Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Mark Pawsey and Clive Betts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

I thank the Government for taking up two of the proposals from the Select Committee’s report in the previous Parliament on rent recovery and civil penalties. That was something the Committee agreed unanimously. I see the hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) in his place. He was a member of the Committee at that time. It is right to give local authorities a lighter-touch way of dealing with the less serious problems that may exist in private sector properties by introducing civil penalties and rent recovery. The idea that landlords should be getting public money when clearly providing a property that breaches legal requirements is outrageous. It is good that the Government are acting and legislating, I think with all-party support, to ensure that the money paid out in those wrongful circumstances can be properly recovered by the public sector and indeed by tenants where their money has been used to pay for rent for a property that has not met the legal standards.

I want to raise one or two issues mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) and refer to the Select Committee report. When the Committee published its report—I am sorry to cut slightly across my hon. Friend on this issue—we concluded that licensing schemes should be a matter for local discretion. We said that they were a useful tool in the armoury of local authorities to deal with particularly bad problems in areas with poor landlords and poor-quality housing, but we adopted a localist approach and said that in the end it should be a matter for local discretion. However, we did raise the problem—it is right that my hon. Friend raised the issue again—that many authorities chose not to take up licensing schemes, not because they thought they were a bad idea, but because the whole bureaucracy around the schemes deters authorities and makes it expensive to get them in place. I hope the Minister will have another look at that.

I speak from experience, not in my constituency but in the next-door constituency of Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough. A licensing scheme that was introduced in Page Hall has been very successful in dealing with the real problems caused by bad landlords and bad properties, but the process of establishing it involved a great deal of bureaucracy and money that could have been better spent on enforcement and attempts to deal with the inadequate housing situation.

[Mark Pawsey]

The hon. Gentleman led the production of the Select Committee report very effectively during the last Parliament. As he will recall, the evidence suggested that good landlords were happy to go on to the register, or, alternatively, were reluctant, but did so because they wanted to play by the rules. The rogue landlords, by definition, do not want to play by the rules and would not register in the first place. The process tends to be not terribly productive.

communities and local government committee

Debate between Mark Pawsey and Clive Betts

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

That sentiment was expressed very strongly to us when we met the 60 representatives of community groups and parish groups. We consistently heard the message that people did not feel in control of what was happening in their own areas. If there was no local plan in place, they felt completely unprotected against individual applications for developments that they felt would be unsustainable. The right hon. Gentleman gave evidence to the Committee on precisely those points and we took that very much into account in our recommendations.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

May I thank the Chair of the Committee for his accurate representation of our report and pay tribute to him for the way in which he brought people together—Members and witnesses—throughout our inquiry? I am sure he will have seen the recent report by the Home Builders Federation which shows that planning permissions for new homes are running at 200,000 a year for the first time in many years. That is evidence of a simpler and more easily understood system, but we heard concerns from individuals and groups about the operation of the NPPF. The evidence showed that the greatest challenges occurred in those areas where there was no local plan—this is a plan-led system—but that people have little to fear when the local authority has a plan in place. Therefore, the Committee was entirely right to call for a statutory requirement for local authorities to get their plan in place promptly.

We also identified one or two areas where the NPPF could be strengthened, one of which relates to housing land supply, whereby those authorities that have identified large sites that are not deliverable within the five years are vulnerable to speculative applications. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Committee was entirely right in calling for that matter to be addressed?

[Mr Betts]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is also a member of the Committee, for his contribution to the report, particularly the way in which he focused on the problems with the five-year supply of housing and the definitions of viability. Indeed, sites where planning permission has actually been given are not necessarily automatically factored into the five-year supply, and our report calls for that to be addressed. The hon. Gentleman did not mention this, but he has also been a great champion of what more we can do to protect the high street and town and city centres.

“Councillors on the Frontline”

Debate between Mark Pawsey and Clive Betts

Thursday 5th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Betts]

I thank my hon. Friend for that—I think—but I will not be led down the road of discussing a debate that happened in Parliament this morning. However, I think there is a case for such training. I pointed out the major financial changes in local government that councils are having to deal with, but of course, we have to deal with those as Members of Parliament, too.

