Planning Committees: Reform

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Helen Morgan

Monday 9th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I say, we inherited an acute and entrenched housing crisis, with 1.3 million people languishing on social housing waiting lists and a generation locked out of home ownership. To their shame, the Conservative Government passed on a situation where 150,000 homeless children are in temporary accommodation as we speak. We have to build the homes that our people need, and we are determined to do so.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on flooding and flooded communities, and the MP for a constituency that suffers from surface water flooding as well as river flooding, I am concerned that the proposals will divert decision making away from those with the greatest local knowledge. When a flooding area is drained, the water has to go somewhere else, and where it goes is critical to the people living in the surrounding area. Can the Minister reassure me that the proposals will not dilute the importance of local knowledge in making critical decisions about draining and flooding when we build?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I can reassure the hon. Lady on that point. The proposals will operate within the context of a national planning policy framework that has very clear requirements in relation to flooding. We are in no way removing local expertise and knowledge from the system; either experienced and trained local planning officers or locally elected authority members should make the decisions, but we have to ensure that they are making the right ones, and that their energy is focused in the right way, to streamline the decisions that we need. We heard the statistics on how planning applications are not progressing through the system at a timely pace. We need to turn things around.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Helen Morgan

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Recent freedom of information requests by the Liberal Democrats found that four out of five councils that responded had someone on their social housing waiting list for more than a decade, and this shocking statistic comes all while the stocks of social housing have been reducing. Will the Minister consider reforming the land conservation Act, so that local councils can buy land at current value rather than hope value and get on with delivering the social housing that we so desperately need?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the hon. Lady for drawing attention to the appalling record of the previous Government on affordable housing, in particular social rented housing. Over the past 10 years, the number of social rented homes owned by registered providers fell by over 205,000. We have to take action to better protect our stock and build new social rented homes, but she is absolutely right that further reform is needed of compulsory purchase orders, how they are drawn and the powers available to councils. We first need to enact the changes that were introduced by the previous Government though the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, but we intend to go further, and will consult on that in due course.

Renters (Reform) Bill (Eighth sitting)

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Helen Morgan

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Helen Morgan]

Once again, I draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, on which there are two jointly owned properties: a residential property and a holiday let.

During our evidence sessions, we heard that experience in Scotland has shown that grounds 1 and 1A are open to abuse by landlords who are simply looking to re-market their property either at a higher rent or to a different tenant who will not complain about serious defects in the property. We heard about a pretty horrifying case in which a rat and maggot-infested property was simply re-marketed three months later. Clearly, the time in which the property could not be re-marketed was not enough of a deterrent to prevent abuse of such a clause. Amendments 132 and 133 therefore seek to extend from three to six months the period before which a property can be re-marketed.

In our debates over the past couple of days, I have spoken at length about the need to ensure the maintenance of balance between tenants and landlords, so that landlords are not driven from the market, which would exacerbate the chronic shortage of rental property in the whole UK and the decline in the size of the private rented sector in rural parts. I do not think that these amendments would have an impact on that balance. Any landlord who is seeking repossession under ground 1 or 1A and is acting in good faith has no intention of re-marketing the property at the point at which they seek repossession. Extending the period beyond which it can be re-marketed should not influence their decision in any way.

We understand that people’s circumstances can change, sometimes very suddenly. I think six months is a reasonable length of time both to provide a deterrent to abuse of grounds 1 and 1A and to provide fairness for landlords who have acted in good faith but have suffered an unexpected change in circumstances. I would be grateful if the Minister commented on the steps needed to prevent the recurrence of the situation in Scotland that we heard about and, ultimately, to support the lengthening of the period.

Amendments 134 and 135 seek to address the problem facing many tourist areas that properties for private rent are being flipped into holiday lets or Airbnb-style holiday homes. Members of all parties who represent tourist hotspots have raised the issue in the main Chamber, and there is broad consensus that the over-supply of holiday accommodation is having a hugely detrimental effect on those areas.

