Social Housing (Regulation) Bill [HL]

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I want to speak about energy efficiency as well, because clearly this is something that no one can disagree with. It is smart and, at the very least, good business practice—not to mention that it helps people on very low incomes.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, pointed out, social housing landlords have a huge challenge to raise the energy efficiency of the homes they look after and to bring them up to modern standards, simply because they do not have the money. If the Government are not going to give them a handout or ease the energy crisis in all sorts of ways, they need to make it possible and to make funding less incredibly difficult. The situation is getting worse day by day, as supply chain issues and the rate of inflation keep shooting up.

At the moment, the main source of funding for social housing improvements seems to be borrowing against future income from social rents. This means a very tight pot of funding, where energy-efficiency measures have to compete against issues such as maintenance, renovation and new home building. The Government could create new fundraising opportunities for local authorities. Some of this could be grant funding but there are other options too, such as facilitating the creation of climate bonds and other sorts of financing.

I hope that tackling this funding gap for social housing is a priority of this Government. It would help so many people. I look forward to the Minister sharing the Government’s plans and, I hope, bringing forward something on this issue on Report.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to briefly record my support for the intent of all these amendments for both social and environmental reasons. The tenants of social landlords need to be prioritised by improving their energy efficiency, and hence cutting their bills. Because it is a significant proportion of our housing stock, to meet the net-zero pathway it is necessary for the social housing sector to make a step change in the improvement of its premises.

To achieve that, there are responsibilities on government, not least in pursuing the strategy that the speech and amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, address, but there are wider responsibilities on government to create the overall policy and the legislative and regulatory framework to ensure that it is delivered. There are also responsibilities on social landlords, and that should be made explicit to them, but the Bill is primarily about the regulator. The regulator’s central duty ought to include energy-efficiency objectives. I regard that as an important missing dimension of the Bill. I would argue this in relation to almost any other legislation, in any field, that changes or introduces new regulation. We need a net-zero objective in our social and economic regulators’ responsibilities and terms of reference.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. When pursued on energy-efficiency matters on the Energy Bill and in other contexts, her noble friend and colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, often says that part of the Government’s solution is to fund the programme of improving social housing. I find it difficult to say that that is sufficient. Does the Minister know what proportion of the totality of social housing premises, or whatever subset of that she has information on—large estates, in particular—has been addressed since the Government’s intention that social housing’s energy efficiency be improved, both by insulation and by the source of its energy, became clear? If she does not have that information today, perhaps her department and BEIS could provide me with an answer.

The second question is on planning, which clearly is within her department’s responsibility. Many social housing estates, mainly in the local authority but also in some housing association areas, are faced with major schemes of regeneration. Too often, in my view, local authorities and developers, when faced with demands or requests for regeneration, opt for demolition and rebuild. In almost all cases, demolition in each of its stages and the rebuild have a larger carbon content than most schemes of refurbishment. When will the planning process address this and ensure that it is a central issue for those planning authorities faced with propositions from social landlords?

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 2 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Pinnock. I wish also to echo from these Benches the support for the amendment in the name of the inspirational—I agree with that—noble Lord, Lord Best, on the same topic. The fundamental difference between the two amendments is simply that our amendment to Clause 1 would make it a fundamental objective of the Bill, while the noble Lord’s amendment seeks to ensure that the regulator has the powers to require housing associations to safeguard and promote the interests of the homeless and potentially homeless. Therefore, I am pleased to say that they work very well together.

We are seeking this simple amendment as a fundamental objective because, without it, there is a real danger that, as the Government quite rightly and understandably tighten the regulation of social housing as outlined in the Bill, social housing providers themselves, many of whom are fairly cash-strapped, will prioritise that which is being measured for fear of being named, shamed and fined. So they should, you might say, but it will have consequences for the homeless and those in temporary accommodation. This is a phenomenon that has been experienced with former council inspections and with Ofsted.

The fact that several housing associations have formed themselves into their own group, known as Homes for Cathy, shows that many take their homelessness prevention work seriously and strive to house people away from the streets, sofas and the overcrowded conditions that they might currently live in. Quite simply, we believe that this work is significant, valuable and essential, and therefore should be monitored by the regulator as part of a provider’s performance improvement plan.

