibility that a tenant will give two months’ notice on day one, and set-up costs hurt landlords. In my briefing, which I sent round to you, I gave an example of that.

Thirdly, the amendment protects against the creation of an “Airbnb lite” in the sector. We do not want the private rented sector to become Airbnb by the back door, and there is a real risk of these periodic tenancies creating that.

Fourthly, the Bill is about fairness, and striking the balance between protecting tenants from bad landlords, and landlords from bad tenants, so there is no justification for us not being treated in the same way, through that moratorium.

There is a fifth thing: this is quite easy to do through an amendment. For those five reasons, I think that we can make this work.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Ben, you propose six months on both sides, but you seem to be suggesting that a student or someone would maliciously come in for a month, and then say, “I’m off.” Is it not the case that people look at the house and say, “This isn’t working for me. The house isn’t quite what I thought it was, or what I thought was advertised.” Perhaps it is very cold at night and expensive to heat. I am not saying that these are enforcement matters for the local authority; they are just things that would lead normal people to say, “I want out of this.” Also, people’s circumstances may change. Why should they, or their guarantor, be stuck with having to pay the bill for six months, when the accommodation might not be appropriate? Surely the best way of getting the market to improve its standards is to have the ability for someone to walk in, realise it is not a very good property, and walk out again.

Ben Beadle: To turn that on its head, why have the clause one way in the first place? Why not let the market talk for itself? If a landlord wants to sell, why not let them?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Because the landlord has the power, and is renting the product out. The consumer is assessing whether they find that product useful. They have a very different relationship to the product, don’t they?

Ben Beadle: I think the Bill is about fairness, striking a balance between the reforms that we all want, and all the things that have been said about not causing a crisis of confidence in the sector. I do not think that it has to be quite as easy as ordering something from Amazon and sending it back. The reality is that it costs a lot of money to set up a tenancy and get the property in the right condition. Of course, energy performance certificates and other regulatory mechanisms are available, which allow tenants to make a very informed decision about the property that they are moving into. That will be supplemented by the property portal and the register. All that information is available, as it will be in future.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

We know that the Government have abandoned the EPC.

[The Chair]

Order. Mr Russell-Moyle, we are asking questions, not having an argument.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Usually it is a dialogue, but anyway—

[The Chair]

No, we do not want a dialogue. I am the Chair. We ask questions; witnesses answer questions. We take evidence. The arguments come later in Committee.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I am just trying to tease this out.

[The Chair]

No, let us not tease anything out. Mr Douglas.

Timothy Douglas: To build on the points that Ben made, in any legislation, we have to be careful about unintended consequences. In the student market, there would be the option for landlords to rent on a licence or give individual tenancies. That would potentially mean more student properties being rented on a room-by-room basis. If a student leaves within the term, any non-student could come in to fill the property. I am not convinced that all students would be happy with that. If we are talking about reasonable costs for re-let, that is covered by the Tenant Fees Act 2019. We have been through those arguments, and that is already in legislation. There is enough protection for tenants in place, and it is clear there for landlords as well.

Theresa Wallace: I have just two quick points. First, if the property is not at the correct condition and that is why the student wants to leave, that should be dealt with under the property portal. If the property portal is built correctly, with the right objective or end in sight, and it can ensure that a property is safe to rent, that should take care of that side of it.

We also have to remember that students are often sharers who have come together for the first time. They move into a rented property and some of them very quickly—within the first couple of weeks—think, “Oh my goodness. I don’t like the people I’m sharing with. I’ve made a mistake. I want to get out.” They serve notice, and that serves notice for everybody in that tenancy, so all the students would then have to leave. But I have also found that they can settle down, and after another week they get to know the people they are sharing with, and they end up staying there for that tenancy. I think we have to take that into account as well.

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[Helen Morgan]

Q Just to clarify, would you not allow the landlord to serve any of those types of no-fault evictions after six months?

Theresa Wallace: No, they would be committed for the entire term.

Timothy Douglas: I totally agree with that, and I think it is not an either/or, as has been stated. Let us have the option. The beauty of the private rented sector is that it is built on that flexibility. Without the flexibility of that option, we are closing that down. Of course, you can have a fixed term for up to three years—otherwise, it then becomes a deed, as we understand it. You can have it for longer. So in theory, it is already there and that 12-month fixed term, or longer, with break clauses could offer lots more flexibility and the security that certain tenants want, and we know that agents are hearing that.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q I am interested in this. Are you saying that in the fixed period, the landlord would not be able to execute any eviction grounds, or just not grounds 1, 1A and 1B?