There needs to be some holiday accommodation, but the balance of holiday and private rented sector accommodation is very important for those areas, because over-supply of holiday accommodation hollows out communities. It has led to a situation in which the workers needed for the tourist industry to thrive have nowhere to live, so hotels and restaurants are unable to operate at full capacity. That is bad for the local economy, as well as for people who cannot find anywhere to live in the area.

Meanwhile, in rural areas, the private rented sector is shrinking rapidly. Local families and people working in essential services, such as care workers, teachers and nurses, are being driven away. The sector is completely out of balance. My understanding of the legislation is that landlords seeking repossession under ground 1 or 1A must not re-market the property as a residential let within a three-month period; I would prefer six months. There is no provision for holiday let-style marketing, because those properties do not require tenancy agreements.

My amendments recognise that problem by adding holiday letting to the three-month, or ideally six-month, moratorium on re-marketing once ground 1 or 1A has been used to regain possession. I think that that is a pretty uncontroversial addition to the Bill; I very much hope that Government Members support me when I press amendments 134 and 135 to a vote.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I rise to speak to amendments 140 to 142. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Shropshire. We agree fully with the spirit behind amendments 132 to amendments 135, and we will support the hon. Lady when she presses either amendment 134 or amendment 135, regarding short-term lets, to a vote. They highlight a valid concern.

As we made clear during an earlier debate on mandatory possession grounds 1 and 1A when considering clause 3, we believe that there is a clear risk that these de facto no-fault grounds for eviction could be abused in several ways by unscrupulous landlords. As a result, we are convinced of the need to amend the Bill to provide tenants with greater protection against their misuse. However, we do not believe that the hon. Lady’s proposal to extend the no-let provisions in clause 10 from three to six months for both standard periodic and short-term lets is sufficient, for reasons I will go on to explain.

We are once again considering mandatory possession grounds 1 and 1A because clause 10 would insert proposed new section 16E into the 1988 Act, prohibiting certain actions by landlords or former landlords, including re-letting or re-marketing a property or authorising an agent to market the property within three months of obtaining possession on those grounds.

We take no issue with the prohibitions that the clause provides for. It is obviously right that the Bill seeks to prevent landlords letting a fixed-term tenancy; serving an incorrect form of possession notice; failing to give prior notice where required; specifying a ground for possession that the landlord is not entitled to use; and issuing a notice for possession proceedings within the proposed six-month protected period that applies to grounds 1, 1A and 6. We also welcome the clause’s explicit prohibition of the re-letting or re-marketing of a property obtained by means of issuing a ground 1 or 1A notice, and the fact that clause 11 provides for financial penalties and offences for a breach of that prohibition.

As I remarked to the Minister in a previous debate, the fact that the Government have introduced that prohibition highlights that they clearly accept that amended ground 1 and new ground 1A could be used as a form of section 21 by the back door. However, we are absolutely convinced that a three-month no-let period is simply not sufficient to deter and prevent abuse of the kind we fear will occur if the two possession grounds in question remain unchanged. We take that view because of our understanding of the English rental market.

Three months of lost income, which is what any unscrupulous landlord who deliberately abuses mandatory possession grounds 1 and 1A in order to evict a tenant will incur, may act as a significant disincentive for some buy-to-let landlords, particularly those with highly geared large portfolios who have seen their rental yields reduced by rising interest rates and the restriction of mortgage interest tax relief as a result of tax changes under section 24 of the Finance Act 2015.

However, a significant proportion of landlords do not have a mortgage; they own their property outright. A recent survey carried out by Shelter suggested that well over half of all landlords come under that category. For landlords who are mortgage-free or have a mortgage but can absorb extended void periods, a three-month no-let prohibition, which could ultimately see them losing only one month of rental income if the tenant serves out the two-month minimum notice period that applies to grounds 1 and 1A, is not a particularly strong deterrent against abuse.