During the pandemic, heroic efforts were made by government, councils, voluntary groups and housing providers to significantly reduce the numbers sleeping rough, which according to the 2022 government figures stand at an eight-year low. This is to be commended and is indeed good news, but we have to set it against the same set of annual figures that show that the numbers in temporary housing have been rising steadily since 2011. There are over 96,000 households in such accommodation as of September last year. Extremely worryingly, that figure includes over 121,000 children. We are all aware of the negative impacts this leads to, not only on a child’s education but on their general health and well-being.

Regrettably, I know from personal experience that the quality of that accommodation has deteriorated due to several factors, not least the inexorable decline in the number of social homes being built to move families on to; that is a debate for another day but a relevant factor. I will never forget the day that my head of housing came to see me urgently. Knowing that I was proud of our record of never having to use bed and breakfasts for homeless families, she was not looking forward to telling the mayor that that day we were placing families into a hotel for the very first time. Such were the pressures mounting on our housing stock. Now it is commonplace for councils to use bed and breakfasts, hotels and hostels—albeit the time for that is now limited by statute—before a move to temporary accommodation, which is when other problems begin.

Temporary accommodation, sad to say, is often inadequate—a room in a shared house that is overcrowded and in need of repairs or in poor condition. Critically, it can even be in another town, miles away from your workplace or children’s schools. It is not unusual for families to be in temporary accommodation for years. Shelter and the LGA have evidence of some families being housed in this way for a decade or more. That has to be unacceptable. Getting people off the street and out of temporary accommodation are two sides of the same coin. That should be an important function of all providers; we need it to be.

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[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, my name is attached to both Amendment 30, which was so ably moved by my noble friend on the Front Bench, and Amendment 47. I will not repeat everything my noble friend said, but I endorse all of it.

I will focus on the nature of the problems some tenants of social housing have encountered. In recent media exposés, we have seen serious problems in social housing—both local authority and housing association —of unaddressed conditions of damp, infestation and electrical faults. I will read an extract from a letter I received this morning from a tenant of social housing—I will not identify the landlord. The tenant says, “I have witnessed first hand terrible living conditions and treatment of tenants by my housing association. This includes illegal entry to properties, landlord harassment if a tenant makes an official complaint, poor repairs, failure to deal with severe anti-social behaviour from neighbours, lack of insulation, failure to decently carry out essential maintenance, poor fire safety and huge lies about cladding”.

That is not a unique experience; we have seen enough of it to indicate the decline of the management of social properties in too many areas of local authorities and housing associations. The reasons for this are not clear, but it has been partly about the structure of the industry and because local authorities have been under severe financial pressure, which has starved them of the ability to staff issues such as maintenance and support. Meanwhile, it is also true that some housing associations have become, through mergers et cetera, too large to relate effectively to their tenants and their problems.

When social housing was at its best—for example, in the era that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, referred to—local authorities and housing associations had substantial in-house expertise in their management and professional roles in areas such as architects, construction, maintenance and social support for tenants and their families. Much of that expertise has gone, due to pressures on local authority budgets and so forth. For example, the lack of construction expertise has put local authorities in the hands of developers when they propose major changes. In those days local authorities effectively had the whip hand in dealing with the building sector, because there was competition between a lot of local building companies—but they are now very much in the hands of the big housebuilders and developers. That changes the social responsibilities, and the result has been a failure of maintenance provision, toleration of damp and unhealthy conditions and, as other noble Lords have referred to, a general disdain for the views and knowledge of tenants. That is why I support Amendment 30.

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[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot help thinking that the government amendments seem to have had an easier time than the amendments from the rest of the Committee.

I want to oppose the proposition that Clause 4 should stand part of the Bill. This is a probing suggestion, following up a point I made at Second Reading about the potential overlap between the role of the Housing Ombudsman on the one hand and that of the Regulator of Social Housing on the other. I am all in favour of empowering social tenants and enabling them to drive up the quality of the housing in which they live and the quality of the management of the social housing stock. However, there is a risk of confusion as the roles of the ombudsman and the regulator begin to merge.