On our Committee, for example, we have tried to get more briefings from the Scrutiny Unit in Parliament, which is an excellent resource, and from the National Audit Office, which is trying to work more closely with us, so that we can understand some of the complicated technical issues—which I am sure that the Minister can explain to us, if he wishes, at any point in time. We are all trying to grapple with these issues, and I agree that training is important for us as well. It is also important that we try and reach out to potential councillors and potential candidates, and that parties and local councils work on that as well.

We looked at the barriers, why we have an unrepresentative group, and why certain people feel it is just not for them. Perhaps they would like to be a councillor, but they do not become one. Time is a factor. Flippant comments are often made, such as “Well, it’s only a part-time job, a few hours a week.” I do not think it is; the ward work alone can be demanding. Cabinet members clearly have larger time commitments, but if someone is on a scrutiny committee and they are going to do what we saw in Sunderland, where ward councillors are taking decisions through area committees and are spending money, that is also a time commitment. It is easier for retired people than it is for people who work, which is why more retired people tend to go on councils. That is a fact, but it is also a challenge and a barrier.

I remember a time in Sheffield when all the major steelworks would almost vie with each other. One would say, “We’ve got two councillors on the council”, while another would say, “We’ve got three.” They all saw giving time off as a badge of honour. I accept that it is easier for large organisations employing thousands of people to do that than it is for small businesses, but it is a challenge to try and ensure that being a councillor is an opportunity open for many people in all walks of life.

As part of our process, we talked to young people, some of whom had been councillors and had given up. One reason was that young people start off, perhaps prepared to make a sacrifice about having a job, but eventually, they have to get a job, and the employer starts saying, “I’m sorry, time off really isn’t on—well, maybe we can find you half a day every fortnight.” They cannot really do the job in that regard. We heard from a councillor—I think she was a Conservative councillor—who said she was trying to get a job, and the jobcentre told her to take the fact that she was a councillor off her CV, because if anyone saw it, they would not employ her. That is really worrying. We ought to give proper attention to that, and the Government have to address it as well.

Councils can help councillors by providing better admin and clerical assistance. Again, there is a worry that such things get squeezed and scrapped when councillors are, understandably, trying to protect front-line services from cuts. We looked at what is happening in the Ministry of Defence. We made the following recommendation:

“The Ministry of Defence is giving serious consideration to the ways in which employers can be encouraged to support military reservists. The Department for Communities and Local Government should conduct a similar review. We recommend that the Government consult on how employers can be encouraged to provide support to their staff who serve as councillors.”

We are not saying that it has to be exactly the same as the MOD, but at least if the Government were out there saying to employers, “We think this is important. We think serving as a councillor in your community is something we should encourage people to do”, having that ministerial steer would be helpful. Do a review. Work with the LGA. At least recognise it as a problem, Minister, because it is a problem, as was clearly shown in our own evidence.

I am getting towards the end of my comments. We also raised the issue of allowances. Given the press comments and ministerial responses made initially about our report, one would have thought the only thing we said was that all councillors should be paid more. Actually, we did not say that anywhere in the report. We raised the issue of allowances because it was raised with us in evidence as a problem—it was an evidence-based report; that is what Select Committee reports are. We did not recommend, as I say, that allowances should be increased. We got the evidence clearly that councillors, in some cases, were not well paid.

We did not agree with the idea of having a national rate for councillors, because we recognise the big differences in the job that councillors do in different authorities, and in the jobs that various councillors do. However, we were generally persuaded that councillors had the right to expect an appropriate level of compensation for the time and loss of earnings. Both are important; it is about the time that councillors put in, often at weekends and evenings, but it is also about the time that those in work give up, and the loss of earnings as a result, which is often a risk.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

To reflect on the speed-dating exercise that we did, the allowances came across as being a substantial sum of money. For someone who is very young, and perhaps not yet in their first job, it is a substantial payment, but for people in full-time work, the allowances were relatively modest. That is one reason why the analogy with reservists is particularly interesting.