We believe that the no-let prohibition provided for by clause 10 in respect of mandatory possession grounds 1 and 1A must increase from three months to 12 months. That would ensure, taking into account the full minimum notice period, that any landlord not legitimately using the landlord circumstances grounds to occupy or sell the property would lose 10 months of rent—a financial penalty that we think would be sufficient to deter and prevent such misuse. Amendments 140 and 141 would provide for that 12-month no-let period. I urge the Minister to reflect further on the issue and to accept the amendments.

Amendment 142 seeks to address a distinct but related issue with the no-let prohibitions provided for by clause 10 in relation to grounds 1 and 1A. Proposed new section 16E(5) provides that the prohibition is applicable only if the tenant surrenders the property as a result of a notice having been served, without an order for possession being made. To put it another way, the proposed three-month no-let ban will be applicable only in instances where a tenant has left a property voluntarily without court proceedings, not where a court has issued an order. That is genuinely inexplicable, from our point of view.

Is it the Government’s view that where a ground 1 or 1A notice is served and the tenant wishes to contest it, the no-let prohibited period would, in effect, run throughout the possession proceedings, so that if they take three months or more, the period will have been deemed to have already expired prior to any order being issued? Is that the reason? If so, we would welcome clarification. Otherwise, we cannot understand why the prohibition does not apply where a court has issued an order. The Minister must provide a detailed explanation of the rationale behind the Government’s decision, because we cannot understand why it is equitable to apply the prohibition only to instances where a tenant has left a property without court proceedings, vis-à-vis having challenged them by taking the matter to court.

We are also concerned that the decision to do so will prevent tenants themselves from seeking redress in instances where they have good reason to believe that grounds 1 and 1A have been misused. It stands to reason that tenants who have challenged their eviction in court are inherently more likely to suspect that they are being wrongfully evicted and to be willing and able to pursue their landlord if they are abusing the grounds subsequent to losing their home.

To reiterate a point I made in an earlier debate, it is almost certain that a minority of unscrupulous landlords will abuse grounds 1 and 1A to unfairly evict tenants they perceive as problematic, and will then proceed to re-let those properties in short order. As things stand, if and when they do so the courts will be able to do nothing. Indeed, how will they even know what happened subsequent to a ground 1 or 1A possession case? The obvious mechanism to ensure that grounds 1 and 1A are used legitimately in each instance is to require landlords to evidence and verify prior and subsequent to a notice being issued, but the Government rejected our amendments 138 and 139 out of hand.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

No, I genuinely do not. In a case where a tenant has felt so strongly that they are potentially being evicted unlawfully that they have taken the matter all the way to the court, it is right that the no-let period should apply from the point that the award is granted. Again, that may be a point of genuine disagreement, but we will press amendment 142 to a vote.

[Helen Morgan]

I thank the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich for his comments. I am in general agreement with his point about needing to extend the period beyond which a property can be re-marketed, although my view is that 12 months is excessive. If a landlord’s circumstances have changed—for example, if they repossess their house to sell it because they are facing financial hardship but are unable to sell and need to re-let it—12 months is punitive.

Renters (Reform) Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Helen Morgan

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Helen Morgan]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I tabled these amendments to reflect my general concerns about the potential for abuse of ground 14, the discretionary ground for eviction on the basis of antisocial behaviour. We heard, both on Second Reading and in last week’s evidence sessions, about concerns that ground 14 could be used to evict a tenant who is a victim of domestic abuse or is suffering with mental ill health or a physical condition that could cause annoyance to surrounding neighbours.

We also heard last week from Liz Davies KC, in our fourth sitting, that the threshold is being lowered by a very small margin. She said that it was difficult to see circumstances in which behaviour would not meet the threshold of “likely to cause”, but would meet the threshold of “capable of causing”. She outlined that, in her experience, courts use the existing discretionary ground wisely, to rightly allow possession where there is a flagrant problem with antisocial behaviour. We have no reason to believe that courts will not continue to do so. I am therefore a bit perplexed as to why the Government have tried to slightly lower the bar for eviction. Further to our recent discussions of other amendments, I am concerned that it is to allow landlords to exploit the clause as a route to an easier eviction.