In response to my concerns, when winding up the Second Reading debate, the Minister said:

“I point out that there is a long track record of close working between the regulator and the ombudsman, and we are ensuring effective information sharing between them. The proposals in the Bill will reinforce and strengthen the co-operation that already exists. We are also delivering a communications campaign to tenants so that they know where to go and are well informed”.—[Official Report, 27/6/22; col. 469.]


The department then sent me a document, headed Regulator of Social Housing and Housing Ombudsman’s Roles and Responsibilities. It is some six pages long, indicating that there is clearly a need for a detailed explanation. This document complements a five-page memorandum of understanding, published two years ago.

There are two sentences in the recent document which set out what I thought the respective roles were. One says:

“The regulator does not intervene in individual complaints or mediate in disputes between tenants and landlords.”


This statement simply is not true. The Regulator of Social Housing can intervene in individual complaints. The social housing White Paper expects the Regulator of Social Housing to

“undertake specific, reactive investigations and/or inspections where appropriate. This could be when a serious potential compliance breach has been brought to its attention by tenants”.

The briefing notes that accompanied the Queen’s Speech reinforced this by referring to the powers of the regulator to arrange emergency repairs to a tenant’s home following a survey. By definition, the regulator can do this only if he has intervened in an individual complaint. The regulator also has the means to rectify these complaints himself, as is contained in Clause 24. It is clear from that that the regulator can move from the systemic down to the detailed.

The other sentence is about the ombudsman. The document says that his role is to resolve disputes between tenant and landlord. It would be fine if it stopped at that but, again, his role is far wider and begins to encroach on the role of the regulator. He can move up from the detailed to the systemic. The social housing White Paper says that his remit includes the powers to investigate potentially systemic issues arising through complaints. He has issued a code, setting out good practice for landlords; he can initiate investigations of his own if an individual case is indicative of wider failure, again trespassing on the role of the regulator; he can use insight and data to identify trends in complaint type; he can carry out thematic investigations into issues affecting the sector, producing regular spotlight reports; he can share expertise, insight, experience and learning to influence the sector to drive a positive complaint-handling structure, again overlapping with the role of the regulator. The objectives I have just mentioned are emphasised in the corporate plan for 2022 to 2025 and in Clause 31 of the Bill. It seems that there is a clear risk of confusion, duplication and overlap between these two bodies.

The Explanatory Notes to the Bill refer diplomatically to the overlap to which I have just referred:

“The regulator and the housing ombudsman both have a role in overseeing the performance of social housing landlords”.


Exactly. I note that the memorandum is to be revised—in the words of the document to which I referred earlier—

“to provide clarity following the passage of the Bill.”

I hope we can find some clearer demarcation of the roles which avoids mission creep by both, but also ensures that there is not a gap between the two. One could argue, as the memorandum effectively does, that these two individuals are grown-ups, can work amicably together and can sort out who does what—and I am sure they do. However, I still do not think it right to leave potential overlap and duplication to the good will of two individuals.

My second concern is for the tenants who now have two bodies they can turn to if their complaint to the social landlord is not resolved: the Housing Ombudsman and now the Regulator of Social Housing. The ombudsman can make awards and recommendations, but he cannot, for instance, enter premises to remedy specific failures. If I were a tenant—and particularly if there were a backlog of complaints to the Housing Ombudsman—I would probably head for the Regulator of Social Housing since he has more powers. Is he geared up to cope with this?

In its briefing for this debate, Shelter says it is vital that the regulatory roles of the ombudsman and the Regulator of Social Housing are clearly defined, that tenants and tenant groups understand how to complain and that any complaints process or system is easy to use, accessible and effective. That leads me back to what my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh said at Second Reading:

“We are also delivering a communications campaign to tenants so that they know where to go and are well informed”.—[Official Report, 27/6/22; col. 469.]


This is crucial. Can my noble friend the Minister say a little more about this, as the briefing from Shelter indicates that a tenant with a complaint about his or her social landlord may not know who to go to?

As I said, my opposition to the clause is probing, and I hope that my noble friend can assure me that these concerns will be taken on board.

