Draft Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 General Committees

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central, I warmly welcome the regulations. They are long overdue; it has taken a very long time to get here. It is shocking that in this country, tenants can still rent a property without any assurance about electrical safety.

My hon. Friend discussed the 400 fires that have occurred in private rented properties. I am particularly concerned about electric fan heaters. They are a major cause of fires, although they are not covered directly here. A few years ago, of 11 fires in the London area, three were down to fan heaters. That was not necessarily down to the landlord—I do not have the detail—but it goes to show what can happen if something goes badly wrong with an electrical appliance.

That brings me to the issue of PAT tests, which my hon. Friend raised. It is all very well having good wiring in a property—that is vital, of course—but if a single appliance has a problem, there can be a serious issue. In parts of the country where young professionals are passing through on short-term lets in single rooms in a property with shared electrical facilities, landlords are probably not checking every appliance. They are certainly not doing PAT tests; they are not required to. I urge the Minister—I know he is new in his post; I hope he stays a bit longer than any of his predecessors, which will not be difficult to achieve—to look at that issue and to respond to that serious point.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The missing part in this is who is actually doing the testing. There seems to be a serious gap in the regulations on the requirement for that person to be professionally competent. There is talk about issuing guidelines and all the rest of it, but there is precious little detail.

[Meg Hillier]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He has read my mind—that is one of my other concerns. It is a really long-awaited measure and yet it is full of holes.

I am sorry, Ms Nokes—I should declare an interest. I let a property so I know a bit of what I speak. It is in the register of interests. I mentioned PAT tests. Good landlords should maintain high standards but, as my hon. Friend highlighted, finding someone with the right qualification to do this work and knowing that the recommendations they make are the right ones is a challenge. It is important. I hope the Minister, in guidance if not in the regulations at this late stage, will be able to look at the standards that electricians should be maintaining.

Even where someone has an electrician to visit a property or their home to have something done, standards change over time. Standards have changed even in the last decade or so. Perhaps the fuse box or other elements of electrical equipment may need to be altered. If that work is done piecemeal or by somebody with a lower qualification, there is a real concern.

The law did change—all electrical installations in any property, rented or otherwise, need to be done by a qualified electrician. For landlords, there is a public safety interest as well. It is not the same as in a private home. A landlord is acting to keep a place safe for a third party. It is important that we have slightly higher standards of inspection at that point.

The other issue I am concerned about is enforcement. In part 2, regulation 3(3)(c) says that the landlord is to

“supply a copy of the report”—

the one that my right hon. Friend and I were discussing—

“to the local housing authority within 7 days of receiving a request in writing for it from that authority”.

That is all very well, but given the squeeze on local authorities, highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central, and on environmental health, I cannot envisage that councils will have the resources to run around trying to find where landlords are and ask them whether their properties are safe. Of all the things that landlords do for tenants’ safety, electrical safety will be at the top of the list of importance.

Does the tenant therefore alert the local authority? In an ideal world, yes, but we all know that there are unscrupulous landlords who will inflict punishment on tenants for making a single complaint to the local authority—and anyway, that is reliant on the local authority having the resources to act in time and do something about it if it does not receive a report within seven days or considers it to be in some way inadequate. The enforcement element of the regulations is very light.

My hon. Friend also mentioned new burdens. I am sure the Minister will have done a new burdens assessment or required to see one on local government. This paragraph alone will provide a significant new burden, let alone the overall responsibility for ensuring that properties in an area are safe. At the same time, the Government have clamped down on local licensing regimes and refused to set in place even a basic national licensing programme.

Licensing can be another burden on local government, but basic modern safety standards for private rented housing are long overdue. I urge the Minister, early in his career with responsibility for housing—hopefully his career will be longer than his predecessors’—to look seriously at this issue. We have individual licensing schemes around the country that vary greatly, with no basic minimum standards other than those required by other parts of the law. We keep adding bits to legislation, like on a Christmas tree, without seeing coherently what should be at front and centre. A private let property is a home for the tenant living there, and they should be safe and secure at all times in the home in which they live. There are so many holes in the system.

I turn to the fine of up to £30,000. Is that how local government is expected to fund this measure? That will require local government to find some very bad transgressors quite quickly to get the money in to pay for staff time alone to ensure its implementation. We can all talk warm words about how vital it is to have this measure on the statute book, but how will it be delivered?

Finally, we are in the grip of a deadly killer in coronavirus, where households will self-isolate and professionals—however well qualified—will struggle to manage their workload; indeed, they may not want to leave their own homes. In part 3, regulation 5(2), on the duty of a private landlord to comply with a remedial notice, says:

“A private landlord is not to be taken to be in breach of the duty under paragraph (1) if the private landlord can show they have taken all reasonable steps to comply with that duty.”

Nothing should let an irresponsible landlord off the hook. However, given the timeframe involved, with the regulations coming into force in June for all new tenancies from July, and the severe restrictions on British society because of the coronavirus situation, it might be challenging for some good landlords—possibly bad ones, too—to comply. Will the Minister be crystal clear about whether “reasonable steps” will cover the serious state we are in now? Will he also make clear how he will ensure that unscrupulous landlords do not use that as a get-out clause for doing what is proper and right in the interests of private tenants?

[John Spellar]

May I probe the Minister a bit further about who will do inspections? I hope he may intervene to satisfy me on that. The regulations talk about a “qualified person” but the explanatory memorandum says that the Department decided

“not to introduce a mandatory competent person scheme”.