Amendment 130 would maintain the existing definition, which, as we heard last week, should be sufficient for landlords to evict where antisocial behaviour is a genuine problem. Unless the Minister can provide some reassurance that the changed terms will not lead to an increased number of evictions, I intend to press amendment 130 to a vote.

Amendment 131 reinforces that point. Literally interpreted, the legislation does not specify whether or not a visitor exhibiting antisocial behaviour is regularly attending the property. Clearly tenants should be protected from eviction where there has been a single or very intermittent problem. Indeed, a regular antisocial visitor may not be welcome at the property; they may be regularly attending to intimidate or cause distress to the tenant.

I have a piece of casework in which the tenants of a property, through no fault of their own, have been subjected to intimidation and verbal abuse by a member of the community who lives elsewhere. I do not doubt that that causes nuisance and annoyance for other residents, but it would be grossly unfair to evict those tenants. In all likelihood, it would not resolve the problem in the long term either; it would just shift it to a different place in the same town.

I will not press amendment 131 to a vote, because ground 14 is discretionary and we should trust the judgment of the court as to whether an eviction is appropriate in each individual case. However, as we have heard of instances where unreasonable evictions have taken place, I would welcome an assurance from the Government that there will be safeguards and guidance in place to prevent the innocent from being evicted by an unscrupulous landlord under ground 14.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I rise to speak to amendment 158 and new clause 55, which stand in my name and in the name of my hon. Friends.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Shropshire. Both her amendments to schedule 1, in relation to the proposed revision of existing ground 14, are welcome. Indeed, we tabled an identical amendment to her amendment 130, but it was not selected, on the basis that it was an exact duplicate—that is a lesson for the whole Committee on the importance of tabling amendments in a timely fashion. If the hon. Lady presses her amendment 130 to a vote, we will certainly support it.

As the hon. Lady set out, paragraph 23 of schedule 1 to the Bill will widen ground 14 of schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988 to include behaviours

“capable of causing nuisance or annoyance”,

as opposed to the existing language, which merely refers to

“likely to cause nuisance or annoyance”.

We are pleased that the Government are not proposing to make existing ground 14 mandatory, as some had feared prior to the publication of the Bill earlier this year. The court will therefore still have discretion to judge whether it is reasonable and proportionate to evict a tenant for the behaviour in question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

The Minister must have been listening to a different balance of the totality of the evidence from what I heard. I heard significant criticism of this proposed change by the Government. He still has not given me an example of the types of behaviour that would not fall under the existing definition, but that would be covered by the expanded one. I think that is because the change is driven more by the politics of what is required to get the Bill through than by any empirical evidence that such a change is required to deal with instances in which landlords cannot recover their properties from tenants who cause antisocial behaviour.

[Helen Morgan]

We heard extensively from the representative of Grainger plc about antisocial behaviour. I felt that her evidence demonstrated clearly that the existing grounds were adequate for tenants to be evicted under such circumstances. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I think that is a worthwhile intervention. I heard the evidence from Grainger and others highlighting concerns about this ground, so the Government are just wrong if their position is that expert opinion out in the country is that there is no problem whatever with the proposed change to ground 14.

We agree with the hon. Member for North Shropshire that the Government should remove paragraph 23 of schedule 1 and leave ground 14 with the current “likely to cause” wording. However, if they resist doing so, we urge the Minister to at least consider clarifying, as I have asked him to, what kind of behaviour is and is not capable of causing nuisance or annoyance so that county courts can better exercise their discretion about whether eviction is reasonable and proportionate in any given circumstance once the Bill has come into force. Let us be clear: the Government’s eleventh-hour new clause 1 does not do that. Indeed, it is not clear what on earth they are trying to achieve with it. As with so much of what the Government have tabled fairly late, we suspect it is more a product of rushed thinking than anything else.

