Hyde Housing (Lambeth)

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Gavin Barwell)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) not just on securing this debate, but on the eloquence with which she has set out her constituents’ concerns. I assure her that the House has listened very carefully to what she has said about the situation her constituents are experiencing. I was pleased to hear of the initial improvements that Hyde delivered after the transfers, and I was very disappointed to hear that those improvements have ebbed away. I anticipated that the hon. Lady would focus primarily on the issues in relation to the two community centres, but she raised much wider concerns about some of the basic landlord services that her constituents are experiencing.

The hon. Lady will be aware of the Government’s view, which is that housing associations are part of the private sector. They are not state institutions under the Government’s control, so there are limits to how much I can say to reassure her. It is worth pointing out—in fact, it is important to point out, thinking back to one of the quotes she read from a letter sent to her by a constituent—that housing associations are not profit-making companies. They have clear values of helping people in real housing need, and it is very important that as they become much more commercial organisations, raising finance from the private sector to help them to achieve their objectives, they do not lose sight of the core values that lie behind them.

The housing associations currently operating in this country broadly fall into three categories: some of them, such as the Peabody Trust, are the original philanthropic organisations set up some time ago; a whole lot of them were set up on the back of “Cathy Come Home”; and more recent ones were often formed as the result of the transfer of local authority homes. However, all of them should have a common set of values, and it is important that they do not lose sight of those values as they become more commercial in the ways they finance the development of housing.

By way of a partial reassurance for the hon. Lady, it is important to say that although housing associations sit outside state control, they should comply with the clear regulatory standards that exist, and some of the issues she raised clearly give rise to concerns in relation to that. At the moment, this association has the highest level of regulatory clearance. I do not know whether she has been in touch with the regulator about some of these issues, but if not, she or Lambeth Council may wish to draw those concerns to the regulator’s attention.

More generally, the points raised by the hon. Lady draw our attention to one of the fundamental challenges that confronts the housing association sector. This debate is quite timely for me, because my first meeting this morning—it was some hours ago—was with a group of housing associations to discuss the Government’s housing White Paper and the role that they can play in helping to confront the housing crisis in this country at the moment. As a Government, we are very much pushing housing associations to increase the supply of housing and to build the new homes that, as I am sure the hon. Lady agrees, are so desperately needed right across the country, but particularly in this great city that she and I have the privilege to represent in this House. However, there is a tension in ensuring that housing associations, in their efforts to deliver the housing we so desperately need, do not lose sight of their responsibilities in providing services to their existing rental tenants. It is probably worth putting on record a little bit about the scale of what Hyde is doing in that regard. In 2014-15, it built more than 1,000 new homes of various tenures. Its plan is to deliver about 3,000 homes from 2015 to 2018, and a further 3,000 from 2018 to 2020. In terms of supply, it is doing very much what the Government—and, I am sure, the hon. Lady—want it to do with regard to meeting the acute housing need in our city and across the country. Hyde also provides a lot of services to tenants, including financial advice, and jobs and training advice. That is a very important part of its work as a landlord.

Obviously, the core issue of this debate is that relating to the two community centres. As the hon. Lady said, the central Stockwell estate, with just under 2,500 homes, was transferred in 1998-99, and Kennington Park, with about 760 homes, was transferred in 2005. At the core of the hon. Lady’s argument was the suggestion that Hyde has not honoured the promises it made at the time of those transfers. If she believes that to be the case, my main suggestion is that her first port of call should be to make a complaint to the association itself under its complaint procedure. I am sure that she has already done that—she would not have raised the issue in the House if she had not.

If the hon. Lady has exhausted Hyde’s own complaint procedure, the next step is to go to the housing ombudsman, who has responsibility in respect of the honouring of any promises that were given. If that has not happened so far, the hon. Lady might wish to go down that route.

I know the association reasonably well. I have met its chief executive, Elaine Bailey, a number of times. I do not know whether the hon. Lady has tried to get in touch with Elaine directly, but if she has not and she would like my help in facilitating a meeting so that she can raise some of her concerns directly, I would be happy to do so, if that would be of any use.

I am conscious that time is drawing to a close, but from the Government’s point of view, housing associations have an absolutely vital role to play in delivering the new homes that we so desperately need in this country. However, as I have said, it is very important that, alongside delivering those new homes, they also have regard to the services that they provide to their existing tenants. The Government take that very seriously.

The two main ways in which control is exercised is through regulatory standards and the housing ombudsman, with whom people can raise concerns. I encourage the hon. Lady to go down those two paths. She may want to speak to me further about these matters outside the Chamber, and I will certainly use my office in any way I can to try to help her to ensure that she gets the result that her constituents would rightly expect with regard to the services that they receive. I am grateful to her for drawing these issues to my attention.

Question put and agreed to.