Theresa Wallace: If it were rent arrears, that would be different. Landlords cannot afford to keep properties when they are not receiving the rent. For rent arrears, I am saying that the landlord would not be able to serve the notice to either sell the property or move back into it.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q So 1 and 1A are basically the only protections. Is there a danger that this will become the default tenancy and landlords will not offer periodic tenancies, or would you require them to have an option and they would have to advertise both?

Theresa Wallace: It is an option, yes. I still believe that there should be a minimum term of six months with any tenancy to make it financially viable for landlords. That is why we have so many landlords waiting to hear what the Bill will bring, and more of them will exit the sector if they are going to have only periodic tenancies from day one. I have landlords telling me that.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q I asked this question of the last panel. Putting aside whether the six months is on both landlords and renters or one or the other, should there be a protection every time a rent increases that that six-month protection restarts, or it is the case that you can never get the protection back once the six months is done?

Ben Beadle: With this Bill, we have to strike a balance between giving confidence to both sides. The more you tinker and the more you meddle with things like this, the less confidence there is. I cannot see why on earth you would want to do that.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q In most assured shorthold tenancies at the moment, when you redo rent, you sign a new contract that then gives someone a six to 12-month protection. What we are now saying is, because it is rolling, that rent increase will just be within the rolling contract, so you are not then given the extended protection.

Ben Beadle: Bluntly, it sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it there. You want all the benefits of a fixed term and all the benefits of a periodic tenancy.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Yes. If we can get that, yes. [Laughter.]

Ben Beadle: Well, from our side, it is no—absolutely not.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Ah, okay.

Theresa Wallace: Just to add to that, at the moment you do not always have a fixed term. You can have a periodic tenancy, and you can put the rent up annually. That does happen, and it continues as a rolling tenancy, so we do have that at the moment.

[The Chair]

Unless there are any further questions from colleagues, I thank our three witnesses for their evidence, which will be very useful to the Committee in the deliberations that lie ahead.

I will ask the last set of witnesses to take the stand as soon as possible, without too much further delay, but just before our next panel, I ask Dean Russell to make a wee declaration of interests.

[Dean Russell]

Thank you, Chair. I just want to declare that my wife works part time at an estate agent that also does lettings.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Mr Gray, I should also have said that I sit on the legal working group for a radical housing co-operative association.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

What is the radical bit about?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

That is its title; I did not choose it.

Examination of Witnesses

Paul Dennett and Richard Blakeway gave evidence.

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[Jacob Young]

Q Thank you to the panellists. Richard, what do you feel is currently working well in social housing redress that we need to ensure we bring over to the PRS?

Richard Blakeway: That is a really good question. An ombudsman is not a surrogate for an effective landlord-tenant relationship and effective dispute resolution at source, done locally by a landlord. One thing that we have sought to introduce through our work on social housing is our complaint handling code, which has set out how to create a positive complaint handling culture and resolve disputes as early as possible without having to escalate them to the ombudsman. We have done a significant amount of work with landlords to implement that code and to avoid a postcode lottery whereby, depending on your landlord, different approaches might be taken, and some of those approaches were not promoting natural justice at a local level.

For me, although an ombudsman might be conceived as the potential stick—there is an element of that, which is important—another part of an ombudsman’s role is to promote effective complaint handling locally and support landlords. There are a lot of landlords who want to get things right—they are not rogue landlords—but sometimes they may not be aware of all their responsibilities, or they may struggle to engage the resident effectively or to discharge their responsibilities. That role is important for the ombudsman. It is something we have done in social housing and, were we to be appointed as the ombudsman, it is something we would certainly seek to do with landlords in the private rented sector.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q There is currently a system of selective licensing that some local authorities can do, but they have quite a high threshold of burden to demonstrate it and it requires the sign-off of the Secretary of State. Do you see the potential for allowing local authorities to remove those burdens and introduce selective licensing without Secretary of State sign-off, because of course the information will already be there in the portal?

Paul Dennett: Selective licensing is very interesting for Salford, because I think we were the first local authority in the country to pilot the new legislation at the time. Selective licensing schemes will inevitably continue to be an important tool for councils to manage and improve the private rented sector properties in their area. In our opinion, local areas should have the flexibility to employ selective licensing schemes to meet local need, as we determine that. We are calling on the Government to amend the Housing Act 2004 to remove the requirement for councils to seek approval for larger selective licensing schemes. You will be aware of the 20% threshold—

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

You could do ward by ward.

Paul Dennett: Absolutely. People ultimately have benefited from that. We have evaluated that and renewed selective licensing, certainly in Greater Manchester. Having that flexibility at a local level would aid the legislation and ultimately our approach to regulating the private rented sector.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Thank you very much.

