Housing and Planning Bill (First sitting)

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Teresa Pearce]

Q 83 So you are in the same position as the wider federation of the G15?

David Orr: As a wider federation, what we have been trying very clearly to do is to locate the responsibility for the decision where it lies, which is with the Government. It is not a decision for us, and it is not a proposal we have ever sought or have ever endorsed, and we have no plans to do so.

Sinéad Butters: Similarly, we pride ourselves on our strong relations as community-based housing associations, and therefore we do not endorse the sale of high-value council homes in order to fund this.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Q 84 If I understand it correctly, you both say that you agree that those who earn more should pay more, and I think you have both said that housing associations should have the discretion to set rates, but I understand that there is already provision to set higher rents for those who earn £60,000 or more. How many associations use that provision at the moment and, for those that do not, why not?

David Orr: Very few of them do, partly because there are very few people in those circumstances and partly because housing associations do not always know because they do not have a particular obligation to require that information from their tenants. We do not have very detailed data. Also, it is partly because it is very administratively complex to impose such things.

My view is that we should not think about this in terms of specifically focusing on individual households. We should offer different products at different prices in different parts of the housing market, among which people have the opportunity to choose. Our housing market is not nearly varied enough, and housing associations are an integral part of providing more variety and different pricing in different parts of the market.

I also think that we need to be smarter about how we turn things from a threat into an offer if someone is a tenant of a housing association and their income increases. Rather than pay-to-stay, I would much rather the housing association was in a position to say, “If your income is increasing, we would be happy to sell you a small equity share in the property that you live in.” That has the same effect of providing cash that the housing association can use, and the tenant gets an active benefit from it rather than just paying a higher rent. We have to be much more creative about how we look at all of this and how we change that relationship. In order to do that—to echo what Sinéad was saying—housing associations have to be much more free to run and manage their own businesses. This is a theme that we will be coming to all the time.

[Maria Caulfield]

Q 85 I agree with you in that sense, but if you are not actually collecting that information, that makes it very hard to gather evidence for that argument. If we really need to target—

David Orr: We don’t need to collect evidence about people’s income if we are making them an offer by saying that if they are in a position to buy an equity share that will gain in value over time, we will provide that for them.

[Maria Caulfield]

Q 86 Okay, but if we really want social housing to be for those on a lower income, if you are not collecting that information it makes it very difficult to gain support for your argument. You are not collecting information on which of your tenants actually earns that amount in the first place. I find it hard to understand how you have that evidence if you do not collect it yourselves.

David Orr: We presently have no legal basis for requiring that information. We can ask.

[Maria Caulfield]

Q 87 Hence why it is in the Bill.

David Orr: Well, pay-to-stay is in the Bill. One of the mechanisms that would deliver that is by requiring information to be given—

[Maria Caulfield]

Sorry, maybe I am not making myself very clear—

[The Chair]

Order. We have four minutes, and four Members are trying to catch my eye. The current point has been explored reasonably well.