Communities and Local Government Committee Report: Private Rented Sector

Debate between Mark Pawsey and Clive Betts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the publication of the First Report from the Communities and Local Government Committee, on Private rented sector, HC50.

I am delighted to present the report of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government on the Floor of the House and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving me this opportunity, the first for our Committee. I thank all the Committee members for their unanimous support for the report, the Committee staff, particularly Kevin Maddison, for their excellent work, and our specialist adviser, Professor Christine Whitehead.

Why did we carry out the inquiry? We had two main reasons. First, the private rented sector is growing. In 1999, fewer than 10% of households rented privately. By 2011-12, the figure was more than 17%. More households now rent privately than are in the social rented sector. Secondly, the sector is home to a growing range of people, including, increasingly, families with children. In view of that growth and the changing nature of the sector the Committee thought it was the right time to consider how the sector could better meet the needs of those who live in it.

We make the point consistently that many landlords do an excellent job and our efforts should be targeted at the rogues who let substandard accommodation, often to those in real housing need. During our inquiry, we visited Germany. We are not calling for the German system to be adopted en bloc in this country but there are lessons to learn. We saw the advantages that a mature market brings for landlords and tenants: widespread understanding of rights, good-quality housing and a broad equilibrium of supply with demand.

In England, in contrast, the rapid growth of the sector has left in its wake regulation and legislation that was introduced in response to problems from decades ago. Our report identified a number of areas in which we believe action is required. First, we call for better, simpler regulation—not more of it. More than 50 Acts of Parliament and 70 pieces of delegated legislation relate to the sector. The result is a bewildering array of regulation that few landlords or tenants have a hope of understanding. That needs to be consolidated in a much simpler, straightforward regulatory framework. We have seen what the Government have done to simplify planning regulation: why cannot they do the same thing in this case? That is an obvious question to ask the Government and the Minister for Housing, who I see in his place on the Government Front Bench.

Once a new regulatory framework is in place, we need to publicise it. The Government should work with landlords, tenants and agents groups on a campaign to promote awareness of the new framework once it is produced. We call for a standard, easy-to-understand tenancy agreement on which all agreements should be based. Included with that should be a factsheet setting out clearly the respective rights and responsibilities of the tenant and landlord. We heard far too much evidence that people simply do not understand their rights and responsibilities.

We also say that councils should have the freedom they need to enforce standards and the law. First, they need more flexibility over the introduction of licensing schemes. We heard evidence that these are over-bureaucratic and restrictive in the way they can be used. Secondly, councils should have the power to require landlords to be part of an accreditation scheme. We saw an excellent scheme in operation in Leeds, but the landlords who were part of the scheme and tenants drew attention to the fact that those landlords who caused problems were generally not a member of the scheme. Such schemes should as far as possible be self-funding, with extra charges for those who do not comply. We must ensure that the overall burden of costs shifts to unscrupulous landlords and we call for a review of the level of fines and consideration of the use of penalty charges as ways to improve standards and act against bad practice.

In addition, we were concerned about public money, through the housing benefit system, being used effectively to subsidise landlords who do not meet legal requirements. We therefore propose that local authorities should be able to recoup housing benefit when landlords have been convicted of letting substandard property. To ensure we have a balance and that we are consistent, tenants should also have the right to reclaim rent paid in similar circumstances from their own resources.

A real concern—we probably had as much evidence about this as about anything else in our inquiry—was the need to crack down on sharp practice by some letting agents.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Betts]

Of course, and I welcome a fellow Committee member.

[Mark Pawsey]

Does the Chairman of the Select Committee agree that one of the most compelling pieces of evidence that we received on that issue came not in a formal evidence session but when we met tenants? A person told us that if he and a colleague were to visit an estate agent’s office where people were selling houses on one side of the room and letting properties on the other, one set of agents would be regulated and the other set would not, despite the fact that both parties going into the agency were looking to do the same thing: find their own home.