[Eddie Hughes]

Q That all sounds quite exciting, Paul, in terms of your being able to apply your finite resource as effectively as possible. At the moment, if you have a complaint about a property, you do not know whether that landlord owns 10 other properties in your area, and we anticipate that the portal will allow you to do that. Do you not see this as an exciting opportunity, contrary to the negative spin that you put on it at the start, to be able to more effectively manage the properties you have?

If I remember correctly, you and I met at a social housing decarbonisation fund demonstrator. With your decarbonising hat on, surely now you could have the opportunity to be able to communicate directly with landlords. You do not know who they are or where they are at the moment. You would be able to communicate with them directly and say, “The Government have this scheme. We can help you improve and replace your boiler,” and so on. There is no end of benefits, yet you seem to focus only on the negatives. Why is that?

Paul Dennett: I am definitely not only focusing on the negatives.

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[Eddie Hughes]

I am sorry, Mr Gray—no hectoring.

Paul Dennett: Renters should welcome the property portal, as it will inevitably create a more transparent system for tenants and provide a single place to check what is important information for tenants and also for local authorities about the properties. For the portal to be effective the Government must also require landlords to display eviction notices on the portal. That would support local authorities in enforcing the prohibited letting period associated with the new eviction grounds. For example, were a landlord to evict a tenant on a legitimate basis covered by the Bill, but then sought to re-let the property, logging that eviction on the portal would make it clear whether the property was within the prohibited letting period or not. Obviously that requires the portal to operate in real time, which is something we would certainly support in the Local Government Association.

What is absolutely critical to the success of the portal, and to secure its longevity, will be for the Government to commit the resources, both financially and non-financially, to the portal, and ultimately how that then interfaces with local government from an enforcement point of view.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Richard, you are ready and willing to take on the ombudsperson duties in the Bill. At the moment there are myriad redress schemes for deposits in the private rented sector. You never know the outcomes of them because they are all kept secret. There is no case law built up, so you could have one redress scheme coming to a very different conclusion to the next redress scheme. The only way tenants can deal with that is by going to the courts directly. Do you think that the ombudsperson’s purview should be extended to include a right of appeal for the deposit redress schemes?

Richard Blakeway: A couple of thoughts. In direct response to your question, I think the ombudsman has been developed partly in the context of pressures and backlogs in courts. In designing the role of the ombudsman you need to give consideration to how that ombudsman’s jurisdictions could go further in relieving those pressures on the courts, not least so that the courts can focus on section 21, which in itself will be essential to give residents confidence to use the complaints process. There is plenty of evidence out there to suggest that until section 21 is removed, residents will be cautious about using the complaints procedure.

You give a compelling example of where an ombudsman’s jurisdiction might go beyond what is envisaged, albeit in a way that is trying to bring coherence to the system. Rents might be another area to look at. As an ombudsman, we currently look at aspects of rents and charges, and there will be other aspects for the tribunals, given some of the potential reforms to rents. You could consider the ombudsman’s role in considering what are often quite technical aspects, rather than things going to the courts.

If I may briefly answer on the context of the question and our being ready and willing, given the complexities of the system, which benefit neither the landlord, the provider, nor the resident—nor indeed the other bodies involved in this jigsaw—what the housing ombudsman can provide is one front door, one back office and one coherent approach to dispute resolution in the rental market. Given the policy convergence and the clear evidence that the more fragmented the process is, the more people will fall between the gaps and the more duplication and confusion there will be, building on our scheme would be the most effective way to deliver the ambitions of this Bill.

However, we should also do so at pace, because there is no one who can move faster than us to implement this. Therefore, you could implement the redress scheme before the removal of section 21, before some of the courts reforms that have been talked about. To enable that, we need a clear and unambiguous statement from Ministers during the passage of the Bill, and ideally in Committee, that they will appoint the housing ombudsman on Royal Assent to deliver the redress scheme.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Perfect; thank you. We will await that.

[Mike Amesbury]

Q The Government have confirmed that section 21 will not be abolished until the courts are reformed. What is your assessment of that? I will start with Mayor Paul and then move on to you, Richard, because you touched upon that.

Paul Dennett: Obviously we need to fully understand, from an evidence and empirical point of view, whether the courts issue is a legitimate concern, because at the moment we do not have the evidence to corroborate that. We are being told that this needs to be halted, but no definitive time has been given for the abolition of section 21 until the courts issue is resolved. For us, it seems as though this could be indefinite—there has been no definitive date. We know that there are lots of issues with our courts—we see that day in, day out—but we really need clarity on when the Government will introduce this legislation. We also need the evidence for whether the court delays issue is justified and warranted, because at the moment we do not know. We are hearing a lot about this, but we are not seeing the evidence to corroborate it, which is a concern for us. We are asking the Government to commit, in law and in timescales, to abolishing section 21, and to do that publicly.