New clause 1 would make it a requirement for the court to consider, in particular, the effects of antisocial behaviour on other tenants of the same house in multiple occupation, but that is already the case. Judges already have to consider the impact of behaviours that could be categorised as antisocial on others, so why do the Government feel the need to specify that they are required to do so via this amendment, purely in relation to HMOs? I would be grateful if the Minister could provide us with a reason. Will he also explain why the Government do not believe this provision needs to cover, say, a house under part 3 of the Housing Act 2004 or a rented property that is not covered by parts 2 or 3 of that Act?

The new clause also provides for the court to take into account as a factor in its determination

“whether the person against whom the order is sought has co-operated with any attempt by the landlord to encourage the conduct to cease.”

Again, when considering antisocial behaviour, the courts can already consider, and frequently do, what efforts the tenant has made to co-operate—for example, what the tenant’s response has been when a landlord has tried to contact them to press them to bring the offending behaviour to an end.

Of course, that presumes that the landlord has tried to contact the tenant, but that highlights a more fundamental problem with the new clause. At present, there is no duty on landlords to prevent or take steps to stop antisocial behaviour on the part of their tenants. I am thinking of the extensive case law reviewed in the recent Poole Borough Council v. GN judgment. Is the new clause an attempt to impose such a requirement surreptitiously? If it is, I wonder what the National Residential Landlords Association and other landlord organisations will have to say about it. The problem is that it is not clear at all, and we fear that fact exposes the Government to the possibility of litigation.

If the new clause is not an attempt to impose a requirement for landlords to take steps to stop antisocial behaviour on the part of their tenants, should we instead take it to imply that landlords now have to at least reasonably co-operate with a tenant to limit antisocial behaviour? If it does not imply that, what is the point of it? If landlords do not have to do anything to encourage antisocial behaviour to cease or do anything about it, whether a tenant can “co-operate” is reliant on the whim of the landlord in question and whether they decide to ask the tenant to stop.

Put simply, we question whether the new clause will have any practical effect, and we would appreciate it if the Minister could explain the thinking behind it, particularly because, like the many other last-minute Government amendments to the Bill, there is no detail about it in the explanatory notes. Even if the Minister just reads his box notes into the record, I would welcome the clarification. That would at least give us a sense of the Government’s thinking.

Leaving aside the deficiencies of new clause 1, we remain of the view that if the Government are intent on widening ground 14 to cover behaviour likely to cause nuisance or annoyance, they must at least clarify what kind of behaviours they believe will be included in that definition. New clause 55 would place a duty on the Government to produce detailed guidance on precisely what constitutes antisocial behaviour for the purpose of assisting landlords and the courts to determine when ground 14 conditions have been fulfilled under the revised terms that the Government are proposing. Specifically, it requires the said guidance to define how antisocial behaviour differs from nuisance and annoyance caused by incidents of domestic violence, mental health crisis and behaviour resulting from adults or children with autism spectrum disorders or learning difficulties. Amendment 158 would, in turn, require landlords seeking possession on the basis of amended ground 14 to have regard to the guidance that the Government would be obliged to produce.

Taken together, we believe that new clause 55 and amendment 158 would at least provide the extremely vulnerable tenants we fear might fall foul of amended ground 14 with a further degree of protection beyond the discretion that the courts will still be able to apply. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will say two things to the Minister, because I think that was a helpful answer, although his officials are going to be doing a lot of writing over the coming days and weeks. It was helpful in two ways: it is welcome to hear an assurance that we expect guidance before these measures come into force, and that the working group has been set up to that end.

This is where the private rented sector is very different from the social rented sector, where registered providers operate. Registered providers often have trained antisocial behaviour teams who are equipped and trained with the tools—injunction powers and others—to remedy antisocial behaviour before eviction action has to take place. They are trained to distinguish between antisocial behaviour and things such as the domestic violence instances that we are worried about, and to take safeguarding action to protect tenants from either eviction or criminalisation. The private rented sector has none of that. I do very much think we need guidance in this area, so I welcome the Minister’s clarification in that regard. On that basis, I am happy to not to push new clause 55 to a vote.