[Mr Betts]

Absolutely, and the hon. Gentleman anticipates my next point. In the report, we welcome the Government’s commitment to a redress scheme, and we hope that our report helps to shape it, but we felt that we could go a little further. On the exact point that he makes, it is quite surprising to people who look at the issue afresh that letting agents are subject to less regulation than estate agents. We believe that they could be put on exactly the same basis. A key point is that the Office of Fair Trading has powers to ban estate agents who behave badly; the same power should be introduced for letting agents.

We also looked at the fees charged by letting agents and found that many of them were unreasonable and unclear. The first step has to be transparency. Wherever a property is advertised to let—in a window, on a website or in a newspaper—it should be accompanied by a full breakdown of the fees that a tenant is likely to have to pay. No more hooking the tenant with a property that they like, and then, once they are interested and are looking to sign the tenancy agreement, letting the hidden fees come out, little by little—drip, drip. We are talking about costs that the tenant never anticipated, and that can run into the hundreds of pounds. Also, there should certainly be no more charging the landlord and the tenant for the same service; that is completely and utterly unacceptable, and should be banned.

An important step in bringing the market to maturity and aligning supply with demand would be to meet the clear need for longer tenancies. The common industry standard is six months. That might be suitable for many mobile, younger people; it is certainly not adequate for the many families in the sector who want a secure home. One renter who came to give evidence to us told us that their 10-year-old daughter had already moved house seven times in her life. That is simply not acceptable. If families move home, it means moving school, and we need to tackle that sort of insecurity.

We need to look at and remove the barriers, real and perceived, to longer tenancies. Limitations in mortgage conditions need to be lifted. We were encouraged by the news that Nationwide building society has begun to allow longer tenancies; we welcome that. We have to ensure that letting agents work with landlords and tenants to make sure that they are aware of the different options for tenancy length. Too many letting agents seem to be hooked on getting repeat fees for short lets. They are almost like the football agent who benefits from constant transfers, rather than players staying at a club for a long period. In return for offering longer tenancies, landlords should be able to evict tenants who simply refuse to pay a lot more speedily.

We looked at safety standards. Safety is absolutely paramount. Landlords who let out death traps must face the consequences. The gas safety regime has gone a long way to making homes safer, but electrical safety is still a blind spot. The Government should develop an electrical safety certificate for private rented properties. It would confirm that wiring had been checked and was in good order, and we think that the check should take place at least every five years. We also call for a requirement that all private rented properties be fitted with a working smoke alarm and a carbon monoxide detector with an audible alarm.

Placing homeless households was another issue to which we gave consideration. Councils can now discharge their duty to homeless households by placing them in the private rented sector without their consent. When councils do this, they must ensure that the accommodation is suitable. As a matter of good practice, they should inspect properties before using them to house homeless families. We are aware that some councils are placing homeless households away from their local area. Where this is necessary, there should be a statutory duty of full discussion, including sharing appropriate information with the receiving authority and, of course, with the prospective tenant.

The Government need to look at how the housing benefit bill is spent in the private rented sector. There are obvious concerns in all parts of the House about the rising bill. We heard from Blackpool about how the market has failed there because housing benefit levels are set artificially high, as the calculation of local housing allowance, which determines benefit levels, includes surrounding rural areas where rents are higher. We heard wider concerns about the interaction between housing benefit and rents. Housing benefits can drive rents up across an area, which in turn leads to upward pressure on local housing allowances, creating a vicious circle and increasing costs for the taxpayer, who picks up the bill. We recommend that the Government conduct a wide-ranging review of the local housing allowance.

We looked at the issue of tax evasion. Very often the tax authorities and councils operate in different worlds. We called for greater co-ordination between councils and the tax authorities, which could go a long way to cracking down on tax evasion, both capital gains tax and income tax. It would be especially effective in areas where a licensing or accreditation scheme was in place and details about the landlords were known. We call on the Government to promote a more joined-up approach to tackling tax evasion, which would benefit us all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Betts]

Agreement is breaking out on the Front Benches as well as in the Committee. We welcome that as well.