I would not argue that the Department should set up its own mandatory competence scheme, but they are already out there in the industry, in the same way as they are in the gas industry. It is not necessarily for the Department and the Minister to identify one particular qualifying organisation, but what I find slightly odd is the fact that they are not requiring that someone qualified under part P must have a qualification from the National Inspection Council for Electrical Installation Contracting or whoever in order to be able to undertake such work—as far as I recall, it is already required for certifying a new electrical installation. That is also a protection for the landlord against people who might purport to have such qualifications—unless they produce a fraudulent certificate, but that is a different danger and another issue. It would surely benefit the tenants and local authorities to have somebody sign off and give their registration number, which can be checked if there are subsequent problems.

[Meg Hillier]

My right hon. Friend raises a really important point. If we are trying to reduce the burden on local authorities while protecting tenants, a trusted trader scheme or a trusted inspection scheme can cut through some of the bureaucracy that local government may otherwise feel the need to introduce. Actually, local government does not have the resources to do that. Surely he would agree that that would be cost-effective to the taxpayer all round.

[John Spellar]

Very much so; it makes the local authorities’ job much easier. We already have a well-regulated scheme for training and for testing the competence of people working in the industry—for very good reasons, given the inherent dangers of electricity. As I said, I understand that people might produce fraudulent certificates and so on, but that can be dealt with in a different way. This approach would make it much easier for local authorities to say to a landlord, “Where’s your certificate?” and, if they have their suspicions, to check back on that or even to check on the individual. It cuts out a huge amount and does not require the Department, local authorities or consortiums of local authorities to pull that together.

If I may say bluntly to the Minister, this process seems to have a bit of a feel of, “We’re against the big state and bureaucracy.” This would cut bureaucracy, but we still have to cut through to the idea that having proper qualifications, regulation and checking is enormously important. It facilitates commerce, rather than inhibits it, but it also provides a lot of reassurance to all the parties involved.

[Luke Hall]

I am grateful for the contributions to the debate. I am certainly grateful for what sounds like support for the principle of introducing the regulations but, understandably, a number of questions have been raised.

All Opposition colleagues asked why this has taken so long. We wanted to introduce them early in this Parliament, having announced in July 2018 that we would introduce mandatory requirements. I hope all Members will appreciate that there have been parliamentary challenges on time over the past couple of years, but we have been using this time to work closely with experts in the sector, carefully considering some of the complex issues that we have talked about in the debate to ensure that what we are introducing is proportionate. Delivering the regulations early in this Parliament has been a priority.

We have heard a couple of questions about how landlords will know that an electrician is a qualified and competent person. We will ensure that landlords know that an electrician is a qualified and competent person. Before the regulations come into force, guidance on this specific issue will be published for landlords. I will make a note to ensure that the Members who have spoken in the debate are notified when that guidance is published.

[Meg Hillier]

I thank the Minister for alerting colleagues in the room—presumably others will pick this up—but we are now in mid-March. The regulations come into force in June, but landlords will want to make plans to get the tests done. When will the Minister provide that information? Will it be in time for landlords to know exactly who they should ask to do such work?

[Luke Hall]

I cannot give the hon. Member a specific date, but I will respond to her in writing on a number of the issues that she and others have raised. I will do my best to provide a date as soon as possible.

The right hon. Member for Warley mentioned the idea of competent person schemes and the principle of trusted trader schemes. We will be encouraging industry to establish competent person schemes but membership of them will not be compulsory, to ensure that there is no further pressure placed on industry nor burdens placed on inspectors or customers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Meg Hillier]

I thank the Minister for giving way again. I raised the issue of new burdens. We recognise that in certain parts of the country there are clusters of poor landlords, who need to be driven out. The challenge, though, is for local authorities, because they are going to have to pay up front for the inspections for the work before they get any money from the fines. Some of those landlords may well be the sort of fly-by-night people from whom it is very difficult to extract the fine at all, because they will find a way of dodging it by going bankrupt or whatever, or they often have properties in the name of other family members. How is the Minister going to make sure that local government can afford to get on with this job, and has he considered the new burdens?

[Luke Hall]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. The House has secured the most positive local government finance settlement for 10 years, a £2.9 billion increase in funding for local authorities. We are quite clear that that will not resolve all of the pressures on local authorities, but that settlement—a 4.4% real-terms increase in support for local government—has been welcomed by the sector, and we think they do have the resources they need. We accept that they are—

[Meg Hillier]

I apologise for intervening on the Minister again, but the new burdens rules are very clear. If there is a new requirement for local government to act, the Department has to make sure that the Treasury provides the necessary money to local government for at least 12 months after the new burden is introduced. If he cannot answer now, perhaps he could write to us with that information, but this is vitally important, particularly in areas with large swathes of unscrupulous landlords where it will be costly for the local authority to act when, quite rightly, they will want to do so.

As Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, I must pick the Minister up on the fact that Minister after Minister stands at the Dispatch Box and tells us that local government has had its biggest financial settlement in cash terms for the past decade. That is because local authority funding has been cut back so ruthlessly over the past decade—by 40%, in my own local authority’s case—so that does not go anywhere near filling the gap. There is still a huge squeeze on local authorities, and they certainly do not have money swilling around to deal with this as a huge priority above everything else. Although it is vital that they deal with it, they are having to face Hobson’s choice, so will the Minister undertake to look at those new burden issues? I am sure it has been done already, but if he cannot tell me now, perhaps he could write to me.

[Luke Hall]

I will write to the hon. Lady with that information. She is right, by the way, that we do not think this latest settlement solves all the pressures that local government is facing. The Secretary of State made that very clear when we brought the settlement before the House a couple of weeks ago, so we completely appreciate that point. We do think, though, that it is the most positive settlement for a few years, and are pleased that it has been welcomed and supported by the whole House for the first time in a number of years. We will absolutely consider the points that the hon. Lady has made.

I am grateful that the Committee seems to support these vital regulations, and I will pick up on the points that have been raised. They will drive up standards and reduce injuries in the private rented sector, so I am grateful for the Committee’s support.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020.