I have also added my name to Amendment 29, which will be spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and which deals with the frequency of inspections. The social housing White Paper says that large providers should be inspected every four years, but there is no commitment to this in the Bill. I just want to make one point about this.

When I discussed the amendment with Shelter, before I added my name, I asked it to contact the National Housing Federation, as this obviously affects its members and, as we have heard, has financial implications for them. Shelter replied:

“We were able to meet with the NHF to discuss the amendments last week. They do not have a formal position on the amendments themselves. This is largely because they are a large membership body, and it would require posing the question to all their members.”


However, it did say that it had no real concerns about the amendments and is generally supportive of them, and agrees that more scrutiny and monitoring standards are needed. Its main priority is ensuring that its members are informed of what is in the Bill, to ensure that they are best prepared to implement the changes when they happen.

Its only potential issue was the inspections amendment applying to smaller social landlords. But with the amendment being a regulation-making power and not prescriptive, Shelter continued,

“we feel that it allows the Government/regulator flexibility to have different requirements on inspections for social landlords of different sizes.”

Basically, the National Housing Federation is broadly supportive of this amendment.

Against that background—and with, I am sure, the compelling oratory of the noble Lord, Lord Best—I hope that the Government will respond positively to Amendment 29. In the meantime, I beg to move that Clause 4 be not added to the Bill.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree in part with what the noble Lord, Lord Young, says, but we need some degree of clarification. Therefore, I hope that the Government will be able to produce more complex and clear regulations as to the relationship between the two organisations.

It is slightly incongruous that my Amendment 11 is also in this group. It is a simple amendment, and I shall be brief for obvious reasons. It would add, in the designation in Clause 9 of the role of the designated health and safety officer, that mental health and well-being should be taken into account in terms of their duties. It is clear from many of our personal experiences and from the media coverage which the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson of Welton, recently referred to, that failures to deal with problems in social housing both cause and aggravate mental health problems and cause anguish and distress among tenants and their families. For that reason, we need to write it in the Bill because, in terms of prioritisation on issues with which the designated health and safety officer will be faced, it is important that he or she takes into account the mental anguish and the consequential mental health problems of tenants who are, regrettably and deplorably, in these circumstances.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 29, in my name and the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Thornhill, and of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who has already spoken; I am grateful for his comments. The amendment obliges the Regulator of Social Housing to carry out regular, routine inspections of the registered providers of social housing.

The principal justification for regulation at present—with extensive regulation of governance and financial affairs—has been to protect the taxpayer, who has paid for a significant, although much diminished, proportion of the spending by these bodies. But, as the Bill recognises, the very valid justification for effective regulation today is to protect the consumer—the tenant, the resident. This aspect of regulation has been seriously neglected.

Even though most housing associations are charities, and all except the strange new breed of so-called for-profit registered providers exist for the public good rather than their shareholders’ returns, the interests of the consumer still require all these organisations to be subject to the watchful eye of an external, independent agency. Sadly, no organisation is immune to making mistakes or becoming complacent, insensitive, deaf to the voice of their consumers, customers, citizens. This can be an increased hazard for the housing associations that have grown dramatically over recent years, to which the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, made reference; several now own and manage over 100,000 homes, accommodating a population equivalent to that of a major city. This brings accusations of registered providers being out of touch with their residents, lacking local knowledge, and becoming remote and uncaring. Reporting by ITV and others, which has been alluded to already, has uncovered very poor performance in some of the largest housing associations.

Meanwhile, being a relatively small organisation, and supposedly with shorter lines of communication between provider and consumer, is not a guarantee of good practice. After all, in the most serious case of the Grenfell tragedy, the organisation—a tenant management organisation within the council—was relatively small and entirely locally based, but it failed its residents disastrously. An ombudsman service can play a vital role—as the Housing Ombudsman does—in responding to tenants’ complaints. However, this is no substitute for a regulator with the remit and powers to enforce proper standards and good practice in every social housing organisation.

So, given that effective regulation—particularly consumer- orientated regulation—is necessary and valuable, how can we ensure that the new regime introduced by the Bill actually succeeds in delivering decent standards, good management and maintenance services, and sensitive engagement with tenants and leaseholders? Amendment 29 seeks to address this.