However, what I am still concerned about, and why we will support the hon. Member for North Shropshire if she pushes her amendment to a vote, is that in some ways it does not matter what the guidance says if the definition of what constitutes antisocial behaviour is very broad and the change from “likely” to “capable” is made. That still concerns us a great deal. The Minister has not given me an example—I only want one—of a kind of behaviour that would be “capable of causing” antisocial behaviour without falling under the existing “likely to”. I do not think he has any such behaviour in mind; I do not think the officials have any idea, either.

I think the Minister gave the game away, intentionally or otherwise, that this power is to be used to make it easier for landlords to threaten tenants in the first instance, and most will not go to court, and then to be able to evict tenants. As he said, the behaviour in question does not have to have caused or be likely to have caused antisocial behaviour in any given instance. It will enable an argument on the basis that there is a pattern of behaviour that now meets the reduced threshold.

None of the evidence I listened to last week suggested that that was necessary. I remember—one good example—that Timothy Douglas from Propertymark could not understand the difference between “likely” to cause and “capable” of causing, and the need for the change in this instance. He did call for guidance—absolutely. However, none of the evidence I heard supported the change, apart from evidence from some landlords, who, of course, are going to say that they welcome a widened power. They do not have to deal with the consequences. It is local authorities and society that will have to do that.

I know this is not the Minister’s brief, but he really should know whether tenants, if evicted under these grounds, will be made intentionally homeless. I suggest that it is almost certain that they will be. We are talking about an easier way to make people homeless, and we will all pick up the costs in various ways. This will impact some incredibly vulnerable tenants. We therefore think that this measure needs to be removed from the Bill. Again, we will certainly return to the issue at a later stage.

[Helen Morgan]

I welcome the support from Opposition Members, who, I think, have summed up the issue very well. There is an increased threat of eviction even if these cases are not taken to court, because the threat of having notice served in the first place is very frightening for people who do not necessarily have the legal ability to follow that through and oppose it.

Renters (Reform) Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Helen Morgan

Committee stage
Thursday 16th November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Q I want to pick up on the point about delays in the court process. We heard this morning that the president of the Law Society is concerned about the lack of access to legal aid and the fact that, because so many people are unable to access it, they will be disadvantaged in the court process. My first question is, what are your thoughts on that?

My second question is about clause 18 and local authorities no longer having a duty to help people when they have been made homeless. Shelter has said that the Bill does not specify when help to prevent homelessness should be available to private renters. Do you have a view on that and how it could be addressed?

Liz Davies: First, housing legal aid is absolutely in crisis. The number of housing legal aid providers is diminishing each year. The Law Society has an amazing and heartbreaking interactive map where you can press on a county and discover that there are no housing legal aid providers or one of them in the area. Obviously, London is slightly better served. That is letting down everybody who cannot afford to pay for housing legal advice.

That needs fixing, and it needs an injection of resources—there is no doubt about that—but that is not a reason why there would be difficulties for landlords in obtaining possession under these new proceedings, not least because the Government have put this money into the duty solicitor scheme. Where there are no housing legal aid providers and a tenant turns up at court having been unable to find advice in advance, they will see the duty solicitor. While Richard Miller is absolutely right to be concerned about the sustainability of the housing legal aid sector—we all think it could collapse in a few years—this particular area of getting advice about possession is covered by the duty solicitor scheme. That is the first thing.

Homelessness is covered partly in clause 18 and partly in schedule 1, but this is one of the unintended consequences that the Committee should look at. The current position is that somebody is threatened with homelessness if they are likely to be homeless within 56 days. If they have a valid section 21 notice, which is two months or 56 days, they are threatened with homelessness. It is deemed. All that a local authority has to do is look at the notice and say, “Yes, that’s valid,” and that means that it owes the tenant what is called a prevention duty—a duty to help them to prevent the homelessness—and spends the next two months trying to help them to find somewhere else to live. That is a good thing, because if it works, it averts the crisis of homelessness. It means that someone can move from their previous tenancy into their new one.