Richard Blakeway: I agree with the thrust of that response. From a redress perspective, as I alluded to, clearly some residents will not exercise their right to redress because of a fear of eviction. The analysis by Citizens Advice, for example, says that it probably reduces tenants’ willingness to use the complaints process by about 50%, so about one in every two tenants will not exercise their right to redress. Obviously we will hear more about the timetable for removing section 21. What would be unnecessary, in addition to that, would be a delay in redress, whereby redress through an ombudsman and section 21 have to be removed or reformed at the same time. I think the redress can come first. I would not want to see a delay on redress. Even if fewer people might use the complaints procedure, some clearly will, and it is therefore important that they have that right.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q I want to ask a niche question about local authority investigatory and enforcement powers; I hope I explain myself clearly enough for you to understand. There is the issue we have discussed about the new duties and responsibilities in the Bill, which, assuming they are sufficiently resourced and supported, should work well, and which we support.

The White Paper also committed the Government to exploring and bolstering local authority enforcement to tackle a wider range of standards breaches. That is not in the Bill. We have a commitment in the King’s Speech, as one of three areas for the Government to bring forward amendments to make it easier for councils to target enforcement action and arm them with further enforcement powers. Could you speculate on what we might expect the Government to bring forward in that area? What would you like to see? Should we seek to weave into the Bill the more expansive measures outlined in the White Paper?

Paul Dennett: The Bill deals with enforcement for local authorities quite adequately. It is about how we resource that and develop the workforce within local government, and how we ensure that this legislation is genuinely resourced and empowered to deliver on what we are setting out here. At the end of the day, any legislation and regulation is only as good as our ability to enact it.

To enact it requires a trained, skilled and developed workforce. I say that against our losing many people from regulatory services, certainly since 2010-11. It also requires the resources to employ people to do the work, gather the data and intelligence, prepare for court and, ultimately, work with landlords, ideally to resolve matters outside of the courts, if we can do that. That is the LGA’s position on all this.

We would like to be in a position of having a working relationship whereby we resolve matters outside of complaints systems, outside of courts, working through local authorities. Nevertheless, if that is required, it is important to have a skilled, resourced workforce. I stress the importance of resource, because local authorities spend an awful lot of money these days on children’s services and adult social care. Those are responsive budget lines that ultimately consume a lot of our budgets and that therefore diminish our ability to get on and do some of that regulatory activity in local government. The legislation is there for enforcement; we just need the resources to get on and do it, and we need the workforce strategy to train the people of the future to enact this and, ultimately, to prepare to support landlords and tenants in this space.

Richard Blakeway: That is a really interesting question, Matthew; I have a couple of thoughts in relation to it. It is perhaps worth testing—if, for example, the ombudsman is seeing repeated service failure in a particular area—what powers there might be to address those kinds of recurring systemic issues, and whose role and responsibility it should be. That goes to the heart of your question about clause 29 and the relationship between the various parties.

The second thing, which goes back slightly to your first question, is how redress is scoped in the Bill. The one area that I would highlight—I can understand why it has been introduced, but it might not stand the test of time—is the cap on the financial compensation that an ombudsman can award. At the moment, we do not have a cap. The Bill proposes a cap of £25,000. I can understand the motivation there and, as an ombudsman, we are always proportionate, transparent and clear about the framework in which we work when awarding compensation. None the less, in time to come, £25,000 might not seem an appropriate sum. It also slightly incentivises people to think of the courts, which do not have a cap, to solve their dispute, rather than using an ombudsman.

It is critical that the ombudsman has sufficient power to enforce its remedies, as well as the council being able to enforce its role and responsibilities, but the cap might be something to re-examine.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Does the ombudsperson have the right to initiate? You talked about seeing a pattern of behaviour, rather than waiting for the complaint to come to you. Do you have the right to initiate at the moment? I know that other ombudspeople do.

Richard Blakeway: There is a term that may be in the statute or scheme of an ombudsman called “own initiative”, which allows them to initiate an investigation without a complaint whenever they have a strong sense that there might be service failure. That is not currently explicitly in our scheme. However, three years ago, we had scheme amendments that allowed us to investigate beyond an individual member of our scheme, or beyond an individual complaint, if we had concern that there may be repeated systemic failure. That is something that is exercised.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Would it be useful?

Richard Blakeway: Yes.

[The Chair]

Unless there are any more questions from colleagues on either side, I will thank the two witnesses on our final panel: Paul Dennett, the Mayor of Salford and member of the Local Government Association’s local infrastructure net zero board, and Richard Blakeway, the housing ombudsman for the Housing Ombudsman Service. Thank you both very much for your evidence.

Ordered, That further consideration now be adjourned—(Mr Gagan Mohindra.)