[Mark Pawsey]

Does the Chair of the Select Committee agree that it was pleasing that we did not receive any evidence at all from anybody calling for any form of rent regulation or rent control? We recognise that there are problems with some landlords and that people would like to see lower rents, but at no time was a convincing case put to us in respect of rent control.

[Mr Betts]

The hon. Member is right. We concluded that rent control was not feasible. We were concerned that it could drive some good landlords out of the sector and deter new investment. We certainly agree with the Government that we need to get more investment in the sector. Where we looked at rents, it was in the context of housing benefit and landlords not getting away with receiving rent for substandard properties which they were prosecuted for.

Renting can be an attractive alternative to owner occupation, but we need a mature market that meets many more renters’ needs. We need to drive bad landlords out of the sector altogether and to bring all property up to an acceptable standard. The Committee believes that the measures set out in our report will help to achieve this vision. We look forward to the Government’s response and hope that they will respond positively to our recommendations.

Question put and agreed to.

New Housing Supply

Debate between Mark Pawsey and Clive Betts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

There is a problem when market housing is not being built. It is because of the over-reliance on section 106 housing in the past. I know the Government have proposals to encourage, if not force, local authorities to renegotiate the terms of 106 agreements to make market housing more viable. I have reservations about that—it was not something the Select Committee considered in particular—although we recommended that any changes to 106 agreements be left to local discretion. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, however, about the comfort of relying on section 106 agreements to provide housing. There are two problems with that: first, when the market collapses, there is not the alternative balance of social housing to replace it in the construction industry, so that element falls at the same time, and secondly social houses are not necessarily needed in exactly the same places as market houses.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that for some time local authorities have had the power to renegotiate their section 106 agreements in order to move away from an arbitrary set figure for social housing. Perhaps the Government should be encouraging local authorities to do that, rather than dictating to them.

[Mr Betts]

That is absolutely right. I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. As we know, many local authorities of all political persuasions are doing just that and being sensible about it.

The Committee made a recommendation about self-build—or rather self-contracting, which is what we probably saw at the massive site at in Almere. When I was told, “You’re going to see a self-build”, I expected to see the teacher, the bank manager and the postman in their wellies and overalls on a Sunday morning digging away and laying the bricks, but that was not what we saw. We saw a local authority site on which individuals had bought plots at a given price and with limited restrictions on what they could do—some areas were reserved for bungalows and others had a three-storey height limit, and obviously there was a boundary to the site. These individuals had either contracted a local builder or designed their own homes on the internet, as we saw at one place we visited. In effect, they had contracted their own homes. That seemed a brilliant way forward. I see no reason why we cannot build 50,000 self-build homes in this country, instead of the 10,000 we build at present. That could go a long way to meeting the gap. We found that people were satisfied because they had the homes they wanted with the money they had. They did not have to have something off the shelf that did not really meet their needs. Their homes were being built for only 75% of the cost of a similar home from a volume builder.

There are clearly challenges in getting the whole thing up and running. I welcome the Government’s £30 million of funding to try to encourage such activity. How far have we got? I have not yet been invited to the turning of the first sod on such a site, let alone the first home to be finally built and opened, so I suspect we have not made as much progress as we might have. I think all members of the Committee who went were enthused by self-build and thought it was a good way forward. It needs a push from the Government and local authorities to release land—it might need the Ministry of Defence to release some—but it seemed an excellent way forward. Self-build also helps small builders, who have been hit more by the recession of the last few years than the volume builders have, because they cannot get funding from the banks and face real difficulties. The challenge with self-contracting is to get the building societies and the banks to understand that they can lend money on a house that does not yet exist and—because people have to live in one home while the other is being built—to put bridging arrangements in place. In the end, however, people end up with something that costs only 75% of its market value, so we really ought to push on self-build.

Our report is not a complete solution to all our housing problems. It is not right in every respect, but it contains a number of proposals, and if the Government made a clear commitment to implementing them—not necessarily all of them, but a significant number—that would go a long way towards delivering the 250,000 new homes that this country so badly requires.