As a result of the abolition of section 21, this Bill retains the definition of threatened with homelessness within 56 days, but takes away the deeming provision whereby if you have a notice of possession within 56 days, you are deemed to be threatened with homelessness. If that was reinserted, if a tenant received what would be a section 8 notice requiring them to leave within two months, you would be back in the straightforward position that they go along to a local authority, the local authority would say, “Yes, you are threatened with homelessness. We don’t need to make further inquiries or think about it any more. We accept that we owe you a prevention duty and we will help you to find somewhere else to live.”

That is absolutely the best thing, because it front-loads all the looking for somewhere else to live while a tenant still has a roof over their head, rather than waiting for the crisis moment when they have to go into interim accommodation or end up on the streets. I urge the Committee to think about an amendment that requires that section 8 notices count as deemed homelessness. I know there have been some drafts flying around, so the work has been done.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q I have three questions, if we can squeeze them in—I will get in as many as I can. Do tenants have enough power to enforce the measures in this Bill via rent repayment orders, and if not, where might we seek to reasonably apply them where they do not apply as the Bill is currently drafted?

Simon Mullings: Rent repayment orders create, as I have said before to officials in DLUHC, an army of motivated enforcers, because you have tenants who are motivated to enforce housing standards to do with houses in multiple occupancy, conditions and all sorts of things. There are clearly opportunities to expand the rent repayment order scheme, perhaps to sit alongside existing enforcement measures to do with offences. I am sorry that I do not have really specific references for you, but certainly expanding the rent repayment order scheme could in principle take some burden off local authorities in terms of their obligations, which would be an extremely important measure.

Giles Peaker: Was the question about enforcement of RROs or about the use of RROs in enforcing?

Renters (Reform) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Helen Morgan

Committee stage
Tuesday 14th November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Helen Morgan]

Q Building on the point about local authorities and their responsibilities to people who have been evicted, they are currently reporting intense pressure on their budgets because of the escalating number of people who have been evicted and made homeless. Could you build on what you would like to see in the Bill to protect those people? Do you think that ending no-fault evictions more rapidly would assist local authorities in managing the financial pressures of those homeless people?

Darren Baxter: We know from the data that local authorities capture why households come to them reporting homelessness, and why they then have a duty to house them, and section 21 no-fault evictions are a really significant part of that. Anything that reduces that flow will inevitably take some pressure off local authorities, so the more quickly you do this, the more quickly you stop one of the really significant drivers of homelessness.

Dame Clare Moriarty: We need to recognise that there is a whole range of problems with the housing market, including the extent to which rents are simply not affordable for many people. The local housing allowance is now seriously out of kilter with what people are paying for rent. That means that if you are on benefit in the private rented sector, a big chunk of your living costs go just on paying rent.

There are lots of broader questions playing into the pressures landing on local authorities. Having said that, section 21 evictions are definitely part of the problem, but they can be addressed, and the Government are committed to addressing them. As Darren was saying, this Bill has been a very long time in the making, and addressing the issue of insecurity for tenants, and the number of evictions that that is driving, has to be helpful. We should not kid ourselves that it solves the whole housing market problem, but it would make a real difference to people.

Polly Neate: I agree with all that. The Government have decided to remove the prevention duty and not replicate it for section 8 evictions, leaving it to the discretion of local authorities to decide when a duty is owed to tenants. Given the resource constraints and the issues in local authorities, there is a real risk that people just will not get the homelessness support that they need, so we urge that that be changed in the Bill.

It is absolutely right to say that no-fault evictions are not the only reason local authorities are overwhelmed by homelessness. The freezing of housing benefit and of local housing allowance is another major reason, and of course the really serious lack of social housing stock is at the root of this. This is not a magic bullet to resolve these issues, but the Government can remove a really significant factor contributing to the overwhelming pressure on local authorities.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Returning to possession grounds, concerns have been raised about new grounds 1, 1A and 6A and the changes to existing ground 14. I want to ask the witnesses a question about the new ground for possession 8A, which concerns repeated rent arrears. Do you think that that new ground is needed in any form, or should it be removed from the Bill? If it is to stay in the Bill, what changes might strengthen it to better protect tenants?