Regeneration

Debate between Mark Pawsey and Clive Betts

Thursday 19th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Betts]

Regeneration is defined widely. Different areas will have different needs and a different response will be required. I agree with the Minister that that is why, in the end, a localist approach to what works in an area is important.

With regard to my comments about Crossrail and HS2, which are massive, major projects involving billions of pounds of expenditure, if a tiny bit of that affects one area, then good, but it is a little bit difficult to recognise such projects as regeneration funding as a whole. In Burnley, Liverpool and Rochdale, we saw market failure and nothing will happen without some public funding. That was the message that came over to us. If the public money is not there, the private money will not be there either. The two need to go hand in hand. As witnesses said to the inquiry, no regeneration is happening in Britain at present, because it has virtually come to a standstill. There is a bit of the tail-off of housing market renewal in respect of schemes that are being wound down, but that is all. There is a need, potentially, for the private sector to invest with some gap funding, which, again, may be available through the European Regional Development Fund, which I will mention in a second.

Regeneration and market failure is not just about bricks and mortar; it is about the environment, as well as various facilities, skills and jobs. If we are going to tackle the difficult, fundamental problems that we see in some of the worst areas, there probably has to be some concentration of whatever public money can be found—recognising the issue of the public finances—in those particular areas. I have made the comment already, but the previous Government’s failing was not in making the money available, but in not committing it for a long enough period to see the schemes through to a successful conclusion.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I am mindful of the advice from the mayor of Newham, because there is rather more to regeneration than continually putting in public money. The mayor’s evidence was that, despite 20 or 30 years of continuing investment, the indices of deprivation had not moved. It is sometimes a matter of attention, not only of continually putting the money in.

[Mr Betts]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. It has been said, in particular about helping with skills and improving people’s availability for employment, that what happened was that people in Newham who got that help then moved to other areas. There are clearly challenges to making regeneration successful. One of the criticisms we made in the Select Committee report was about learning lessons from the past. We should look at where money has been spent—the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) was keen on that in the Committee—and at what was got right and wrong.

We took evidence from Lord Heseltine and went to Hulme to look at the city challenge area which, in everyone’s view, was a success. It was, however, a 20-year project and, to begin with, did not go well. Lessons were learnt from initial failures, but it was a 20-year programme with the public and private sectors working together; it was about not only buildings but skills, employment opportunities and the general environment of the area. It was also a lot about demolition of some really bad properties, and their replacement with new, attractive properties in the private as well as the public sector, as we saw on our visit.

The issue of the long term is so important. The hon. Gentleman is right that we can have long-term projects that still go wrong, but if we do not do things for the long term we will not get some areas right at all. There was a lady in the community centre in Rochdale who said to us—she had not been briefed and she put it in her own way—“It is a bit like going on a weight-loss course. It is easy to get a few pounds and even a few stones off at first, but it gets harder and harder. You have got to keep working at it. If you don’t keep going at it for the long term, you clap the weight back on and all the hard work of the previous time has been lost.” That is a real worry now in some housing market renewal areas—that the investment has gone in but stopped halfway, so some of the benefits will be lost. That lady’s comments always stuck in my mind. She was so enthusiastic about her area because it had been about improvements to the school and to employment opportunities. I remember she said, “I used to be ashamed to bring visitors. In fact, I used to pretend that I didn’t live here. Now when they come to visit, I walk down the street with pride because of what has been done.” That is an awfully good testament to what happened.

We ought to learn lessons from the failures. I am trying not to be party political, and the single regeneration budget had some successes but, very often, it was spread too thinly around the place, to give everyone a little bit but without achieving any long-term benefits. Let us learn from the problems of the past as well as from the successes achieved—that is a bit of common ground with the Minister at least. The regional growth fund was proposed as a possible solution, but Lord Heseltine has told the Committee, absolutely bluntly, “This is not about improvements for housing. There is no money here for those sorts of initiatives.” He told us that, in words of one syllable. He basically said, “It doesn’t matter what the Minister says, I am in charge of this”, and I am sure that the Minister does not want to argue with Lord Heseltine on such points.